Jus in Inordinatio · 5:46am Jun 17th, 2020
EDIT: After a conversation with a friend, I've been convinced that despite agreeing in principle with the points that television host Tucker Carlson makes in the portion of his commentary I've transcribed, expressing the points in my own way would be a better way to convey my thinking. That said, it seems right to retain what I'm no longer using via use of the "spoiler" tag so that a record of my first draft still exists. I may be rewording it, but I am still responsible for who I chose to quote to introduce my points.
"We don't have our Hayakawa yet; instead we have cowards. Our leaders are happy to talk about everything but the collapse of the centuries-old civilization tumbling down around them. They have no idea how little credibility they have. They have no sense of how irrelevant they have become. If you can't tell the truth when the truth actually matters then nothing you say matters.
"Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter has become more powerful and more popular with the public. Why is that happening, exactly? Here's why: because Black Lives Matter is getting exactly what they want. That is the most basic sign of strength, strength is the most appealing quality to voters, and to people, and to animals. Three weeks ago, Black Lives Matter demanded that cities defund their police; today [June 15], the mighty NYPD the biggest police department in our nation, the most sophisticated police department in the world, bowed and announced it is abolishing its entire plainclothes division. Six hundred people, gone for good, because Black Lives Matter wanted it done, and now it is done. That's not bluffing, it's not posturing, it's not tweeting, that is real power.
"You'll notice it did not require the usual maneuvering for Black Lives Matter to get that power; they didn't need a team of lawyers to get it. Black Lives Matter doesn't make legal arguments, they're not trying to convince you of anything. Black Lives Matter believes in force. They flood the streets with angry young people who break things and they hurt anyone who gets in the way, When they want something, they take it. Make them mad, and they will set your business on fire. Annoy them, and they will occupy your downtown and declare a brand new country. You're not going to do anything about it; they know that for certain. This is the most destructive kind of politics; we've seen a lot of it in recent years. Organized groups did it to Bret Kavanaugh. The main point of slandering Kavanaugh was never to block his confirmation; we misread that, they knew they could probably never achieve it. The real point was to send Kavanaugh, and John Roberts, and the other Republican justices a very clear message: step out of line, and we will hurt your families and judging from recent Court decisions, it worked. At times it's very clear that supposedly conservative justices are afraid to defy the mob.
"So what message do the rest of us take from what's happened over the last three weeks? It's very simple: force is more effective than voting. Elections change nothing. Rioting on the other hand makes you rich and powerful. When you riot, prosecutors will ignore the law on your behalf. Corporations will send you millions. Politicians will kneel down before you. It works. Violence works; that's the message. Everyone hears the message. Until violence stops working, violence will continue. How powerful is Black Lives Matter? Well for the left, keeping their protests going is more important than fighting a deadly pandemic. In the city of New York, officials are not even allowed to ask if the people they are surveying attended the protest, which may be spreading the virus."
I did my best to accurately transcribe the monologue from Tucker Carlson in this video (https://youtu.be/22j_OhbnW20?t=860) because although I do not agree with every single thing he says on the matter, it gets to the gist of why I do not and cannot support Black Lives Matter or even the entirely peaceful actions that are being taken under their banner.
Surveying the scene of recent weeks, there are two major components of what's going on that have stuck in my mind the most. The first thing that has impressed me is the complete collapse of public officials into a supine posture of obsequious surrender to the anger of the protesters. The sight of it is deeply revolting to me. We have long passed the age when people would prostrate themselves before kings and popes. We are well passed the time when it was appropriate for any person to kiss the boots of their master. We are beyond these things in the Western European cultures because the prostration is not respect, but fear and sycophancy. A public official who voluntarily falls on their face in front of a mass of angry people no longer has any power or credibility; their cowardice is obvious, and their opinions no longer mean anything. If they cannot tell the truth when the truth matters, nothing they say matters.
The second thing is that the organization Black Lives Matter appears to be popular, very popular. My personal perspective is that they are for black people what the Daily Stormer is for white people; an organization identifying the roots of its activism in the lie of a thug trying to beat a man to death and being killed in self-defense being a cherubic child murdered by his victim, is starting from a position of cripplingly low credibility, and I have seen no indications that this has changed. It seems to me that the root of this popularity is partly a matter of the Bradley effect, that phenomenon in polling where people will tell a stranger with their phone number and sometimes address (and who asks for at least their first name) the thing that is socially acceptable at the moment, but really believe the opposite of what they told that stranger. It is also partly a matter of voters, and people in general, finding success and strength to be attractive, and BLM presently looks to be stronger and more successful than anyone else. They appear to merely show up, demand something, and have officials rush to do as they're told and even genuflect before them. It is thus my conclusion that the popularity of BLM at this moment comes entirely on their effect on other people: the random citizens who agree that black lives matter and obsequious public officials licking their boots. As for me, when I look at BLM, a quote from Booker T. Washington comes to mind: “There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” The more black lives matter, the less Black Lives Matter does.
As to the protests, although the message is transmitted peacefully in most instances, the real persuasive power of what they want is not founded in soaring rhetorical ideas or superior arguments, but in shattered glass, burning buildings, and blood. It is not that these obsequious officials are persuaded by a genuine desire to see justice done, or legitimate concern for civilians, or arguments of great force and power, but by the certainty that the howling mob will fill the streets if they resist. I am weary of this. I've been turning on my television and watching screaming masses of drek engaged in futile and destructive protests of superfluous things since I was in junior high (about 22 years ago) and fiddling with the "rabbit ear" antennas on top of an old TV set to see what was going on. Nothing is accomplished by their rage, by them throwing tantrums, bottles, and bricks and like the old saw that defines the Fallout games about war never changing, the futile and hateful howling never changes either.
Black lives do matter, but so do yellow lives, and brown lives, and red lives, and white lives, and all the lives that don't fall neatly into those boxes. I've a friend who is very, very deeply bitter about the terrible misbehavior of the police across the United States in more instances than can be adequately described. He is fond of sending me news stories to demonstrate just how monstrous the police can be. It's not only a police officer kneeling on a man's neck while others watch and do nothing. It's no-knock warrants where police murder a woman because they got the wrong house. It's the hair-trigger SWAT teams that make the evil tactic of "SWAT'ing" effective, in at least one instance killing someone because the online brat got a fake address from his target. It's a bunch of cops arriving to find a handcuffed man and pin him until he suffocates to death, jeering and laughing as they do. It's a reckless officer barging into the wrong apartment and shooting down the owner because she thought he was an intruder. It's a frankly sadistic gang of officers screaming commands at a crying, terrified man begging for his life and then gunning him down because he moved his hands wrong. It's a poorly-trained officer shooting a driver who revealed that he was legally carrying a firearm in the wrong way. It's an idiot shooting passed his partner to kill a woman whose only crime was approaching the car the two were sitting in to ask a question. These things and hundreds more, and thousands more, destroy my friend's faith in the police and I frankly cannot blame him. Notably, the specific instances above are a grab bag of different races as victims of these terrible cops because severe police misconduct is not aimed only at one race. The protests are not about a desperate cry for someone to save an oppressed population, as I've seen claimed, because protests that want to attack the problem of police brutality would actually be saving signs full of demands, and specific goals.
Like Tucker Carlson's monologue, I don't endorse everything represented in this image. I believe that errors of fact and logic are found therein, and some of the problems are not assessed correctly. But it is my opinion that this image represents people trying to solve the problem instead of just howling for it to be solved in some vague, unspecific way. The image doesn't address the severe issue of the "war on drugs" that accelerated the problem to warp speed. It doesn't attack in detail the serious issues with the prison system. No mention is made of the correlation of crippling impoverishment with single motherhood, and how the lack of fathers unleashed a tide of young men who were not properly socialized by an older male authority figure on numerous communities, leading to a great deal of crime. But this is more of a solution than protests will ever be, and causes no damage, nor provides cover for riotous thugs to burn and loot. The image represents a solution, an imperfect one, one not fully seated in the truth, but an actual attempt to set out the problem and enumerated concrete steps towards addressing them. After bowing and scraping public officials have finally managed to buy off the protests with insincere bon mots and measures, nothing will change, and the yelling masses demanding something unspecific be done in some way not specified or thought about will come back to inflict pointless misery on the common man.
I wish to strongly, strongly encourage anyone who feels like reading my ramblings to go over to this blog entry by Wanderer D to see a wholly different perspective by someone who I'd like to think of as a friend. I am not in his shoes and cannot adequately speak to the anguish he expresses, but I read what he had to say, and I appreciate that this issue is completely different if you're wearing a different pair of shoes. Even so, I have reached a point where my patience with this has completely snapped. People decried President Donald Trump talking tough and suggesting the use of the military to solve this problem but I sincerely wish he'd just do it and have it done. Nothing further can be accomplished, and the more local authorities have proven profoundly incapable of policing the protests in a fair and safe manner, and have also proved unable or unwilling to crush the riots under the wheels of a state juggernaut. There comes a point where you run up against a problem where the only way to achieve a just outcome is the judicious application of force, and we have long left that point in the dust. Crush the mob, under the wheels of tanks if necessary. For the rest, return peace with peace, and show them respect instead of simpering cowardice and obsequious bowing and scraping. I hope that there comes a time when someone rises up to direct the energy of these protests towards concrete goals to specific problems, and take a sledgehammer to the foundation upon which the rotten shed of police brutality is built.... but that is not happening, and there is no further point to entertaining a disruption of the nation or allowing criminals to cackle and caper over the ruins of lives, stealing what is not theirs.
If I was to pinpoint a specific moment where my thoughts on what's going on fully bloomed it was when I saw this picture:
This statue is of one Sir Robert Peel, who devised a series of policing principles that epitomize the sort of police conduct that every citizen should want to see enacted. The statue has been defaced with the acronym ACAB, "All Cops Are Bastards," and the hammer and sickle. It was defaced during solidarity protests in the UK, a nation with law enforcement issues so different from those in America that there was no sense to them protesting at all. Among the targets of their protests was a statue memorializing a man whose principles epitomized a solution to the problem they were protesting. It was when I saw this that I came to the conclusion: there is no point to any of this, and no matter what they claim, these protestors have nothing to say worth hearing. It's time to make peace prevail.
Just going to leave this here, because if Fox News (And worse, Tucker) is your (general you) main source of info, perhaps you need a bit of contrasting information. I recommend watching the whole thing.
5286643
I'll do so, but I used Tucker's monologue because it got to the core of my feelings, not because I get my news from him; as a point of fact, I have never watched Fox News at all because my family's satellite TV package never included it. I had also contemplated using some commentary from YouTubers Upper Echelon Games and Matt Christiansen because certain portions of what they've had to say also effectively articulate my feelings.
5287150 That's fair. Tucker unfortunately carries a lot of baggage with his claims/rants that is very... well, let's just say "intentionally designed to mislead". Although I don't consider anyone in FN really trustworthy, others are a lot less extreme/pandering to a base following in their general views.
5286643
Having watched the videos you suggest from beginning to end, there is not a single thing brought up by either video that's new to me. As a point of fact, every bit of it is quite familiar because I've heard it numerous times over a long period of time. That said, I appreciate being presented with information to expand my understanding. I can't think of a more productive response than to try to educate someone on an issue, so thank you for that. :)
5287257 A bit irreverent, but this has a deep underlying truth that gets reflected in Tucker's rhetoric. A bit over a year old, but you can see how his approach is to repeat consistently the same lies, the same opinions, the same pandering to a specific base.
I know you said you don't agree with everything he says, and out of many of our acquaintances you make the effort to at least see what others share about a subject... but BLM and other movements DID use legal terms.
5287943
I don't mean to diminish you, or the gentleman who made the video about Tucker Carlson, or what may well be a legitimate concern about Carlson's veracity but the flaws of Tucker Carlson are not only a bit irrelevant. Tucker Carlson could be one of the most terrible people online, and a compulsive liar on every point, and not a word of the entry I quoted him to open would change. I don't feel the way I do because of Tucker Carlson; I quoted Tucker Carlson because I feel the way I do. I'll watch this video, of course (although "Tucker Carlson should eat shit" is not a promising start to a video I'm meant to take as serious criticism), but I take the position that shooting the messenger doesn't change the merit (or lack thereof) of the message.
5288540 My concern is that you are using a person that is unquestionably... I'm concerned that you are quoting a person that is not, and should never be a source of inspiration. I feel using his words, given his history and his motivations, diminishes your argument, because he reflects a deep flaw in a certain type of thinking that I know you are not part of. Using him to express your concerns takes away yours, to express his... and saying "I agree with some of it", rather than you saying what you feel without that, obfuscates the distinction between your views and his.
5288545
I appreciate that but I don't know what this deep flaw is, nor the certain kind of thinking is, without more specificity. Maybe I have the same flaw he does; it's kind of hard to know without knowing what the flaw is. This situation is kind of like the one I experience with Game of Worlds: I may well have a great many flaws as a writer, and my work may well be badly flawed, but I have no way to know what those flaws are unless someone tells them to me. I can't seem to buy a harsh critic for GoW; maybe I could solicit one here?