Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

I'm not convinced the unemployment rate was a factor. Certainly not a significant one. I don't ever recall BLM/Antifa violently protesting due to the government prohibiting them from working or because they were sick of Covid-related lock-downs. Liney summed up my opinion on that point perfectly.

To Talent's point on the correlation of funding and outcomes: Liberals never found a problem that can't be solved by throwing gobs of money at it. But when it comes to violent crime, their new solution is to defund the police. Seems to be going poorly.

Part of my point is that people are more likely to participate in riots or looting if they are pissed off, desperate, feel hopeless, etc. The sort of negative emotions that become widespread when there's a pandemic that authorities seem to have no idea how to combat and unemployment jumps to over 10%.

Why did none of the other "martyrs", be they Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or any of the others, spark the same level of violent protests that came after George Floyd? I can't agree that the pandemic and the subsequent job/life losses played no significant role.

[Mike]

The pandemic could be a factor. Hell, for sake of argument, I'll grant that it is. I would still consider it far less significant than the anti-police movement. I tie that in with the rioters themselves. The violence from burning and looting is combined with LE taking a decidedly hands-off approach in many instances because they A) become apprehensive about the application of force, B) are instructed by local officials to stand down, C) are demoralized by a media narrative that frames them as the bad guys and a lack of support by the elected officials they work for. We saw it in Atlanta after the infamous Wendy's incident. Blue flu, hardly any traffic stops, etc. That alone dwarfs most other factors.

[iam416]

I don't think it's NOT a factor. I just don't think it's the greatest contributing factor. There were BLM protests every year from the George Zimmerman acquittal in 2013 to the present. There was no dramatic upsurge in crime until 2020. And the upswing may subside quickly, who knows?

I also find it hard to believe there's no link between unemployment/poverty and drug crimes. Maybe not MURDERS, specifically. But greater demand for illegal drugs probably leads to more drug war activity. I could go looking for links but I thought it was well established that joblessness and recession generally led to more drug abuse, alcoholism, domestic abuse, and overall more anxiety that makes people more volatile?

(1) the 2020 protests were the full-on embrace of BLM and, to a lesser extent, some form of defund the police. They were fundamentally anti-police in both a quality and quantity that we had never come close to seeing.

(2) Murders (and violent crime) was the point. We weren't talkng about petty crime; we were talking about massive increases in murders.

(3) I'm sure there is a link between unemployment/poverty and drug crimes in some sense; but not violent drug crimes. Certainly addicts increase and property crimes increase.

(4) Again, I can pretty easily see how a loss of a job might turn someone toward petty property crimes; I cannot really see how a job loss turns someone into a violent criminal in any sort of statistical sense -- outliers, sure, but in macro sense? No way. The facts seem to bear that out.

[iam416]

My opinion is that the unusual confluence of higher unemployment, pandemic frustration and an outright hatred of the police were the major contributing factors to the increase in murders nationwide. I think the general policing issue is the most important of those factors. I'm not sure, e.g., that I've heard of violent crime spikes in areas that aren't massively anti-police. Whereas the entire country is suffering from the unemployment rise, not all of the country is avidly anti-police.

[Mike]

Why did none of the other "martyrs", be they Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or any of the others, spark the same level of violent protests that came after George Floyd? I can't agree that the pandemic and the subsequent job/life losses played no significant role.

This is a good question. It's hard to know what would have happened if there was no pandemic and everything else happened the same, Floyd, etc. My hypothesis is that there still would have been large scale unrest. The Floyd video is very powerful and most of the other incidents you mention were not filmed. Also, the media immediately went bananas with it. Practically overnight we were inundated with "systemic racism", "white supremacy"!?, etc. Over and over and over. It was just accepted that these are facts and not opinions. If you tell someone they are being oppressed by a white supremacist society long enough, apparently, they start to believe it.

[Dr. Strangelove]

This is a good question. It's hard to know what would have happened if there was no pandemic and everything else happened the same, Floyd, etc. My hypothesis is that there still would have been large scale unrest. The Floyd video is very powerful and most of the other incidents you mention were not filmed. Also, the media immediately went bananas with it. Practically overnight we were inundated with "systemic racism", "white supremacy"!?, etc. Over and over and over. It was just accepted that these are facts and not opinions. If you tell someone they are being oppressed by a white supremacist society long enough, apparently, they start to believe it.

I think there would have been Eric Garner or Michael Brown type of protests and then people would've moved on. City blocks wouldn't have been set on fire. Garner was all on video and was also choked to death and hell, all he was doing was selling cigarettes. I think the national mood going into that Memorial Day weekend was such that an incident like that was going to become much worse than previous ones.

This was a really, really bad year for authority figures of all kinds. Politicians, Doctors, Scientists, Teachers, Universities, the Media, Big Business, etc. etc. all saw their credibility damaged. When society's "leaders" look incompetent and people feel like they're getting fucked over, they become a lot more receptive to FUCK SOCIETY, BURN IT DOWN kind of messages. I guarantee you there were a ton of people at George Floyd rallies that never showed up for a BLM event before. Not because they were new converts to the message but because they were pissed.

[Mike]

I think there would have been Eric Garner or Michael Brown type of protests and then people would've moved on. City blocks wouldn't have been set on fire. Garner was all on video and was also choked to death and hell, all he was doing was selling cigarettes. I think the national mood going into that Memorial Day weekend was such that an incident like that was going to become much worse than previous ones.

This was a really, really bad year for authority figures of all kinds. Politicians, Doctors, Scientists, Teachers, Universities, the Media, Big Business, etc. etc. all saw their credibility damaged. When society's "leaders" look incompetent and people feel like they're getting fucked over, they become a lot more receptive to FUCK SOCIETY, BURN IT DOWN kind of messages. I guarantee you there were a ton of people at George Floyd rallies that never showed up for a BLM event before. Not because they were new converts to the message but because they were pissed.

I can see that to a certain level. There was a lot of dry tinder between the pandemic, Trump fatigue/election year, etc. OTOH, you have the NYC BLM leader expressly stating on national TV that peaceful protests in the past weren't working and now that shit's on fire they are getting stuff they want. There was a definite and deliberate shift in strategy to be more aggressive by BLM/Antifa, IMO.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Sequels better than the original

Empire Strikes Back
Godfather Part II (ok, debatable)
Impeachment 2: Electric Boogaloo

[Tom W]

I can see that to a certain level. There was a lot of dry tinder between the pandemic, Trump fatigue/election year, etc. OTOH, you have the NYC BLM leader expressly stating on national TV that peaceful protests in the past weren't working and now that shit's on fire they are getting stuff they want. There was a definite and deliberate shift in strategy to be more aggressive by BLM/Antifa, IMO.

Just follow the money- it will probably lead to places above and beyond BLM/Antifa.

[Hannibal]

Just follow the money- it will probably lead to places above and beyond BLM/Antifa.

That's quite easy to do. The shitty corporations that donated hundreds of millions of dollars to BLM made it very public.

[Hannibal]

If the Republican nomination were held today, I feel like Ron DeSantis would be the runaway winner.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/02/07/florida_gov_ron_desantis_on_catastrophic_covid_shutdowns_people_vote_with_their_feet.html

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis told "Fox & Friends" on Sunday that other states have gone overboard with the coronavirus pandemic, noting that because "people vote with their feet, they are flooding into this state."

"You look around the country, and they still are debating whether schools should be open. We’ve had schools open the whole year, they talk about whether businesses should be open, every business in Florida has a right to operate," he said. "They talk about all these people unemployed in Florida, every single person has a right to earn a living. And our unemployment rate is lower than the national average even though we’re so tourism-dependent, that market hasn’t recovered at all."

"Our COVID though, we have less COVID mortality per capita than the national average 25 states or higher. So the lockdowns don’t work on their own, but they cause catastrophic damage to society. So we’ve been able to do as other states have tried to lock people down, we’ve tried to lift people up."

"I’ll tell you, every time I go out, someone will come up to me and say, my kid wasn’t doing well, thank you for getting them back in school or my business would have failed, thank you for saving us or I would have lost my job," he added.

"Those effects are going to make this state so strong going forward. And I think had we tried a different course that has not worked in other places, I think it takes years and years to be able to recover from the damage.”

DeSantis said media praising New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo "have a partisan agenda."

"And I think it was an election year, they did not want the president to carry Florida," DeSantis said. "I think the fact that the President endorsed me when I ran for governor, you know, means that they want to do that. So they had a narrative. And their narrative is whatever that helps them advance their political, it doesn’t matter about the facts. They don’t care about the facts. In fact, they will ignore facts that are inconvenient for their narrative, and even concoct conspiracy theories as to why the facts aren’t doing it. So I think they’ve done a horrible job with what they’ve done."

"People vote with their feet, and they are flooding into this state, we have investment coming in. We have people buying homes like never before, we have the fact just the fact that we have schools open, people are leaving in every corner of the state just because we have schools, we had sports, we’ve had sports going on the whole time, I have parents who have moved their kids to Florida because they didn’t want to miss football season, which they would have in some of these lockdown states. And so I think that there are the narratives that some of the corporate elite media tried to sell, people don’t buy it. And this is a perfect example. Because if people bought their narratives, you’d have people leaving here to go to the states that are supposedly doing so well," the Florida governor said.

[Tom W]

If the Republican nomination were held today, I feel like Ron DeSantis would be the runaway winner.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...heir_feet.html

Well, yeah. It's a bit shortsighted to think that the Republicans are doomed because Covid was the hit below the waterline that sunk Trump. Being that he wasn't a particularly skilled politician or even a likable person, and it still took almost a nuclear option to knock him out shows that the Left isn't particularly formidable, either.

[Hannibal]

it still took almost a nuclear option to knock him out shows that the Left isn't particularly formidable, either.

I don't think that there is any "almost" to it. Both parties and every corner of the media pulled out all the stops to defeat Trump. And they still needed a dozen or so unprecedented statistical anomalies for it to happen.

Did the Time Magazine victory lap article get posted here yet?

What they admit to with regards to "Fortifying" the election is absolutely fucking astounding.

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information

JFC Alex Jones could have written that line.

[iam416]

Meanwhile, under Chairman Joe you need a negative covid test to enter the country (if you’re flying). Of course, no such requirement if you’re an illegal alien.

[Hannibal]

Found via Telegram, perhaps the last bastion of Wrongthink on the Web.

The Barack Obama administration actually did radically change America.

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