Beware of the Mob
Our Modern Lynch Mob
Democracies are in general prone to fits of the mob. Just read the Thucydidean account of the debate of Mytilene. Or watch a 1950s Western as the lynch party heads for the town jail. Fear of democratically sanctioned madness is why the Founders came up not just with classical tripartite government to check and limit power between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches, but also now generally disdained notions of allowing states to impose property qualifications for voting, the Electoral College, two senators guaranteed per state regardless of population, and senators originally selected without direct votes.
They were not concerned that under Athenian-style democracy the proverbial “people” and their populist Rottweilers in government and the press could not check the power of capital and birth, but were worried, as Juvenal later quipped, over who would police the police. So there had to be checks on the mob as well — a fickle and unpredictable force as we saw in the last eight years.
2006 Evil Guantanamo/ 2009 Good Guantanamo
Sometime around 2005, the anger of the mob over the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols peaked. Preventative detention, renditions, military tribunals, Guantanamo, Predators, wiretaps, and intercepts were all considered unlawful, unnecessary, and immoral. The Bush-Cheney “terror state” seemed capable of almost anything, as it shredded the Constitution while claiming to “protect” us from non-existent terrorists. Dick Cheney went from a respected and perennial Washington insider, given his due by both liberals and conservatives as a sober and judicious administrator over the past thirty years, to a pernicious Darth Vader.
The Left never really adduced any evidence to support its charges, but such serial attacks went largely unanswered. Candidate Barack Obama both benefited from and whipped up the venom, only as president to embrace or expand all of what he had once so vehemently denounced. He soon became predator-in-chief, increasing targeted assassinations eightfold, as he joked about them being unleashed at any potential suitors of Malia and Sasha.
The Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism policies were quietly reinvented as necessary (given that no post-9/11 plot [and there were many] had succeeded) and continue on today as if no one ever had questioned their utility or legality. The fist-shaking mob apparently decided that what was truly bad before 2009 was mostly good afterwards, or at least not bad enough to question an Obama presidency. So it threw down the torches and drifted on home, wanting the proverbial prisoner in the jail freed and canonized rather than hanged.
Today we are left with either one of two liberal assumptions: the Bush-Cheney protocols are still bad, but to continue to criticize them would now be to weaken the liberal agenda of their present adherent Barack Obama; or, why get riled over politics? — every out-party attacks the in-party any way it can, so get over it.
Planet Warming on Hold
One of the most venomous lines of attack against George W. Bush was his supposed failure to address climate change. These were the mob days of the anguished Al Gore, still smarting over having won the popular, but not the electoral, vote in 2000, damning Bush as a liar, as he created Gore, Inc. — a near organic-growing merchandising empire of several hundred millions of dollars.
Gorism both hyped a global carbon threat and then offered the consulting and expertise to address it. His carbon footprints and “offsets” followed the medieval model of selling exemptions. In such holy work, there were no such things as conflict of interest, influence peddling, or simple bad manners. Gore rode his Earth in the Balance / Inconvenient Truth express train to a Nobel Prize, a sizable fortune — and a general impression that he had become unhinged, whether in his incarnation as a “crazed sex poodle” or a vein-bursting screaming “he lied!” mental patient.
No matter, Barack Obama came into office on the shoulders of this screaming mob. His team lectured us on the wisdom of withholding oil leases, on the desirability of European-level gas prices, and on why we must soon pay skyrocketing energy prices. Obama-sanctioned cap-and-trade passed the Democratic-held House.
And then?
Snow fell. Ice still formed outside the kitchen window. Chicago, as is its habit, got both really hot and really cold. Volvos still needed gas. People in Malibu still liked central heating. Philology adjusted accordingly. Global warming begat climate change and the latter begat climate chaos: if the planet were not hotter, then snow and ice were symptoms of such heating; and if even that were insufficient proof for us dunces, then tornados, earthquakes, and hurricanes would have to do.
Yet the mob mentality began to fade, as revelations about everything from doctored research, politicized grant-giving, and false conclusions about glaciers, Greenland, and polar bears began appearing in the liberal news — suggesting that if such scandal made even the mainstream media, then the phrenology-like fad was nearing an end.
Obama had done his part in postponing the Keystone pipeline, putting oil on federal lands off-limits, and talking up boondoggles like the Chevy Volt and Solyndra. But the idea of $5 a gallon gas makes even the most liberal Santa Monica Volvo driver edgy, and now the global-warming movement has collapsed. Bush is in Texas, not the White House. Obama now blames Solyndra on Republicans, brags about entrepreneurial wildcatters in the Dakotas, does photo-ops in front of derricks, and promises to allow bits and pieces of the Keystone pipeline.
And the mob? Why hurt the liberal cause by going after Obama? Suddenly, the would-be-lynchers have left the sheriff’s office porch and are in twos and threes heading back home.
Postmodern Ethics
The mob, of course, had once tried to storm the jail to get at Bush over presidential ethics and decorum. It was a valiant effort. “Rovian politics” had polluted the national scene. PACs, the revolving door, lobbying, earmarks, and mega fundraising had ruined American politics. An Enron-insider mentality had warped the White House. “Swift-boating” was Rove-inspired character assassination.
Now? We live in an age of Peter Orszag, the OMB to Citibank monorail, and $1 million sent to the Obama PAC from the misogynist Bill Maher whose “t—t” and “c—t” are the sorts of popular smears against women that Obama does not wish his daughters to experience.
The idea of a Democrat running for president according to the rules of public campaign financing was destroyed four years ago by none other than Barack Obama. His genius lies in demonizing his donors as “fat cats”, “one-percenters,” and “corporate jet owners,” while they fork over cash, again on a medieval principle that the more you lecture the usurer or money-changer, the more he purchases penance for his soul by giving the church a marble block or two for the dome of the cathedral. Or is the shakedown not a shakedown, but rather a simple connivance for the big money guys — Obama is dead even in the polls, so why not keep a stiff upper lip and hedge your bets?
I think it was around January 2009 when ethics in government ceased to be an issue. Insider influence peddling suddenly became the necessary price of getting green energy. Bundling and corporate giving were vital to getting universal health care passed. And $35,000-a-head private dinners were a sort of castor oil, a bad-tasting medicine that led to better air and water for all of us. In those happy days, John Edwards was a populist idol. Jon Corzine put his financial expertise to work for hoi polloi. Steven Chu’s Nobel Prize-winning physics mind would be let loose on the pernicious carbon lobby.
Then it was all over. The Obama team of Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, and Summers headed back to tenured berths or big money or both. “Millionaires and billionaires” meant skipping the insignificant former and concentrating on shaking down the important latter. Today, we just shrug when Obama lectures us at 9 a.m. on paying our fair share, and then does a $40,000-a-plate fundraiser in the Upper West Side or Palm Beach at noon.
The Old Race Card
The same hang-the-suspect hysteria breaks out over race only to dissipate as if it never happened. Before 9/11 it was the reparations movement. Then it was the Bush neglect of the underclass. Then it was the preppie white non-rapists at Duke. Then it was Eric Holder’s lectures about “cowards,” “my people,” and the racists who wanted answers about Fast and Furious.
We went from the beer summit to Trayvon Martin’s resemblance to the boy the president never had. In each case, facts did not matter: Bush increased Great Society spending, and sent $15 billion to save black Africans from the ravages of AIDS. If there were any voting fraud, it came as a result of Acorn, Chicago wards, and the SEIU get-out-the vote machine, not Karl Rove with levers and gears.
The Cambridge police did not act stupidly. And if police do stereotype, it may be because 12% of the population commits almost half the violent crime in the nation. In the case of rare black/white and white/black murdering (94% of murdered African-Americans were killed by other African-Americans), a minority is more likely to commit murder (and rape) against a majority than the majority is against the minority.
As I write, the hysteria (is there any other word for it when Spike Lee twitters the address of George Zimmerman or the New Black Panther Party publishes a wanted poster or the mayor of Philadelphia calls the death an “assassination”?) is beginning to die down, somewhat.
The initial moblike news (in this regard, Fox News’s Shepard Smith was especially culpable in whipping up frenzy when he did not have the evidence to support his allegations) that a white, Germanic-named vigilante ran down and executed a small African-American child (at least Mr. Martin seemed so from his adolescent photos in the press) eating candy while strolling in an exclusive gated community is not quite the entire story. At least it has morphed into an account of an excitable, gun-carrying Hispanic neighborhood-watch volunteer, in a mixed community, prompting (?) a fist fight with an unarmed 17-year-old, 6’2” youth in a hoodie. Mr. Zimmerman apparently lost the struggle, and then pulled out a gun and fired — even as the narrative seemed to change with new information every day. The case is not helped by presidential editorializing that now, after the beer summit and Sandra Fluke, seems a gambit to divert attention from $4 a gallon gas and 8% plus unemployment (17% in Fresno County).
The Trayvon Martin tragedy is not over. We do not know all the facts; bad judgment, racism, and ill-intent may well have led to manslaughter or even second-degree murder or, then again, in theory, self-defense, but to speculate about any such charges without evidence is to become mob-like. My own view is that carrying a weapon requires greater forbearance, but I was not there and still have no idea what transpired. As I write this, the account will be out-of-date by tomorrow’s disclosures. What we are left with are no rules of national anguish: When ten African-Americans are murdered by other African-Americans in a single weekend, is it news or not news? When the occasional African-American murders a white person, as in a recent car-jacking, is it a sign of something the nation must note? When an Hispanic shoots an African-American, is it news to the degree he has a European name, but had he been Jorge Martinez with an Anglo mother, it would not have been news?
The role of a president is to rein in the mob, not to unleash it. The latter is what community organizers do; the former is what makes statesmen. Yet on issue after issue — anti-terrorism, global warming, government ethics, and racial relations — a frenzied mob, egged on by the media and demagogues like Barack Obama, have almost stormed the jail, only to dissipate when met by either evidence, or the knowledge that the incarcerated was one of their own — as if they had never screamed and threatened in the first place.
It’s getting really frightening —
almost seems as if there was a plan laying in wait for a cause to tie itself to — to bring people out to riot.
Something to bring out the rest who had not already come out with Occupy, SEIU and ACORN. Just ready and waiting to have the forces joined together, with Obama egging them on, as if it would serve his purposes for there to be riots and violence — that he could then blame on those “others.”
I remember his audiotape in which he spoke about how going thru the Courts wasn’t good enough to get the necessary “redistributive change” — but that it had to be done “on the ground.” I wonder what he meant by that “on the ground.”
I don’t know if this has begun to calm down — but if it has, what’s the next one? When will that happen? How far will it go?
This is all known as “Obama’s 2012 campagin strategy.” What does an incumbent president do when he’s made a bunch of unpopular decisions which have made a bad economy much worse and saddled the nation with billions of dollars in unproductive debt while causing economic hardship ($5 gas, anyone) and his “signuature achievement” of health reform is hated by a clear majority of voters? How does he make a case to the voters to send him back to Washington for 4 more years of golf? Occupy, class-warfare and now this.
The is slightly off-topic, but well worth mentioning:
Thomas Friedman, the NYT “Grandee” whose walrus mustache Dr. Hanson has frequently – and rightly – tweaked gives VDH full-on mad props in his March 24 column:
“THE historian Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote a brutally clear-eyed piece in The National Review, looking back at America’s different approaches to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan and how, sadly, none of them could be said to have worked yet…”
Friedman’s goes on to quote many of Hanson’s harshest lines, “Keeping clear of maniacal regimes leads to either nuclear acquisition or genocide — or 16 acres of rubble in Manhattan. What have we learned? Tribalism, oil, and Islamic fundamentalism are a bad mix that leaves Americans sick and tired of the Middle East…”
You know the world is changing when our favorite Voice in the Wilderness, Doctor Hanson, is quoted admiringly by a columnist in the NYT. Now if only Friedman will consider your “brutally clear-eyed” views on China.
I have one word for you, Buck my friend: Skittles. Carry Skittles on your person at all times and the MSM mob will shout your innocence to the world. Then your enemies would become their enemies. Skittles=maximum innocence.
It must be the rainbows!
Fear of the mob is a factor in our history, from the very beginning of civilization. But in the current context, it is well to look at the way the white liberal establishment reacted to the urban riots of the 1960s, for they set the stage for today’s worrisome race relations. See http://clarespark.com/2010/07/18/white-elite-enabling-of-black-power/ for one example. Don’t miss the bottom bold-face account of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco.
There is a plan ready for any spark. Saul Alinsky even wrote and published a user’s manual. The secret to Alinsky’s (and Antonio Gramsci before him) strategy is that it describes methods for disabling a majority while putting a minority in a dominant position. Sure, Louis Farrakahn, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton are whipping up the blacks into a frenzy, but, before 1960 or so, any black race riot would have been (and were) met with massive counter-force from whites. The genius of Alinsky’s plan is that it derails white action before it starts. Although race riots before 1960 were almost all ‘white’ riots, after Watts, riots switched 180 degrees and became automatically black, and were not met with any reasonable force (see George Romney; Detroit; 1967). Just the reverse of the pre-1960s situation. So, as anyone who has ever read a history of any civilization, at any time, in any place, will know, there will always be one group that is free to rampage at will, and all other groups will be silenced and restrained. In the US, the only surprise is the almost-instantaneous reversal of dominance, from white to ‘minority’.
As I showed in my prior comment, there was a deliberate tactic formulated to co-opt the civil rights movement and turn it toward racialist politics. To make it some time worn tactic of any society at any time, robs the reader of blaming particular individuals and ideologies. For instance, the same liberal foundations refused integrationist tactics and liberals have supported Obama even though he was associated with the most virulent of black liberation theology tactics. I wrote in detail about this here: http://clarespark.com/2009/10/31/the-offing-of-martin-luther-king-jr-and-ralph-bunche/. The Progressive universities continue their racialist discourse and practices, separating out “ethnic” and women’s studies departments.
I hear you, Aqua. It seems like the popular voices are encouraging hate. Not standing up against it. (Where is President Obama?) Wild fires do get out of control. Will the center hold?
I just wrote a letter to Mr. Obama asking him to call out the hatred. I am nobody. Doubt he will ever read my words. But I had to do my part. Burke’s words are inescapable: “The only thing that evil needs to triumph is for good me do to nothing.”
Take heart, Aqua. The Golden Rule is self-evident. The arc of history is on the side of common decency.
“Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j’attaque.” F. Foch, WWI
My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.
Thanks for the quote, Don. In the original, no less. Especially liked the “situation excellent” part. Great attitude.
Btw, the link to my site should have read UNRIVEN.ORG. I’m interested in your thoughts on my open letter to President Obama. The hatred being stoked out there portends a Mad Max world.
Civil society is fragile and can be broken. The public figures whipping up the mobs seem completely ignorant of this.
Where is Mr. Obama?
I hear you, Aqua. It seems like the popular voices are encouraging hate. Not standing up against it. Not calling for due process. (Where is President Obama?) Wild fires do get out of control. Will the center hold?
I just wrote a letter to Mr. Obama asking him to call out the hatred. I am nobody. Doubt he will ever read my words. But I had to do my part. Burke’s words are inescapable: “The only thing that evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
Take heart, Aqua. The Golden Rule is self-evident. Even mobs reflect after their carnage. The arc of history is on the side of common decency.
“now the global-warming movement has collapsed”
No, it hasn’t. It’s just “under the radar.” It may look like that here in the U.S. for the moment, but it’s going strong overseas — and at the U.N.
As for here — it’s going to depend on who wins the election. If the O wins, with his free “reign” — he’ll bring it back in full force — thru the EPA — and presidential “edicts.”
It not that he “believes” it’s true, but it serves his ultimate “redistributive” and “make America weaker (more fair) internationally — purposes. (Note that he’s given billions to Brazil for off-shore drilling.) His decisions have nothing to do with “climate.”
Not forgetting the White House and the Democratic party in general too.
The AGW scamsters and their political backers just took a major trouncing Down Under.
Unfortunately, the global warming crap is taught at schools with greater fervor than Newton’s laws or the water cycle… as is the extremely contradictory and idiotic philosophy of “diversity”.
The wanted poster part has a bit of an update–New Black Panther Party has decided that a simple quest for justice is boring, and has actually announced a reward, an actual bounty, for the “capture” of Zimmermann.
Dear Stupid Black Panther Retards–
Offering rewards, in the absence of official warrants, is illegal. Nice going idiots, you just made yourselves liable in case any harm comes to Zimmermann. I realize you’re not afraid of prosecution, with our thoroughly racist DOJ, but the rest of us figure Panther season will start up in a year or so, immediately after Obama gets fired. And fired he will be.
“Retards” and racists too. As an American of Spanish descent, and closley tied with many Jewish relatives, I am outraged that a clearly racist outfit like the Panthers, would follow the Nazi black shirt path of putting bounties out for Hispanic minorities with Jewish sounding names in such a obviously Racist effort to discriminate against a minority. It need not be said but this is a minority who, otherwise, should be granted the presumption of innocence, certainly before he has been charged with anything criminal. (Stupidity is not always criminal).
And this on top of threatening non-black voters with baseball bats, which racist actions were protected by those wonderful racists that imposed “Fast and Furious” on hundreds of dead Mexicans. Memo to Holder: The Mexican Drug Cartels do not need US government help in order to kill Mexicans who have done you, Mr. Holder, no harm. Stop your racist nonsense for no other apparent reason that to violate your oath to uphold and defend the US Constitution, including its Second Amendment (Part of our sacred Bill of Rights).
Lastly, how come these obvious points are never part of the “conversation” we need to have about race that the Lame-stream media keeps trumpeting? What does another echo chamber “conversation,” that solely involves the usual leftist talking points going to accomplish anyway? We need a real, two way conversation about the conservative talking points, partly enumerated above, that fully expose the rabid, “anti-everybody but us” racism of the Left that is all too evident and which, without any pushback, is obviously getting worse.
(I’m being sarcastic here)
Do you not know Mr. Burke? As they are not white, they cannot be racists. Truly, it is only white people who can be racists, since they control the structures of government and ultimate power in the US. All minorities are blameless in their actions, as they are merely lashing out against the oppression in any way that they can. The poor angry men of the Black Panthers are simply additional tragic victims, reacting they only way they feel they have the power to, since, fundamentally, they are powerless in society at large.
Or something like that. And while I’m being a sarcastic b…ard, if you look around at college campuses and progressive texts, you’ll likely see something like that said with all sincerity, often by a white person who has bought the ‘I’m helping to institutionalize racism’ line spouted by progressives.
So, you know, in the vernacular of the average american 20 something ‘it’s like, not really their fault because they’re all oppressed and stuff, by the rich white guys. Really, I feel sorry for them’
Precisely: “The role of a president is to rein in the mob, not to unleash it.”
Words and deeds matter, because they tell us who someone is. Every day, Obama reveals his true self.
Yes, he’s the “predator in chief.” He’s also the instigator in chief, the community organizer in chief, the detractor in chief, the campaigner in chief.
He’s the leader of a gang, not the nation. And he behaves as such.
That’s how “Community Organizers” of his ilk operate. Work the crowd, inflame them, polarize them, provide them with an enemy to hate. Exploit that. Use it. Point them like a firearm and pull the trigger. Remember, it’s always about “justice” and “fairness,” because you want them to believe you are their champion.
It’s also pure Alinsky.
It is also “pure” Lenin and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1921.
Hell, I am certain the Romans before them.
Argumentum ad populum didn’t just pop up from nowhere.
Have you read Mein Kampf? It’s also pure Uncle Adolf.
“The role of a president is to rein in the mob, not to unleash it.”
Well, not this one. He’s just a community organizer playing POTUS, and unleashing the mob is one of the things he’s actually worked at and been paid for in his past life.
From what I’ve heard, Moochelle is from a Gangster Disciples family.
Oh, and by the way, not only did Treyvon Martin make himself look as though he was up to no good, there is some evidence that he was a small-time drug dealer and gang-banger.
Remember Obama’s remark to bankers (I believe) that he’s the only one standing between them and the pitchfork-wielding mob?
That’s the message he wants all of America to hear. That’s his re-election campaign.
Indeed Obama is the smug instigator hiding behind his arrogant smirk. He learned a long time ago how gullible the masses are and how easy to con.
I’m a bit of a chronic optimist, but reading your comment, I could see very clearly how Obama could gin up the pitchfork crowds, plead for “civility” while blaming and accusing, suspend elections, institute martial law …
Note to self: Halloween 2012 – Watch for Tricks, not Treats.
I hate to play into Godwin’s Law, but yin this case it’s a historic parallel. Sure, that is one thing Hitler did well – get all of the industrialists on his side, very early on.
GDI, you took the words right out of my PC. ;D
The worst part is America has become 320-million cowards who sit on their hands and do nothing about it. Like rabbits trembling before a big black snake gobbles them up. What if he enforces the executive order BEFORE the election — with an October Surprise? Or during the election, first voter numbers report he is losing, he closes all polling places and declares martial law to “prevent street rioting”? We are NOT too good, too upper class, to take to the streets to reclaim America! Demonstrating in person is as American as it gets, ask the first Patriots.
October Surprise, could be an attack on Iran.
What? Like those hundreds of protesters ranting about how Bush’s sanctions were killing millions of babies each year? Those mobs?
Both Ruger and Smith & Wesson are so overloaded with orders they can’t take any more. Somebody out there is preparing a warm welcome for Obama’s mobs.
Obama promised he’d figure out a way to stimulate the economy …
Dr. Hanson’s analysis is — as always — wonderfully astute. As far as I know, he is also the first among conservative pundits to defend common sense and common decency in the Travyon Martin – George Zimmerman case.
I respect Hanson’s Swedish level-headedness and his classicist “long view” insights about the “fits of the mob” as an (unavoidable) challenge of democracies – particularly when contrasted with “we are all doomed” and “Alinskite conspiracies everywhere” shticks that so many frustrated conservatives are all too prone to.
But — what if we are really losing some key protections of our Republican Democracy? Dr. Hanson seems to suggest that the methodical (and — at the time – successful) mob-rousing tactics of the Left on: anti-terrorism, global warming, ethics in government and the race issues – have been or will be “compromised” as the country learns more about the facts in each of these areas
Unfortunately, as demonstrated by this most recent use of “unprovoked killing of an innocent black kid by a hateful white racist” trope – if the demagogues are never held to account for their systematic use of mob-politics — they’ll keep coming for more.
And, it is not just the Modern Sophist party (likely to use the Fluke-Limbauagh; Martin-Zimmerman and 20, 30 or 50 other similarly manufactured “controversies” before November 6th) – that we have to watch out for. How about Sheppard Smith running to the front of the mob posse and the “conservative” Republicans like Gingrich, Santorum, West and Scott also posturing to show their “righteous” indignation — without slightest effort to check the (relatively easily available) facts?
So, my (non-rhetorical) question to VDH is: How do we mobilize Americans of good will and judgment against the mob-leaders and against the opportunistic mob-participation?
Napolean’s “whiff of grapeshot” is the only known answer to a mob. Of course, you’re then stuck with Napolean.
On a more practical level, black mobs just have to be reminded that they’re only 13% of so of the US population. That would cool me down fast, and I’m sure it works the same with them.
Bullies are always the minority. They succeed only because the majority won’t fight, won’t gang up.
Furthermore, they really have little to lose, while the folks who have to gang up have much to lose. The mobs will not get prosecuted, but the armed responders always do. You get arrested and prosecuted, even if you are clearly in the right. If you are an upstanding, productive citizen, you pay for your own lawyer. It’s lose-lose. Better to just let them riot, right?
How about starting with indictments of Sharpton and Jackson for running criminal conspiracies? Then, at the very least, all their troops would be fighting to save them instead of harm us. Force them to pay to defend themselves and all their high-level minions in court. Jackson is famous for extorting money from large corporations by threatening to accuse them of racism and discrimination. The corporations pay up and Jesse decides they’re OK after all. That sounds like racketeering to me. Al Sharpton never had to pay damages for his behavior in the Tawana Brawley case (see, for example, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/ballot_box/2003/09/the_worst_of_al_sharpton.html). These shenanigans don’t even pass the laugh test — both of them are so proud of their brazenness that I’m sure very little effort has been made to hide what’s really going on. All we need to do is elect officials with the courage to investigate and prosecute.
Aren’t there any laws against ‘incitement to riot’.
Once again thank you Dr Hanson for a voice of reason. Given what little we know now, your remarks seem precisely on target.
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This mob that is forming in the wake of the Florida shooting is the beginning of Obama’s civilian force, more powerful and better funded than the military. Obama has made Treyvon into the son he never had. If Zimmerman is acquitted and not given mob justice, there will be riots all over the country. Obama will then calm the mobs in return for the vote by guilty white liberals. This shooting is shaping up to be the means by which Obama will secure his reelection.
It makes me wonder: why was there no outcry for justice for that school kid who was burned alive by a gang of blacks? Where are the celebrities and white people demanding justice, or putting together a “million book bag march” to get justice for that kid? It all comes down to the socialist food chain of victim hood. A few years ago in Newark, three black teenagers minding their own business were murdered by illegal alien gangbangers. There was little outcry because illegal alien Hispanics are more oppressed than blacks. But now we have an Hispanic citizen with a white sounding name and the outcry is nationwide. If Treyvon had been shot by a radical Muslim, you can bet the story would have lasted only a day and quickly forgotten.
Your outline is reminiscent of how the dystopia in “Hunger Games” comes to power.
Who cares what really happened. Zimmerman played right into Obama’s backroom gang’s plan for a “long hot summer” and race wars.
For three years I’ve predicted on this forum a pre-election race war in 2012. The demagogues comb the news cycle for anything they can use to marshall outrage across the country. By murdering a good looking young black boy this moron of a Walter Mitty gave them everything they needed to light the fuse. Lyching may be too good for him.
pelaut – This link, and my quote from it, suggests this is how this whole thing started:
http://www.cinchreview.com/trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-new-mob-rule/6443/
“Kevin Cunningham is a 31-year old social media coordinator for a Palestinian children’s charity called KinderUSA. He is a resident of Washington D.C., and, since everyone’s race and appearance seems so crucially relevant in this case, it can be noted that he is of Irish descent. The online petition he initiated, demanding the prosecution of George Zimmerman, became the focal point and spur for the attention the case has received.”
Let me speculate – Cunnigham is Irish, and for some reason the Irish have become anti-Israel, and pro-Palestinian (Arab). Did Cunningham, who works for a Palestinian charity, think that Zimmerman was Jewish and that by getting this started it would lead to a further fraying of black-Jewish relations in America, and that, that would somehow have negative repercussion on Israel? Just a speculation.
“Where are the celebrities and white people demanding justice,…….”
They are calling for Mr. Zimmerman’s head.
Are Barack Obama and other race hustlers going to use the threat of riots if he loses the election? Are they going to gin it up so there will be riots if he loses the election? I don’t see him going quietly off into the night if he loses.
I feel the same way. He has two months to trigger his martial law in peacetime order.
Hopefully, though, all this noise and screaming outrage is just him and his cronies negotiating the price of their golden parachutes.
“Are Barack Obama and other race hustlers going to use the threat of riots if he loses the election? ”
Count on it. There is ample precedent.
In the days just before the 2008 election when Obama was high in the polls and McCain was not, I saw predictions in newsgroups that said there were going to be riots (of celebration) if Obama won the election and riots (of anger) if he lost.
As I recall, there weren’t actually any riots when he won but the political operatives who proliferate in Usenet certainly wanted us to be afraid of riots….
I have long held the opinion that the “Racist run Black Inner Cities” will rise up in protest and riot when what they perceive as their “free pass’ and ‘food stamp’ enabling President is deposed.
“When an Hispanic shoots an African-American, is it news to the degree he has a European name…?”
There was a book in which described how the leaders of a country distracted the people from their real problems with Two Minutes of Hate. They were whipped up in a frenzy against an ideoligical devil with a similarly germanic name, Emmanuel Goldstein.
Actual, Emmanuel Goldstein is more of a Jewish name than a German one, although there is certainly some overlap between Jewish and German – although that overlap was larger before Hitler took his turn on the world stage.
George Orwell was a lifelong Socialist but he’d turned away from Marxism as a result of his experiences during the Spanish Civil War when he fought on the Republican side, one of whose main sponsors was Stalin. He was appalled by how Stalin’s operatives liquidated any leftists that didn’t support Stalin’s flavour of Marxism. I’ve long believed that Emmanuel Goldstein was just a metaphor for Stalin’s arch-rival Trotsky, who was also Jewish and made a scapegoat for much that had gone wrong in the Soviet Union on Stalin’s watch.
And Trotsky ended up as one of the “troublemakers” Stalin had terminated, in Mexico City in 1940. With an ice ax in the brain, no less.
As to why Trotsky was in Mexico, he was there preaching his doctrine of an “eternal revolution without borders”. He apparently dreamed of a world in which the purges, or rather massacres were unending.
His definition of a perfect state was one in which anyone who questioned authority was executed on the spot. Which I can only assume means Trotsky would have had Stalin liquidated if he’d gotten the chance first.
There just seems to be something about socialism, in any form, which attracts people who would otherwise be defined as dangerously insane.
cheers
eon
It should be remembered that Saul Alinsky was a Trotskyite, along with most of the leadership cohort of the hard left in the US. Maybe there should be a surge in ice axe sales.
“There just seems to be something about socialism, in any form, which attracts people who would otherwise be defined as dangerously insane.”
Thread winner.
I’m getting off topic here, but “Goldstein” is no more Jewish than “Trotsky” or “Smith.” Goldstein is Germanic, but also happens to be a relatively common surname amongst those of the Jewish community with German roots.
It’s far more likely that a person named “Goldstein” is Jewish, especially in the U.S., but the name itself is Germanic.
“In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish”
page 15, “Animal Farm” by George Orwell Thirty-first Printing, 1964 – Ahem Somehow I carried this around with the rest of my book stash for the past 48 years. It was on my summer reading list between 9th and 10th grade. Do high school kids read stuff like this now?
page 15, “Animal Farm”
I believe the quoted passage relates to “1984.”
Obama is John “War Whoop” Tumbril. Except more unabashedly evil.
Obama and his crew ran to bring down the system. The Democrat Washington machine just wanted another shot at the cash.
Looks like they are both getting what they want.
Amazing. In less than a hundred years we have gone from Blacks worrying about being lynched to Blacks trying to organize one.
Yep, and a Hoodie is todays Klan hood. Look at all the modern Klan putting them on now as a display of solidarity.
That’s a very astute observation.
Atonishing how resilient cultural memory is, isn’t it?
I read the Bible as a non-Christian archaeologist, and find threads that go back to the Ice Age (and possibly before).
RE: Precisely: “The role of a president is to rein in the mob, not to unleash it.”
Actually, if you recall, remember what Obama said to the insurres/bankers in 2009? “I’m the one standing between you and the pitchforks.”
So, this is a control issue for Obama. He will unleash his mobs if you do not do what he says.
Unofortunately, this tactic wears thin after a while, as the people he threatens determine it better to stand up.
Side Note: VDH: did you mean “Ethnics” in your bold 2nd heading, or “Ethics”?
John B, yes, I do recall the pitchfork comment. A real leader, real president would speak and behave as a uniter, not a divider.
Obama has chosen a different path.
“Sometime around 2005, the anger of the mob over the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols peaked. Preventative detention, renditions, military tribunals, Guantanamo, Predators, wiretaps, and intercepts were all considered unlawful, unnecessary, and immoral. The Bush-Cheney “terror state” seemed capable of almost anything, as it shredded the Constitution while claiming to “protect” us from non-existent terrorists. Dick Cheney went from a respected and perennial Washington insider, given his due by both liberals and conservatives as a sober and judicious administrator over the past thirty years, to a pernicious Darth Vader.”
And the anger was all justified.
We now live in the worlds finest police state.
Most of the Bush/Cheney administration’s ideas in this area failed one of the basic tests of the responsible use of power. That being, “Is this a power you would be comfortable with if it were in the hands of your political opponents?”
At the time, I took considerable flak for my opposition to TSA, the Patriot Act, & etc. My usual response to the criticism was two words. “President Hillary.”
Most of the problems I anticipated then are what we are dealing with now. Including the problems with a unionized TSA.
The only consolation I have is that Obama is a much less competent would-be autocrat than The Hill. And that he and she are apparently too busy trying to undercut each other to do any serious planning for their Brave New World.
cheers
eon
It is the second worst Republican disease, right behind the compulsion to be nice. Fundamentally, Republicans are so bad at the actual nuts and bolts of running a government that they really don’t understand what can be done with all those cool toys. I used to have a sign over my desk that said, “When the enemy is in range, so are you.” Whenever we had a nominally Republican governor, the administration was constantly either wanting to enact powers they already had but didn’t understand or wanting some new power that nobody in their right mind would want in the wrong hands. How many times I’ve turned to some shiny new appointee and said, “have you thought about what[insert Democrat's name]would do if s/he had that power?” Sometimes it gave them pause, sometimes they’d just say, “oh, nobody would use it that way,” and keep saying it right up until somebody did use it that way. Nuclear option on filibusters anyone? The Soros Junta has all the powers of the perfect police state and a Republican Administration and Congress enacted them. But of course, they’d never use them against political opposition, would they?
“You are next.”
I’ve tried to reason with conservatives a zillion times.
Both sides betray their agenda.
“If we only the right people to run it…”
I learned over 50 years ago that if you don’t do a thing to stop a bully, it will only become a worse bully.. After I snapped and beat the crap out of a bully, the rest never came near me (and I was a small boy with a hell of a temper that had built up).
Obumjob is a bully organizer. If the mobs go nuts after his defeat, many of us will take care of the problems. And that will be that. One thing I will not do, ever, is dial 911.
Mary, a truly inspired column! You have broad grasp and understanding of how Owebama has used a willing press to deliver hysteria and sensationalism over the past 4 yrs. The result: chaos, drama and diversion from real existential issues facing our Republic. I fear the ship may be lost if he is re-elected. And if he’s not, many people will howl racism. And they may riot. Too much free stuff has been promised to too many. The rational era of individual responsibility is over. This criminal-in-chief has set back race relations by at least 40 years. He has inflamed old animosities to a degree that is criminal. And we as a nation will pay the price in blood. None of it needs to happen.
Something just struct me, our President dithers when it comes to our national safety and sticking up for our friends a far, but rushes to judgement about anything that has to do with race. He said he was a uniter and instead has divided us beyond belief. We need a leader that will bring us together.
Obama seems to have time to call Ms Fluke when she is called names by Limbaugh. He muses about Mr Martin being the son he never had and calls for a supposely federal investigation before any of the ongoing investigations have been anywhere near being completed.
Strange that our President of “all the people” cannot spare any time for a 15 year old Mr Coon of Kansas City who was lit on fire by two Blacks who alledgedly told him you’re “getting what you deserve white boy.” Where was Obama when Black mobs beat whites at the state fair in Wisconsin? The New Black Panthers get a complete pass for obvious voter intimadation in Philadelphia. Isn’t there a 50 50 chance that Mr Coon could also look like the boy Obama never had?
Far from being a post racial President Obama has done more to worsen race relations in this country than any president in memory.
Our country stands on a knife’s edge.
Hey anonymous, you’re right. And we are now one Supreme Court Justice’s vote away from lighting the final fire to an old oudated document that gave some protection to we the people for two hundred and thirty plus years. If justice Kennedy supports the constitutionality of the health care mandate, the knife falls and severs the body of the collective people into two parts. Those who dictate and then everyone else. Federalism and the Republic will cease to exist. THE ONE will have won it all in four short years.
Read Gustave Le Bon and his theories about mass psychology and control.
Freud, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao are just mental midgets comparing to him. He is THE pioneer in mass/crowd mental manipulation.
I have a retired neighbor who was mugged in one of Florida’s gated communities. A couple of blacks jumped the fence, grabbed her purse, in the process knocking her down and breaking her shoulder. She told me that she “spent a month in a Florida hospital,” from complications, but I digress…
There have been 7 or more German tourists murdered in Florida…but I di…
My 24 year old unarmed relative was shot by a black man, a stranger to him. Did I mention that he was forced to kneel and beg for his life before being shot in the face from 8 inches away? But I…
Remember the misunderstood Jena Six? Pat Buchanan wrote, “…some $500,000 has been raised for the Jena Six defense, its whereabouts is unknown. (Mychal) Bailey did pose on the Internet grinning, however, with $100 bills in his mouth. Bell’s mom is said to be driving a new Jaguar, and Bailey’s mom a new Beamer. Two other Jena Sixers, Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis, appeared in rapper attire on Black Entertainment Television as presenters of a Hip-Hop Award.” Al and Jesse were on hand, as usual, but…oh, never mind.
Here’s a current photo of ‘O’bama’s son,’ soooooo not what we have seen:
http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/565216_100003684727737_1164746587_n.jpg
What…no Skittles? Strutting his thug thistle, sporting gang attire while giving the ‘one finger salute,’ and now dead. A shooter, claiming self-defense, who will spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, a price on his head from an all righteous, all knowing New Black Panthers, fresh from a polling place near you.
Hope and Change We Can Believe In. Hand me that TV remote and an aspirin.
Another site had that picture posted and then took it down claiming that it was not Trayvon.
Maybe. Here is another:
http://tray.site50.net/Trayvon_Martin.jpg
Apparently a witness has just come forward who actually actually saw Trayon attack Zimmerman prior to the shooting. So lets see the Black Racists squirm out of that. No doubt will he get death threats too like Zimmerman has.
There’s crazy…and then there’s PJM crazy.
Take a look at the video of the Sherrif’s Department press conference last month, a day or so after the shooting. It’s on the local Fox News channel there. There was a witness who had already been questioned who said that he saw one person on top of the other one, beating the crap out of the one underneath; the one doing the beating was the one the witness later saw dead. Also came out then that Zimmerman had facial injuries – broken and bloody nose? – and a bleeding injury on the back of his head. Also that police asked Martin’s father about the voice on the 911 tape asking for help and that the father said that wasn’t his son. This case is a perfect example of the necessity to teach your sons (and daughters, too) not to start a fist fight with a man with a gun.
VDH, wonderful, inspired writing.
We are being made. So here is the question, and it is a hefty one. What is our resiliency, what is the U.S. able to stand and how shall we do it? Here’s what I think, and although it isn’t pretty, it is optimistic. Little by little our government has been coming at us, and when I say “us,” we know who we are. The media are not with us. Half of the churches aren’t either. Forget the business sector, too many possible sanctions hanging over their heads. So what will allow us to weather the storm of insanity until we are able to assume the stable course? It’s almost too simple to say, and although provocative in the telling, it isn’t meant to be. In a word, guns.
Unlike every other made country who has succumbed to the mob or the “strong man,” we are an armed populace, our constitutional right having been reaffirmed in the last couple of years. My guess is that the disarming of America was part and parcel of this administration’s big plan to make government ascendency imminent. It didn’t work, and in light of Operation Fast and Furious’s
revelations, won’t work. But we came dangerously close.
We are at a crossroads which will decide if the U.S. will have to contend with innumerable dangers within and without. Hopefully, we will emerge as an object lesson on the perils of freedom too long taken for granted, and this generation’s rekindled dedication to it.
I share Professor Hanson’s attitudes towards President Delusional Narcissist, however I wish he did not bring up global warming. Few here are climatologists, I certainty an not, bot I just saw a Nova program that makes a very valid correlation between man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming.
To sum up; physical science is not something that should be tossed into the right-left debate.
I agree. I have total trust in every program I see on PBS. /s
Bob, if you do have an interest in expanding your knowledge on the subject(s), read every piece of material pertaining to that subject matter possible. Both aspects, viewpoints of the topic.
As for ‘..sciences is not something that should be tossed into the right-left debate’ – make note of the Illiberal/ Left leaning/ federally funded ‘non-profit organizations’, colleges, foundations, companies etc., who ‘coincidentally’ agree and PUSH for MORE government intervention, heavy-handedness/ overstepping in environmental regulation for ‘bettering the environment’ though NEVER accept a discussion/ debate with privately funded, differing scientific minds regarding AGW.
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com is a knowledgable and interesting website which is the latter viewpoint.
Though does have the opposite spectrum’s viewpoints on the right side column of the same site.
The original term, as someone said here, was: AGW, Anthropogenic Global Warming, as in man-made. This was then changed to Global Warming and, as VDH says, to Climate Change, as the ‘facts’ changed.
I agree, you can’t discount science. But the ‘Man-made’ and ‘Global warming’ parts of this theory has yet to be proven. What has been used by the UN and others to support AGW is not science. For example, someone from the UN won a Nobel Prize for stating that w/in 30-50 years the Himalayan ice caps would melt. This is just not true (or happening). Some parts are melting, some parts are swelling with more ice.
The website listed by Paul unAlaska, above, is great. Also, http://behindtheblack.com sometimes has scientific comments on how sun spots were left out of the theory of global ‘warming’.
“…….physical science is not something that should be tossed into the right-left debate.”
I agree, which is why you should do a little more research and investigate the other side of the “consensus”. Watching one program on Nova only makes you propagandized, not informed. There are many prestigious skeptics (“deniers”, as the warmists like to demonize them) that question the effect of CO2 on global warming. You can start start with Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
There’s no reason to trust Wiki on ‘Global Warming’. One of its editors quit his job working on ‘Global Warming’ to work for Wiki to make sure the story was told the way he wanted.
How many times do we need to catch the warmists telling lies?
Remove all possibility of receiving public money for these scientists and then see how many are still squacking about global warming.
2001-2008, our problem-causer in the White House was strictly Bush-League compared to the one we’ve got now.
/sorry, everyone — it’s a compulsive disorder :-D
S’OK, we’ll just shrub it away. However, can I “Dubya” one of the PJM’s chronic smartasses? I understand the position comes with benefits. :)
The Left and its black hustlers are a suicide cult.
In my home town last week, a fine young “African American” raped and beat to death an 85 year old white woman, then proceeded to torture her white 90 year old husband, shooting him in the face over and over with a BB gun before stealing their car and ransacking the house. At this moment, I don’t know if the husband made it. They had been married about 65 years.
And not a peep from the black racists, not a whimper from the media, and a ho hum from the general populace and local paper. In fact, there was no mention of color at all. I simply looked at the pictures.
How much longer are we going to tolerate this double standard in behavior before we say enough is enough?
Tex,
We have the same hometown.
The woman was also raped according to one account in the Daily Mail. She did die of her injuries.
Her husband is alive and has been released from the hospital. One recent article states that he never wants to return to that home he shared for decades with his wife. He is afraid….and understandably so.
Really a hideous, evil crime. It deserves national attention much more so than the Zimmerman/Martin case if only for its innate evil. Evil exists and we have seen it in our home town.
Sure is a lot of self-affirmation in this thread.
Obama sucks!
Yup.
Yup.
Blacks are scary.
Obama’s scary!
Yup.
Yup.
And crafty, too!
Yup.
And we have lefty useful idiots too.
What about moderates like me? Are they to be found here?
(crickets chirping)
Oh yeah, Ben? You are a moderate? Well then, show us your Skittles. All innocent moderates carry Skittles. Ask the NYT and Wapo.
Zimmerman… hmm…
And how would LSM describe him: White? (perfect but the Narrative doesn’t fit the facts) Hispanic? (nay, with a name like Zimmerman clearly he’s half-Peruvian)
Maybe white-Hispanic fits the bill? Oh, yes Narrative fits perfect and (few facts forgiven later) whitey Zimmerman killed Innocent black angel.
But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a jew janitor.
That is a rather simplistic summation of Dr. Hanson’s essay. But what else can be expected of a “moderate?”
The Lame Stream EneMedia are as much ‘in the tank’ for the green NAZIS as they are for Obama. So the general populace , those that even bother to read any media, get fed a diet of unending propaganda from both sources. Add to that the fact that Academia is stuffed with Left Wing moonbats too who are feeding and brainwashing their naive , gullible students with the same propaganda and it is no wonder such ridiculous theories as ‘Global Warming’ and such undocumented, non investigated people as Obama get credence and support.
Pretty much what I wanted to say has been said – it’s infuriating to watch mobs ginned up by the press (though I should expect no better) and the President. It’s a disgrace.
By the way, the medieval term was “indulgences”, not “exemptions”.
I’m not sure who is the more ignorant, hypocritical racist. Lovie Smith who says to vote for Obama because of the color of his skin. Or Barack Obama who says to vote for Obama for the same reason. One more irony, their learned their racism on the streets of Chicago, where mobs have always demonstrated how anti-American true communists can be.
Oh dear how inconvenient for all the mouthy Black Racists and their enablers , and I include Obama in that. It seems that a witness has come forward who actually saw Trayvon attack Zimmerman. Just wait for all the death threats to the witness of course its all Racists know how to do.
Further to my last post here’s the link.
http://global.christianpost.com/news/trayvon-martin-case-new-witness-says-martin-attacked-zimmerman-72031/
“A new witness has allegedly come forward to offer his account of what took place between Trayvon Martin and his shooter, George Zimmerman. Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman, who claims he fired in self-defense.
The witness, known only as John, told Sanford police that 17-year-old Martin was attacking Zimmerman before he fired the fatal shot. “The guy on the bottom who had a red sweater on [Zimmerman] was yelling to me, ‘Help, help…’ and I told him to stop and I was calling 911,” John told Fox 35 in Orlando.”
You mean to tell me that we find out this poor, little choir boy going out for a pack of Skittles, might actually be the neighborhood thug and bully after all, and the “white” hispanic might actually have been acting in self defense?
Imagine that? A Jena 6 Redux, an event that was quietly swept under the rug when it discovered not only a hoax, but four of the poor, little black teenagers “falsely accused” of darn near beating a savage white kid to death, within 24 months were arrested for everything from resisting arrest to assault and battery across three states.
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It is the height of irresponsibility and crass Marxist manipulation of these Democrat operatives to sh*tcan the basic tenants of our country i.e. due process, rule of law, the right to fair trial, etc. to encourage this lynch mob mentality. And these *ssholes do it for everything, global warming, Bush/Cheney,…well the list goes on. And they are the party of science and reason? And now they deliberately foment hatred, and commit race baiting, all in the name of power. This makes me so angry I could spit. Now, I hope IF it is truly Zimmermann’s fault, he hangs. But now the mob is going to go after the eye-witnesses and friends of this guy, and probably their families too. And this is ENCOURAGED by Jesse Jackson and even THE PRESIDENT himself. Absolutely terrifying and disgraceful!
Oh please, righties love lynch mobs too, they just have a harder time selling their stuff. If VDH were so inclined, he could come up with such a list from the right, but he is not so inclined. Fox News is always looking to create such a mob. Both sides are Alinskyite now, but the Dems have a more predictable constituencies.
That having been said, we have courts for a reason and that’s where Zimmerman should go. It is an outrage that no judicial process was brought to bear on Zimmerman, and that omission eventually helped gin up all the current outrage. Not to worry, the public is no capable of outrage or even interest for much longer then four or five days.
The fact that Martin was carrying Skittles demonstrates his complete innocence, right Dwight? I’m with you and the librul media on that one. And possession of sodie pop puts the cap on the case.
“It is an outrage that no judicial process was brought to bear on Zimmerman, and that omission eventually helped gin up all the current outrage.”
Well, how refreshing it is to see Dwight take a position for once, or rather take a position other than ‘I am right that both sides are wrong’. The police and local prosecutor in Florida, who investigated the case, found no evidence for arrest nor prosecution. Dwight, situated somewhere near the Arctic Circle but still having some means of accessing the librul media, has concluded based, one supposes, on Exhibit A, Skittles and Exhibit B, sodie pop, that the local authorities are in the wrong, and that Jesse Jackson, Spike Lee, Al Sharpton and all their followers are right. Dwight has joined the mob in absentia as it were. Good for you Dwight. May all vigilantes have to travel long distances to do their work.
Someone is dead.
someone is brain dead.
“Outrage”. “But”.
The Ping Pong Tongue paddles it’s own behind.
“It is an outrage that no judicial process was brought to bear on Zimmerman, and that omission eventually helped gin up all the current outrage.”
Aren’t the police and prosecutors part of the “judicial process”?
“Not to worry, the public is no capable of outrage or even interest for much longer then four or five days.”
And of course D-White, you are not part of “the public”. You do appear to be outraged. Appear.
“If VDH were so inclined, he could come up with such a list from the right, but he is not so inclined.”
Why not come up with a list of your own, Pick It Fence But, and post it? Why let the terminally biased Dr. Hanson do your thinking for you? All these nasty “righties”, boy oh boy, they need your oh so logical non mob induced correction.
Are you the channeling the Manster, at right about the part where the eye is coming out of the shoulder?
But…
”Both sides are Alinskyite now, but the Dems have a more predictable constituencies.”
Both sides are socialist now, but Stalin is more predictable than Hitler.
Take it Joni!
I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all
““Outrage”. “But”. The Ping Pong Tongue paddles it’s own behind.”
Uh oh, the “queer old josser” from “The Dubliners” re-appears from the Penn State locker rooms. Lock up the children…if not the women.
I agree with Fred that Skittles are essentially irrelevant and are becoming irritating, but the fact that Skittles (I assume) rather than a weapon were found, is one of the reasons why there should be further investigation. I have not said that Zimmerman is innocent or guilty, because I have no way of knowing.
Hmmm… One wonders if fists are weapons, particularly when they break a nose.
Gee D-White, next time you’re on the bottom getting beat up, why don’t you just lay there? Like an arranged European aristocratic 19th century marriage.
So where is the “rightie” list? Should be easy D-White, with that extra head emerging from your shoulder.
Now, now. Don’t interrupt Dwighty while he’s triangulating. Mr. ‘Soul of Reason’ is too busy moving that ‘synthesis’ to the left to notice that we’re not buying it.
Dwight, you can have your own opinions, but, facts are stubborn things. Righties love to lynch. really. The KKK was formed by democrats. Ever hear of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Lester Maddox was a democrat. So was Governor Wallace. President Eisenhower a Republican desegregated southern schools. Ever hear of dixiecrats? Spew Your B.S. elsewhere. Google Bull Connor.
To quote Kinky Friedman, “The crowd always picks Barabas.”
eon@”There just seems to be something about socialism, in any form, which attracts people who would otherwise be defined as dangerously insane.”
WoW! truer words…..
Side note VDH: “tenured births” shd probably be “tenured berths.”. The sense in the sentence is “safe and easy position” which of course “tenure” conveys; and the sailor’s phrase would be a “safe (or soft) berth” or bunk.
But I haven’t looked it up. Otherwise the essay is, as usual, letter-perfect. Best part for me is your refusal to get ahead of the very few facts we have. That is the acid test of intellectual honesty: anyone can speculate, and usually does, producing only grotesque reflections of their own prejudices, of what they want something to “really mean.”. But those who stick to facts –boring, slow, hard work with few crowd-pleasing conclusions, with no built-in narrative “arc”– those people are the leaders we want. And, today, desperately need.
Congratulations also on blazing a trail that even midgets like Tom Friedman are able at last to follow. The issues were too complex for him, the vines too thick, the thorns too sharp. But now he gets it.
“And then?”
And the, along came Jones—-better known as King Obama.
Or is that Ayatollah Obama?
Nothing compounds a tragedy like race baiting in its wake.
During the tragic events surrounding the double homicide of two innocent people in Brentwood, race became the dividing wall between two separate cultures that simply would not see any of the facts except through their very distinct prisms.
In the instant case, nearly 18 years later, the facts are just as muddled and the ethnicities are still looming large, if somewhat equally muddled.
Zimmerman is Hispanic, but if any Latino wishes to become white in our society, he can do so by committing a crime. That is when the conspiratorial press will instantly transform him and the crime statistics geeks will lump him into white society. If he’s the victim, instead of the perpetrator or suspect, he will stay brown the rest of his natural life.
The black-Hispanic divide on how to deal with each other in matters of neighborhood turf protection, handling disputes, guns, and machismo is barely mentioned in the race-baiting press. Certainly not hammered home by the cottage industry of race baiting flame throwers posing as preachers and civil rights activists.
The narrative that a redneck “white” vigilante, carrying a 2nd amendment killing toy, looking for innocent black babies to blow away is simply too inviting, too neat, too shrink-wrapped to pass up.
The inconvenient facts that need to be “ethnically cleansed” from the stories, scrubbed away to fit the narrative, buried and hidden from view? Well, that’s simply the way that “truthyness” gets told these days.
Black and white communities saw the facts and the narrative 18 years ago go completely off the rails in separate directions.
The fact that Zimmerman is Hispanic makes this story even harder to pin on Southern White Redneck Conservative Religious Tea Party Racist Man.
But, not impossible.
Zimmerman was a zealous neighborhood watch guy in a gated community that had a history of incidents requiring citizens to be on alert for criminal activity, coming into their homes.
He carried a legal weapon with him.
He followed a 6’2 inch black male, they had a physical altercation where the black male was beating him about the face and head and the Hispanic guy shot the black male.
Not much of a fun narrative for the conspiratorial press and the race baiters to play with.
So, they have to muddy the waters. And, OJ’ify the case.
Obama is sure to weigh in on on the “stupid, mean, racist” society that he intends to transform. Derek Bell and Jeremiah Wright have already written the script. Al Sharpton will fan the flames and the conspiratorial media will blame the usual suspects.
Zimmerman is a lightning rod for the whole bag of 2nd Amendment, racial divide, law enforcement narrative cheap shots. There’s nothing but victims in this story.
And nothing but tragedy at the end of it. Just like OJ eighteen years ago.
And Eric Holder every day of this administration.
I agree with many of your points, but they all boil down to the fact that a through investigation is needed. Will we ever be able to find out if the condition of the deceased’s body substantiates any of Zimmerman’s story. Are you satisfied that you know all the facts?
I’m not satisfied I know ANY of the facts…all I know is hearsay and opinion at this point.
And, the conspiratorial media isn’t interested in providing any facts and the race baiters aren’t interested in providing any facts.
And the politicians aren’t interested in providing any facts.
They are interested in taking tragedy and making it hyper-tragedy. Racial division is a benefit to them, fanning the flames of that divide is what they do. Making stereotype victims and villains is how they roll.
The truth is a trifling thing to them. And, that is perhaps the biggest tragedy of all.
It’s not a complete Victor Davis Hanson essay, until you, cfbleachers, ETAB, Gylippus and Art Chance have waded into these brilliant, stirring, troubling pieces from the good doctor. There are many who contribute most worthily in the comment sections, but when time is short, they are your voices I turn to for additional analysis and wise counsel.
Thank you all.
So what you are saying is that the wonderful son Obama never had would love to beat up Hispanics with guns. He should have listened to his pretend father. “Don’t bring Skittles to a gun fight.”
The lesson Kids is: Always listen to your pretend parents.
In the laboratory of states, Nevada discovered O.J. Simpson committed a crime, and Nevada’s justice sentenced him to prison, and last I heard Nevada keeps him in a cell outside Lovelock, which is ironic on multiple levels.
Is American justice somehow different OJ’ified states?
Are we safe with our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in all 50 states, or is this gift from our Founders available in limited supply?
Excellent column, poining out that all of the principled rhetoric from the left is nothing more than partisanship. One thing that the Martin-Zimmerman situation tells us is that the Democrats honor and perpetuate the traditions of fomenting racial hatred and lynch mob mentality handed.down from their Klan days.
“The role of a president is to rein in the mob, not to unleash it.”
Yep, Obama really stirred up the mob by calling for an investigation.
“…and now the global-warming movement has collapsed.”
A stupid statement even for Prof. Hanson — and that’s goin’ some.
I beg to differ. Obama could have called for calm and to allow the wheels of justice to turn. He could directly confront the actions of the New Black Panthers; that would be quite an about-face from his endorsing their Philadelphia voter intimidation. Recall this administration’s rhetoric after the Fort Hood shootings as an example of the difference in tone.
And yes, the global warming hysteria is abating – look at trends in the polling.
I recall a famous quote from Forest Gump…
The Mob leaders are in the White House, with the keys to the Mint and the money printing machines. By comparison the old mobsters were ethical and honest.
Is.it.true.dick.Cheney.got.trayvons.heart?
Could be.
Did you get the Oz’s Scarecrow’s brain?
From the photos of Martin that I saw on TV, I thought he was about 5’7″. I had no idea, until I read it here, that he was 6’2″. I have no idea how tall Zimmerman is, but I would guess he’s a lot shorter than Martin.
Tom Wolfe in “Bonfire of the Vanities” explains very clearly how a Black ‘victim’ goes from being a ‘mediocre student’ to a ‘scholar’ once the press gets involved.
I’ve heard that Zimmerman is 5’3″. Interesting how the media slants stuff, isn’t it?
Reality: We will outlast you geezers.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/lisa-fithian-occupy-wall-street-teaching-civil-disobedience?page=1
Not if we just decide we’re tired of putting up with you and make you get out of our basements and off our sofas and health insurance, and if you want to make an issue of that, I suspect we “geezers” are better prepared to deal with whatever issue you’d like to make of it.
Not to mention my progeny will inherit my arsenal, already have my values… they dislike parasites more than I do!!! :)
Also I am just 50… you will die of aids before I quite voting…lol.
My apologies Art, my meaning was that BB brained would die of aids before I stopped voting…. that would be Mr Bridges.
It is interesting, and predictable, that the media is portraying Zimmerman to be white when in fact he is hispanic.
….”And if police do stereotype, it may be because 12% of the population commits almost half the violent crime in the nation.”….
Actually, I think the picture is worse than that. 12% is the total AA population, half of which are women. And most would agree that women don’t commit much violent crime. So now you have 6% of the population committing all this crime. But the picture gets worse. Because that 6% comprises men of all ages – infants to old timers. Figure that since 3 years olds and 70 year olds rarely commit violence, the remainder, between the ages of say 16 and 50, comprise about half of the 6%, leading to the fact that approximately 3% of the population commits close to 50% of the violent crime. But I guess that says I’m a racist because I just committed math.
Thanks, LG, now THAT is a very interesting insight.
On January 27, 1838 Abraham Lincoln gave an address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield Illinois.
In the speech, Lincoln mentioned mobs or mob law nine times. Exaggeration or no… it’s worth a read, because this man spoke, thought and acted Presidential… and shames the current occupant of same office.
“It would be tedious as well as useless to recount the horrors of all of them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi and at St. Louis are perhaps the most dangerous in example and revolting to humanity. In the Mississippi case they first commenced by hanging the regular gamblers — a set of men certainly not following for a livelihood a very useful or very honest occupation, but one which, so far from being forbidden by the laws, was actually licensed by an act of the Legislature passed but a single year before. Next, negroes suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection were caught up and hanged in all parts of the State; then, white men supposed to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers from neighboring States, going thither on business, were in many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers, till dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every roadside, and in numbers almost sufficient to rival the native Spanish moss of the country as a drapery of the forest.
“Turn, then, to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim only was sacrificed there. This story is very short, and is perhaps the most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever been witnessed in real life. A mulatto man by the name of McIntosh was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman attending to his own business and at peace with the world.”
Dear Readers, please allow me to post a few more things from Lincoln’s Lyceum speech…
“I know the American people are much attached to their government; I know they would suffer much for its sake; I know they would endure evils long and patiently before they would ever think of exchanging it for another — yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.
Here, then, is one point at which danger may be expected.
The question recurs, “How shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor — let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars…
“Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
See Disney’s original “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.” [right makes might... not PC-Obama end-justifies-means]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnkAoQrm3lU
Last thought: What if you or I got into an accidental situation, the media made it racially charged, and then our President made an inflammatory comment personally against us? To which court, or palace, would we go for justice?
The whole of USA IS held in the caprice of a mob- a very dangerous mob, who does not need our loyalty or affection. They have no conscience and they have might on their side. The US Govt. has shifted from one that can be voted in and out, to being the right arm of a Globalist Elite who are hell-bent on destroying nationalism and everything held dear by most-family, decency, integrity-through policy changes and media & educational influences. Don’t like the Govt.? Do you think they need our vote? They alter the figures of votes and bring in the guy who is best serving their purposes-sorry guys, we are in for more of the same after elections-Obama will be back-like a bad odour.
The whole of USA IS held in the caprice of a mob- a very dangerous mob, who does not need our loyalty or affection. They have no conscience and they have might on their side. The US Govt. has shifted from one that can be voted in and out, to being the right arm of a Globalist Elite who are hell-bent on destroying nationalism and everything held dear by most-family, decency, integrity-through policy changes and media & educational influences. Don’t like the Govt.? Do you think they need our vote? They alter the figures of votes and bring in the guy who is best serving their purposes-sorry guys, we are in for more of the same after elections-Obama will be back-like a bad odour.
Here are Trayvon’s Tweets: (Warning; explicit language)
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/26/the-daily-caller-obtains-trayvon-martins-tweets/
to sule.
Thx for the link to the trayvon tweets. They dont fit the picture of the sweet looking innocent teenager walking home with candy. The tweets make him look more like a gangsta rapper wannabe. Still, I think it was unwise for the original sherriff not to charge Zimmerman with at least negligent homicide, and then do a real investigation to independently and completely verify his self defense story before dropping the case. He might well be innocent, and we may be dealing with another bogus Duke Rape case, pumped up by the racial greivance artists and unwisely augmented by Obama. But he might also be guilty, at least in that even if he was attacked and worried about being injured, he might have had a significant role in originally initiating the confrontation. If he had listened to the 911 operator, and not followed Treyvon, there might have been no violent confrontation in the first place. That would undermine any self defense claim and open him up to 2nd degree murder or manslaughter. I would not buy 1st degree murder, since I dont beleive Zimmerman initially wanted to do a killing. I think at the worste, he overdid his neighborhood watch duties, going from a reporter of crime, to one who actually tries to apprehend the criminals, and got into a confrontation that went too far. At the moment I am waiting for the full facts to come in. In any event, anybody out there talking about any violent action against Zimmerman is clearly wrong. Calling for a real independent investigation is one thing, calling for vigalantee action another.
That’s fair. I think I’ll just look into your life, and if there’s anything slightly amiss, report you to the DA for prosecutiion…you know…just to make sure you’re OK.
I hope you have nothing to hide (don’t count on it. We’re all criminals by 9AM each day), and a nice lawyer who won’t bankrupt you.
Don’t worry, either, because Eric Holder is such an upright, moral character, he won’t let anything happen to you…if you’re black.
Don’t go wishing the government to get involved. It’s innocent until proven guilty. Only idiots who haven’t been mugged by the “justice system” would even suggest what you have. I’ll give you credit for naivete, because noone’s that stupid. You need to prey daily that you never fall under an accusation, because then you’d find out quickly how horrible that really is.
Today I read that one of the reasons the Germans hate Israel is that it reminds them of their guilt during WWII and the Holocaust. Perhaps the current need of leftists to see racism in every interaction is because Democrats can’t face their own guilty past.
Or maybe just maybe and much more likely the Germans are the same antisemites that they were when they were NAZIS.
Current (new) photo of Martin; transcript of the police report, also, tweet (from Martin’s brother) regarding possible assault on bus driver by Trayvon five days before shooting.
http://www.examiner.com/charleston-conservative-in-charleston-sc/trayvon-martin-s-ten-day-suspension
http://i.imgur.com/t0fMm.jpg
Much of what I’ve read on this site is like prisoners in a jail planning a riot to break out: the chow is louzy, the staff suck, there aren’t enough blankets to keep us warm. “Come election time-we’ll vote them out!” No we won’t, it is already determined by the Elite that he will be “voted” in for president again in the next elections: go to- jesuknecht.blog.spot. (think thats it): very interesting interview with the late Aaron Russo (was close friend of Rockerfeller. Was famous movie director, who gave Bette Midler her stardom),talking of his conversations with Rockerfeller (one of the Elite who are bring about Global Government.Rockers wanted Russo in the Elite, but Russo said he could not join as he valued peoples personal freedoms. Rockers said, “Why do you care?! They are all mere serfs!”) Rockers spilled the beans on the 9/11 without naming the actual place, and of how they were using it as an excuse to begin a “war on terror,” which would eventually subjugate those strong Islamic nations whom they (the Elite) knew would not happily acquiesce to joining the Infidels in Global Govt., (i.e. find an excuse to occupy their land and bring in “democracy.”)They want everyone microchipped for ID and banking etc purposes, and Rockers said, if some hard-head refuses to comply to having their taxes raised, they cut off his pay-since it will all be electronically, digitally controlled. The idea of the chip is to control the world population and also in making the world cashless (which is feasible now), they will (via the media) tell everyone of the billions of dollars that will be saved by being cashless, no more tax fraud, bank robberies etc, etc.
Obama is a pawn to those guys-a willing pawn. What has all this to do with the above article-I don’t know-except maybe I could fudge it and say it mentioned “democracy”-so in a weird way it ties in.
The best anybody can do is scratch “Obama sucks” on their prison wall,
Should read: jesuknecht.blogspot.com (not what was in original comment.) Worth listening to.
The picture of the sweet looking innocent teenager was taken when he was 12 or 13 years old. He was actually 17 years old, and about 6 feet tall. He had also been kicked out of school.
Of course the media was not interested in printing the truth of this case. They had something else on their minds, such as a lynching, and an excuse to ignite their racist agenda for their summer of rage. After all, there was an election coming up.
Sorry folks, should read: jesuknecht.blogspot.com I gave the wrong email in previous comment. Worth looking up!
VDH (who I had the pleasure of dining with on a cruise ages ago, and he’s even less assuming and more polite in person) writes prose so dense and cutting that you have to read (and cherish) every paragraph. Bravo.
re: Mr. Martin. Sad to lose one so young. What a waste. Another exclamation point on the failed “just give us more power, time and money and we can perfect humankind” progressives. But a deserved tragedy in the pure greek sense – that which what results from what the dems do to themselves, wittingly.
It’s a wonderful political dilemma the dems face. They’ve got those on the plantation in the bag (even happy to proclaim they have “Mr. O’s back”). But they have now chosen to offend the much larger and more conservative population of the Hispanic and Latino voter. Here’s someone doing what he can for his family and neighbors’ security and a ton of bricks is falling on him for doing his part in helping voluntary (civil) society sleep a bit easier at night.
Will make a good movie someday. Neighbor sees what appears to be a stranger, perhaps a gang-member hiding his identity in the area, at a time and in weather that raises questions. Gets out of his vehicle and asks him if there’s something he can do to help, offers to drive him home or to wherever he’s going. He’s met with vitriol and language that would make anyone but Maher blush. As he turns to return to his vehicle he says something in kind under his breath at the stranger who has just reconfirmed what a large number of his family and neighbors believe about the underclass of any race (while they are working three jobs to make ends meet, helping each other and paying their taxes, they have to worry about the safety of their neighborhood and children because of these types).
Next thing he knows he’s been hit on the back of the head with a can of soda and knocked senseless, kicked in the face and then beaten while he’s waking up on the ground.
Assuming the facts support the above, it’s time for an “I am Zimmerman” campaign. And the dems to lose what few Hispanics remain in their camp. With luck analysts will note this as the turning point in the election.
Not that what happened to Martin isn’t its own tragedy – and all those in his life that contributed to him wandering where and appearing in a manner that he would naturally be a “person of concern.”
Thank you Victor.
This Essay has gotta be hurting some egos in Sacramento right now. The Trayvor-Incident can only inflame the “Hispanic” caucus’ identity crisis further (it’s still chafing from the Fluke-Affair). Mexicans like their babies. I’ll bet the Villagarossa machine in LA’s feeling some pain: the LA Times has been kinda quiet of late.
The La Raza-ists have gone underground, too. This I attribute partly to Jan Brewer’s push0back against ASU’s “Ethnic Studies” program. Despite Sacramento’s unions’ silly boycott, Arizona’s AG stood firm, and we’re beginning to see some results on the ground now.
Hi Dr. Hanson,
Big fan of your writing since I read your superb essay “Why the Muslims Misjudged Us” not longer after 9/11. It is heartening to know you are still fighting the good fight more than ten years later. I did have one comment/correction however on something you wrote in this article: “When an Hispanic shoots an African-American, is it news to the degree he has a European name, but had he been Jorge Martinez with an Anglo mother, it would not have been news?”
Though I understand the point you were trying to make, it behooves me to nevertheless point out that Jorge Martinez is just as “European” a name as George Zimmerman. Spain is in Europe. Though the Left has attempted to obscure this salient geographic fact over the past few years to serve its own racialist agenda, we should not fall victim to this type of postmodernist obfuscation.
Say what you will about Ann Coulter (and everyone takes their shot)but she predicted (or rather summarized) this phenomenon in her book “Demonic.” Many have dismissd her thesis that conservatives are the true descendants of the American Revolution while liberals are heirs to the French Revolution but it seems to fit. Ask yourself – Which group is most likely foment a riot today? The answer is crystal clear. The Left has been ratcheting up the level of political hysteria for the last six months and the Trayvon Martin case is just the cherry on the parfait. At this point even Timothy McVeigh had a better shot at getting a fair trial than George Zimmerman.
In a companion piece here on PJ Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D) is quoted as making not-so-subtle threats against the Supreme Court should they come to the “wrong decision” in the Obamacare case. What happens if the Court tosses out most or all of the legislation? Can’t wait to see how the mob will reach in June if that happens.
I was hitherto unaware of the “motes around their fiefdoms” aspect of the Delta Smelt boondoggle, but it makes such perfect sense. It’s that missing piece of the puzzle that I’d never noticed, but brings the whole picture to life. That picture being a sickening tableau from Animal Farm.
Gday. I was considering adding a hyperlink back to your website since both of our sites are primarily based around the same subject. Would you prefer I link to you using your website address: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/beware-of-the-mob/ or web site title: Works and Days » Beware of the Mob. Please make sure to let me know at your earliest convenience. Cheers
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