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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
Well, no. We should back them when they’re right. I would even spot them the ambiguous cases. But if they are clearly in the wrong, why would they deserve support?
No, we have to back them, even when they make a mistake. No officer today wants to have a suspect die under their custody, and I will back the policeman unless there is clear evidence the suspect was murdered. George Floyd was not murdered . . .
It depends on your interpretation of the word “wrong.” If by it you mean mistaken, then you can back the officer — defend his integrity — while still dealing with the error. (Some kind of discipline may still be required.) If by it you mean corrupt, then no of course you can’t back the officer.
Excellent math, Dr. B.
I don’t spend much time keeping up on the trending idiocy, nor connecting the dots as you have done (you made a square!), but I think that most of these reactionary chains involving the commission of a crime, followed by a threat, followed by an indignant response, followed by job loss, could be defused at any link in the chain of events. It’s sort of like when my wife invites her sister and her sister’s girlfriend over for dinner, and I make a remark about it being a little warm for flannel, then my MAGA hat inexplicably ends up in the grill, and I wind up sleeping on the couch. Actually, I still haven’t figured out how that keeps happening, but you know what I mean.
Couldn’t agree more, Bro.
I would interpret “back them” to at least mean demand deliberate, rational, due process and the appropriate presumptions until any of that above is determined.
Of course. I hope we could all agree that people shouldn’t be thrown under the bus under any circumstances. That’s just cowardice and disloyalty.
You got it.
There you go.
At least, I hope that’s what you meant…
The correct answer is to call the commie a blood-soaked mass-murder supporting communist. Say she supports mass murder 10 times more than the Nazis and that her denial of this is 10 times worse than denying the evil of the Nazis. Say she is a morally reprehensible person who needs to acknowledge the evil she has supported, denounce it, and reeducate herself to be a decent human being.
The Idaho deputy marshal has not been fired. It is not that easy in any civil service job. He is suspended without pay. Now his boss, the city marshal, and “marshal” is the precise term, needs to hear from everyone in this country that gives a rat’s rear end about the madness. And the city mayor/council needs to hear so the marshal cannot hide behind the garbage language his office spewed on their FaceBook page.
The garbage the Belleview Marshal’s Office spewed was:
The Belleview Marshal’s Office is on a page inside the municipal government website. Their public information on that page reads:
The Belleview Mayor and City Council page reads:
Don’t sugar-coat it, Clifford.
I copied to to a document for quick reference.
GoFundMe will likely end up taking it down.
Edit: kedavis beat me to it.
Nohaaj,
Your wife should probably sunset that “maid of honor” title that she bestowed upon her friend. But that’s just me. ;)
Social media is often neither.
It’s interesting that Biden has become what they all predicted Trump would be, yet they don’t seem to mind. Maybe their criticisms of Trump were insincere.
NO WAY!!!!
They were sincere because they were emotionally based.
Cancel Culture is become a big enough threat to scare good people into silence and inaction against the left. People don’t see we are in the throws of a Marxist cultural revolution because their neighborhoods look the same. Once the violence comes to your town, it is too late to stop the a Marxist cultural revolution. There is very little left of our society that isn’t under its power now. Cities are where the Marxists hold their power. Cities are where they want us all to live.
Cities and towns….
My town has an awful lot of armed people in it. My neighbors own a lot of guns. I don’t know if the Antifa pansies will get the same mileage where I live as they do on Democratic Main Street.
In many cities/towns, it seems to depend in part on the willingness of local law enforcement to go up against Antifa etc, rather than taking guns away from truly mostly-peaceful people who aren’t likely to fight back.
If the Dems really try to confiscate guns, I’m going to fight back. I’m sure an FBI sniper will be able to take me out, but maybe a neighbor will shoot him in the back while he’s aiming.
I am skeptical that a true gun confiscation attempt will be met with any enthusiasm by American law enforcement. Here in New York they tried implementing an oppressive gun law (SAFE act) on an already excessively restrictive regime. It was a spectacular failure, with non-compliance the norm.
We Americans like our guns. One of the many things I love about my country.
These days that seems to include Democrats a lot more too. Although they may not yet have figured out the proper direction to aim them. But I expect that’s coming, eventually. At least for some of them.
Sectarian civil war. It is coming. Too many Democrat voters are willing to join with the constant attacks on men. Rwanda is our future. Villifing a segment of the population always leads to violence. Cancel culture is a rehearsal for genocide.
If there were to be a civil war it wouldn’t be anything like Rwanda. It would be more like what used to be called the Sioux Uprising of 1862. (Now it’s generally called the Dakota War of 1862.) There are many other examples like that, but it’s one that comes quickly to mind.
No, it will be neighbor against neighbor. It will be horrible.
That’s what I said. It will be like the Dakota War of 1862. It will be horrible. And people who try to make the idea thinkable are living in an alternate reality.
Whatever it may or may not be, I suspect it’s going to be preceded by a period during which people plainly express their opinions — even currently unpopular and unapproved opinions — in public, without a lot of concern about how it makes them look. Because shooting at people is a big deal, and seems unlikely until we’ve exhausted talk as an option.
I don’t think we’re anywhere near that, yet.
I agree. But people who are predicting it now are giving the impetus to some unstable wacko who will go ahead and start it, which will lead to a massacre — of us.