Elsewhere (207)
Ben Shapiro on facts versus feelings:
If the political goal is to alleviate feelings of discrimination, no end point can ever be reached so long as a disproportionate number of black people end up in prison. And a disproportionate number of black people end up in prison not because of discrimination in the criminal-justice system, but because a disproportionate number of black people commit crimes… Crediting the unjustified feeling that there is pervasive bias in the criminal-justice system means making evidence secondary to perceptions. In the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo., a large majority of black Americans felt that Officer Darren Wilson was guilty of murder in August 2015. They were wrong. But according to our political leaders, such feelings ought to be granted the patina of legitimacy. This isn’t leadership. It’s moral cowardice.
It’s also, quite often, arrogance and vanity.
Thomas Sowell on egregious media bias and the war on cops:
To the race hustlers, black lives don’t really matter nearly as much as their chance to get publicity, power, money, votes or whatever else serves their own interests. The mainstream media play a large, and largely irresponsible, role in the creation and maintenance of a poisonous racial atmosphere that has claimed the lives of policemen around the country. That same poisoned atmosphere has claimed the lives of even more blacks, who have been victims of violence by thugs and criminals who have had fewer restrictions as the police have pulled back, or have been pulled back, under political pressure. The media provide the publicity on which career race hustlers thrive. It is a symbiotic relationship, in which turmoil in the streets gives the media something exciting to attract viewers. In return, the media give those behind this turmoil millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity to spread their poison.
Part 2 here. Heather Mac Donald’s book The War On Cops, which is recommended by Sowell, can be purchased here (Amazon UK) and here (Amazon US).
Speaking of media bias:
This is apparently the current state of American journalism. The newspaper printed a fact, but that fact was unacceptable based on the demographics of the people who might potentially see it.
And Franklin Einspruch on why sport remains hugely popular while art is in decline:
Baseball hasn’t spent a hundred years smashing its own conventions. Baseball players don’t endeavour to turn hitting into a critique of late capitalism. Baseball doesn’t call upon fans to comprehend discussion full of coinages by PhD students trying to impress their dissertation committees, or implicitly punish them for having bourgeois values. Audiences instinctively and rightly hate this kind of pretentiousness.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
#BLM
#PigsInABlanket
https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/754710432229777409
Ever notice how the Canadian media announces and in effect gives free advertising for left wing protest events in their ‘news’ broadcasts?
Ever notice how they do not advertise or announce abortion rallies?
Sport requires talent, skill, practice, dedication, and effort. And so does art. The difference is you can’t fake sport.
The difference is you can’t fake sport.
Heh. I denounce your bourgeois aesthetic normativities.
Although I should add that although you can’t fake sport, you can push a vastly inferior women’s version for all its worth, especially if you’re the BBC.
Speaking of denouncing bourgeois this ‘n’ that: the Marxist critique of Pokemon Go. (And a response.)
*
“Black Lives Matters wants a separate, segregated country,
free of ‘white mans’ rules and police oversight.”
“Of course, these social justice warriors are forgetting that
mythical kingdom already exists… it’s called Africa.”
*
Reason also offers a more critical review of MacDonald’s book.
LGBT editor at Think Progress says shooting random cops is ‘justice’.
https://twitter.com/uberfeminist/status/754732898075369472
Re: Einspruch
I would note, sports journalism is headed in the same direction as “art,” at least in comparison with the sports themselves. ESPN, the self-described “worldwide leader” in sports television, is gravitating more and more toward “social justice” and away from the games, scores and great plays. For some inexplicable reason, the network worthies believe I need to be lectured or harangued during the course of Sports Center.
….you can’t fake sport
From my experiences of watching football at Turf Moor for these last forty-odd years, I’d disagree.
A poor joke notwithstanding, I would agree, Tim. And there are times when sport approximates or exceeds art; a David Gower cover drive, a perfectly executed four wheel drift by Juan Manuel Fangio in a Maserati 250F or Robbie “Teeside Maradona” Blake’s perfect winning volley against Manchester United in 2009 were and are things of sublime beauty (I’m on an iPad with a slow internet connection so I would suggest Google as links are nigh-on impossible).
Regarding BLM, “The War on Police,” etc., it’s worthy to note that law enforcement is in a no-win situation. If the police deliberately reduce their presence in minority neighborhoods in order to avoid “racist” incidents, they will then be declared “racist” for failing to protect minority citizens from crime. As mentioned, the number crimes committed by minorities is disproportionate to their number within society as a whole. Yet minorities refuse to acknowledge the problems within their community and prefer to blame everything and everyone else for their ills.
Related from Baton Rouge.
“[Q]ueer, nonbinary Black fat femme writer, artist, and cultural producer” Ashleigh Shackelford gets down to brass tacks in an article about white people who show up at BLM rallies.
The sidebar to that article is really something, too. Trigger warning: intersectional feminism.
@Steve H.
That there, together with the sidebar is some weapons-grade psychological pathology.
these social justice warriors are forgetting that
mythical kingdom already exists… it’s called Africa
And Belgians, French, Dutch, English, and now the Chinese have been invading, colonizing, “fixing” Africa for centuries.
Meaning that you cannot convince SJWs that Africa is or has been free from “white” influence. Obviously, all of the basket cases there are the fault of white people, especially Zimbabwe.
Reparations will never be negotiable. So if you’re not willing to talk money, you are not here for #BlackLivesMatter as a movement or for us as individuals.
I believe the word is shakedown. See Thomas Sowell quote above.
Yet minorities refuse to acknowledge the problems within their community and prefer to blame everything and everyone else for their ills.
The influence of leftist identity politics, and the left’s counsel more generally, have been hugely corrosive. As when making the collapse of the family unit, and its grim effects, difficult to discuss realistically, if at all. And episodes like this – and like this horror show – all enabled and excused by leftist educators, tend to linger in the mind.
Though I think one of the more striking example of bad advice came from Scott Eric Kaufman, an emphatic, preening leftist who told Salon readers that young black males “shouldn’t have to” comply with lawful instructions from the police. Mr Kaufman, who is white, dismissed any cooperation with the police as being “servile,” presumably on grounds that being combative and physically resisting detainment or arrest will improve the situation no end.
Mr Kaufman was very keen to be seen as being down with the gangsta massive, but as someone who’s watched quite a few episodes of the reality show Cops, it amazes me just how often a routine stop for a minor infraction can escalate alarmingly precisely because of the chippy attitude that Mr Kaufman, a former academic, is all too happy to endorse while facing none of the likely consequences.
DAYTONA BEACH POLICE CAR TORCHED WITH ‘MOLOTOV COCKTAIL’; NOTE LEFT SAID ‘F*** THE POLICE:’ “According to reports, the patrol car was a ‘ghost car’ parked outside of the Islamic Center of Daytona Beach to deter attacks during Ramadan. Oops.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/238964/
Another shocking racial injustice has been discovered:
Cops are thugs who act like occupiers; race doesn’t matter.
Note how the cops in the above case openly tried to destroy evidence by disabling the surveillance cameras; they didn’t want their illegal behavior caught on tape. (There was a second set of cameras they didn’t find.) This is routine; police consistently try to take the cell-phone cameras of people trying to record them because they don’t want video evidence. Note also how quick the cops are to reveal video evidence when it makes them look good.
The maddening thing about BLM is that there is a real problem with police militarization in the US, but now that it’s been turned into a racial issue, we can’t discuss it rationally. You’ve got the BLM types and their supporters who think you can only talk about it in terms of race on the one hand. On the other hand, you’ve got people who say, “Oh, it’s just those race hustlers going on about the issue so we can ignore it. Besides, blacks commit more crime than white, so it’s good that police thug against blacks.”
Heather MacDonald thinks the chokehold Eric Garner was subjected to had nothing to do with his heart attack. Never mind that selling loosies shouldn’t be a crime, anyway.
Cleveland police union boss: I don’t care about the Constitution; make my job easier
Note that he’s quoted saying both, “We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something—I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point,” and “We are going to be looking very, very hard at anyone who has an open carry, […] I couldn’t care less if it’s legal or not“.
If you buy into the “obey or die” mindset of “but the cops issued an order”, the cops will increasingly start issuing illegal orders to make things easier for them. But we can ignore this because it’s only those icky crime-committing race hustlers hijacking the issue.
The maddening thing about BLM is that there is a real problem with police militarization in the US, but now that it’s been turned into a racial issue, we can’t discuss it rationally.
Quite. Dennis the Peasant left an excellent comment over at Tim Worstall’s place, which is worth reading in full:
“Baseball hasn’t spent a hundred years smashing its own conventions.”
Neither has art, really. Bolstering the audience’s soft-left nostrums while telling yourself that you’re astonishing the bourgeoisie isn’t smashing anything very much.
Some interesting stats here.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-17/not-white-problem
Chicago is 32% white, but they commit only 3.5% of the murders. Over 96% of the murders are committed by non-whites. Essentially, it is young black men murdering other black men. White people are not in the equation and are not part of the problem. It’s a black problem framed as a gun problem by Obama and his lying apparatchiks.
Mark Steyn’s been on the case of US police militarisation for some time: http://www.steynonline.com/6524/cigars-but-not-close
you can push a vastly inferior women’s version for all its worth
On a related note.
Baseball hasn’t spent a hundred years smashing its own conventions.
No; they only introduced the designated hitter.
Hmmm. One of the following doesn’t seem to quite fit with the others . . .
Theresa May: It would be irresponsible to scrap Trident
BBC News – 3 hours ago
Parliament to vote on renewing Britain’s nuclear arsenal
Kelowna Capital News
Theresa May would authorise nuclear strike causing mass loss of life
The Guardian – 1 hour ago
Trident debate live: Theresa May says threat from Russia and North Korea ‘very real’
Belfast Telegraph –
Theresa May sets out case for renewal of Trident
Financial Times – 1 hour ago
Socialism makes people selfish.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/239010/
http://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler
Blacks are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops. This is according to FBI data, which also found that 40 percent of cop killers are black. According to Mac Donald, the police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person.
I don’t know where AC1 gets his tortured statistics.
A quick internet search yielded a 2013 statistic of 111 police dying in the line of duty (the lowest since 1959, according to the article), while cops killed over 1000 people in 2014. (Yes, I know they’re different years. It’s the best I could do in two minutes.)
To get to this latest statistic, AC1 and the Heather MacDonalds of the world would have to argue that the people killed by cops are overwhelmingly white, even though it’s only the blacks who should be getting shot since they’re the ones committing all the crime.
Note as well that even though I explicitly stated I was trying to point out cases in which race isn’t an issue, people respond by sticking their fingers in their ears and saying, “But blacks commit more crime!” with the implication that therefore that police brutality, especially against black people, is deserved.
It’s a pretty amazing thing to read this HuffPo article about a Pakistan honor killing where the words, Islam and Muslim, never make an appearance.
The author blames The Patriarchy and misogyny.
Ted
I don’t know what you mean by ‘tortured stats’, the links to the data are right in the article.
Indeed, your even though it’s only the blacks who should be getting shot since they’re the ones committing all the crime is quite the tortuously-built strawman you claim belongs to AC1 & “the Heathers”.
Here, amuse yourself with actual data tables and then try to post something not so absurd.
I suppose AC1 is suggesting that the smallish number of police killed is a bigger percentage of all police than the number of black people killed is a percentage of all black people.
But the point I’m trying to make is: there is no war on cops. Cop deaths on duty have been going down for decades. The numbers also show that cops shoot more non-cops dead than the other way around.
There is a problem with police brutality and a double standard that puts cops above the law, but that has NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE. And yet every time I argue this, some people will respond, “Blacks commit more crime”, as if that’s relevant, and as though it makes any thugging by cops against black people something OK.
“The one thread in the Washington Post database that is common to the overwhelming majority of police shootings is that almost all of the civilians were killed while resisting arrest. The records of the deaths show that to keep from going to jail, people were fighting with the police; they were shooting at the police; if they didn’t have a weapon handy they were punching the police or trying to drown the police; they were trying to run the officer over with a car or smash the officer’s skull with a baseball bat … but regardless of the endless variations of method, almost everyone killed by the police was in exactly the same situation — no less than 97% of the people fatally shot by police were killed during the course of an arrest that went bad when the people tried to resist.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/18/analysis-of-washington-post-police-shootings-data-reveals-surprising-result/
“there is no war on cops”
What appears to be happening now is out-and-out assassinations of police, though, complete with baiting them to the assault location in some cases.
What appears to be happening now is out-and-out assassinations of police
https://twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/755625823340752896
“Baseball hasn’t spent a hundred years smashing its own conventions.”
Then why does ESPN shove wimmin announcers down our throats?
Every single one is some bimbo with absolutely *no* deep understanding of the game. All they ever do is interject some vacuous comments (and sometimes diatribes) on some tangental “human interest” aspect of a certain player.
Guess there’s no place left for men to shelter in without some harpie’s presence.
I just hope to hell my beloved L.A. Dodgers don’t hire one for their official broadcast team.
Baseball players don’t endeavour to turn hitting into a critique of late capitalism.
There is no such thing as “late capitalism”. Capitalism is the system in which government does not interfere with persons who wish to voluntarily trade items of value for mutual benefit, i.e. profit. Thus it is founded on the principles of freedom and justice. It is not early or late or right on time, any more than it is blue or red or yellow. None of those adjectives apply.
We should hope however that socialism should become “late”, as in defunct, very soon.
Vince N: The informal definitions I use:
Capitalism: the system where persons may accumulate and use their accumulated material and human capital for any purpose, without unnecessary hindrance by government.
Free Market: the system where persons may agree to exchange capital, material or intellectual items by mutual agreement on terms, without unnecessary hindrance by government.