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Early March, 1991. I was then in the second decade of my police service and saw the Rodney King video. I remember thinking: I have no idea what happened before the video began, but it doesn’t matter; those guys are toast.   In terms of the process being the punishment, they certainly were.   Two officers were convicted and served prison terms, and two were acquitted.

Fast forward to late January, 2022, Memphis, Tennessee, a city 65% black with a black mayor, black police chief and black assistant police chief. The last Republican mayor of Memphis was in the early 1980s. Oh, but what about the police force? It’s 60% black. It’s about as close to “looking like Memphis” as it’s possible to get, considering said force is short some 500 officers.

Perhaps part of the reason the MPD looks like Memphis is for some time, their hiring policies have been “relaxed.” They even hire convicted felons. According to media reports, two of the five officers fired, and charged in some way with the death of Tyre Nichols were hired under those relaxed standards. All of those officers, and Nichols, are black. As this is written two additional officers have been fired, but I’ve no idea of potential charges, nor do I know their race, nor do I care.  Why should anyone care?

But Van Jones, who is so wonderful he was recently awarded $100 million dollars by Jeff Bezos, cares, and in his inclusive wonderfulness has pronounced a new standard for detecting racism in such affairs:

At the end of the day, it is the race of the victim who is brutalized — not the race of the violent cop — that is most relevant in determining whether racial bias is a factor in police violence. It’s hard to imagine five cops of any color beating a White person to death under similar circumstances. And it is almost impossible to imagine five Black cops giving a White arrestee the kind of beat-down that Nichols allegedly received.

Actually, Jones is projecting. American police kill far more white people than black men every year. It’s not even close. Fortunately, considering the millions of police contacts every year, even that is rare, so Jones is sort of right, but not in the way he implies. On the other hand, though blacks comprise about 13% of the American population, they are grossly overrepresented in the rate at which they commit violent crimes, and the rate at which they kill police officers.

But what’s most noteworthy about Jones’ pronouncements is the new standard. Any police contact with a black person is automatically racist, motivated by white supremacy, by systemic racism, it’s a hate crime, and the race, actions and motivation of anyone else involved is irrelevant. According to Jones, it’s clear: black people are perpetual victims, cannot possibly be racist, only everyone else, particularly white men, and particularly white police officers, even if they’re black—which appears to be his exception to the new standard.

This aligns with the general racism standard: you’re a racist, and if you deny it, that conclusively proves you’re a racist, because racists always deny they’re racists, those racists.

Noted social scientist Whoopie Goldberg added this to the “national conversation:”

‘Seems things don’t make sense to people unless it’s somebody they can feel or they can recognize,’ Goldberg continued. ‘Do we need to see white people also get beaten before anybody will do anything?’

Oh my gosh, anybody has to do something/anything! Let’s review. In this case, five officers (+2)—thus far—have been fired and are being charged with multiple felonies, including some shade of murder. So what’s to do? Double the charges? Triple them? If they’re convicted give them the death penalty, and then kill them twice? I’m confused. Do we now have to get some black police officers to beat a white guy to even the score, or would that require white police officers beating a white guy? Aren’t white people ever beaten by the police?

And in California, somebody is trying to do something:

I will have to say I am truly grateful that California’s politicians voted for a Reparations Panel.

The organization is proving critics who insist there is no appeasing racial justice activists right in every move. In fact, I would suggest that its theme song be The Cure’s ‘Never Enough.’

Granted, the band may be too white for the group, but the reparations panel hasn’t hesitated to step up its grasping demands for more, more, and more money. First, the panel demanded over $200K for each black in California. Then, it was a cool $1 million. Next, it insisted that $5 million was fair.

What’s that you say? California was never a slave state? No one alive had anything to do with slavery? Shut up you racist!

But reparations are only the beginning. The work of social justice is never done:

At their meeting in San Diego this weekend, where expert members of the public testified about various issues including prison reform, the panel preliminary approved recommending that ten prisons be shuddered [sic] while debating what should be done with the sites.

California state prisons house some of the most notorious prisoners in the country, including serial killers and lifelong gang members.

The savings made from closing the prisons will be used to fund the work of the new government agency being set up to dispense the reparations, the California American Freedman Affairs Agency.

The group has recommended more cushy treatment for current inmates, that includes eliminating certain types of punishment and paying them more money for work done while incarcerated.

But that’s crazy!  Shut up you white supremacist!

Let us concede the death of Tyre Nichols should not have happened. Let us concede at least some of the police officers involved may be facing legitimate charges–I don’t know; no one who has not seen all the evidence does. Let us further concede reducing standards for police recruits is lunacy. Let us further concede all police officers should always behave professionally, apolitically, and should always equally, never equitably, uphold the rule of law.

However, in so doing, we need to remember the people screaming about the latest holy social justice martyr are the same people who have been trying to defund, even abolish, the police. Facing a backlash over that kind of foolishness, D/S/Cs turned to saying: “we never wanted to defund the police, it was always Republicans/MAGA.” Now, they’re back to screaming about defunding the police again, and are more strident in their cries to abolish policing, though they call it “reimagining policing.”

The result of their bold, society-changing demands has been the Ferguson Effect on steroids. In our D/S/C ruled cities, where most of the violent crime takes place, every police officer that could has fled. Some have moved to red parts of the country where police officers are allowed to enforce the law. Others have retired, and others have left the job entirely. As a result, places like Memphis are 500 officers short, and have dramatically lowered hiring standards to put just about anyone with a pulse in uniform. Remaining officers are forced to work enormous amounts of overtime, which makes them and their families sick and stressed. The officers that remain generally do as little as possible, which means criminals are free to do pretty much whatever they like.

What happened to Nichols should not have happened. There should be consequences—not retribution, but equal application of the law. However, is anyone surprised this sort of thing happens as a result of demonizing the police and exalting criminals?

Apparently, somebody doing something always involves riots, looting, arson, destruction of property and assault, which took place in Memphis and many other cities around the nation not long after Nichols’ death.

So what is happening, in Memphis and elsewhere? Why would any sane person think defunding and/or abolishing the police a good idea? It’s the Cloward-Piven Strategy. I’ve written about this before, but we’re seeing it played out all around us in virtually every facet of our lives. The indispensable Discover The Networks explains:

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven — both longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America, where Piven today is an honorary chair — the ‘Cloward-Piven Strategy’ seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

In application, D/S/Cs seek to destroy the country, bit by bit, making life so intolerable, Americans will accept D/S/C “solutions” to the problems they’ve created, “solutions” no sane person would ever accept under a constitutional republic with the rule of law. 

They seek to abolish fossil fuels, ban gas stoves, gas and diesel powered vehicles, despite the fact we don’t have sufficient electric generation capacity for our current needs, and they prevent mining, and building that generation capacity. They demand electricity be solar and wind generated despite the fact there are not enough rare earth and other materials to build that lunatic future, and our enemies control most of the materials that do exist. They demand masks knowing they don’t work, and lockdowns knowing they don’t work and devastate our economy and the lives of our children. They label Americans exercising their first amendment rights domestic terrorists and insurrectionists. They label any rational attempt to prevent election fraud “voter suppression.” They pass laws preventing the remaining police from actually pursuing and catching criminals, abolish cash bail, open our borders, knowingly allow terrorists into the country, and when police officers exceed their authority, a man dies, and those officers are arrested and charged with murder, that is somehow wrong and racist.

The list, gentle readers, is endless, but one of the essential conditions, perhaps the essential condition for the ultimate success of the Cloward-Piven Strategy is racial hatred. Surely, convincing people to be members of tribes and genders rather than to think of themselves as Americans is essential to the strategy. But If you can infect Americans with racial hatred, if you can destroy every hard-won advance of the civil rights struggle, it’s so much easier to infect Americans with every other conflict, entitlement, destructive character trait and hatred, and so much easier to destroy everything America is.

Imagine the consequences of abolishing the police, or alternatively, of federalizing all police.  Either would hasten America’s destruction.

It’s a bit trite, but if our “leaders” were actively trying to destroy the country, what, other engaging in actual warfare, would they be doing differently?

It’s the Cloward-Piven Strategy, gentle readers—D/S/Cs know it well–and followed in its intended course, Americans will eventually have the choice to submit, or fight. The only unknown is when, and what will be the final outrage, the final trigger?

It is not my current intention to analyze the Nichols case. Regular readers know I give police officers the benefit of the doubt until they don’t deserve it. I’ll refer you to Wolf Howling at Bookroom room for a good exposition of the case. There you’ll find rational analysis and arguments, and multiple videos.  Also visit this video by Andrew Branca for insightful legal analysis.

If you’ve not heard of the Cloward-Piven Strategy before, now you know what’s happening when D/S/Cs push plainly insane policies, policies any rational person must recognize as destructive of our society and country. And yes, it’s all related.

As I’ve so often said, I am not remotely advocating civil war. No sane person could, nor could any sane person advocate policies that would inevitably provoke it.

As I’ve so often written, all that is necessary to prevent a second civil war is for everyone to fully embrace the Constitution—every little bit of it—and embrace the rule of law. The Constitution can be amended, but the founders wisely made that purposely difficult. That’s why D/S/Cs want to rule by executive order. That’s why they want the administrative state to rule by regulation. That’s why they want to pack the Supreme Court. That’s why they want to codify election fraud: if you let the people choose their form of government, they tend to make the wrong choices, choices that don’t give D/S/Cs permanent, absolute power.

That’s why we’re all racists, and why we’re probably going to have to make that choice.