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:

Video here, via Darleen. Because recreational sociopathy is very in right now. 

Anything else is an excuse, of course, a lie. The rationalisation – that trashing another random restaurant and menacing its customers, people about whom the aggressors know nothing, will somehow usher in a brighter, more fragrant tomorrow – can be dismissed as ludicrous and self-flattering, a moral non sequitur. But look carefully at what these self-imagined warriors for “social justice” choose to do – repeatedly, by default. See their go-to solution, their way to fix the world.

See how they enjoy it.

Because that’s what it’s about.

Update, via the comments:

As noted before, if someone’s preferred form of activism is to harass and bully random strangers, while feeling enormously self-satisfied about their own imagined radicalism – and while clearly exulting in mob domination – then this tells us very little about any issue supposedly animating them. Again, it’s a moral non sequitur and rather like saying, “I’m troubled by the plight of the Javan rhinoceros, so I’m going to start spitting at the elderly and keying random cars.”

It does, however, tell us just how narcissistic and spiteful these creatures are. And how low a priority their wellbeing should be.

Further to rumblings in the comments, 

Flamethrower-Packing Antifa ‘Entered Foetal Position And Began Crying’ After Unsuccessful Escape From Cops.

Yes, one minute, it’s masks, mobs, and Sturmabteilung tactics, complete with Flammenwerfer. The next, it’s “I’m just a little flower girl, please don’t hurt me.”

Mr Matthew Banta, our fearless Antifa warrior, also likes biting people. 

Lifted from the comments, and further to this, more Mao-ling loveliness.

As someone quipped on Twitter,

If you’re comfortable screaming in someone’s face, for any reason, it means you haven’t been hit in the mouth enough.

Which sounds about right.

And that’s the thing about the kind of tribal, collectivist psychology we’re seeing – there’s no interest in, and an overt denial of, personal responsibility. In the eyes of those possessed, people – at least white ones – are merely types. The cells of some identitarian organism. Something to poke and abuse. There’s no reciprocity, at all, and no regard for personal boundaries, except as something to violate, repeatedly and gleefully. It’s a game of domination and quite literally dehumanising. 

Also, sealing doors with concrete and trying to burn people alive.

For “social justice,” no doubt.

Lifted from the comments, regarding recent scenes from Portland. Though it applies to the Mao-ling left more generally.

This is what happens when malevolent narcissists don’t get slapped and thrown to the ground. The kind of psychology we’re seeing, over and over again, overwhelmingly from the left, is an exercise in bad faith, a fundamental dishonesty. It therefore isn’t amenable to correction with facts or debate, or appeals to reciprocity or some higher purpose. Tolerating such behaviour – and worse, deferring to it – will only encourage an escalation of vanity, malice and sociopathy. It may, however, be discouraged with reminders of physical consequences. Ideally, physical humiliation. A reminder that nasty little egos can be publicly broken.

These are people who will lie as readily as breathing in order to excuse their antisocial urges. They aren’t being obnoxious reluctantly, in desperation, or under duress. They harass, provoke and delight in domination because it gives them pleasure. It makes them feel important and powerful. Power being conceived solely as power over others. It’s a focus for their spite. Anything else is a fig leaf, a pretext. Among Portland’s mentally uniform radicals, the ones exulting in the alarm and misery of others, there is no good faith. And so, you can’t engage with such creatures on their own ostensible terms.

Because that’s not what it’s ultimately about.

Update, via the comments:

In the video linked above, note the planning, the efforts to maximise the imposition and its somewhat menacing implications. Someone sat down and thought, “How can we really aggravate hundreds of random people, ordinary families, about whom we know nothing, and make them feel unsafe in their own homes?” And then, other, like-minded people agreed, presumably with enthusiasm.

This isn’t politics. This is recreational sociopathy.