I Was Only Going To Stab You
Heather Mac Donald on the new woke rules:
Sunday’s anti-cop riots in Lancaster, Pa., have made the current de facto rules of engagement clear: Officers may never defend themselves against lethal force if their attacker is a minority. They should simply accept being shot or stabbed as penance for their alleged racism.
Mr Ricardo Munoz, 27, the noble, oppressed citizen in whose name our betters rage, can be seen being lively here. Mr Munoz had a history of involvement in stabbing incidents, including the stabbing of women and children, and a history of resisting arrest.
The stuff of sainthood, clearly.
One could easily get the impression that as a civilisation we’re suffering the equivalent of kidney failure, in that the toxins that inevitably accumulate are no longer being expelled. We even have a loud and influential demographic, including children of the elite, telling us, quite forcibly, that kidney failure is a good thing, something we should want. Such is wokeness.
Update, via the comments:
The implications of the unrest that followed the demise of Mr Munoz fit rather well with an all-too-common strain of leftist thought – or posturing, at least – according to which, we should not defend ourselves against habitual predation and malevolence, even if our lives may be in peril. And according to which, the creatures violating us, treating us as mere prey, people from whom things can be taken, are the ones most deserving of our sympathy and indulgence. Pretentious sympathy, of course. But still.
See also the second item here, on leftist theories of crime, and the airy pronouncements of Mr Clive Stafford Smith – a man who believes that the wellbeing of burglars is more important than the wellbeing of their numerous victims, especially if the burglar is a “young black person.” And who regards anger at being burgled and the subsequent sense of violation as plebeian and unsophisticated, while disdaining the victims’ expectations of justice as, and I quote, “idiotic attitudes.”
Update 2, via Ed at Instapundit:
Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender wants us to know that a dislike of having your home invaded by sociopathic predators, and having the lives of your family put in serious danger, “comes from a place of privilege.”
Update 3:
And yet another manifestation here. Apparently, you mustn’t do anything likely to inhibit or deter shoplifters who are black, on account of their magic blackness. It’s the way of the woke. Note the lady’s rationalisations and somewhat unhinged tone. The lady in question, Charity Sadé, is a self-described “writer, activist, teacher” who finds it necessary to declare her pronouns. Ms Sadé’s view on whether store owners who happen to be black should also allow themselves to be robbed by black people is, alas, unknown.
’ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.’
Seemed apposite today.
One could easily get the impression that as a civilisation we’re suffering the equivalent of kidney failure, in that the toxins that inevitably accumulate are no longer being expelled.
That.
As noted here many, many times, there’s a strain of leftist thought – or posturing, at least – according to which, we should not defend ourselves against habitual predation and malevolence, even if our lives may be in peril. And according to which, the creatures violating us, treating us as mere prey, people from whom things can be taken, are the ones most deserving of our sympathy and indulgence. Pretentious sympathy, of course. But still.
See also this, particularly the interview with Clive Stafford Smith.
I recall sage advice from the University of Colorado on dealing with rape: https://www.cnn.com/2013/02/20/justice/colorado-rape-prevention-guidelines/index.html
When it comes to the woke wanting the rest of us to suffer, we should never forget Professor Melissa Click of the University of Missouri. When confronted at a protest by someone who identified as a journalist but possibly a person not sharing her opinions and who she believed shouldn’t be there, she shouted the famous words:
“I need some muscle over here.”
Shame on you if you call for muscle, however.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8736183/1M-bail-set-Lancaster-police-shooting-demonstrators.html
How can we achieve justice for the victims of systemic discrimination as a class if you insisted on defending yourself as an individual rather than excepting your guilt as a member of a class? Real self defense occurs when victims of systemic racism take what is rightfully theirs. Check your privilege!
See also this, particularly the interview with Clive Stafford Smith.
These people are f*cking vile.
Screw that … you attack me with a knife and I will shoot you … I do not care what color you are.
Every cop in America should go on strike for a week and then see what happens without ‘what’s left of them’.
These people are f*cking vile.
The words that come to mind are preening degenerates.
And so, burglary, the violation of someone’s home, is, we’re told, “really quite inconsequential,” and the victim’s feelings of distress and any expectation of justice are merely, and I quote, “idiotic attitudes,” terribly unsophisticated. Especially if the one doing the violation is a “young black person.” And habitual, gratuitous thieving is unworthy of punishment or any fuss at all, and is instead to be excused, repeatedly, via elaborate contortion and considerable dishonesty.
Provided it’s being done to someone else, of course.
Again, such is wokeness.
This entire movement leaves me deeply frustrated.
I’ve preached for police reform for almost two decades. I share the concerns of many who complain about police militarization, no-knock raids, rampant pet-killing, sovereign immunity, the code of Omerta among cops, and the lack of any sort of leadership or accountability when a police department screws up badly. Weak mayors and city councils who can’t stand up to their police chiefs, and police chiefs who’ll throw their weight around with elected officials but collapse into dust when confronting the police union. It’s been going on for decades, and only getting worse.
And when a flashpoint comes that could be the catalyst for much-needed reform, what do we get? A stupid fucking race war.
So now we get a period of anarchy when the cops are on the back foot. They’ll lash out in some profoundly stupid ways, and they’ll get away with it, because in the end regular people don’t want to be left to fend for themselves.
So a few years from now, we’ll have cops strutting around and basking in their newfound respect, secure in the knowledge that they can get away with absolutely anything and never be held accountable, because the alternative is chaos. And all because the organizers decided that leveraging events to kick-start a race war was a better idea than forcing much-needed reforms.
My one consolation is that they’ve spurred several million homeowners to purchase personal firearms. I hope that unintended consequence gives them some heartburn.
A woman? I don’t fancy yours…
“Self-defense” is just part of a legal system based on essential injustices that originated in settler colonial violence. And one has to go to Harvard to learn that truth.
And one has to go to Harvard to learn that truth.
Again, preening degenerates. They invoke perverse construals in order to accrue in-group status. The contortion and absurdity are currency for them, and mentally blunting for those on whom it’s inflicted. It is, quite literally, stupefying.
Prof. Reynolds at instapundit is fond of pointing out that the police are not there to protect the citizens from the criminals; they’re there to protect the criminals from the citizens.
I would also add that the many of the criminals the cops are protecting from us are the politicians and administrators that enable them. And when the police aren’t around, due process tends to diminish as well, so those city officials intent on defunding the police better allow themselves to claim personal security on expenses, otherwise piano wire and lampposts may be in their future.
A Harvard University professor claimed…that states use gun laws to “outsource its violence to individual citizens”…
As with so much else we hear from Our Betters, this is precisely backwards. We The People created police forces for the same reason we created waste haulers: we’d rather pay somebody else to dispose of our trash properly. If the cop and the garbage man are both outlawed, I seriously doubt that your average Harvard prof would approve of the results.
And in communities where police withdraw, and murder & burglary inevitably skyrocket, the next generation of lefties will insist that the decision to draw down policing was because those evil right-wingers thought the poor folk didn’t deserve police protection.
After all, the bulk of BLM are rich persons of pallor; ergo, they must be conservative!
This happened yesterday afternoon in the People’s Republic of Minneapolis: Council asks “Where are the police?”
The quote in the final paragraph really brings the absurdity into sharp relief.
Academia’s laser-like focus on fact-checking right-allied assertions has left them ignoring plainly false left-allied assertions. Few can point out how activist goals will fail to create the benefits the activists assert.
Despite all the rot in higher education, I’d wager that most academics believe that communism won’t work — not an overwhelming majority, but still a majority. However, they’ve swallowed the idea that “capitalism”, or “the patriarchy”, or “colonialism”, etc. must be overcome, or at least that overcoming it will result in an improvement. Thus, they’re willing to defer to their colleagues who trust that the other highly-credentialed researchers have figured out a way to have an economy with neither government control nor private ownership of capital.
Obviously self-contradictory, of course, but they can’t spare the time to check that; they have to make sure that free market advocates aren’t overstating their case!
So, any social reform — no matter how valid, or even necessary, it may be — is doomed to invasion by a large number of people who just like complaining & breaking things, and a smaller number of people who want to make sure it won’t attempt to defend business owners. Naturally, this sort of hazard always faced people trying to work for a cause; however, our credentialed & subsidized intellectuals are mostly letting it happen, and largely encouraging it.
For the foreseeable future, any actual improvements are necessarily predicated on countering academia’s left-wing bias.
They pay me the big bucks ’cause I can predict things that have already happened.
piano wire and lampposts may be in their future.
Wait, what? That’s ridiculous, if you try to lynch someone with piano wire, it’ll just slice right through the trachea and probably the spinal col-
Ohhhhhhhhh.
countering academia’s left-wing bias
will occur when more left and leftish academics walk away from leftishness. The walking away may appear to be a movement then, but it will really be, as it must be, the several choices of individuals. Those who feel, and care for, the dignity of the academic profession, will be obliged in conscience to collegially refuse to endorse the clear falsehoods and dubious dodges which now gain assent merely because they seem to advance a desired outcome.
This fact was fairly well established 8 years ago or so in the George Zimmerman case. Why is it such a big deal now? As Sophocles said: “What people believe prevails over the truth.”
Those who feel, and care for, the dignity of the academic profession, will be obliged in conscience to collegially refuse to endorse the clear falsehoods and dubious dodges which now gain assent merely because they seem to advance a desired outcome.
And what’s the big assumption in this statement?
Those who feel, and care for, the dignity of the academic profession, will be obliged in conscience…
So, you’re saying it won’t happen, then? ‘Cause I don’t see a whole lot of that caring, or dignity, or conscience.
And because it seems rather fitting, one more time:
Cargo-cult morality.
America is in a state of complete moral inversion. In the minds of the Woke (and too many others) whores ALWAYS have hearts of gold. Muggers are ALWAYS latter-day Jean Valjeans. Middle-aged white businessmen are ALWAYS secret murderers. Priests and pastors are ALWAYS covert perverts and hypocrites.
I blame television.
So, you’re saying it won’t happen, then? ‘Cause I don’t see a whole lot of that caring, or dignity, or conscience.
Faith is the evidence of things not seen.
This just in from Chicago University whose English Department is now accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies.
How curious for all this noteworthy African American, African, and African diaspora literature and media to have been produced exclusively in English?
‘Police Brutality Activist Fails Use-of-Force Training’
https://youtu.be/HRcOgA5_iXc
This just in from Chicago University
University of Chicago, to be pedantic. It’s shocking and disheartening that such a famously superior university could become so debased. On the other hand, most English Department today do seem to be filled with fools and worse.
I blame television.
I blame those who accepted what was put out there without question. Whether they watched it themselves or not. Also movies. Also news media. Also school system, public or private. Also those who paid for what those schools taught, public or private.
M-A-G-A
https://youtu.be/02fwkmgqfNk
to be pedantic
Aye, fair enough.
Also, in the interests of transparency, I should clarify that the application restriction applies to graduate admissions.
Whence comes identity politics?
Bella Dodd, a distaff doppelgänger of Whitaker Chambers, describes its source in her book “School of Darkness.”
(http://genus.cogia.net/chap13.php)
Short version: in 1945 the Comintern directed the CPUSA to abandon its “we’re just loyal Americans in the melting pot” policy and instead to encourage Balkanization of the various ethnic and other social groups in America.
Presumably Stalin had appreciated the trouble such Balkanization caused in the USSR, and wished to infect the US with the same problems.
How curious for all this noteworthy African American, African, and African diaspora literature and media to have been produced exclusively in English?
A leftist “scholar” in South Africa (IIRC) described her field as “post-colonial African literature.” She could’ve saved herself a lot of work by focusing instead on “pre-colonial African literature.”
“This just in from Chicago University…”
This has been a long time coming. In the 1970s my father who was an English Professor at a “Famous Name” college said that the MLA (Modern Language Association) had been taken over by radicals who turned everything into politics. He said the profession of English was slowly dying. He himself was a lefty of the old school – New Deal etc. – who earnestly believed in and practiced recruiting women and blacks and boosting pay for junior faculty. But still, he was aghast at the radicalism of the new left emerging in professional associations.
“…all this noteworthy…literature and media to have been produced exclusively in English.”
When it comes down to fundamentals, receiving royalty checks is an important consideration.
She could’ve saved herself a lot of work by focusing instead on “pre-colonial African literature.”
I’m afraid the irony would be lost on her.
Instalanche. https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/400948/
Instalanche
Thanks. Post updated. Ms Bender’s entirely useless statement really does invite the term preening degenerate. Elect enough of these fatuous creatures, give them enough leverage, and you can ruin a civilisation.
Ms Bender’s entirely useless statement really does invite the term preening degenerate.
So if someone’s breaking into my house at night the first thing I should do is think about my ‘privilege’? Good to know. That’ll help.
Mags: lie back and think of Somalia.
Tomorrow’s Ephemera has been compiled and should materialise just after midnight.
[ Slumps across desk, emotionally spent. ]
Ms Bender’s entirely useless statement really does invite the term preening degenerate. Elect enough of these fatuous creatures, give them enough leverage, and you can ruin a civilisation.
The very fact that she was elected shows that a lot of people in Minneapolis are themselves preening degenerates. Would she–and those who voted for her–learn better if the victim of a horrific home invasion? Very likely not.
Mags: lie back and think of Somalia.
A friend of mine lived in several different countries throughout Africa with his wife and children over a 15 year period. It was necessary to rent or own a two story residence. After sunset, the family moved to the second story and went into complete lockdown on that floor. Home break-ins were the rule not the exception and “wealthy” individuals had to pay a crew of “security” people to guard the lower floor and outside the house. These “security” people were also highly principled capitalists and sold their services to the highest bidders. Said bidders also included the bad guys who were breaking into the dwelling. Each night he had to hope he had been the highest bidder that day.
This is the future Ms Bender is so hopeful of.
[ Slumps across desk, emotionally spent. ]
But think of all the surprise, joy, pleasure even, you bring to your acolytes on the morrow.
Sadly a fleeting and insubstantial reward, I grant you, because you have to do it all again next week…
Alex wins today’s intarweb thing. A bon mot to be stolen and spread far and wide.
Adam:
My father wasn’t an English professor. He was a truck driver. I still have his Teamsters dues book (and somewhere, a “Hoffa for President” comb).
In the 1950s, he was at the head of a campaign to run Communists out of the local labour council (other totalitarian movements too, but the Nazis were well out of favour so there was really only one target). The motion to exclude Communists passed, and one of the Communists came over and shook my father’s hand, saying if he had to be kicked out, he was glad my father did it because “you believe in what you’re doing,” then added, “but in the end, we’re in the schools.”
I’ve thought about that over and over lately.
Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender wants us to know that a dislike of having your home invaded by sociopathic predators, and having the lives of your family put in serious danger, “comes from a place of privilege.”
The privilege of not living in sub-saharan Africa, but obviously not the privilege of living in a country that respects and protects its own citizens.
but obviously not the privilege of living in a country that respects and protects its own citizens.
It’s the implication that the victims of a small-hours home invasion, which may result in their injury or death, should somehow feel guilty about prioritising their home and their loved ones – i.e., not wanting them to be robbed or killed – over some hypothetical “social justice” concern.
Wow, Jim, that’s quite the unexpected accolade. Thanks.
“Hmm… ‘systemic racism’, you say? Well, now…”
Pass the popcorn.
preening degenerates
Minneapolis band name.
Poor Princeton. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Guess they gotta put some money where their mouth is. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Ms Sadé’s view on whether store owners who happen to be black should also allow themselves to be robbed by black people is, alas, unknown.
Honk!
Honk!
Well, quite. But this is the standard of thought to which we’re supposed to defer. Because Ms Sadé is a “teacher,” you see, a bringer of light to our dim and primitive minds.
And note her casual erasure of any agency on the part of black shoplifters, and by extension black people generally. They are construed, by Ms Sadé and those just like her, as mindless, impulsive and morally inert – one might say subhuman. We’re told, furthermore, that mere proximity to a police officer will cause black shoplifters to expire, or to undergo spontaneous combustion, and yet they choose to shoplift, often brazenly – an activity that one might think would entail some risk of encountering police officers.
Again, this is the standard of thought to which we’re supposed to defer. This is wokeness.