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The Power of Social Media
So a 16-year-old girl in Ohio doesn’t want to clean the house, and gets in an argument with another girl about it. She decides to stab the girl she is arguing with. The girl is unarmed, but fortunately a police officer arrives just in the nick of time, and heroically saves the unarmed girl by shooting her knife-wielding assailant. Normally this would warrant little more than a pat on the back for the cop, who saved a life that day. But unfortunately, the girls were black. And even more unfortunately, the cop was white. Still, this may have remained a local matter. Until a video of the incident went viral on Facebook and Instagram.
A basketball player in California saw the video and threatened the white cop with a vaguely menacing, “You’re next.” This may have remained a private matter between a California basketball player and an Ohio police officer, but the basketball player posted the threat on his Twitter feed. He has 50 million followers on Twitter. So his threat went viral.
A basketball player in California threatening a cop in Ohio because he saved a girl’s life seemed absurd to many people. Including a cop in Idaho, who filmed a brief (less than 2 minute) video of him pretending to call the basketball player during an attempted murder to ask advice on what he should do. This may have remained a private matter between the Idaho cop and the California basketball player, but the video went viral on TikTok, and got millions of views within days. The Idaho cop was immediately suspended without pay and is likely to lose his job because he made fun of a basketball player who threatened a cop who saved a girl who was in an argument about housekeeping in Ohio.
Sort of.
In reality, none of this could have happened without social media. Without Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, the Idaho police officer would still be employed. These are powerful forces, that can lead to unpredictable results.
Suppose the Idaho cop’s boss was unusually prescient, and he could have anticipated all this. Imagine him calling the cop into his office the day of the knife fight in Ohio:
Boss: Hey, Jerry, just thought I’d let you know in advance. You should start looking for other work.
Idaho cop: Gee, boss, why is that? I thought I was doing a good job around here.
Boss: Oh, absolutely. You’re one of the best cops on the force. But a teenage girl in Ohio doesn’t want to clean her house, and therefore is about to stab another girl in a suburb of Columbus.
Idaho cop: Oh, I see. Ok, thanks for the heads up. I’ll start putting together a resume. I’ve really enjoyed my time working here boss.
This is surreal.
It’s also scary. The modern Democrat party seems motivated by little more than gaining as much control over American citizens as possible. Social media is a powerful weapon for Democrats in this battle.
Black Lives Matter played a big role in getting Joe Biden elected president. Some cop in Idaho has the temerity to make fun of them in a humorous video. Biden didn’t have to go after the guy himself. Powerful allies took the guy out on his behalf. Biden didn’t even have to make a phone call. It just happened. Very, very quickly.
And very, very quietly. I find it extremely concerning that the video from Columbus went viral, the threatening Tweet went viral, and the Idaho cop’s funny video went viral. What didn’t go viral? The story of the Idaho cop losing his job for making fun of a basketball player and, indirectly, Black Lives Matter. You might think that story would be a big deal.
But no, never mind about that. Nothing that might interest you there. Everything got taken care of. Just a minor personnel matter in an Idaho police department. By the way, there’s a hilarious cat video going viral right now – it’s awesome!
This is surreal.
And this is scary.
Published in General
I saw these reprisals coming last Fall. The vile nastiness that was being thrown around. My wife’s maid of honor, who is normally a fun, amusing entertainer, who can also be caring, becomes another person when politics arise. She is a dyed in the wool Socialist, man-hating, anti-capitalist, Trump is a Nazi spewing crazy person. My wife who is pretty apolitical, but who also was German born, commented that to constantly call Trump “Hitler” and repeatedly compare him to Nazi’s was a disservice, and false comparison to the true evil that emanated from Hitler and the Nazi’s. To which her Maid of Honor declared publicly on FB that she (my wife) was nicer than her Nazi ancestors. This resulted in my wife being bombarded by dozens of personal and public messages, threats, and suggestions for death from people she both knew and many others she never met before. I responded and deleted my FB account, and will never go back. The left has no fear of either electronically or physically punching a Trump supporter in the face. They not only do not fear such actions, they feel justified, emboldened and virtuous if they can confront, attack and bully Trump supporters (which in thier mind is anyone who doesn’t declare loudly their own views)
It is scary.
The absolute cowardice of municipal officials never fails to astound me. It doesn’t seem to matter the area of the country or the size of the population, the gutlessness of our elected officials is astonishing.
Have we forgotten that there is such a thing as recall elections?
And who is the only one to have apologized?
To be a politician is to be a coward
I saw all the videos you reference here, but I hadn’t heard that the Idaho cop lost his job. And it’s not because I was watching cat videos. Why do employers keep feeling it’s necessary to fire people over any attempt to push back? It may be explicitly against the terms of employment. I suppose that’s why the most vocal people are independently employed or “uncancelable.” Of course, there is an obvious double standard where left-leaning opinions are broadcast without repercussions.
“Why do employers keep feeling it’s necessary to fire people over any attempt to push back?”
It’s all about the power. Plus, in government there’s no need to look at the bottom line and worry about losing a good employee. There’s always money coming in from good obedient taxpayers.
The video is quite hilarious.
How depressing. One would not think that the Woke Commissars had penetrated as far as Idaho.
No kidding. It’s Idaho.
Or rather, it used to be.
Now, it’s northern California.
Well, it’s not like people are taking this lying down. A GoFundMe for the officer has blown through a $100,000 goal. Same with the Holiday Inn guy who was harassed and made into a viral phenomenon.
Pardon the weird way Jeremy talks – he has to avoid certain words that risk outraging the fragile sensibilties of youtube advertizers.
Damn.
Damn damn damn.
—-
Okay, I want to expand even more on my wordy comment.
Four damns. The first is for relating the events to social media and pointing out its significance. That’s a good idea, worth making explicit on occasion.
The next two are for the pickle we are in, the fact that we’ve become a reaction machine responding without thinking based on vicid impressions and cartoonish moral frameworks.
And the last one is because you keep doing this, turning out great pieces that make sense and say something worth hearing – and somehow also include graphics that make them more eye-catching. I don’t know where you find the time.
And now the countdown on GoFundMe removing that one, like they’ve done in other situations…
This really is outrageous. I’m glad he’s getting so much push-back support through the Go-Fund-Me campaign. It shows that people are watching. Perhaps his supervisors will notice and reconsider.
Un-firing him is likely “administratively impossible.”
This was the precedent set last spring first with Covid data, then with Antifa, BLM, Biden’s dementia, more Covid stuff, election fraud, Jan 6th details, vaccines, Chauvin facts, etc..etc…
This is the world we now live in. Many contributed to its creation and many others prefer living in it to the alternative world where critical thinking and journalism are still practiced and where standing up for truth is more celebrated than staying in the good graces of the mob.
One of the most trenchant questions I’ve heard asked in a while was I think from P.J O’Rourke.
“Who was the genius who thought it was a good idea to invent a technology that can effortlessly connect every idiot in the world with every other idiot in the world?”
We can’t accept that.
Hollywood is trying to make the most polite tweet a cancelling offense. This cop is still a citizen and he has the right to express himself as an American citizen. Biden may not have ordered his cancellation but having to be constantly scared of losing your job because you express a slightly spicy opinion is Soviet.
I love me some Quartering.
Jeremy is a normal guy who was at best, center right. Wanted to do an entertainment youtube. Crazy on the left has pushed him right.
The uneven impact of social media is curious.
Often very powerful people (especially celebrities like actors and sports figures) use social media to torment people with no power (see Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandman; not clear if Lebron James actually contributed to the suspension of the Idaho police officer). So social media can amplify already existing social hierarchies.
But sometimes social media allows otherwise insignificant people to have outsized influence. Social media allowed a person with fewer than ten followers to get a large company to stop sponsoring Michael Knowles’ show on Daily Wire. No inquiry whether the social media user’s views were shared by any other potential customers. So social media allows the “little guy” to have a voice, but audiences sometimes misjudge the extent to which that voice represents other people.
Or the cop that lost his job in Virginia, because his anonymous donation to a defense fund for a kid in Wisconsin got doxxed and he had used his official email address for the donation. That is about as petty as it can get. Surely it was driven by complaints generated by social media. We are in a 5th war and the enemy (and the useful idiots) have infiltrated many centers of power.
Maybe LeBron will get fired. But I guess that’s too much to hope for. My guess is, that if I said “You’re next” to LeBron, I’d be in jail.
If his antics didn’t get him cancelled by now, I don’t see why this latest incident would be the last straw.
People on his side of the aisle don’t get cancelled.
I’m thinking, Dr. Bastiat, that the cop who did the shooting didn’t “heroically” save that unarmed girl. He just saved her the only way she could be saved. It was a damned-if-you-do, -damned-if-you-don’t situation in that, had he not saved the unarmed girl the only way she could be saved, he would have been accused of depraved indifference to her plight due to his feelings about her skin color.
On the other hand, the cop who made the hilarious video acted heroically. I’m not kidding. We now NEED people to do what he did. And it’s now usually going to cost the people who do it.
Is there a way to contribute to a fund for the cop who made the video ?
O. K., I just saw comment # 23.
I’ll donate.
Heroes don’t choose how they act, they just act.
Kind of makes them toddler nazi’s just waiting for orders to move from virtual brown shirts, to literal in your face brown shirts.
Why does everyone not have a sense of humor or the stomach for satire.
That policeman revealed a truth in his video.
That most people already had in their mind. I thought the same, but did not make a video.
Yeah, I formerly used H blades.
Not any more.
Anyone know a sane blade company.
Gillette is also off the table.
If we don’t back our men and women in blue – right or wrong, there will be no more men and women in blue . . .