I had dinner with my parents last night. Dad watches CNN 24/7, and he knows nothing about anything in the universe but for what’s shoveled into his head by CNN. It should therefore not surprise me that he’s completely unfamiliar with the concept of self-defense or that it had any relevance to the Rittenhouse verdict, and he firmly believes that Rittenhouse got away with double murder. Because that’s what CNN has been shouting for over a year, and much more ferociously since the verdict.
Imagine the lies and lies by omission CNN had to tell for so long to convince viewers that Rittenhouse is a white supremacist murderer who went to Kenosha to kill people. Yet to someone like my dad, all he would need to know to go from “Kyle is a murderer” to “Kyle is a hero and I love that boy” is knowing that a 5 time sodomizer of 9 year old boys lunged at Kyle and was rewarded with a bullet. I’m not saying that kind of facile analysis of Kyle’s culpability, one that’s informed by the past crimes of the dead, is appropriate either. But I can’t shake the feeling that the media’s crooked reporting not only manipulates people into a desired political stance, but does so against the viewers’ own core beliefs. It’s like my dad has been served a very delicious meal that he’s enjoyed and wants more of and raves about, but would have the opposite reaction if he knew he’d just been fed the corpse of his father. It sickens me to see my dad on a puppet string, raving about the lovely meal that I know he would puke up violently if he knew what was in it.
There is no way that honest, productive discussion can take place in this country when so much of the media is captive to a set narrative that conflicts with simply reporting the news and holding the powerful accountable. There are rumors that CNN is going to revert to a pure news reporting format. Not that straight news reporting will be free from The Narrative, but if it gets Chris “Stop Whining About Your 4 Year Old Seeing A 38 Year Old Dick In The Ladies’ Room” Cuomo off the air, that’s a step in the right direction. But I have little faith that there will be any course correction, or that the media will begin to value its credibility beyond declaring that they have it in spades and giving themselves awards for excellence. They love to see cities burning down, and will tailor their reporting and punditry in service of that love. 2024 is going to be absolute hell.
My wife is literally experiencing what your father just did. I agree with you, it doesn’t mean Rittenhouse was justified per se in shooting Rosenbaum, but it illustrates the media’s crimes here.
Also, people are sleeping on the fact Rosenbaum attacked a kid. You don’t rape kids because they fight back.
This is someone the left lifts up as a “white ally?”
My wife isn't completely enthralled by the MSM narrative but she leans that way. If nothing else it ensures that I back up what I say with proof.
As far as Rosenbaum the Diddler, you should look up Michel Foucault, who is literally the spiritual godfather of woke-ism, a founding father of post modern thought and a pedophile who petitioned the French government to remove age of consent laws down to infant. There's also the founding paper of Queer Theory, a spiritual kin of CRT, whose author has a special soft spot for pedophiles, calling them an oppressed minority. Another important founder of Queer theory believes that pedophiles should be given a greater role in children's lives.
I apologize for not giving these women's names but I don't remember them & I'm not on my home computer. A web search should bring it up if you're interested. It is some sick shit passing itself off as an intellectual discipline.
I disagree; the only facts that are relevant are the ones that described the facts of the assault on Rittenhouse, and which supported his valid claim of self-defense.
If someone with a criminal record for child rape had been shot and killed as a result of Rittenhouse simply taking potshots at the rioters, Rittenhouse would still have been guilty of murder.
If someone with no criminal record for any offense had physically accosted Rittenhouse in the same way the Rosenbaum did, Kyle would still deserve to be held not guilty on grounds of self-defense.
Agree with all this. The facts you point out are the only ones relevant to the trial. The facts I've raised are relevant to media coverage designed to shape public opinion against Rittenhouse and the verdict.
Though not relevant to the trial, to many people enraged by their perceived unfairness of Rittenhouse's acquittal, the self-defense argument would be more plausible if they knew the chain of events that night was triggered by a disturbed Rosenbaum with a history of the most heinous violence. The media narrative instead is that Rosenbaum was showing his support for the black community when some punk from across state lines showed up with a military grade assault rifle to get his white supremacy freak on. Rosenbaum is portrayed as some justice-inspired hero standing in solidarity with his black brethren. Heck, some news outlets even reported that Rittenhouse had shot and killed three black men. This narrative is divorced from the facts, yet is broadly accepted by many.
The jury got the verdict right. A big segment of the population got gut-punched by the verdict because of how the media distorted this story from the start. That pain fuels the next riot and marks an innocent 18 old. While I'm opposed to Rosenbaum's sexual assault convictions coaxing an acquittal for an otherwise guilty Rittenhouse, I'm not opposed to now showcasing Rosenbaum's criminal history to diffuse outsized public rage directed at an innocent man and a judge and jury that did the right thing.
Completely correct. The "liberal Prestige media" of the US has been indulging in myth-making, unbalanced reporting, errors of omission, and what's arguably censorship of dissenting views.
I find this terribly distressing, because while I recognize that almost every media outlet has an editorial slant of some sort- and that this even extends to matters of story placement and reportorial emphasis- I've always had the idea that a large, respectable news organization would check themselves well short of the bias that I've seen on display for stories like these.
I know, people can say "what about Rupert Murdoch, he started it..." and that there's some truth to that history. But it isn't that simple, really- biased news coverage and "yellow journalism" has a long history that goes back before the era of electronic media, and partisan bias was also obvious in the supposedly Elysian era of Gatekeeper Media (although that was more often about a shared consensus that served to narrow the parameters of acceptable debate.) But regardless of what Rupert Murdoch did with his media empire in the 1990s, it's inexcusable that every other Prestige Media organization follow along, while mantling themselves in superior Virtue and superior Intelligence because Liberal Ideals.
And now, as a result, Right or Left, nearly all of the Prestigious are floundering. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a high-functioning, literate, intellectually curious 18-year old who sees the world with fresh eyes, and suddenly realize what a crapfest the Prestige News Media is at this juncture. From Fox to MSNBC, so many supposedly Respectable Adults have run off the rails, representing for various hackneyed epistemic bubbles and clutching preconceived frames of reference that don't admit any fact that might undermine, contradict, or refute them.
My biggest thought at the verdict was "Thank god the courts are still working in this country." I know some of them are corrupt but many are not. So, the leftwing "march through the institutions" has not completely gutted the country just yet. There is hope.
Completely agree. I don't think my post above was really clear.
Rosenbaum's history certainly plays into anyone venerating him as a hero of some degree. Pointing that out to people is a good way to attack some of the ridiculousness around this entire affair.
I'm commenting here because you don't allow comments on your own page. I just started reading your stuff today and I'm impressed with your sanity, wisdom, and clarity. I've slotted you in my personal rankings of substack writers into the very top group and hope you keep it up.
"It’s like my dad has been served a very delicious meal that he’s enjoyed and wants more of and raves about, but would have the opposite reaction if he knew he’d just been fed the corpse of his father. It sickens me to see my dad on a puppet string, raving about the lovely meal that I know he would puke up violently if he knew what was in it."
This is so apt and such a sharp and indelible image, i may just have to steal it ;)
I am spending Thanksgiving with my liberal California cousins whom I have not seen since 1978. I will keep my mouth shut about politics and just talk about family.
That might be an almost impossible task for any informed person. IF the talk turns to current events the liberals are most often very misinformed and so sure of their "know nothing" information that it is difficult to keep your mouth shut. Problem is like religion arguments reality is NOT the controlling force. Leftist politics is a fantasy world where "leaders" are wise and all knowing govt. officials who only have the "people's" concerns as their political agenda. It is like they are mentally challenged children.
The problem here is that these lying "news" organizations have taken people so far beyond truth and rational assessment, that they are going to fight being drug back to reality. We have to find a way to destroy CNN, MSNBC and all the other propaganda arms of the woke left. They are not only toxic they are the enemy.
I would venture to say that most Americans do not want any man of any color to get a railroaded in a court of law. The best thing that trial did was taught Americans the words "Prosecutorial Misconduct". Now all we need is an honest broker. Just dreaming. Don't mind me.
"It’s like my dad has been served a very delicious meal that he’s enjoyed and wants more of and raves about, but would have the opposite reaction if he knew he’d just been fed the corpse of his father. It sickens me to see my dad on a puppet string, raving about the lovely meal that I know he would puke up violently if he knew what was in it."
I can't make the callin - this is a chicken and the egg. Had the cities that allowed rioting, looting, and burning to take place all last summer actually NOT allowed rioting, looting, and burning as per their actual jobs, a lot of things would be different. But self defense is a legal doctrine and NO ONE is required to just stand there and be killed because they "aren't allowed" to defend themselves.
This. Also, had the media been honest about Jacob Blake we also would not have been in this situation. He was no martyr. They forget that he had victims as well. There are a whole lot of people that should be facing consequences.
The media is so desperate for victims and "heroic" icons to advance their anti-American narratives that they put up a criminal with a past history of domestic violence and weapons possession as a hero just because he was shot during a violent confrontation with police. The Rittenhouse "victims" all were horrid criminals and even a convicted child molester and mental case. Yet they are all portrayed as somehow upstanding members of society and community oriented people. Harris even called Blake a "hero." These sick and almost demented depictions are a sure method of creating a huge win for GOP in 2022. That will be the final straw for the mob and we might see the kick off to a civil war or a racial conflict that has been brewing for the last decade or so. It seems to be what the left is craving. Once that fire starts it will burn all semblance of social order and might lead to the installation of a Communist like dictatorship to restore peace to our cities. What is going on within the radical left can not be a rational political movement but a designed strategy to wreck our Republic and Capitalist economic system. The chasm seems beyond anyones ability to bridge under current conditions.
The media are not advancing an "anti-American" agenda. It's financial. Both real and social media desperately need clicks, likes, and subscriptions in order to rake in profits. Drama--real or fake--does that better than anything else.
Actually, I think you're closer to the truth. I love living in America and I think it is hands down the best place in the world to be. But I have no illusion about the damage our elites and corporations have done in their quest for just a little more money and a little more power. You can love a place and still understand what motivates the bad actors in it and wish that we had much better ways to counter them and that people would wake up to what they are doing.
Thanks, Lillia. I too find America pretty damn swell and our people far more decent and kind than the media make us out to be. I choose to live here when I could move anywhere I wanted.
But we do have that serious problem of corporations and elites hogging virtually all our wealth and income, along with a governing class so bought-and-paid-for that it asks "How high, boss?" when Big Money says "jump." We need a drastic rebalance, not for purposes of "social justice"--that's a different issue--but to ensure this republic survives and thrives because its citizens are not so desperate for money and stability.
I am a firm Capitalist, but you must recognize and try to mitigate the ill effects of the Capitalist system. You also personally don’t have to “buy into” it.
The effects of the Capitalist system are to allow social mobility and creation of new wealth that moves many individuals quickly up the wealth ladder. The idea that Capitalism is a system to exploit the poor and concentrate wealth is a red herring. If you and others increase your personal wealth and the rich grow richer also --- so what.
Rich people spend money and invest in society 100's of millions/billions of their dollars. Just check out ANY hospital, University and all charities and the huge sums that are donated by wealthy people is enormous. Add the donations by average people with disposable income and the numbers are staggering.
Under Socialism almost no one would acquire new wealth and few would have the disposable income to donate to anything. A very grey and dismal society under central planning and distribution by bureaucrats is that future.
If the Mid-terms turn out as a big win for the GOP, like the Tea Party before Obama's IRS illegally wrecked that movement, those newly elected representatives should be carrying the message of freedom and liberty as their mandate. RINO's left behind will get the message and hopefully start moving away from the leftist policies and programs of AOC and the rest of the loons.
Time for the RNC to start imposing some discipline on the stray cats like the DNC does to keep their caucus voting as a. bloc. This is no time for elected GOP'ers to be free lancing and chasing their personal agendas. The threats are too real and the stakes too high.
The molester Rittenhouse shot was just an unhinged individual-witnesses said he was randomly screaming the n-word at bystanders and freaking everyone out before focusing his ire at Rittenhouse.
"What is going on within the radical left can not be a rational political movement but a designed strategy to wreck our Republic and Capitalist economic system"
No doubt-Jacob Blake was being arrested for rape when he pulled a knife on the arresting officer.
Whenever stories about bail/prison reform come up, it’s always the non violent weed dealer or the dude jailed for 35 parking tickets that are trotted out as the face of injustice ( a stance I don’t necessarily disagree with.) Felonious assault or sex crimes-radio silence from liberals/the MSM. Look at the horrific Xmas parade killer-he was out on $7500 bail for trying to run over his gf w/ the same vehicle he killed 5 people with.
Great point. I’m still a fan of “three strikes” laws. I’m 62 and still felony free. If you can’t be a law abiding member of society you must be incarcerated.
He was. So were the men that Rittenhouse shot. Did Blake or the others *deserve* to die? No. Are they subject, like everyone else, to the general rule of play stupid games, win stupid prizes? Yes. Blake, Huber, Rosenbaum, and the one whose name I can't spell all played a very stupid game and won a very stupid prize. Rittenhouse shouldn't have spent any time in jail for their stupidity and Kenosha shouldn't have burned for Blake's.
Blake and Grosskreutz are alive only because the bullets did not kill them. It wasn't anything the officer or Rittenhouse did or didn't do; the survival of B and G was sheer luck, fate, and bullets failing to go beyond wounding to lethality.
Defensive shooters open fire to stop the attack--not to kill or to wound, but to get the guy to stop what he's doing. There is no way in a churning, violent melee that a defender can deliberately choose to kill OR wound--it's beyond his control. Defensive shooters aim for the biggest parts and hope their gunfire is accurate enough to hit something and stop the attacker in his tracks. Death happens sometimes, sometimes not.
But the shooter's only goal is to get the attacker to stop.
One could argue, and probably successfully, that when the government fails to act and instead cheers on rioting and violence in an effort to derail a sitting president... it would be construed as tyranny and THIS is exactly why people created the 2nd amendment.
Does anyone think that King George III didn't use native populations to terrorize and harass colonists that wouldn't toe the Imperial line? They did... repeatedly.
That, in addition to just sending marines over to occupy peoples' houses illegally, search and pillage with wanton abandon and beat, kill, maim or otherwise terrorize a population that barely had the means to defend itself from the advances.
So... When the US government, state and local agencies start working for the establishment cunts who see their viable positions at the levers of a functioning system to derail the rule of law and instead pursue a active path toward mayhem and chaos for political gain... do we have the right to defend out families, communities and selves from this advancing fake-horde?
Yes.
That's the underlying principal here; not whether or not people should be allowed to carry openly or have more than X number of rounds per magazine.
It's a win for self-defense as your once-trusted government cheers on and actively supports a rioting mob of violent assholes who are going to beat you to death if you try to put out a fire on your own house.
If anything, people need to be gathering up the means to defend themselves more now than ever.
Exactly. That's why all the ski masks. God forbid people ID them. With cameras all over the place, it's inevitable that people find out that one of the people who set fire to the car dealership was the well-to-do son of the dealership owner, who has daddy issues ever since he left mom to date the receptionist.
God, you're a blistering idiot. Don't you have anything constructive to say, other than granny "Grab Your Guns", the mob Apocalypse zombies are at the gates - kill everything that moves .. . or do you just troll Taibbi's comment section spouting MAGA hat bullshit all day?
Shouldn't you be watching Tucker Carlson and the Great Reset... I hear your hero Kyle Rittenhouse is going to be a special guest.
*you're like fucking sharpshooters in a 'Russian firing squad'
There's going to be an inflection point (if it already hasn't happened) where the majority people, especially white people tune out when they hear the phrase "white supremacy". It's becoming trite. The left along with the media constantly throw the phrase around to the point "playing the race card" has become a legitimate response. The few examples of real minacious white supremacy will begin to receive collective eye rolls. I think many are tired of the boy who cried wolf already.
The more the media and our Beloved President call every day regular folks who happen to be political adversaries “white supremacists”, the more it robs white supremacy of all meaning and leads white people to figure out “oh shit, they mean me and my family! This whole time I thought they were talking about skinheads and racists and genocidal maniacs. But they actually mean me and my neighbor who likes to go hunting. LMAO, what a joke.”
The institutionally coddled political science wonk Proteges who craft Democratic Party rhetoric somehow still haven't figured this out. Even though it's basic to their job description, and even though some of them have loudly bemoaned the "mixed messages" coming from spokespeople for the Democrats: "Hmm- reifying White Supremacy as an undiminished influence in American life that biases every American of European ancestry (even the Woke ones, according to Robin DiAngelo), instead of a set of coercive institutional measures ordained by laws that were abolished decades ago, and a set of attitudes now held by only by a dwindling political fringe- what could go wrong?"
Well, for one thing, you're kindling the hopes of that lunatic fringe that White Supremacy still lives, and is on the verge of a comeback. For starters.
"a set of attitudes now held by only by a dwindling political fringe"
Exactly. Did the Klan or the Stormfront guys come out in support of Rittenhouse? No, because the Klan barely exists any more and the Stormfront guys were dorks who spent all day posting on a message board.
Right, Left, Nazi, Subgenius, or whatever, these forums can be an addictive spiral. No less than videogames, or porn, following Influencers, or curating the perfect Potemkin Household on Surfacebook and Instacokegram...but we're better than Them, really. We have our Text, and our Repartee, and our Literary Allusions, and it's so warm and comfortable here in the softly lit blankness of the Form, here on the Interzone...not like the 4Chan Trolls and the Memers and the Animeists, with their Emojis and their Graphic Photos and their Deepfakes...or, really the worst, Onlyfans...I refuse to try it even once. Lines must be drawn.
"it's so warm and comfortable here in the softly lit blankness of the Form, here on the Interzone..."
You're making me think of David Cronenberg's film adaptation of NAKED LUNCH, the finale of which is William Lee (Peter Weller) crossing the border from Interzone to Annexia. (Spoiler alert!)
Lowbrow here; I have read the novel and like it, but I have no idea what the fuck it's about. Cronenberg at least mashed elements from it into a semi-coherent narrative.
I was in fact doing a pretty much direct parody of a passage from Burroughs' Naked Lunch (one that shows up recurrently, an example of the insistent looping that's a key feature of Burroughs' style. Along with the drily sarcastic mockery of self-deception that makes him such a droll fellow.)
I've read Naked Lunch, too. In some sense- I got to about page 20 and started skipping around the pages at random, until I got to a passage that began "by now, the reader should have realized that this work isn't to be read in a linear fashion, and has simply resorted to flipping through the book and opening up pages at random intervals..." That's a paraphrase. (But as old Bull Lee would say, "What isn't?") Anyway, to read that book, read in linear form as long as you can stand it, and then just start skipping around. You'll meet up with the narrative line again eventually. With more than one of them, actually.
I think Billy Lee Burroughs is an important, innovative writer, even if I'm at most a casual fan, and think that he peaked with his first book. Also, like yourself, I prefer the film Naked Lunch to the book, for the same reasons as yourself. And for Ornette Coleman's soundtrack, and Cronenberg's visual sensationalism- the depictions of the Mugwumps, the exterminators and their bug spray, etc.
Strangely enough, that adaptation of Naked Lunch is the only Cronenberg film I've ever seen that I have any use for. The rest of the ones I've seen- from "Videodrome" to "A Dangerous Method", nope. But his film adaptation of "Naked Lunch" is a keeper. It distills most of the most important themes and concepts of the book, and the twisted comic humor is intact.
What's the book Naked Lunch about? It's sort of like a Raymond Chandler novel, only instead of being written from the point of view of his private investigator Philip Marlowe, it's written from the point of view of one of Marlowe's degenerate informants. Or it's like Bram Stoker's Dracula, written from the point of view of Renfield.
In a strange way, it isn't all that different from the array of social conditioning influences that work to encourage black people to view themselves from childhood on outcast delinquents with no future and nothing to lose, and hence no compelling reason to acquire scholastic or occupational skills other than those required for street criminality.
We can only be glad that the Wokist narrative has yet to alienate the Americans of European ancestry to a similar extent. Although it is disturbing to find that some of the voices who are sending disempowering messages of terminal cynicism and internalized negativity to Americans of African ancestry are the same ones who act as if White Supremacy is holding the serve in American society the way it was 70 years ago. I'm not getting what's "progressive" about ignoring or dismissing 70 years of progress toward a more impartial standard of justice in this country, instead of celebrating it. If not celebrating it, the Wokies could at least admit to it as a fact, instead of alternating between passive aggressive sulking and the empty- but nonetheless malign- rhetoric alluding to some future violent revolution along "color lines" that's waiting in the wings. That narrative is as batshit as QAnon. Although I wouldn't say that it's had no practical effects; it's probably been a windfall for the firearms industry, in what might be termed a "second-order consequence". Granted, not nearly as much as the second-order consequences that have accumulated as indirect results of decades of the War On Drugs (i.e., the real problem behind the other problems of deteriorating community and social mores in the US.)
There will never be an inflection point, at least not in my lifetime. I'm 59 and at least since I started paying more attention in the late 70's this tendency of smearing people and opinions as "racist" has been continually increasing without pause. Every year it gets a little worse, never better.
I remember my parents being angry about the "racist" Willie Horton ad in 1988. Recently I watched it for the first time, and I sort-of understand how they perceived it, but the dog-whistle aspect doesn't bother me. Truth is a universal value.
I get the NYT Evening Briefings, and it's always an exercise in filling in blanks and unravelling the spin. I go to several other sources for comparisons.
"Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges.
After 26 hours of deliberation, a jury found Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two men and wounded another amid protests and rioting over police conduct, not guilty of homicide and other charges.
Jurors appeared to accept Rittenhouse’s explanation that he had acted reasonably to defend himself during the protests in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020, days after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black resident. ['Jurors appeared to accept Rittenhouse's explanation...' --is something being implied here or is it just horrible writing? Both are possible.]
Rittenhouse, 18, sobbed and was held by his lawyers after the jury finished reading its verdict. Conservatives celebrated the verdict; liberals lamented it. Here’s what to know about the trial. [Can't click on that link in order to properly inform myself because I'm not a paying subscriber]."
And in another briefing--
"The Rittenhouse trial is over. The divisions remain.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s friend, Dominick Black, faces two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 causing death, and could face up to six years in prison if convicted. But Rittenhouse’s acquittal helps his case, experts say — and highlights the failure of efforts to implement even modest new gun restrictions."
And that last sentence really drives home the NYT's mission: "...to help people understand the world." The way they want it to be understood.
I spent nearly 30 years in big-city newspapering. The NYT's level of editorializing and insertion of opinions into news stories would have gotten me fired, and properly so, had I even dared try. That was the old and proper standard: cover the event and keep your opinions to yourself.
Now, "highlights the failure ..." is a model of coverage instead of a felony that make city editors vent their spleens on hapless reporters like journalistic drill sergeants.
I worked as a newspaper reporter and editor at the Bangor (Maine) Daily News from the mid 60s until the end of the 70s.
We both would have been fired, or at the very least demoted to cleaning toilets, had we stuffed our own opinions into a straight news report.
Took me a few years of having my typing fingers figuratively slapped by our copy editors before I understood that a young man full of his own sense of self worth should have applied for a different job.
Back in my time as a reporter/editor the gray old lady was the pinnacle of American journalism in terms setting standards for beginning reporters.
I stopped describing myself as a "journalist" late in my short lived career, if only because the term was being abused by too many men and women who worked for major print and TV news outlets.
I enjoyed reading your comment. Thank you.
Glad I came back to his discussion, William, if only because we "old timers" share similar experiences.
I am now 77 years old and have discovered my inner curmudgeon.
This is what "Defund the Police" looks like in reality. Rich people will pay for private security, while poor people will band together, and both will do what it takes to protect their neighborhoods. Whether that is building walls and living behind them, a la the rich as we have seen, or going on street patrols to keep miscreants away, a la Zimmerman.
And when the mob runs amok, they both look like what we have seen over the last year; Rittenhouse, the couple in Missouri, and so on. This is the true meaning of Militia in the 2nd, the ability for citizens, absent government control, to band together or act alone, in defense of their community. And, frankly, Rittenhouse showed why you need to be able to keep and bear arms.
One of the basic jobs of government is doing whatever it takes to let honest protestors march and holler--while cutting off the air supply of rioters, looters, and arsonists. Fail that, and the Rittenhouses of America will keep filling the vacuum.
Kenosha happened not because of Rittenhouse, but because our politicians abandoned their prime responsibility of keeping the peace in public spaces. During January 6, the Summer of Floyd, Portland, Minneapolis, and Seattle, small groups of zealots from the left, right, and nihilist zone decided to burn, loot, and riot. Instead of jumping into the breach, city and state officials let it happen.
It's simple: If you don't want more Kenoshas, then don't allow more CHAZ takeovers and month after month of arson riots in city centers.
They didn't abandon it so much as they enabled, supported and cheered it all on. They were all trying to dunk on Trump... and stoked the flames all summer long.
Then fast forward to January 6th and they're apoplectic now over a supposed "insurrection".
Nah. Not buying it.
At the end of the day, and when push comes to shove... the administrative weenies who cower behind mobs they fund and spurn forward will have to have a reckoning. On that fine day... you will see them done in by their own greasy bullshit.
Some certainly enabled and cheered the mobs. Others backed off whimpering, hoping the problem would go away on its own so they could not be accused of "white supremacist racism herp-derp-blah." January 6, the Summer of Floyd, Kenosha, all the riots allowed to continue hours after day after week, was government Weeniehood In Action.
This needs to stop. Now.
I'm not suggesting a Nixonian or Trumpian "crush all dissent." We have the right and responsibility to peacefully dissent. But government has to use the power we handed them with their oaths of offices: we want order and peace in our public spaces. Protests long and noisy are fine and to be protected and encouraged. Riots, looting, arson, assault, and murder are not, and must be suppressed quickly and by whatever means necessary.
The Portland appeasement was and remains a horror, and so was the absolute lack of government presence and command on January 6. If current governments keep on this track, then We the People must throw them out and install new.
The Social Justice movement has very different thinking than most people in this country have, and the social justice warriors are trying to normalize our thoughts. What you see is a conversation between morality systems, relative morality vs. universal morality.
Relative morality does not constrain itself to a box. The postmodernists do not believe in moral values, as moral values are a standard constraining you to a particular set of thoughts. They tear down all values and definitions and view them as meaningless. To them, this trial was not about self-defense; it was about who had the more just cause.
Was the defense of property, standing for America Just, or attacking property the white capitalist power structure just? In relative morality, any resistance to their movement is considered unjust The men killed supported the CRT movement who believed property destruction was just. Anyone defending property was the enemy.
The left will never accept the "validation" of this trial. because it goes against what they think is justice. Justice using universal morality is an objective debate of what happened and a judgment by the community, and it is reasonable people coming up with a rational decision. It should leave the community and the actors in the dispute with a feeling of respect and dignity.
What the WaPo journalist is saying is, morality is subjective and should be for the cause of CRT. He says; "The jury was not asked whether it approved of Rittenhouse's actions or if individuals should take it upon themselves to supplement or replace law enforcement. They were not asked to take sides in the underlying tension between critics of law enforcement behavior and the police. Perhaps other jurors would have reached a different conclusion."
Was the defense of property something the government should have been doing? WaPo says; "It wasn't that there were no police. It was that the police were containing the unrest, not engaging in it." Isn't it the government's first duty to protect property? Can private citizens defend their own property, or has property become meaningless? Have our principles to "validate" justice changed from universal morality to mob-ruled relative morality?
Rittenhouse restored the right to defend property and brought attention to our legal system being inadequate for the woke. They would prefer mob rule. RITTENHOUSE WAS FOR A SHORT TIME JESUS WITH A GUN. WHAT WOULD REPUBLICAN JESUS DO?
I'm a Democrat myself, but much of what the Democrats stand for is not within my set of values. They subscribe to CRT, which has no values. They deconstruct all standards and all laws and create justice at the moment based on intersectional social constructs and what weights or power they have.. Not being a democrat is fine with me right now. Republican have their problems too, but at least they subscribe to Universal morality and the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment. Demos are postmodern thinkers. In epistemology they fall apart in the ethics and morals and logic battle.
If there's going to be an academic discussion on vigilantism, everyone must consider the fact that many cities told the police to stand down during riots last year. I am in no way endorsing taking the law into your own hands, but when the police and fire department stop responding to 911 calls what else do you expect people to do?
I know, right? People have the absolute right to defend themselves from death, injury, and financial ruin. If government abandons its role of keeping the peace so that does not happen, people will do it for themselves . . . and correctly so.
If we don't want America's new political slogan to be "a chicken and AR in every pot," then government MUST retake its role as public peacekeeper.
Your excellent point is one that too many people choose to ignore.
Those of us who live in rural and wilderness areas sometimes find the need to protect ourselves and our loved ones because the nearest law enforcement officer may be two hours away.
Open google maps and ask for Ashland, Maine. Then select satellite view and closely examine the northwestern third of the state. Now move westward and cross the border into Quebec, where you will see an that more closely resembles a more normal level of population density.
In addition, without public support it is pretty hard if not impossible for the police to enforce any laws. As a resident of Minneapolis in 2020 I had the opportunity to watch this in action from my window a few times - basically police pull up, they try to work, a crowd chanting "murderers" materializes and they essentially have to choose to escalate or to back down. I watched them try to stop a fight between two men in the street - 7 or 8 cop cars eventually showed up but they all ended up leaving after the men fighting refused to comply. (The upshot was the two guys seemed to bond over their shared cop-hatred so I guess problem solved? ha.) Another time it was the aftermath of a stabbing, same story. These episodes were a few weeks after the riots, which were kind of the same problem x1000. There was a stand down during the first round of riots directly from the mayor's office, but the problem goes beyond that - and as you said, what else are people going to do when no one can help them? Thankfully it seems Minneapolis is making some progress towards accepting the idea that law enforcement is necessary to have laws - hopefully it's not too late.
I feel that the progressive position on crime, police and guns is not very coherent. Defunding the police is a very libertarian position while outlawing guns is authoritarian, and putting these two ideas together begs the question as to who will enforce the gun laws without police. I would think in order to sell gun control to the public you would want to instill confidence in the police rather than the opposite. SFO has gotten so bad that the San Francisco Chronicle is publishing propaganda saying burglary is simply a fact of life for urban dwellers and you should learn to barricade yourself in the evening.
Taking the law into your own hands." That is exactly must what must be done when the enforcement of those laws has been abandoned by the political structure. If people for whatever reason, are attacked in their homes or their businesses and property threatened by rioters taking the law into one's own hands is the only reasonable response. Ignoring the existing laws by those PAID to enforce those laws does not abrogate those same laws. Since when has rioting become an acceptable form of political action? Guess the Democrats have found another way to employ the gangster inspired Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals organizing ideas.
The lying was so outlandish in the Rittenhouse case that it can only be explained as an attempt to discourage or even outlaw actual self defense claims. The lies about his LEGAL gun possession and the "crossed State lines with a firearm" were so crazy that it can only be a pretext for passing gun ban laws under the "Rittenhouse" banner. Rittenhouse worked in Wisconsin, his family was there and the gun was legal and NEVER brought across any State line (not illegal) as it was stored in Wisconsin. Yet the lies are repeated on and on until they become "true" in the minds of the uninformed public. Leftists and ideologues worldwide have always been i. the business of disinformation since their ideas and programs are impossible to sell to the majority of the public so they must be imposed by either force or gaslighting.
Especially if the rioters are a bogus color revolution being perpetrated by the Establishment to derail a sitting president and cause chaos and mayhem for political gain.
So, it's a big win for self-defense, defending your own and your family's property and lives... and another big L for the establishment cunts and administrative weenies -no matter how they try to frame it and market it.
Maybe you missed the point. Putting an innocent person through the process of a trial is the punishment itself. That action in of itself has a deterring effect on anyone thinking of actually defending their homes, families, themselves or their property. The McCloskies never fired a shot but were indicted and needed to go through the mill before the Governor stepped in. Again the process is the punishment as many Trump supporters have found out to their dismay. Now the leftist Communists are trying to get the Federal Civil rights Division to further hector and attack Mr. Rittenhouse. They never let up until they receive a strong pushback that causes them to pay a price for their tactics and hectoring of others acting under the law.
We should have a discussion about vigilantes in the street defending their town as the police step back and allow cities to burn. And we should have a discussion about the brick-throwing mobs of arsonist rioters attacking innocent people and businesses who somehow mysteriously remain utterly blameless in all of these discussions.
Agree, Steve. America desperately needs that conversation, because government's prime job is to keep peace and order in our public spaces. If it does not, than vigilantism by the left, right, and nihilistic yahooism pours into the vacuum. No intelligent person wants that, so government must step back into that role---or be thrown out and replaced with people who understand that if you don't want chaos you have to preserve the peace.
It's obviously not a functioning government. It only took rioting, looting, open treason and a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic to reveal that to the majority of citizens.
The vast majority of the American public forgot about Afghanistan 10 years ago.
Weirdly, there was outrage when Biden (a turnip in a suit and a mask) strangely did a Presidential thing and finally pulled our asses out of a useless war.
I wonder what proportion of the people expressing outrage actually served there. 10%? 5%? 0.5%?
Not true. Government's prime job is to ::checks notes:: "solve income inequality" ::checks again:: "save the planet" ::one more time:: "cut the penises off of healthy 12 year old boys with a mental disorder that makes them think they aren't male" :that's the one:
I have long maintained that we should appoint public officials by draft rather than elections. We still have jury duty, right? "Congratulations. You are the Mayor for the next 2 years."
And of governors resisting someone who they're trying to dunk on requesting that the National Guard be called out to stop it before it hurts a lot of people.
I was Jeremy… you tried to call on last. Couldn’t unmute. Anyway, wondered why people aren’t talking how this happened- ie, from my point of view, this happened in part because democratic governors didn’t want to let the Trump’s national guard in to calm the situations. Always seemed stupid to me to have police manage police brutality protests.
The iPhone-only platform helps keep out the riff-raff, but are there any plans to add a feature to prevent participation by those who own iPhones but attended public schools?
What I learned off of Matt Orfalea's video was the answer to a question that has always bugged me.
Every time I'd watch the MSM blathering on about how Rittenhouse was a murderous spree shooting demon from Klan Hell who farted brimstone and spit out minority killing bullets, I always wondered why these people, who practically masturbate and drool whenever they have cellphone video of a cop acting badly or a white person going ballistic to show, never showed 1 minute of video featuring Rittenhouse firing into a crowd of peaceful protesters. That would have sealed the deal on their story, a picture being worth a thousand words and all.
Now I know they never aired video because all of the available video would have demonstrated, quite nicely, how they're just making shit up.
It's also funny how their audience of feeble minded, terror filled shitlibs never once asked to see the proof. Instead they were like little baby birds lining up for Don Lemon & Brian Stelter to regurgitate right into their eager, yet pliant, yaps.
I'm also amazed that the squad, Omar, AOC, Bush managed to foment racial discord without resorting to one fact in their diatribes. Proving, I suppose, that most politicians are really only fit for jobs that require them to repeat, "Ya want fries wid dat" over & over until the grave claims them.
Then there's Joe "Special Grandpa" Biden who, a year ago, cluelessly said that "we know Rittenhouse is part of a militia group out of Illinois" when he really meant to say "I love me some prepubescent hair stank" also managed to do the same thing.
More bad analysis, by Georgetown University law professor Paul Butler:
"Kyle Rittenhouse beat his case because he put on the best defense money can buy.
Don’t believe the hype that Rittenhouse, who was prosecuted for homicide after shooting three people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020 was acquitted because self-defense cases are tough for prosecutors to win. More than 90 percent of people who are prosecuted for any crime, including homicide, plead guilty. The few who dare to go to trial usually lose — including in murder cases.
Rittenhouse’s $2 million legal defense funds enabled his lawyers, before his trial, to stage separate “practice” jury trials — one in which 18-year-old Rittenhouse took the stand and one in which he did not. The more favorable reaction from the pretend jurors when Rittenhouse testified informed the decision to let the teenager tell his story to the real jurors. His apparently well-rehearsed testimony was probably the most important factor in the jury ultimately letting Rittenhouse walk...."
So there's your Speculative Narrative for you: Kyle Rittenhouse only won his case because of effective coaching by a high dollar ("$2 million") defense team, allowing him to craft a convincing story and stick to it. As if the incontrovertible facts of the case played no role in the jury decision.
(I'll merely note the irrelevance of quoting the statistics that Butler brought up in order to cast suspicion on the acquittal of Rittenhouse; offering that as tactical support for his argument is just flat out embarrassing. Although anyone who disagrees and finds the quoted metrics relevant is welcome to show their reasoning.)
My policy is to refrain from posting my own verdict on a heavily publicized criminal case, unless I conclude that there's a body of crucial evidence that makes it clear beyond all doubt about who did what when. The Rittenhouse case is one of those rare examples. I didn't require million-dollar defense attorneys to conclude from the available evidence that someone who didn't fire his weapon until after he was physically accosted by people with obvious hostile intent is not guilty by reason of self-defense.
"...Regardless of whether Rittenhouse wants or deserves to be, he is now the poster child for reactionary White men who seek to take the law in their own hands, who want to patrol Black Lives Matter protests with assault weapons and who think that violence is a legitimate form of political discourse...."
So, the only people "taking the law into their own hands" were the Kenosha residents trying to keep their city from going up in flames?
Butler is also implying that the Kenosha riot was merely a "Black Lives Matter" protest? No one has plausible grounds to complain that Black Lives Matter demonstrations are being slandered as violent, lawless riots when they've already implicitly granted that narrative credence.
The New York Times published a detailed, long-form story on the civil unrest in Kenosha on October 26, 1971. (Better late than never.) The headline:
"Kyle Rittenhouse and the New Era of Political Violence: What brought the teenager and so many others to the streets of Kenosha, Wis., equipped for war?"
New York Times skeptics will be surprised to learn that this article consists of actual news reportage, not an op-ed. And the story does a good job of explaining exactly what it was that did bring them to the streets, in a group, as an armed presence. ("Equipped for war" is toxic hyperbole. Just what we don't need any more of. At the very least, it shows a level of ignorance so appalling that the headline editor deserves to be fired.)
I could pull some excerpts and post them here, but I don't want to be accused of cherry-picking out of context. This is an article that deserves to be read in full. If someone else wants to pull some excerpts to support the fuzzy narrative that Kyle Rittenhouse was a lone vigilante who traveled to a strange city in order to find an excuse to shoot and kill nonwhites and antiracist white allies involved in protests clearly intended as support for the Black Lives Matter cause, be my guest.
As a long retired professional programmer, Matt, I only use my "smart" phone as a telephone and as a way to exchange text messages with people I know.
Yes, I appreciate your work and was one of your early subscribers. However, I do not like to waste time listening when I can read far faster than you can talk.
I agree with the remarks John wrote. Your dependence upon Apple applications is worth ridicule.
I'll even go as far in my condemnation of using IOS and/or Android as serious replacements for the power and security I enjoy on the computer I'm using to write this comment.
There must be some reasonable alternative that would allow you to create a transcript of your video and aural content.
I had dinner with my parents last night. Dad watches CNN 24/7, and he knows nothing about anything in the universe but for what’s shoveled into his head by CNN. It should therefore not surprise me that he’s completely unfamiliar with the concept of self-defense or that it had any relevance to the Rittenhouse verdict, and he firmly believes that Rittenhouse got away with double murder. Because that’s what CNN has been shouting for over a year, and much more ferociously since the verdict.
Imagine the lies and lies by omission CNN had to tell for so long to convince viewers that Rittenhouse is a white supremacist murderer who went to Kenosha to kill people. Yet to someone like my dad, all he would need to know to go from “Kyle is a murderer” to “Kyle is a hero and I love that boy” is knowing that a 5 time sodomizer of 9 year old boys lunged at Kyle and was rewarded with a bullet. I’m not saying that kind of facile analysis of Kyle’s culpability, one that’s informed by the past crimes of the dead, is appropriate either. But I can’t shake the feeling that the media’s crooked reporting not only manipulates people into a desired political stance, but does so against the viewers’ own core beliefs. It’s like my dad has been served a very delicious meal that he’s enjoyed and wants more of and raves about, but would have the opposite reaction if he knew he’d just been fed the corpse of his father. It sickens me to see my dad on a puppet string, raving about the lovely meal that I know he would puke up violently if he knew what was in it.
There is no way that honest, productive discussion can take place in this country when so much of the media is captive to a set narrative that conflicts with simply reporting the news and holding the powerful accountable. There are rumors that CNN is going to revert to a pure news reporting format. Not that straight news reporting will be free from The Narrative, but if it gets Chris “Stop Whining About Your 4 Year Old Seeing A 38 Year Old Dick In The Ladies’ Room” Cuomo off the air, that’s a step in the right direction. But I have little faith that there will be any course correction, or that the media will begin to value its credibility beyond declaring that they have it in spades and giving themselves awards for excellence. They love to see cities burning down, and will tailor their reporting and punditry in service of that love. 2024 is going to be absolute hell.
My wife is literally experiencing what your father just did. I agree with you, it doesn’t mean Rittenhouse was justified per se in shooting Rosenbaum, but it illustrates the media’s crimes here.
Also, people are sleeping on the fact Rosenbaum attacked a kid. You don’t rape kids because they fight back.
This is someone the left lifts up as a “white ally?”
My wife isn't completely enthralled by the MSM narrative but she leans that way. If nothing else it ensures that I back up what I say with proof.
As far as Rosenbaum the Diddler, you should look up Michel Foucault, who is literally the spiritual godfather of woke-ism, a founding father of post modern thought and a pedophile who petitioned the French government to remove age of consent laws down to infant. There's also the founding paper of Queer Theory, a spiritual kin of CRT, whose author has a special soft spot for pedophiles, calling them an oppressed minority. Another important founder of Queer theory believes that pedophiles should be given a greater role in children's lives.
I apologize for not giving these women's names but I don't remember them & I'm not on my home computer. A web search should bring it up if you're interested. It is some sick shit passing itself off as an intellectual discipline.
I think they have a genuine secret love of pedos. There is hardly a better wrecking ball against everything sacred and civilized than a good pedo.
Right? I suspect it’s the best angle of attack too.
If supporting a pedo isn’t a bridge too far, nothing is.
I disagree; the only facts that are relevant are the ones that described the facts of the assault on Rittenhouse, and which supported his valid claim of self-defense.
If someone with a criminal record for child rape had been shot and killed as a result of Rittenhouse simply taking potshots at the rioters, Rittenhouse would still have been guilty of murder.
If someone with no criminal record for any offense had physically accosted Rittenhouse in the same way the Rosenbaum did, Kyle would still deserve to be held not guilty on grounds of self-defense.
Agree with all this. The facts you point out are the only ones relevant to the trial. The facts I've raised are relevant to media coverage designed to shape public opinion against Rittenhouse and the verdict.
Though not relevant to the trial, to many people enraged by their perceived unfairness of Rittenhouse's acquittal, the self-defense argument would be more plausible if they knew the chain of events that night was triggered by a disturbed Rosenbaum with a history of the most heinous violence. The media narrative instead is that Rosenbaum was showing his support for the black community when some punk from across state lines showed up with a military grade assault rifle to get his white supremacy freak on. Rosenbaum is portrayed as some justice-inspired hero standing in solidarity with his black brethren. Heck, some news outlets even reported that Rittenhouse had shot and killed three black men. This narrative is divorced from the facts, yet is broadly accepted by many.
The jury got the verdict right. A big segment of the population got gut-punched by the verdict because of how the media distorted this story from the start. That pain fuels the next riot and marks an innocent 18 old. While I'm opposed to Rosenbaum's sexual assault convictions coaxing an acquittal for an otherwise guilty Rittenhouse, I'm not opposed to now showcasing Rosenbaum's criminal history to diffuse outsized public rage directed at an innocent man and a judge and jury that did the right thing.
Completely correct. The "liberal Prestige media" of the US has been indulging in myth-making, unbalanced reporting, errors of omission, and what's arguably censorship of dissenting views.
I find this terribly distressing, because while I recognize that almost every media outlet has an editorial slant of some sort- and that this even extends to matters of story placement and reportorial emphasis- I've always had the idea that a large, respectable news organization would check themselves well short of the bias that I've seen on display for stories like these.
I know, people can say "what about Rupert Murdoch, he started it..." and that there's some truth to that history. But it isn't that simple, really- biased news coverage and "yellow journalism" has a long history that goes back before the era of electronic media, and partisan bias was also obvious in the supposedly Elysian era of Gatekeeper Media (although that was more often about a shared consensus that served to narrow the parameters of acceptable debate.) But regardless of what Rupert Murdoch did with his media empire in the 1990s, it's inexcusable that every other Prestige Media organization follow along, while mantling themselves in superior Virtue and superior Intelligence because Liberal Ideals.
And now, as a result, Right or Left, nearly all of the Prestigious are floundering. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a high-functioning, literate, intellectually curious 18-year old who sees the world with fresh eyes, and suddenly realize what a crapfest the Prestige News Media is at this juncture. From Fox to MSNBC, so many supposedly Respectable Adults have run off the rails, representing for various hackneyed epistemic bubbles and clutching preconceived frames of reference that don't admit any fact that might undermine, contradict, or refute them.
My biggest thought at the verdict was "Thank god the courts are still working in this country." I know some of them are corrupt but many are not. So, the leftwing "march through the institutions" has not completely gutted the country just yet. There is hope.
Completely agree. I don't think my post above was really clear.
Rosenbaum's history certainly plays into anyone venerating him as a hero of some degree. Pointing that out to people is a good way to attack some of the ridiculousness around this entire affair.
I'm commenting here because you don't allow comments on your own page. I just started reading your stuff today and I'm impressed with your sanity, wisdom, and clarity. I've slotted you in my personal rankings of substack writers into the very top group and hope you keep it up.
That used to be taught as "Justice is Blind". I haven't heard that in a long time, come to think of it.
"It’s like my dad has been served a very delicious meal that he’s enjoyed and wants more of and raves about, but would have the opposite reaction if he knew he’d just been fed the corpse of his father. It sickens me to see my dad on a puppet string, raving about the lovely meal that I know he would puke up violently if he knew what was in it."
This is so apt and such a sharp and indelible image, i may just have to steal it ;)
Have at it!
#metoo
Thanksgiving dinner with the 'rents gonna be fun. I just mainly try to keep my pie-hole shut except when I shovel pie into it.
I am spending Thanksgiving with my liberal California cousins whom I have not seen since 1978. I will keep my mouth shut about politics and just talk about family.
That might be an almost impossible task for any informed person. IF the talk turns to current events the liberals are most often very misinformed and so sure of their "know nothing" information that it is difficult to keep your mouth shut. Problem is like religion arguments reality is NOT the controlling force. Leftist politics is a fantasy world where "leaders" are wise and all knowing govt. officials who only have the "people's" concerns as their political agenda. It is like they are mentally challenged children.
heh heh...good plan
I think they say "wish in one hand........................."
The problem here is that these lying "news" organizations have taken people so far beyond truth and rational assessment, that they are going to fight being drug back to reality. We have to find a way to destroy CNN, MSNBC and all the other propaganda arms of the woke left. They are not only toxic they are the enemy.
Next time someone posts in support of rioting in places like Kenosha, I'm just posting the addresses to CNN and MSNBC world headquarters.
"Go there. You'll actually help everyone."
I laughed when the mayor of Portland had to apologize to his neighbors b/c antifa tried to burn down their condo building.
I would venture to say that most Americans do not want any man of any color to get a railroaded in a court of law. The best thing that trial did was taught Americans the words "Prosecutorial Misconduct". Now all we need is an honest broker. Just dreaming. Don't mind me.
I loved your analysis
"It’s like my dad has been served a very delicious meal that he’s enjoyed and wants more of and raves about, but would have the opposite reaction if he knew he’d just been fed the corpse of his father. It sickens me to see my dad on a puppet string, raving about the lovely meal that I know he would puke up violently if he knew what was in it."
MSM reporting = Soylent Green 🤣🤣🤣
I can't make the callin - this is a chicken and the egg. Had the cities that allowed rioting, looting, and burning to take place all last summer actually NOT allowed rioting, looting, and burning as per their actual jobs, a lot of things would be different. But self defense is a legal doctrine and NO ONE is required to just stand there and be killed because they "aren't allowed" to defend themselves.
This. Also, had the media been honest about Jacob Blake we also would not have been in this situation. He was no martyr. They forget that he had victims as well. There are a whole lot of people that should be facing consequences.
The media is so desperate for victims and "heroic" icons to advance their anti-American narratives that they put up a criminal with a past history of domestic violence and weapons possession as a hero just because he was shot during a violent confrontation with police. The Rittenhouse "victims" all were horrid criminals and even a convicted child molester and mental case. Yet they are all portrayed as somehow upstanding members of society and community oriented people. Harris even called Blake a "hero." These sick and almost demented depictions are a sure method of creating a huge win for GOP in 2022. That will be the final straw for the mob and we might see the kick off to a civil war or a racial conflict that has been brewing for the last decade or so. It seems to be what the left is craving. Once that fire starts it will burn all semblance of social order and might lead to the installation of a Communist like dictatorship to restore peace to our cities. What is going on within the radical left can not be a rational political movement but a designed strategy to wreck our Republic and Capitalist economic system. The chasm seems beyond anyones ability to bridge under current conditions.
The media are not advancing an "anti-American" agenda. It's financial. Both real and social media desperately need clicks, likes, and subscriptions in order to rake in profits. Drama--real or fake--does that better than anything else.
Actually, I think you're closer to the truth. I love living in America and I think it is hands down the best place in the world to be. But I have no illusion about the damage our elites and corporations have done in their quest for just a little more money and a little more power. You can love a place and still understand what motivates the bad actors in it and wish that we had much better ways to counter them and that people would wake up to what they are doing.
Thanks, Lillia. I too find America pretty damn swell and our people far more decent and kind than the media make us out to be. I choose to live here when I could move anywhere I wanted.
But we do have that serious problem of corporations and elites hogging virtually all our wealth and income, along with a governing class so bought-and-paid-for that it asks "How high, boss?" when Big Money says "jump." We need a drastic rebalance, not for purposes of "social justice"--that's a different issue--but to ensure this republic survives and thrives because its citizens are not so desperate for money and stability.
I am a firm Capitalist, but you must recognize and try to mitigate the ill effects of the Capitalist system. You also personally don’t have to “buy into” it.
Pure capitalism has never existed here in the US
The effects of the Capitalist system are to allow social mobility and creation of new wealth that moves many individuals quickly up the wealth ladder. The idea that Capitalism is a system to exploit the poor and concentrate wealth is a red herring. If you and others increase your personal wealth and the rich grow richer also --- so what.
Rich people spend money and invest in society 100's of millions/billions of their dollars. Just check out ANY hospital, University and all charities and the huge sums that are donated by wealthy people is enormous. Add the donations by average people with disposable income and the numbers are staggering.
Under Socialism almost no one would acquire new wealth and few would have the disposable income to donate to anything. A very grey and dismal society under central planning and distribution by bureaucrats is that future.
Well said, Lillia.
Also to sell insurance, cars, electric cars, solar panels... pretty much anything that the richest assholes have all gone "all-in" on.
Oh, absolutely. The answer to all questions is "money."
Well, they're painting themselves into a corner that money can't buy them out of.
There's a lot of that to be sure, but there are definitely nefarious agendas as well, the percentage of which is hard to tell.
The GOP will “win” but what will they “do” with it? Nothing. We need a new party.
We need the GOP to act like the historical GOP. Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater are spinning in their graves.
If the Mid-terms turn out as a big win for the GOP, like the Tea Party before Obama's IRS illegally wrecked that movement, those newly elected representatives should be carrying the message of freedom and liberty as their mandate. RINO's left behind will get the message and hopefully start moving away from the leftist policies and programs of AOC and the rest of the loons.
Time for the RNC to start imposing some discipline on the stray cats like the DNC does to keep their caucus voting as a. bloc. This is no time for elected GOP'ers to be free lancing and chasing their personal agendas. The threats are too real and the stakes too high.
The molester Rittenhouse shot was just an unhinged individual-witnesses said he was randomly screaming the n-word at bystanders and freaking everyone out before focusing his ire at Rittenhouse.
He's not calling Rittenhouse a "molester", he was referring to the person he shot.
Ah, crap, you're right. I read molester as referring to Rittenhouse. I'll delete, and thanks for the catch, EM. Everyone needs an editor!
"What is going on within the radical left can not be a rational political movement but a designed strategy to wreck our Republic and Capitalist economic system"
Yes. We need to amplify this point.
No doubt-Jacob Blake was being arrested for rape when he pulled a knife on the arresting officer.
Whenever stories about bail/prison reform come up, it’s always the non violent weed dealer or the dude jailed for 35 parking tickets that are trotted out as the face of injustice ( a stance I don’t necessarily disagree with.) Felonious assault or sex crimes-radio silence from liberals/the MSM. Look at the horrific Xmas parade killer-he was out on $7500 bail for trying to run over his gf w/ the same vehicle he killed 5 people with.
Great point. I’m still a fan of “three strikes” laws. I’m 62 and still felony free. If you can’t be a law abiding member of society you must be incarcerated.
He was a violent criminal.
He was. So were the men that Rittenhouse shot. Did Blake or the others *deserve* to die? No. Are they subject, like everyone else, to the general rule of play stupid games, win stupid prizes? Yes. Blake, Huber, Rosenbaum, and the one whose name I can't spell all played a very stupid game and won a very stupid prize. Rittenhouse shouldn't have spent any time in jail for their stupidity and Kenosha shouldn't have burned for Blake's.
BLAKE DIDNT DIE!!
I am well aware. Neither did Grosskruetz. But they both are not still alive because either the cops or Rittenhouse deliberately didn't aim to kill.
Blake and Grosskreutz are alive only because the bullets did not kill them. It wasn't anything the officer or Rittenhouse did or didn't do; the survival of B and G was sheer luck, fate, and bullets failing to go beyond wounding to lethality.
Defensive shooters open fire to stop the attack--not to kill or to wound, but to get the guy to stop what he's doing. There is no way in a churning, violent melee that a defender can deliberately choose to kill OR wound--it's beyond his control. Defensive shooters aim for the biggest parts and hope their gunfire is accurate enough to hit something and stop the attacker in his tracks. Death happens sometimes, sometimes not.
But the shooter's only goal is to get the attacker to stop.
One could argue, and probably successfully, that when the government fails to act and instead cheers on rioting and violence in an effort to derail a sitting president... it would be construed as tyranny and THIS is exactly why people created the 2nd amendment.
Does anyone think that King George III didn't use native populations to terrorize and harass colonists that wouldn't toe the Imperial line? They did... repeatedly.
That, in addition to just sending marines over to occupy peoples' houses illegally, search and pillage with wanton abandon and beat, kill, maim or otherwise terrorize a population that barely had the means to defend itself from the advances.
So... When the US government, state and local agencies start working for the establishment cunts who see their viable positions at the levers of a functioning system to derail the rule of law and instead pursue a active path toward mayhem and chaos for political gain... do we have the right to defend out families, communities and selves from this advancing fake-horde?
Yes.
That's the underlying principal here; not whether or not people should be allowed to carry openly or have more than X number of rounds per magazine.
It's a win for self-defense as your once-trusted government cheers on and actively supports a rioting mob of violent assholes who are going to beat you to death if you try to put out a fire on your own house.
If anything, people need to be gathering up the means to defend themselves more now than ever.
Yep. Strongly recommend weapon purchases and training. They are determined. We must be determined too
They're not really all that determined. Their strength lies in their ability to instigate riots and looting from a safe distance.
The rioters are not organized enough, or smart enough to withstand a unified defense, not now or ever.
Wait until the next "Summer of Love" they plan. Guaranteed to be a massacre.
Maybe afterward the counter mob will storm the cities and yank the corporate news cunts out by their hair off to the guillotines.
Exactly. That's why all the ski masks. God forbid people ID them. With cameras all over the place, it's inevitable that people find out that one of the people who set fire to the car dealership was the well-to-do son of the dealership owner, who has daddy issues ever since he left mom to date the receptionist.
Maybe, maybe not.
Hey, don't be knockin' the summer of love. Damned good rock and roll. But they are definitely cowards - fighting from a distance.
One can dream.
God, you're a blistering idiot. Don't you have anything constructive to say, other than granny "Grab Your Guns", the mob Apocalypse zombies are at the gates - kill everything that moves .. . or do you just troll Taibbi's comment section spouting MAGA hat bullshit all day?
Shouldn't you be watching Tucker Carlson and the Great Reset... I hear your hero Kyle Rittenhouse is going to be a special guest.
*you're like fucking sharpshooters in a 'Russian firing squad'
Right. Because the Great Reset is some vast, Qanon conspiracy theory.
I imagine your solution would be to hand out cookies when the thugs arrive at your door.
Self defense is a legal doctrine and a moral imperative.
There's going to be an inflection point (if it already hasn't happened) where the majority people, especially white people tune out when they hear the phrase "white supremacy". It's becoming trite. The left along with the media constantly throw the phrase around to the point "playing the race card" has become a legitimate response. The few examples of real minacious white supremacy will begin to receive collective eye rolls. I think many are tired of the boy who cried wolf already.
The more the media and our Beloved President call every day regular folks who happen to be political adversaries “white supremacists”, the more it robs white supremacy of all meaning and leads white people to figure out “oh shit, they mean me and my family! This whole time I thought they were talking about skinheads and racists and genocidal maniacs. But they actually mean me and my neighbor who likes to go hunting. LMAO, what a joke.”
The institutionally coddled political science wonk Proteges who craft Democratic Party rhetoric somehow still haven't figured this out. Even though it's basic to their job description, and even though some of them have loudly bemoaned the "mixed messages" coming from spokespeople for the Democrats: "Hmm- reifying White Supremacy as an undiminished influence in American life that biases every American of European ancestry (even the Woke ones, according to Robin DiAngelo), instead of a set of coercive institutional measures ordained by laws that were abolished decades ago, and a set of attitudes now held by only by a dwindling political fringe- what could go wrong?"
Well, for one thing, you're kindling the hopes of that lunatic fringe that White Supremacy still lives, and is on the verge of a comeback. For starters.
"a set of attitudes now held by only by a dwindling political fringe"
Exactly. Did the Klan or the Stormfront guys come out in support of Rittenhouse? No, because the Klan barely exists any more and the Stormfront guys were dorks who spent all day posting on a message board.
[looks at self in the mirror nervously]
You win for my laugh of the day. Thanks! :-)
Right, Left, Nazi, Subgenius, or whatever, these forums can be an addictive spiral. No less than videogames, or porn, following Influencers, or curating the perfect Potemkin Household on Surfacebook and Instacokegram...but we're better than Them, really. We have our Text, and our Repartee, and our Literary Allusions, and it's so warm and comfortable here in the softly lit blankness of the Form, here on the Interzone...not like the 4Chan Trolls and the Memers and the Animeists, with their Emojis and their Graphic Photos and their Deepfakes...or, really the worst, Onlyfans...I refuse to try it even once. Lines must be drawn.
"it's so warm and comfortable here in the softly lit blankness of the Form, here on the Interzone..."
You're making me think of David Cronenberg's film adaptation of NAKED LUNCH, the finale of which is William Lee (Peter Weller) crossing the border from Interzone to Annexia. (Spoiler alert!)
Lowbrow here; I have read the novel and like it, but I have no idea what the fuck it's about. Cronenberg at least mashed elements from it into a semi-coherent narrative.
I was in fact doing a pretty much direct parody of a passage from Burroughs' Naked Lunch (one that shows up recurrently, an example of the insistent looping that's a key feature of Burroughs' style. Along with the drily sarcastic mockery of self-deception that makes him such a droll fellow.)
I've read Naked Lunch, too. In some sense- I got to about page 20 and started skipping around the pages at random, until I got to a passage that began "by now, the reader should have realized that this work isn't to be read in a linear fashion, and has simply resorted to flipping through the book and opening up pages at random intervals..." That's a paraphrase. (But as old Bull Lee would say, "What isn't?") Anyway, to read that book, read in linear form as long as you can stand it, and then just start skipping around. You'll meet up with the narrative line again eventually. With more than one of them, actually.
I think Billy Lee Burroughs is an important, innovative writer, even if I'm at most a casual fan, and think that he peaked with his first book. Also, like yourself, I prefer the film Naked Lunch to the book, for the same reasons as yourself. And for Ornette Coleman's soundtrack, and Cronenberg's visual sensationalism- the depictions of the Mugwumps, the exterminators and their bug spray, etc.
Strangely enough, that adaptation of Naked Lunch is the only Cronenberg film I've ever seen that I have any use for. The rest of the ones I've seen- from "Videodrome" to "A Dangerous Method", nope. But his film adaptation of "Naked Lunch" is a keeper. It distills most of the most important themes and concepts of the book, and the twisted comic humor is intact.
What's the book Naked Lunch about? It's sort of like a Raymond Chandler novel, only instead of being written from the point of view of his private investigator Philip Marlowe, it's written from the point of view of one of Marlowe's degenerate informants. Or it's like Bram Stoker's Dracula, written from the point of view of Renfield.
Another thing is pushing the neutrals away.
I'm reminded of the idea that if one is accused of a crime enough, they may as well oblige their accuser and commit it.
In a strange way, it isn't all that different from the array of social conditioning influences that work to encourage black people to view themselves from childhood on outcast delinquents with no future and nothing to lose, and hence no compelling reason to acquire scholastic or occupational skills other than those required for street criminality.
We can only be glad that the Wokist narrative has yet to alienate the Americans of European ancestry to a similar extent. Although it is disturbing to find that some of the voices who are sending disempowering messages of terminal cynicism and internalized negativity to Americans of African ancestry are the same ones who act as if White Supremacy is holding the serve in American society the way it was 70 years ago. I'm not getting what's "progressive" about ignoring or dismissing 70 years of progress toward a more impartial standard of justice in this country, instead of celebrating it. If not celebrating it, the Wokies could at least admit to it as a fact, instead of alternating between passive aggressive sulking and the empty- but nonetheless malign- rhetoric alluding to some future violent revolution along "color lines" that's waiting in the wings. That narrative is as batshit as QAnon. Although I wouldn't say that it's had no practical effects; it's probably been a windfall for the firearms industry, in what might be termed a "second-order consequence". Granted, not nearly as much as the second-order consequences that have accumulated as indirect results of decades of the War On Drugs (i.e., the real problem behind the other problems of deteriorating community and social mores in the US.)
As long as the bucks roll in, grievance culture will persist. Consultants who need it to will make sure of it.
If they want to be really self aware, they reach across the aisle to our Arab brothers and sisters.
This is no different than calling them terrorists.
I have the rare honor of being called both a terrorist (Persian) and a white supremacist. #CantMakeThisShitUp
You must club baby seals. And wear fur coats while eating coconut oil and palm oil in a rare earth reduction made by Madagascar child laborers.
... and he grabbed the child laborers only after their shifts in the coal mines followed by shifts chained to cotton looms . . .
I'm so jealous! I'm from Ohio, so I only get the Antifa/Proud Boys comments.
:(
Don't fret. You're also male (I suspect) so you have that going against you also.
Can confirm I have a penis and don't mind it either.
There will never be an inflection point, at least not in my lifetime. I'm 59 and at least since I started paying more attention in the late 70's this tendency of smearing people and opinions as "racist" has been continually increasing without pause. Every year it gets a little worse, never better.
I remember my parents being angry about the "racist" Willie Horton ad in 1988. Recently I watched it for the first time, and I sort-of understand how they perceived it, but the dog-whistle aspect doesn't bother me. Truth is a universal value.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y
Well, Scott, at least they stopped using the term "Nazi" to describe any "white" person to the right of Bernie Sanders.
Heck, I can't even be a supremacist in my house if my wife has come back from grocery shopping.
I totally ignore it. My only response is “Go fuck yourself”
I was thinking about Apple when I read your first sentence and I could only think of this
https://i.imgur.com/5ysMpo1.png
"The New York Times and columnist Charles Blow largely stayed away from the specifics of the case ..."
They have to. The specifics of the case destroy their narrative.
I get the NYT Evening Briefings, and it's always an exercise in filling in blanks and unravelling the spin. I go to several other sources for comparisons.
"Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges.
After 26 hours of deliberation, a jury found Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two men and wounded another amid protests and rioting over police conduct, not guilty of homicide and other charges.
Jurors appeared to accept Rittenhouse’s explanation that he had acted reasonably to defend himself during the protests in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020, days after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black resident. ['Jurors appeared to accept Rittenhouse's explanation...' --is something being implied here or is it just horrible writing? Both are possible.]
Rittenhouse, 18, sobbed and was held by his lawyers after the jury finished reading its verdict. Conservatives celebrated the verdict; liberals lamented it. Here’s what to know about the trial. [Can't click on that link in order to properly inform myself because I'm not a paying subscriber]."
And in another briefing--
"The Rittenhouse trial is over. The divisions remain.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s friend, Dominick Black, faces two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 causing death, and could face up to six years in prison if convicted. But Rittenhouse’s acquittal helps his case, experts say — and highlights the failure of efforts to implement even modest new gun restrictions."
And that last sentence really drives home the NYT's mission: "...to help people understand the world." The way they want it to be understood.
I spent nearly 30 years in big-city newspapering. The NYT's level of editorializing and insertion of opinions into news stories would have gotten me fired, and properly so, had I even dared try. That was the old and proper standard: cover the event and keep your opinions to yourself.
Now, "highlights the failure ..." is a model of coverage instead of a felony that make city editors vent their spleens on hapless reporters like journalistic drill sergeants.
I worked as a newspaper reporter and editor at the Bangor (Maine) Daily News from the mid 60s until the end of the 70s.
We both would have been fired, or at the very least demoted to cleaning toilets, had we stuffed our own opinions into a straight news report.
Took me a few years of having my typing fingers figuratively slapped by our copy editors before I understood that a young man full of his own sense of self worth should have applied for a different job.
Back in my time as a reporter/editor the gray old lady was the pinnacle of American journalism in terms setting standards for beginning reporters.
I stopped describing myself as a "journalist" late in my short lived career, if only because the term was being abused by too many men and women who worked for major print and TV news outlets.
I enjoyed reading your comment. Thank you.
Glad I came back to his discussion, William, if only because we "old timers" share similar experiences.
I am now 77 years old and have discovered my inner curmudgeon.
This is what "Defund the Police" looks like in reality. Rich people will pay for private security, while poor people will band together, and both will do what it takes to protect their neighborhoods. Whether that is building walls and living behind them, a la the rich as we have seen, or going on street patrols to keep miscreants away, a la Zimmerman.
And when the mob runs amok, they both look like what we have seen over the last year; Rittenhouse, the couple in Missouri, and so on. This is the true meaning of Militia in the 2nd, the ability for citizens, absent government control, to band together or act alone, in defense of their community. And, frankly, Rittenhouse showed why you need to be able to keep and bear arms.
Absolutely
SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH.
*it's not a lack of money that confirms our abject loss of faith and trust in our justice system .. . or the media for that matter.
Oh, look who showed up and showed out.
God, you seem to be an insufferable cunt.
Is there anything constructive you can offer or do you just troll comment sections?
Are you being paid well enough to come in here and spout unhinged bullshit all day, every day?
Are you working for Iyanna Pressly?
One of the basic jobs of government is doing whatever it takes to let honest protestors march and holler--while cutting off the air supply of rioters, looters, and arsonists. Fail that, and the Rittenhouses of America will keep filling the vacuum.
Kenosha happened not because of Rittenhouse, but because our politicians abandoned their prime responsibility of keeping the peace in public spaces. During January 6, the Summer of Floyd, Portland, Minneapolis, and Seattle, small groups of zealots from the left, right, and nihilist zone decided to burn, loot, and riot. Instead of jumping into the breach, city and state officials let it happen.
It's simple: If you don't want more Kenoshas, then don't allow more CHAZ takeovers and month after month of arson riots in city centers.
They didn't abandon it so much as they enabled, supported and cheered it all on. They were all trying to dunk on Trump... and stoked the flames all summer long.
Then fast forward to January 6th and they're apoplectic now over a supposed "insurrection".
Nah. Not buying it.
At the end of the day, and when push comes to shove... the administrative weenies who cower behind mobs they fund and spurn forward will have to have a reckoning. On that fine day... you will see them done in by their own greasy bullshit.
Some certainly enabled and cheered the mobs. Others backed off whimpering, hoping the problem would go away on its own so they could not be accused of "white supremacist racism herp-derp-blah." January 6, the Summer of Floyd, Kenosha, all the riots allowed to continue hours after day after week, was government Weeniehood In Action.
This needs to stop. Now.
I'm not suggesting a Nixonian or Trumpian "crush all dissent." We have the right and responsibility to peacefully dissent. But government has to use the power we handed them with their oaths of offices: we want order and peace in our public spaces. Protests long and noisy are fine and to be protected and encouraged. Riots, looting, arson, assault, and murder are not, and must be suppressed quickly and by whatever means necessary.
The Portland appeasement was and remains a horror, and so was the absolute lack of government presence and command on January 6. If current governments keep on this track, then We the People must throw them out and install new.
Probably going to happen sooner than we like.
Man... just let me get through another holiday season hahaha
I'm too old for that shit.
You and me both, too old for that shit. I'd have to hobble to the civil war and rest every ten minutes, and that would suck ...
I would pay good money to watch the reality show "Civil War Amongst Old Men." Kind of "American Ninja Warrior" crossed with "Bumfights."
If I don't get the Merrimack vs. the Monitor reenacted with credibly decent CGI, I will ask for my money back.
"Can we end the civil war by 4 o'clock? They got minute steaks at the early bird special and I don't wanna be late."
haha I have long suspected that you were actually Danny Glover. https://youtu.be/aKV7v2Oh71U?t=5
I'd call in but I'm out of range and would have to cross state lines to get reception, so...
This white on white violence has to end, brothers and sisters. Where's our Al Sharpton?
In the White House?
funniest shit on this thread to date
The Social Justice movement has very different thinking than most people in this country have, and the social justice warriors are trying to normalize our thoughts. What you see is a conversation between morality systems, relative morality vs. universal morality.
Relative morality does not constrain itself to a box. The postmodernists do not believe in moral values, as moral values are a standard constraining you to a particular set of thoughts. They tear down all values and definitions and view them as meaningless. To them, this trial was not about self-defense; it was about who had the more just cause.
Was the defense of property, standing for America Just, or attacking property the white capitalist power structure just? In relative morality, any resistance to their movement is considered unjust The men killed supported the CRT movement who believed property destruction was just. Anyone defending property was the enemy.
The left will never accept the "validation" of this trial. because it goes against what they think is justice. Justice using universal morality is an objective debate of what happened and a judgment by the community, and it is reasonable people coming up with a rational decision. It should leave the community and the actors in the dispute with a feeling of respect and dignity.
What the WaPo journalist is saying is, morality is subjective and should be for the cause of CRT. He says; "The jury was not asked whether it approved of Rittenhouse's actions or if individuals should take it upon themselves to supplement or replace law enforcement. They were not asked to take sides in the underlying tension between critics of law enforcement behavior and the police. Perhaps other jurors would have reached a different conclusion."
Was the defense of property something the government should have been doing? WaPo says; "It wasn't that there were no police. It was that the police were containing the unrest, not engaging in it." Isn't it the government's first duty to protect property? Can private citizens defend their own property, or has property become meaningless? Have our principles to "validate" justice changed from universal morality to mob-ruled relative morality?
Try that crap in any wealthy area and you will see property protected with extreme prejudice
Hey, didn't the Nazis do the same thing once?
Yes, the did it once and only once. Stalin did it too in the 1930s' then later in the 1950s.
to ask the question is to answer it
Rittenhouse restored the right to defend property and brought attention to our legal system being inadequate for the woke. They would prefer mob rule. RITTENHOUSE WAS FOR A SHORT TIME JESUS WITH A GUN. WHAT WOULD REPUBLICAN JESUS DO?
Not be Republican.
I'm a Democrat myself, but much of what the Democrats stand for is not within my set of values. They subscribe to CRT, which has no values. They deconstruct all standards and all laws and create justice at the moment based on intersectional social constructs and what weights or power they have.. Not being a democrat is fine with me right now. Republican have their problems too, but at least they subscribe to Universal morality and the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment. Demos are postmodern thinkers. In epistemology they fall apart in the ethics and morals and logic battle.
Have you considered a higher standard than, "Not be Democrat?"
The phrase "Jesus with a gun" is an oxymoron. Retire it.
If there's going to be an academic discussion on vigilantism, everyone must consider the fact that many cities told the police to stand down during riots last year. I am in no way endorsing taking the law into your own hands, but when the police and fire department stop responding to 911 calls what else do you expect people to do?
I know, right? People have the absolute right to defend themselves from death, injury, and financial ruin. If government abandons its role of keeping the peace so that does not happen, people will do it for themselves . . . and correctly so.
If we don't want America's new political slogan to be "a chicken and AR in every pot," then government MUST retake its role as public peacekeeper.
Cleaning your AR in a pot is to my way of thinking a poor idea, but to each their own.
Hoppe’s No 9 may be a piquant additive. May have to try it on a drumstick.
Hell yeah. Nashville Chicken #9.
Hell, I'd try Nashville No. 9, paired with a fine bottle of Chateaux Ballister.
LOL! Would make quite an oily chicken soup, though . . .
Vigilanteism is a dogwhistle for racism -- you know, the kind taught ini CRT.
haha it's subconscious bias toward racist ideals or some such shit.
Bunch of dumbasses.
Ask Charles Bronson.
Your excellent point is one that too many people choose to ignore.
Those of us who live in rural and wilderness areas sometimes find the need to protect ourselves and our loved ones because the nearest law enforcement officer may be two hours away.
Open google maps and ask for Ashland, Maine. Then select satellite view and closely examine the northwestern third of the state. Now move westward and cross the border into Quebec, where you will see an that more closely resembles a more normal level of population density.
In addition, without public support it is pretty hard if not impossible for the police to enforce any laws. As a resident of Minneapolis in 2020 I had the opportunity to watch this in action from my window a few times - basically police pull up, they try to work, a crowd chanting "murderers" materializes and they essentially have to choose to escalate or to back down. I watched them try to stop a fight between two men in the street - 7 or 8 cop cars eventually showed up but they all ended up leaving after the men fighting refused to comply. (The upshot was the two guys seemed to bond over their shared cop-hatred so I guess problem solved? ha.) Another time it was the aftermath of a stabbing, same story. These episodes were a few weeks after the riots, which were kind of the same problem x1000. There was a stand down during the first round of riots directly from the mayor's office, but the problem goes beyond that - and as you said, what else are people going to do when no one can help them? Thankfully it seems Minneapolis is making some progress towards accepting the idea that law enforcement is necessary to have laws - hopefully it's not too late.
I feel that the progressive position on crime, police and guns is not very coherent. Defunding the police is a very libertarian position while outlawing guns is authoritarian, and putting these two ideas together begs the question as to who will enforce the gun laws without police. I would think in order to sell gun control to the public you would want to instill confidence in the police rather than the opposite. SFO has gotten so bad that the San Francisco Chronicle is publishing propaganda saying burglary is simply a fact of life for urban dwellers and you should learn to barricade yourself in the evening.
https://twitter.com/sfchronicle/status/1456638956204924928
Taking the law into your own hands." That is exactly must what must be done when the enforcement of those laws has been abandoned by the political structure. If people for whatever reason, are attacked in their homes or their businesses and property threatened by rioters taking the law into one's own hands is the only reasonable response. Ignoring the existing laws by those PAID to enforce those laws does not abrogate those same laws. Since when has rioting become an acceptable form of political action? Guess the Democrats have found another way to employ the gangster inspired Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals organizing ideas.
The lying was so outlandish in the Rittenhouse case that it can only be explained as an attempt to discourage or even outlaw actual self defense claims. The lies about his LEGAL gun possession and the "crossed State lines with a firearm" were so crazy that it can only be a pretext for passing gun ban laws under the "Rittenhouse" banner. Rittenhouse worked in Wisconsin, his family was there and the gun was legal and NEVER brought across any State line (not illegal) as it was stored in Wisconsin. Yet the lies are repeated on and on until they become "true" in the minds of the uninformed public. Leftists and ideologues worldwide have always been i. the business of disinformation since their ideas and programs are impossible to sell to the majority of the public so they must be imposed by either force or gaslighting.
Especially if the rioters are a bogus color revolution being perpetrated by the Establishment to derail a sitting president and cause chaos and mayhem for political gain.
Cough* Portland's Summer of Love.
"bogus?"
"Excellent!"
Rittenhouse was tried, harassed, and smeared as a “warning” to the rest of us. Do not stand up to the mob, do not fight back. Fuck them
But he was acquitted.
So, it's a big win for self-defense, defending your own and your family's property and lives... and another big L for the establishment cunts and administrative weenies -no matter how they try to frame it and market it.
Maybe you missed the point. Putting an innocent person through the process of a trial is the punishment itself. That action in of itself has a deterring effect on anyone thinking of actually defending their homes, families, themselves or their property. The McCloskies never fired a shot but were indicted and needed to go through the mill before the Governor stepped in. Again the process is the punishment as many Trump supporters have found out to their dismay. Now the leftist Communists are trying to get the Federal Civil rights Division to further hector and attack Mr. Rittenhouse. They never let up until they receive a strong pushback that causes them to pay a price for their tactics and hectoring of others acting under the law.
We should have a discussion about vigilantes in the street defending their town as the police step back and allow cities to burn. And we should have a discussion about the brick-throwing mobs of arsonist rioters attacking innocent people and businesses who somehow mysteriously remain utterly blameless in all of these discussions.
Agree, Steve. America desperately needs that conversation, because government's prime job is to keep peace and order in our public spaces. If it does not, than vigilantism by the left, right, and nihilistic yahooism pours into the vacuum. No intelligent person wants that, so government must step back into that role---or be thrown out and replaced with people who understand that if you don't want chaos you have to preserve the peace.
It's obviously not a functioning government. It only took rioting, looting, open treason and a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic to reveal that to the majority of citizens.
We're on our own.
Don't forget Afghanisan.
The vast majority of the American public forgot about Afghanistan 10 years ago.
Weirdly, there was outrage when Biden (a turnip in a suit and a mask) strangely did a Presidential thing and finally pulled our asses out of a useless war.
I wonder what proportion of the people expressing outrage actually served there. 10%? 5%? 0.5%?
Not true. Government's prime job is to ::checks notes:: "solve income inequality" ::checks again:: "save the planet" ::one more time:: "cut the penises off of healthy 12 year old boys with a mental disorder that makes them think they aren't male" :that's the one:
Throw them out. Democrats are corrupt and evil, Republicans are stupid and weak.
With rare exceptions, yes, they are. Problem is who to replace them with, because who of any sound mind would want such a rotten job?
Guillotines have a good track record of separating weenie-heads from weenie bodies.
the first 100 names in the Des Moines phone book?
Government by Iowa!
I have long maintained that we should appoint public officials by draft rather than elections. We still have jury duty, right? "Congratulations. You are the Mayor for the next 2 years."
And of governors resisting someone who they're trying to dunk on requesting that the National Guard be called out to stop it before it hurts a lot of people.
I was Jeremy… you tried to call on last. Couldn’t unmute. Anyway, wondered why people aren’t talking how this happened- ie, from my point of view, this happened in part because democratic governors didn’t want to let the Trump’s national guard in to calm the situations. Always seemed stupid to me to have police manage police brutality protests.
The iPhone-only platform helps keep out the riff-raff, but are there any plans to add a feature to prevent participation by those who own iPhones but attended public schools?
Proud owner of three public school diplomas, a well-worn iPhone 11 Max, and absolute lack of riff or raff. Does Apple offer riff-raff as an upgrade?
What I learned off of Matt Orfalea's video was the answer to a question that has always bugged me.
Every time I'd watch the MSM blathering on about how Rittenhouse was a murderous spree shooting demon from Klan Hell who farted brimstone and spit out minority killing bullets, I always wondered why these people, who practically masturbate and drool whenever they have cellphone video of a cop acting badly or a white person going ballistic to show, never showed 1 minute of video featuring Rittenhouse firing into a crowd of peaceful protesters. That would have sealed the deal on their story, a picture being worth a thousand words and all.
Now I know they never aired video because all of the available video would have demonstrated, quite nicely, how they're just making shit up.
It's also funny how their audience of feeble minded, terror filled shitlibs never once asked to see the proof. Instead they were like little baby birds lining up for Don Lemon & Brian Stelter to regurgitate right into their eager, yet pliant, yaps.
I'm also amazed that the squad, Omar, AOC, Bush managed to foment racial discord without resorting to one fact in their diatribes. Proving, I suppose, that most politicians are really only fit for jobs that require them to repeat, "Ya want fries wid dat" over & over until the grave claims them.
Then there's Joe "Special Grandpa" Biden who, a year ago, cluelessly said that "we know Rittenhouse is part of a militia group out of Illinois" when he really meant to say "I love me some prepubescent hair stank" also managed to do the same thing.
More bad analysis, by Georgetown University law professor Paul Butler:
"Kyle Rittenhouse beat his case because he put on the best defense money can buy.
Don’t believe the hype that Rittenhouse, who was prosecuted for homicide after shooting three people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020 was acquitted because self-defense cases are tough for prosecutors to win. More than 90 percent of people who are prosecuted for any crime, including homicide, plead guilty. The few who dare to go to trial usually lose — including in murder cases.
Rittenhouse’s $2 million legal defense funds enabled his lawyers, before his trial, to stage separate “practice” jury trials — one in which 18-year-old Rittenhouse took the stand and one in which he did not. The more favorable reaction from the pretend jurors when Rittenhouse testified informed the decision to let the teenager tell his story to the real jurors. His apparently well-rehearsed testimony was probably the most important factor in the jury ultimately letting Rittenhouse walk...."
So there's your Speculative Narrative for you: Kyle Rittenhouse only won his case because of effective coaching by a high dollar ("$2 million") defense team, allowing him to craft a convincing story and stick to it. As if the incontrovertible facts of the case played no role in the jury decision.
(I'll merely note the irrelevance of quoting the statistics that Butler brought up in order to cast suspicion on the acquittal of Rittenhouse; offering that as tactical support for his argument is just flat out embarrassing. Although anyone who disagrees and finds the quoted metrics relevant is welcome to show their reasoning.)
My policy is to refrain from posting my own verdict on a heavily publicized criminal case, unless I conclude that there's a body of crucial evidence that makes it clear beyond all doubt about who did what when. The Rittenhouse case is one of those rare examples. I didn't require million-dollar defense attorneys to conclude from the available evidence that someone who didn't fire his weapon until after he was physically accosted by people with obvious hostile intent is not guilty by reason of self-defense.
"...Regardless of whether Rittenhouse wants or deserves to be, he is now the poster child for reactionary White men who seek to take the law in their own hands, who want to patrol Black Lives Matter protests with assault weapons and who think that violence is a legitimate form of political discourse...."
So, the only people "taking the law into their own hands" were the Kenosha residents trying to keep their city from going up in flames?
Butler is also implying that the Kenosha riot was merely a "Black Lives Matter" protest? No one has plausible grounds to complain that Black Lives Matter demonstrations are being slandered as violent, lawless riots when they've already implicitly granted that narrative credence.
The New York Times published a detailed, long-form story on the civil unrest in Kenosha on October 26, 1971. (Better late than never.) The headline:
"Kyle Rittenhouse and the New Era of Political Violence: What brought the teenager and so many others to the streets of Kenosha, Wis., equipped for war?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/magazine/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-wisconsin.html
New York Times skeptics will be surprised to learn that this article consists of actual news reportage, not an op-ed. And the story does a good job of explaining exactly what it was that did bring them to the streets, in a group, as an armed presence. ("Equipped for war" is toxic hyperbole. Just what we don't need any more of. At the very least, it shows a level of ignorance so appalling that the headline editor deserves to be fired.)
I could pull some excerpts and post them here, but I don't want to be accused of cherry-picking out of context. This is an article that deserves to be read in full. If someone else wants to pull some excerpts to support the fuzzy narrative that Kyle Rittenhouse was a lone vigilante who traveled to a strange city in order to find an excuse to shoot and kill nonwhites and antiracist white allies involved in protests clearly intended as support for the Black Lives Matter cause, be my guest.
As a long retired professional programmer, Matt, I only use my "smart" phone as a telephone and as a way to exchange text messages with people I know.
Yes, I appreciate your work and was one of your early subscribers. However, I do not like to waste time listening when I can read far faster than you can talk.
I agree with the remarks John wrote. Your dependence upon Apple applications is worth ridicule.
I'll even go as far in my condemnation of using IOS and/or Android as serious replacements for the power and security I enjoy on the computer I'm using to write this comment.
There must be some reasonable alternative that would allow you to create a transcript of your video and aural content.