Starting off with a few positive notes before descending into despair…
Hero of the Week: Mom finds son rioting, slaps the shit out of him. Nice to see some good parenting. Watch the videos in both of the links. Toya Graham 2016: Because America could use some tough love.
Hero of the Week II: I heart Robert Valentine. Must watch video at the link.
I like this guy. Not throwing anything at the cops, just dancing in spectacular fashion.
As I’ve noted before, the Baltimore PD is terrible and needs to be completely scrapped and started over. However, that doesn’t justify Monday night.
See, we do actually have a policing problem in this country that needs to be addressed. But that point gets lost when you start rioting and destroying shit.
What I don’t get about the riot apologists – and there are plenty of them on the Left (I’m looking at you Ta-Nehisi Coates and Marc Lamont Hill) – is their apparent failure to understand that the people most hurt by the rioting/looting/burning of these communities are the poor minorities who live there. <—Example A, Example B –> “Do you know how long I’m gonna have to walk now to get some milk?” Jonathan Capehart gets it.
These idiot thugs burned down a church’s Senior Center, for Christ’s sake. Good job, kids! Those old people really had it coming! This African-American mother of three working at a shoe store to feed her kids (video at link is same as below) had been oppressing blacks for far too long. She finally got what was coming to her, amirite? You fucking assholes. Nothing justifies destroying innocent people’s property like this. NOTHING.
The media is having trouble with the narrative on this one because Baltimore is a majority black city run by black progressives. And – like most of our disastrous big cities – it’s been run by Democrats for decades. As Kevin Williamson writes, Baltimore is the Left fighting the Left over the failed policies of the Left. Here’s an excerpt, but go read the whole thing:
American cities are by and large Democratic-party monopolies, monopolies generally dominated by the so-called progressive wing of the party. The results have been catastrophic…There is someone to blame for what’s wrong in Baltimore. Would any sentient adult American be shocked to learn that Baltimore has a corrupt and feckless police department enabled by a corrupt and feckless city government? I myself would not, and the local authorities’ dishonesty and stonewalling in the death of Freddie Gray is reminiscent of what we have seen in other cities. There’s a heap of evidence that the Baltimore police department is pretty bad. This did not come out of nowhere. While the progressives have been running the show in Baltimore, police commissioner Ed Norris was sent to prison on corruption charges (2004), two detectives were sentenced to 454 years in prison for dealing drugs (2005), an officer was dismissed after being videotaped verbally abusing a 14-year-old and then failing to file a report on his use of force against the same teenager (2011), an officer was been fired for sexually abusing a minor (2014), and the city paid a quarter-million-dollar settlement to a man police illegally arrested for the non-crime of recording them at work with his mobile phone. There’s a good deal more. Does that sound like a disciplined police organization to you?
Yes, Baltimore seems to have some police problems. But let us be clear about whose fecklessness and dishonesty we are talking about here: No Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation. Baltimore’s police department is, like Detroit’s economy and Atlanta’s schools, the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party enabled in no small part by black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing project, and a Democratic-party project.
The other Democratic monopolies aren’t looking too hot, either. We’re sending Atlanta educators to prison for running a criminal conspiracy to hide the fact that they failed, and failed woefully, to educate the children of that city. Isolated incident? Nope: Atlanta has another cheating scandal across town at the police academy. Who is being poorly served by the fact that Atlanta’s school system has been converted into crime syndicate? Mostly poor, mostly black families. Who is likely to suffer from any incompetents advanced through the Atlanta police department by its corrupt academy? Mostly poor, mostly black people. Who suffers most from the incompetence of Baltimore’s Democratic mayor? Mostly poor, mostly black families — should they feel better that she’s black? Who suffers most from the incompetence and corruption of Baltimore’s police department? Mostly poor, mostly black families. And it’s the same people who will suffer the most from the vandalism and pillaging going on in Baltimore, too.
The evidence suggests very strongly that the left-wing, Democratic claques that run a great many American cities — particularly the poor and black cities — are not capable of running a school system or a police department. They are incompetent, they are corrupt, and they are breathtakingly arrogant. Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore — this is what Democrats do…Keep voting for the same thing, keep getting the same thing.
Jason Riley has a good piece on this as well.
The Left wants a completely secular society where the state fills in the gaps, where there is no civil society, where the institutions (fathers, schools, churches, marriage) that have traditionally civilized young men are nullified/removed/under attack. You are looking at the end result of that in Baltimore this week. High unemployment, failing schools, chronic poverty, the destruction of the family…same story in every major Democrat-run city. YOU BUILT THAT, Dems. And don’t expect it to change anytime soon. The Left needs a permanent restless underclass in order to stay in power. The angry, violent mob is the pulsing heart of Leftism. It’s been that way since 1798. It’s extraordinarily sad to see, because it doesn’t have to be this way.