CHOP must have been laughing their anarcho-commie bottoms off when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in an NPR interview on Monday that if the people of a city don’t want there to be a police department, then “they shouldn’t have it.”
There are no police inside the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) — or the Freelance Socialism Zone Formerly Known as CHAZ (FSZFMC) — and it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at what’s going on there.
A once-happy CHOP resident took to Reddit a few days ago after several items — including a pricy MacBook Pro — were stolen from his tent.
Here follows his tale of woe, collected for you by Twitter user “Brick.”
i can't stop laughing pic.twitter.com/weKiXoaQaZ
— Brick (@NeuroBrick) June 14, 2020
I’ve transcribed it for you, errors and all:
Disclaimer: this happened 2 hours ago, and I’m still recovering from the shock as all my valuables have been stolen.
Stolen from a tent in a happy hippy commune with no police protection. So quickly, too — CHOP, CHOP!
Came back from a walk to my tent and all my valuable items are gone. My laptop (16 Inch MBP), power banks, Cash of ~$400 and an entire bag pack with my week’s supplies are now gone.
Who you gonna call? It better be Ghostbusters, because the police don’t dare enter CHOP.
I completely zipped up my tent before leaving it, but please don’t take for granted and lock it up, or bring your valuables with you
Are burglars often deterred by a nylon zipper? Asking for a progressive friend.
The surrounding people have been helpful to help look for it, but no luck so far. I’ve asked around and its just too chaotic as people are constantly walking around tents all the time.
“Have you seen my $400 in untraceable cash, comrade?”
“Nyet, sorry. I mean, nein, er, NO.”
Then he writes that the local “council” rounded up some cash, food, and spare power banks to help out, which was all rather comradely of them, but this last bit is too precious to skip.
I just hope to get back my macbook not because it’s expensive, but most of my work is stored in there.
Those 16″ MacBook Pros are pretty pricy, starting at $2,399 for the base model. It’s a beast of a performer, too, and almost certainly computational overkill for anything like an urban camping adventure in downtown Seattle.
CHOP Cuts Seattle’s Citizens Off From Basic Protection
In other words: I’m guessing that anyone who could afford to bring one into CHOP and then shrug off its loss was probably coming from a position of serious privilege to begin with.
And you know what? The locals seem to have sniffed out his privilege, too, as you’ll see in this reply on the Reddit thread:
“Unplanned donations!” That’s the hip new phrase from the people who can’t bear to hear the word “chief” anymore.
The condescending “You did good today. I’m proud of you” is just the cherry on top of our victim’s sundae of shame.
There is, I’m told, a sucker born every minute.
BlazeTV’s Pat Grey did an oh-so-watchable segment on the theft if you have a few minutes to spare watching it:
It feels like it’s time to draw out the famous Mencken quote once more: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Socialism is the theory that they deserve to get it good and hard whether or not they want it.
(You can quote me on that, and I really wish you would.)
Unplanned donations, indeed.
(Reddit screenshot)
On a more serious note, when Gov. Cuomo tells you that people don’t actually need police, it’s with the assurance that people in Cuomo’s privileged position will never go without personal security of some kind.
Police and police departments, whatever their real faults, perform a vital if often unacknowledged function: They democratize law enforcement by making it available to anyone. In many — most? — societies the police act as the local Big Man’s goon squad, when they aren’t preying on the locals themselves as a protection racket. I wouldn’t be surprised if we learned that CHOP’s “security” people were the ones breaking into tents, would you?
In a civilized society, law enforcement will show up for anyone in need who can dial 911.
In theory at least, the police exist to “serve and protect” all of us, equally.
In places like CHOP, victims have no one to turn to for justice. They just have to suffer their unplanned donations, and like it.
Cuomo, with his personal security detail, will never know what it means to walk the streets in fear. The Hollywood celebrity who advocates gun control while hiding behind her armed bodyguard will never know what it means to be deprived of her right to self-defense. The billionaire with a personal SWAT team on standby will never know how it feels to dial 911 only to find there’s no one there to pick up the phone.
So when Cuomo and his ilk say it’s just fine to defund the police, what they won’t admit is that it’s the people who need them most who will suffer the most.
Just ask that stupid sap in CHOP.
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