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These days, the big money is in the history of olden days, as shown by amateur crank historian Nikole “1619” Hannah-Jones getting paid $101,700 for a two day visit to Indiana University. History since redlining and Emmett Till just isn’t that interesting anymore, so many of the curious events of the current century go unexplored. But, I find recent history pretty fascinating, so I try to make sense of recent events.
Therefore, let me toss out a theory, one that, admittedly, I haven’t done any research upon. At this point it’s just a guess. But I suspect that a contributing factor in how nuts many white people went over the anti-police Black Lives Matter manias in 2014 and 2020 was 2008.
My impression is that after the big crash of 2008, a lot of straitened municipalities started looking to tickets to generate more revenue. Is city hall about to go broke? Well, raise the cost of tickets and tell the cops to issue more of them. Fortunately, I haven’t had a moving violation since 2004, but I noticed that parking tickets in Santa Monica (a town relatively unstressed by 2008) seemed to be suddenly much higher. If plush Santa Monica was looking to its police department to boost revenue, what must down-at-the-heels towns like Ferguson, Missouri be doing?
As you may recall, when Michael Brown was shot by a local cop in Ferguson in 2014, the Obama Administration announced that they were doing a huge investigation to uncover all the racism in the Ferguson police department. They looked and they looked and finally admitted they couldn’t find any evidence of racism. But, the Obama Justice Department announced, they had discovered that Ferguson was … a speed trap!
At this point, I rolled my eyes and laughed. I figured many people would have the same reaction and this huge embarrassment for the Black Lives Matter movement would be the end of the BLM mania. But, instead, lots of white people seemed to react: “A speed trap? I hate hate hate speed traps! Black Lives Matter! Fight the Power!”
And so the BLM craze rolled on until its supporters started shooting all those cops in Dallas and Baton Rouge and, in part because of that, Trump got elected and the Great and the Good decided to stop talking about BLM so much … which they mostly did until they lost their minds in 2020.
So a lot of white people felt like they’d been victimized by the police too for getting a huge ticket for driving 47 MPH in a 35 zone. They knew what Michael Brown and George Floyd suffered because it (kind of) happened to them.
What do you think?
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I think I am just going to stick with ‘people are sheep’ for the reason a bunch of white people who have nothing in common with and generally avoid black people were kneeling, washing feet, etc. People willingly jump onto the latest fad du jour – think diet and clothing – as a way to show they are clued into the culture and better than those who do not, and on race we are all instructed from our earliest days that American slavery is the worst crime in history and subsequent discrimination seen and unseen explains everything about the state of black America.
The current 1619 push is to condition young people not to think critically about this or question suggestions put forth by blacks political sponsors to ‘help’ them, and considering how successful its more mild predecessor ideologies were it’s scary to think what this might do.
Whites actually pay the tickets.
Steve – It’s an inventive theory, so I admire you for coming up with it. But I continue to believe that white tolerance of and cheering for BLM and the diversity racket is prompted by fear, dependency and guilt.
Fear of black riots destroying all those lovely cities white liberals live in and the Media-Democrat Party must try, somehow, to govern and prevent from becoming deserted tax-eating shells.
Dependency of the Media-Democrat Party on black votes in elections and black eyeballs to prop up TV, video and pop music.
Guilt at being luckier genetically and in family background than blacks, which white liberals certainly know they are.
I'm not unsympathetic to the "abolish the police" line for a variety of reasons, but it never occurred to me to join BLMers because I feel the surveillance/police state is overreaching or because I dislike getting traffic tickets.
BLM was social contagion. The most soft-headed demographics were most represented.
It’s a very LA theory, which given how much of our elite lives in NYC and DC and doesn’t drive adds quite a bit, I think. It’s also true that most suburbanites’ major interaction with cops is trying to avoid getting pulled over for speeding.
But most of the BLM lovers were suburban Nice White Ladies, and speeding’s more of a guy thing, as you documented in your article on race car drivers.
Whatever else, it’s been my experience (more than once) that there is no fucking way to talk yourself out of a ticket these days. If you’re white and you get pulled, you’re getting a ticket.
I don't know how much it has to do with race. I suspect it is more to do with bodycams and dashcams. The police know that all their actions and statements are now recorded and reviewable, so they don't want a record of not doing things "by the book". The more candid and freewheeling discussions with highway officers at a traffic stop are a thing of the past now.
My father, a mid-20th century modern, lived for a time in a notoriously corrupt (blue) city. He found he could avoid traffic tickets by paying ... shall we say, a small gratuity on the spot. At some point, there was a big police corruption scandal in the media, as one has in those places, and as a result for a while the police had to wear recording devices during traffic stops, which devices in those pre-miniaturization days were ostentatious and obvious. That put an end to their pay-and-go service, at least until the recording devices were discontinued.
Basically, it's now like that plus video plus open radio channels, everywhere. The police don't even want to have a discussion about extenuating circumstances or alternative charges. They just say the minimum, write the ticket, and move on, grateful that the all-seeing digital eye didn't record them misgendering anyone.
The surveillance/police state has affected the police at least as much as the rest of us.Replies: @mmack
It’s not that complicated really. White liberals like blacks because blacks block-vote for the Good Party. Everything else flows from that.
"It’s not a complicated explanation when the black intelligentsia say it out loud."
The tweets list prompt can be found here: https://pastebin.com/NZfrkEKw
There's also a link at the top to a free GPT model playground unrelated to ChatGPT.
Make lame jokes about Nikole Hannah Jones all you want but all the respectable people agree with and endorse her.
You have had years to prove racism is to blame, and all you have are various opinion columns calling neuroscience racist and people lying about hereditarians.
I think woke Hollywood + Netflix had more of an effect.
Netflix hit it big with streaming about the same time that a lot of people got laid off (2007-2009), although there were a few hiccups at the start — when Netflix first announced it was going to all streaming, there was a revolt among existing customers who loved their DVDs in the mail/didn’t have adequate streaming, leading to Netflix to reverse course for a while and give DVDs by mail back to existing customers.
Netflix’s success also jumped started other streaming services. Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Disney+, Paramount +, etc. were all born out of noticing that Netflix was making bank.
The streaming revolution put people in tighter echo chambers with higher loads of brainwashing. So high-ranking premium streaming shows that had “racism” plot lines or allusions were mainlined for 4 hours a night. And plus Obama as president made everyone who voted for him hyper-focused on race.
The Netflix effect is baffling to those of us who don’t binge-watch regularly, since we’re not volunteers to brainwashing. I first noticed it in lockdown, where my roommate and I were locked into our apartment 24/7, working from home.
Roommate started doing 10-12 hour days nonstop of Netflix woke hollywood TV drama garbage, while I did my worked, surfed the web, and watched some YouTube occasionally. Roommate was so wokefied/paranoid/crazed by the end of the first year of lockdowns that I was dealing with a different person, and a worse person.
Yes, the disease paranoia, news media panic pron, and the cabin fever contributed, but I’m convinced the woke Netflix garbage Roommate watched was on par with the other factors in making Roommate insufferable.
Well, we dropped the ball on car manufacturing, and now Toyota is #1. Can’t say I blame them-my buddy’s Camry lasted 200,000 miles.
I think the marketing that anything modern is truly intelligent, "prestigious", or otherwise worthwhile is due to the desperate attempt to conceal how aesthetically awful modern media is. Nothing sounds or looks good anymore.
Overly elaborate. Speed traps contribute to normies disliking the police, so scapegoating the police was easier.
But the overwhelming issue is everyone has been doused for decades in minoritarian propaganda from schools, the news to Hollyweird.
Heck, I was having brunch with a couple normie neighbor (Christian, Republican voting) moms last fall and mentioned that George Floyd OD'd. They did not know that. Ignore my cause of death, they didn't know Floyd was chock full of fentanyl. Basic facts for assessing "what the heck happened" are censored. That's your "news" media--i.e. minoritarian and deep state propaganda service.Replies: @Dmon
After Nixon imposed the national speed limit of 55, everybody knew that state troopers were revenue agents who just happened to be cops. While it certainly didn’t help cops image to be seen as revenue agents, it didn’t seem to lead to the level of anti-cop hatred we see today.
I don’t know about speed traps, but I’m sure police became more militaristic 10 or 15 years ago, even with regular middle class folks. I mean in regular traffic stops.
Resentment may have been simmering under the surface .
Of course, the calls for more policing was fed by the increased lawlessness of the drug trade; border chaos; increase of other social pathologies.
traffic coprevenuerhighwayman that began about 20 years ago. Maybe this is what you get when you prevent intelligent people from being cops and instead select for dominance and coldheartedness. The traffic court administrators masquerading as "judges" seem to have become more corrupt and callous around the same time.These people should go get productive jobs and stop preying on the public.
☮Replies: @S. Anonyia
At one time, police officers were known as "peace officers", hired to "keep the peace", nothing more. Quite often they were residents of the very neighborhood that they were patrolling, knew everyone and tended to keep the local troublemakers and miscreants in line without resorting to the official "justice system".
That all changed when the "escalation of force" system was abandoned for the present "command and control" system in which a police officer's commands are to be followed instantaneously and without exception or discussion.
Failure to do so will result in death or serious injury to those who do not obey "fast enough". For a good example of this, google Philip Brailsford and Daniel Shaver.
It is interesting to note that the "command and control" system is right out of the israeli military "playbook" which is used to enforce control of the Palestinians.
It would seem that "we are all Palestinians now".
There are two more abuses in the American "law enforcement" system that deserve to be abolished.
"Qualified immunity" is a concept in which "law enforcement officers" and other officials are shielded from the consequences of their actions and lawsuits due to their (illegal) actions. It is almost impossible to sue a police officer for his personal behavior under the present scheme. One has to sue under "deprivation of civil-rights" statutes which are almost impossible to prove. In addition, the "system" protects its own with police-friendly prosecutors and municipality-supplied attorneys that "protect" rogue police officers.
"Asset forfeiture" makes police officers no better than criminal "highwaymen".
A person who carries large sums of cash and is stopped for a traffic infraction can and quite often does have his assets (money) seized without any proof of wrongdoing. Just carrying a large sum of cash is enough to trigger "asset forfeiture" which is "legalized robbery under color of authority". It is extremely difficult to fight "asset forfeiture" as the state "holds all of the cards" and can easily bankrupt the individual whose funds were seized.
American "law enforcement" has a lot to answer for.Replies: @Rob Lee
Steve I’m gonna bring some anecdata to disagree with you here.
My neighborhood is chock full of affluent suburban wine moms, with more than enough of “In this house we believe…” signs in the yards, basically BLM’s core support demographic. And also, these people themselves personally seem to have zero fear of police, of getting pulled over or anything. For example I’ve seen them pile their and their neighbors’ little kids into the backseats of SUVs with nary a car seat in sight, to go get ice cream or whatever. That is an automatic ticket if you get pulled over – state law gives no discretion to cops for violating kid car seat laws. But they don’t care, confident as they are in their seeming invincibility.
It seems to me that the idea of getting traffic tickets just doesn’t cross their mind. Cops rarely patrol around here, as they have their work cut out for them in other parts of town. YMMV depending on state and locality, I suppose.
Perhaps this is part of the animus towards the police state. Why must children be placed in ridiculous car seats in the back seat? Look at this child car seat:
https://www.kidsroom.de/WebRoot/KidsroomDE/Shops/Kidsroom/5E67/5C52/81CB/FD8A/7761/AC1E/0705/169E/BILD3_2000033-111072/IC_IMAGE/en-britax-roemer-child-car-seat-advansafix-i-size-storm-grey-2023-Storm-Grey.jpg
F1 and IndyCar drivers don't have this much protection around them. And per Our Benevolent Guv'ment your child should ride in the back seat of your car or SUV until age 12:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/car-seats-and-booster-seats
Why until age 12? "Um, remember those MANDATORY airbags we forced automakers to add to every vehicle they make? Yeah, um, turns out these "safety devices" can maim or kill a child younger than that if they sit in the front seat. Our Bad!"
Here's a novel idea, how about we back off on the mandatory idiocy and let people decide what's best for them. And oh, not have a safety device that causes an explosion in a confined area.
(I always dreaded the idea that on my last car, a Ford Mustang, if the driver's airbag deployed the nice METAL "running pony 🐎" Mustang emblem dead center of the steering wheel airbag cover would be embedded in my face.)
But no, we need SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFETY as Eric Peters at https://www.ericpetersautos.com/ says so airbags and car seats and mandatory tickets for no seatbelt and no car seats.
(Note, for those people building high dudgeon that I am advocating killing little kiddies I am not. When they are small they need protection. However, at a certain point your child shouldn't NEED to be buckled in as if they are going for a qualifying run for the Indianapolis 500. When that point is should be YOUR decision and not some faceless bureaucrat's)Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @That Would Be Telling, @mikeInThe716
Most level headed white people have realized by now that law enforcement is a sham. There is no crime. Statistically speaking the odds of an intelligent white person being a victim of crime are near zero. Only why retards get victimized, for doing stupid and greedy things like leaving their car doors unlocked, or living in the ghetto to try an save a 100 dollars a month so they can eat at red lobster twice a month. There is no way the risk of crime justifies the billions spent on prisons and law enforcement every year.
Just let the blacks out so they can fully sabotage themselves already. With most white people carrying AR-15s in the trunk, two 45 glocks strapped underneath the armpits and a 380 full auto cobray wrapped around the ankle, there’s no way anyone gives a fuck about cops anymore. The entire point of the legal system has been condensed in to a 1,200fps bullet that costs a dollar. Legal system takes 20 years to kill blacks at a cost of like 30,000,000 dollars per inmate. Abd the police even dared to call white nationalists the #1 terorrist tbreat. To hell with cops.
The duck and Obelisk are just one example of performance artists that get noticed. We have a couple of obvious hasbaran trolls that are interesting in a fun way and a few who pretend to be dimwitted foreigners confused by America's shortcomings.
You've almost got the Ed Anger thing going but you need a moniker, something recognizable and catchy.
https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/1617718565427085313?cxt=HHwWgoCw7dqdpfMsAAAAReplies: @Reg Cæsar
White BLM supporters having some rationalization for their support.of BLM?
You give them too much credit.
White BLM supporters are either in the “can be fooled all of the time” category (useful idiots) or they’re in the manipulative megalomaniacal sociopath category (hey, someone’s gotta run things).
BLM: Don’t tell us; show us.
OT: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure Model Reveals Reimagined Splash Mountain
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/splash-mountain-disney-adults-racist-ride-1234666556/#:~:text=Even%20though%20Splash,today%E2%80%99s%20world.%E2%80%9D
No reason to change it except there's not much else to virtue signal about now that the pirates of the Caribbean have had their charm and quirky fun surgically removed by a horse doctor.
The parks wasted money on Kennedy's hated version of Star Wars and can't just retool to any actually popular Star Wars stories until Kennedy is dragged off kicking and screaming. If they even remember a way to do it that doesn't involve, 'reflecting the world we live in.'
Iger's political ambition ties him firmly to the left crippling Disney like forcing a sprinter to carry a boat anchor. Disney is incapable of producing anything that is not explicitly political. They picked a side and it's not entertaining the American public.
I agree very much. Conservatives were late to the culture production aspect of the culture war and Netflix did a number on a lot of people.
If conservatives want to be successful in culture production they need to construct a compelling narrative, and whatever meaning they wish to imbue should come from the natural behavior of its characters. Don't force feed pre-determined messaging for that will only warp the story and hollow out the characters. Let it flow. If your story and characters have vitality they will eventually come to life outside of you, and from that point on you're basically taking dictation. The best work is derived from this process. This is why most creative types suffer from some kind of divine madness.Replies: @Shamu
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e68CoE70Mk8Replies: @bomag, @Galloway (From NI)
What you’re telling us is that respectable people are dumb$hits.
The near northern part of St. Louis County, Missouri, is full of postage stamp incorporated municipalities that were known for a long time for being speed traps. Even the larger ones like Ferguson were that way too.
However, even before the GENTILIVUS GIANTIVUS of the Fergaza Strip purloined his ultimate cigarillo, the state of Missouri had already been cracking down on speed traps. What it means is that however bad the problem was in and wrt Ferguson, it has not been that way for quite a few years before 2014.
Just let the blacks out so they can fully sabotage themselves already. With most white people carrying AR-15s in the trunk, two 45 glocks strapped underneath the armpits and a 380 full auto cobray wrapped around the ankle, there's no way anyone gives a fuck about cops anymore. The entire point of the legal system has been condensed in to a 1,200fps bullet that costs a dollar. Legal system takes 20 years to kill blacks at a cost of like 30,000,000 dollars per inmate. Abd the police even dared to call white nationalists the #1 terorrist tbreat. To hell with cops.Replies: @TWS, @Joe Stalin
You really need to pick a name. Anon can’t really be followed or enjoyed as performance art.
The duck and Obelisk are just one example of performance artists that get noticed. We have a couple of obvious hasbaran trolls that are interesting in a fun way and a few who pretend to be dimwitted foreigners confused by America’s shortcomings.
You’ve almost got the Ed Anger thing going but you need a moniker, something recognizable and catchy.
Agree here. I’d trace it to the Clinton administration, who wanted to score points with the “100,000 more cops” campaign, and the pushing of surplus military gear to local police. This gave us more “kick the door in” attitude among police; more friction with civilians; heightened with the rise of social media sharing.
Of course, the calls for more policing was fed by the increased lawlessness of the drug trade; border chaos; increase of other social pathologies.
Anti-Whitism is pushed harder to the youth than most older people realize.
The youth have no antidote to it, no natural immunity. I mean, most of you find it tiresome to be on your own race’s side, so what did you expect? Who exactly would be providing context for the young people? Certainly not any of you. Technical data patterns don’t do much if the target audience has no emotional motivation to even challenge what they were taught. They have zero motivation to spend hours reading this blog or Charles Murray.
A lot of older white men seem to think that at some point “enough will be enough” and sanity will be restored. They’re living in yesteryear.
Be nice if there was more of a support group countering the Narrative.
Federal, State, and local governments are increasingly desperate for revenue. Turning traffic stops into revenue generators is just one way. I think it was more ‘fix it tickets’ for things like burned out brake lights rather than speeding that resulting in many of the incidents with police.
In general I find police traffic stops are more aggressive when I drive in Black (higher crime) areas. So I just avoid them.
More recently Biden has proposed a massive increase in the number of IRS agents. The proposed number is 80000 which is a huge number of 20 and out pensions+healthcare to fund.
California is currently groping for funding.
Welcome to Hotel California: Lawmakers Move to Tax People Who Have Left the State
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/01/no_author/welcome-to-hotel-california-lawmakers-move-to-tax-people-who-have-left-the-state/
The state of Washington forced Seattle to raise police pensions, without revenue to cover the police pensions, active police were defunded to fund retirees.
Seattle PD chief warns new legislation aimed at helping officers could lead to more departures
I’ve been against that-time-of-the-month revenue generation by traffic cops since the 1980s. Yes, they pick on certain cars, but then, MMHV (My Mileage Has Varied) over various vehicles and conveyances. Coincidentally with your theory, I believe the last time I was even pulled over* was around ’14 or so, amazing to myself.
I think they let off quite a while ago, at least where I live. My thoughts have always been against that arrogant vest-wearing fat-assed militant cop attitude. However, I KNOW that most are not like that, from experience.
This data point falls far from your noticing curve here, as I don’t think BLM any more than anyone else’s, and in general less, as I see from their words and deeds.
BTW, if it makes you feel any
betterworse, parking tickets where I live are only $1 more than they were in the 1990s. That is about a 15% increase. Hey, I’m not the one who loves LA..
* “You blew right by me!” the cop said. I almost blew snot out of my nose laughing, as he was doing 20 mph in a 25 zone, so I passed this marked cop car, so’s not to seem unusual suspicious tailing his slow ass. I’m glad I didn’t say much, as I’d had 2 pint beers within the last couple of hours, and for me, who knows what I’d blow – not “right by him”, that’s for sure.
(You can sing it to the ABC tune if you like.) (Practice makes perfect. )
🎶 ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 🎶
🎶 Now I know my Z Y X's... 🎶
I've only used this life hack once on the side of the road...
And it worked like a charm!
Cop said I was funny and didn't write the speeding ticket...
Or give me any shit about underage drinking.
(This was before the cops embraced their inner Nazi. Circa 1996)
Good times. 🙃
☮Replies: @Colin Wright, @Achmed E. Newman
Alright Mr. Newman you are free from speeding ticket but canceled for misogyny.
Disney keeps shooting themselves in the foot trying to out-woke itself. Three generations of America have memories of splash mountain and only the oldest dimly remembers Song of the South.
No reason to change it except there’s not much else to virtue signal about now that the pirates of the Caribbean have had their charm and quirky fun surgically removed by a horse doctor.
The parks wasted money on Kennedy’s hated version of Star Wars and can’t just retool to any actually popular Star Wars stories until Kennedy is dragged off kicking and screaming. If they even remember a way to do it that doesn’t involve, ‘reflecting the world we live in.’
Iger’s political ambition ties him firmly to the left crippling Disney like forcing a sprinter to carry a boat anchor. Disney is incapable of producing anything that is not explicitly political. They picked a side and it’s not entertaining the American public.
Compare with anime, which for all the ridiculous fantasy elements still has strong male heroes on archetypical heroes’ journeys and semi traditional gender roles. I’m not surprised the kids are opting for Attack on Titan over Steven Universe.
Well, we dropped the ball on car manufacturing, and now Toyota is #1. Can’t say I blame them-my buddy’s Camry lasted 200,000 miles.
Well said. All this amounts to is that there is a subset of the white population–speeders–who have had negative interactions with cops. (I’ve had a couple, basically bullshit, tickets.)
But the overwhelming issue is everyone has been doused for decades in minoritarian propaganda from schools, the news to Hollyweird.
Heck, I was having brunch with a couple normie neighbor (Christian, Republican voting) moms last fall and mentioned that George Floyd OD’d. They did not know that. Ignore my cause of death, they didn’t know Floyd was chock full of fentanyl. Basic facts for assessing “what the heck happened” are censored. That’s your “news” media–i.e. minoritarian and deep state propaganda service.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11774875/george-floyd-protests-around-world-riots-paris-london-stockholm-sydney/
When I was in public school in the 90s, our humanities education was the Nazi holocaust, slavery, Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, the interment of the Japanese, To Kill a Mockingbird, and so on. I’m sure it only gotten worse since then. So we’ve had at least 3 generations of white Americans that have been taught that they are evil and POC (especially blacks) are sacred. The only dissenting voice they hear is “derp derp, Democrats are the REAL racists!” So supporting BLM was the logical response given the programming.
However, the schools had a long history of poor teaching of history/politic science. Nothing has really changed.Replies: @Ian Smith
The theory that municipal traffic enforcement is motivated by revenue generation is one of those aspects of conventional wisdom that doesn’t have much basis in reality. One of the primary reasons is that traffic fines are collected by the courts and the money goes to the state first, where they take a majority cut. When those funds are finally kicked back to cities and counties, it’s rarely looked at as viable revenue for cities, whose primary general funds come from sales tax and property tax.
As a retired cop, let me give you a small bit of insight as to how traffic enforcement works at many police departments. Traffic Units are generally a special assignment for patrol officers, thus someone wanting a traffic unit assignment would have to apply and test for the position. The guys that gravitated to traffic did so for various reasons. Many just want to ride motorcycles all day. Others like traffic because it’s easy and takes you out of the drudgery of patrol. There’s very little paper (reports) and while traffic stops can sometimes be dangerous, a vast majority of the time, you’re not dealing with the normal demographic that patrol sees day in and day out.
My primary beef with traffic enforcement was that it always became a stat driven type of endeavor. Not for revenue, but to demonstrate productivity. How else is your sergeant going to know you are working hard unless you are generating good numbers? Most would subsequently default to working radar ‘honey holes’ instead of places where traffic enforcement might mitigate actual problems, like chronic red light violations causing collisions. The traffic guys who worked nights almost always focused on DUI arrests. Again, they wanted stats and would end up pulling a lot of people over for minor equipment violations and then do the sniff test when talking to the driver. If they smelled alcohol, they would then administer field sobriety tests. Many people ended up getting arrested for DUI who displayed no impaired driving whatsoever. But hey, who cares? If they get 100 in a year they get to adorn their uniform with a gold DUI pin awarded by the ladies at MADD?
Stats driven traffic enforcement grinds my gears. And the tendency of pulling over easy 'marks'. And the retreat to the donut shop during AM/PM rush hours.
Lone speeders on empty highways are ticket magnets. The unlicensed, drugged-up dope weaving thru crowded rush hour traffic won't be touched. Unless he maims or kills someone.Replies: @Colin Wright
If it had anything to do with safety, they wouldn't need the money or they would put it towards victims and crash funds 100%. It's just another revenue generation for the state. And one of a particularly insidious type.
I semi agree. More anecdotal evidence. In 2019 I did a road trip from Miami to metro Detroit. I saw two cops in Florida and didn’t see another cop until I hit Michigan. That’s where it began, 8 miles into Michigan was a cop shooting radar, for the next two hours of my drive I saw 8 more cops, all looking for white speeders driving to work. It’s easy money and whitey will pay and the cops won’t have to be hassled dealing with blacks. However, I’m conflicted here, Michigan doesn’t need more cops, we Just need the cops we have to be in Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, and Saginaw. Don’t really need any outside of those cities. I come from a family of law enforcement I’m against law enforcement in rural areas and pro law enforcement in the four cities I named, at least in Michigan. I don’t support BLM and I don’t support law enforcement in the middle of the sticks, who are clearly just keeping a job by writing speeding tickets. Basically I support law enforcement Where BLM is, that’s why I see it as a semi accurate theory, the cops didn’t make me anti police by harassing white drivers, just anti police where white drivers are.
Here in Oak Ridge, TN for a time in the Oughts and early Teens, we had speed cameras in a number of locations. The backlash got them taken down at some point about 10 years ago. I don’t see very many traffic stops around town, though they do put up some speed traps on the west end of town where the major thruway stops having traffic lights.
Nah, I think certain white peoples’ penchant for self-hatred (and hatred of other whites) is enough of an explanation, and simpler.
It’s possible Steve but at that point a lot of young white liberals lived in cities and at least had some interaction with reality. In May 2020, a lot of young white liberals were “quarantining” in million dollar vacation homes in small all white vacation towns, stuck inside watching CNN, and dreading another Trump victory. When the “mostly peaceful protests” arose, they didn’t see the actual chaos and destruction so it was a lot easier to jump onto “the right side of history” with BLM.
I think it’s possible. Although if that is the reason then we, as a country, deserved it
……these “respectable ” people’s kids burn cop cars and take hormone blockers.
But we have had another 40 odd years of the cops being at war with the American people. Cops have earned every bit of hatred they are shown. The best way to make any situation worse is by adding a badge wearing, overpaid snowflake who has low morals and suspect character . That description works for 99% of all cops today. ACAB
The vast majority of traffic laws have nothing to do with safety. They exist only to raise money for the government. Speed limits are set irrationally low in order to maximize revenue collection.
I don’t agree with this theory, interesting though it is.
White support for BLM is just brainwashing, plain and simple, really a mass Stockholm Syndrome. Fear of black crime is big, of course, but it’s also fear of losing everything with just a few keystrokes and hitting the send button. Heck, you can have your ruined just by quoting rap lyrics, if you’re white and the lyrics include the magic “N word.” As a result, we are a nation with millions of Patty Hearsts.
In fact, Patty Hearst fits the profile of so many white women (and emasculated men): Privileged, then kidnapped by a frightening gang of racial terrorists, she ends up not hating her captures, but actually assisting them in their subsequent crimes.
Sound nuts?
That explains white support for BLM.
The problem with speed traps is well there speed traps. Typically set up at or near the bottom of a hill so just coasting puts you over the speed limit. So yeah, you get pissed off when it happens to you and we all get angry at the man. However, how much additional residual crap do cops find on a traffic stop. Expired plates, license, no insurance, not just speeding but impaired with drugs, alcohol or both. Might there be outstanding warrants, drugs and wait for it, convicted felons possessing a fire arm? What percentage of speed trap traffic stops ended in a arrest that at least temporarily removed a pending destructive gremlin from the roads or future violent crime from happening? The statistics from the last couple of years, suggests it is significant.
Yes, but we hadn’t yet elevated our dusky friends into living treasures, unbound by law.
The youth have no antidote to it, no natural immunity. I mean, most of you find it tiresome to be on your own race's side, so what did you expect? Who exactly would be providing context for the young people? Certainly not any of you. Technical data patterns don't do much if the target audience has no emotional motivation to even challenge what they were taught. They have zero motivation to spend hours reading this blog or Charles Murray.
A lot of older white men seem to think that at some point "enough will be enough" and sanity will be restored. They're living in yesteryear.Replies: @bomag
Yeah, but I like to think that reality has some power of its own.
Be nice if there was more of a support group countering the Narrative.
I noticed a dramatic shift in the militarism and outright hostility exhibited by the average
traffic coprevenuerhighwayman that began about 20 years ago. Maybe this is what you get when you prevent intelligent people from being cops and instead select for dominance and coldheartedness. The traffic court administrators masquerading as “judges” seem to have become more corrupt and callous around the same time.These people should go get productive jobs and stop preying on the public.
☮
You may be on to something, it was around 2008 that I was harrassed on MetroLink for my ticket stampy thingie being faint
I dislike/am wary of cops
My elderly father at this time was driving to a family funeral over state lines, and was pulled over and grilled harshly by cops. He was rather upset afterwards.
That being said, I have also interacted with/observed LAPD cops who were heroic gentlemen.
Let’s also not forget the White/Hispanic cops who beat the white homeless guy to death in Fullerton, which led to Orange County residents to stage a large protest in downtown.
That being said, I have also interacted with/observed LAPD cops who were heroic gentlemen.
But the overwhelming issue is everyone has been doused for decades in minoritarian propaganda from schools, the news to Hollyweird.
Heck, I was having brunch with a couple normie neighbor (Christian, Republican voting) moms last fall and mentioned that George Floyd OD'd. They did not know that. Ignore my cause of death, they didn't know Floyd was chock full of fentanyl. Basic facts for assessing "what the heck happened" are censored. That's your "news" media--i.e. minoritarian and deep state propaganda service.Replies: @Dmon
Exactly. Unless the cops in Paris and Stockholm were running speed traps, I’m going with Incessant All-Fronts Blitzkrieg of Anti-White Propaganda as the primary cause.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11774875/george-floyd-protests-around-world-riots-paris-london-stockholm-sydney/
Fear of black riots destroying all those lovely cities white liberals live in and the Media-Democrat Party must try, somehow, to govern and prevent from becoming deserted tax-eating shells.
Dependency of the Media-Democrat Party on black votes in elections and black eyeballs to prop up TV, video and pop music.
Guilt at being luckier genetically and in family background than blacks, which white liberals certainly know they are.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Shamu, @Hypnotoad666
Agree. If it were traffic ticket-motivated, the white BLMers would have been middle aged male commuters and professional drivers. Instead the white BLMers were approximately the opposite: youngsters who don’t drive or pay their own bills and middle-aged women whose bills are paid by their husbands or the state.
I’m not unsympathetic to the “abolish the police” line for a variety of reasons, but it never occurred to me to join BLMers because I feel the surveillance/police state is overreaching or because I dislike getting traffic tickets.
BLM was social contagion. The most soft-headed demographics were most represented.
Let’s look at our present societal condition regarding American “law enforcement”.
At one time, police officers were known as “peace officers”, hired to “keep the peace”, nothing more. Quite often they were residents of the very neighborhood that they were patrolling, knew everyone and tended to keep the local troublemakers and miscreants in line without resorting to the official “justice system”.
That all changed when the “escalation of force” system was abandoned for the present “command and control” system in which a police officer’s commands are to be followed instantaneously and without exception or discussion.
Failure to do so will result in death or serious injury to those who do not obey “fast enough”. For a good example of this, google Philip Brailsford and Daniel Shaver.
It is interesting to note that the “command and control” system is right out of the israeli military “playbook” which is used to enforce control of the Palestinians.
It would seem that “we are all Palestinians now”.
There are two more abuses in the American “law enforcement” system that deserve to be abolished.
“Qualified immunity” is a concept in which “law enforcement officers” and other officials are shielded from the consequences of their actions and lawsuits due to their (illegal) actions. It is almost impossible to sue a police officer for his personal behavior under the present scheme. One has to sue under “deprivation of civil-rights” statutes which are almost impossible to prove. In addition, the “system” protects its own with police-friendly prosecutors and municipality-supplied attorneys that “protect” rogue police officers.
“Asset forfeiture” makes police officers no better than criminal “highwaymen”.
A person who carries large sums of cash and is stopped for a traffic infraction can and quite often does have his assets (money) seized without any proof of wrongdoing. Just carrying a large sum of cash is enough to trigger “asset forfeiture” which is “legalized robbery under color of authority”. It is extremely difficult to fight “asset forfeiture” as the state “holds all of the cards” and can easily bankrupt the individual whose funds were seized.
American “law enforcement” has a lot to answer for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szZ2A0LvsLI
Just let the blacks out so they can fully sabotage themselves already. With most white people carrying AR-15s in the trunk, two 45 glocks strapped underneath the armpits and a 380 full auto cobray wrapped around the ankle, there's no way anyone gives a fuck about cops anymore. The entire point of the legal system has been condensed in to a 1,200fps bullet that costs a dollar. Legal system takes 20 years to kill blacks at a cost of like 30,000,000 dollars per inmate. Abd the police even dared to call white nationalists the #1 terorrist tbreat. To hell with cops.Replies: @TWS, @Joe Stalin
It’s too bad the People’s Republic of Illinois doesn’t have “Open Carry,” otherwise there would be a massive showing of our militia of armed people surrounding Springfield, IL in a show of the displeasure of the masses.
On the other hand, a victory for youngsters, The People have a RKBA concealed, even for the teenage unorganized militia.
betterworse, parking tickets where I live are only $1 more than they were in the 1990s. That is about a 15% increase. Hey, I'm not the one who loves LA..* "You blew right by me!" the cop said. I almost blew snot out of my nose laughing, as he was doing 20 mph in a 25 zone, so I passed this marked cop car, so's not to seem unusual suspicious tailing his slow ass. I'm glad I didn't say much, as I'd had 2 pint beers within the last couple of hours, and for me, who knows what I'd blow - not "right by him", that's for sure.Replies: @anonymous, @Adam Smith, @kaganovitchThis discussion really surprises me. I’ve lived in/around SF my whole life and seeing a traffic stop has been downright rare since about 2017. Up until about 2013 there was a sorta speed trap run by Daly City bike cops right outside the Olympic Club, but that was completely eliminated and has never returned, while speeds have actually gone up. As I’ve said before, my theory is that Pelosi directs so much federal money this way that there’s no need for speeding revenue anymore.
Well, on my way to lunch I just had one of our friends from south of the border (Chihuahua plates) roll through a stop to make a right in front of me with only a couple car lengths to spare.
How long until he flattens some kid at the school across the street?
Yeah, I haven’t been able talk a ticket out/down in over a decade.
I don’t know how much it has to do with race. I suspect it is more to do with bodycams and dashcams. The police know that all their actions and statements are now recorded and reviewable, so they don’t want a record of not doing things “by the book”. The more candid and freewheeling discussions with highway officers at a traffic stop are a thing of the past now.
My father, a mid-20th century modern, lived for a time in a notoriously corrupt (blue) city. He found he could avoid traffic tickets by paying … shall we say, a small gratuity on the spot. At some point, there was a big police corruption scandal in the media, as one has in those places, and as a result for a while the police had to wear recording devices during traffic stops, which devices in those pre-miniaturization days were ostentatious and obvious. That put an end to their pay-and-go service, at least until the recording devices were discontinued.
Basically, it’s now like that plus video plus open radio channels, everywhere. The police don’t even want to have a discussion about extenuating circumstances or alternative charges. They just say the minimum, write the ticket, and move on, grateful that the all-seeing digital eye didn’t record them misgendering anyone.
The surveillance/police state has affected the police at least as much as the rest of us.
It wasn't Chicago was it? Steve could back me up but CPD officers patrolling the expressways in Chicago city limits were so on the take the Illinois State Police were brought in to replace them:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-12-05-8503240194-story.html
Standard joke was to hand a CPD copper your license wrapped in a $50 or $100.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Colin Wright
If you type some of Steve’s tweets into a free GPT model, and then put someone’s comment at the end, you can get it to reply to stuff as Steve. Here’s the reply it generated to your comment:
“It’s not a complicated explanation when the black intelligentsia say it out loud.”
The tweets list prompt can be found here: https://pastebin.com/NZfrkEKw
There’s also a link at the top to a free GPT model playground unrelated to ChatGPT.
“Conservatives were late to the culture production aspect of the culture war …”
If conservatives want to be successful in culture production they need to construct a compelling narrative, and whatever meaning they wish to imbue should come from the natural behavior of its characters. Don’t force feed pre-determined messaging for that will only warp the story and hollow out the characters. Let it flow. If your story and characters have vitality they will eventually come to life outside of you, and from that point on you’re basically taking dictation. The best work is derived from this process. This is why most creative types suffer from some kind of divine madness.
What the post Reconstruction northeastern Elites realized is that white Southerners made by far the most compelling characters in any national story that was not some rank promotion of liberalism. And that's why America worked so well then. American began falling apart in the 1960s when its Elites began attacking the South and Southerners once again.
I submit that the nation can never right itself until it has made Robert E. Lee a national hero once again. And that means telling the truth about all the black trash our recent Elites have canonized.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
I’ve had two tense experiences with bad cops. I’ve had countless tense experiences with dangerous blacks under the age of fifty.
Stop me if you’ve heard this . . .
A little old lady gets pulled over by a cop for speeding. As she is giving her license to the cop, he notices that she has a concealed carry permit in her wallet.
He says, “Ma’am, I see that you have a concealed carry permit. What are you carrying?”
The old lady says, “Well, Sonny, I have a Glock under my left arm, a 38 Special under the seat, a 45 in the console, a 22 Derringer in the glove compartment, a Mossburg in the back seat, and an Ar-15 and a Mini 14 in the trunk.”.
“Good lord!” says the cop. “What are you afraid of?”.
The old lady says, “Not a damn thing, Sonny”
…….Maybe, or, not wanting to get fired and branded a racist …….or not having your home life rat-fucked by rancid ,woke offspring……..how about fitting in with the libtard social set.
The current 1619 push is to condition young people not to think critically about this or question suggestions put forth by blacks political sponsors to 'help' them, and considering how successful its more mild predecessor ideologies were it's scary to think what this might do.Replies: @Rob Lee
To follow up on your second paragraph, I believe that the black political sponsors understand that if they don’t indoctrinate the young, they’re going to lose white guilt as a weapon (once whites are no longer a major force in the political sphere). Indoctrinating the young captures and conditions the ascendant Asian and Latino community youths to continue genuflecting to blacks; for once the whites are gone and Asians and Latinos are in charge, there will be no more white guilt to protect the black community. Projects like 1619 and the reparations push are an effort to bake permanent deference to the black community into the cake forever.
You are giving blacks way too much credit here.
Steve, Please comment on this news story. We were all told the problem was with white law enforcement officers who did not understand the black community.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/01/26/memphis-officers-charged-tyre-nichols/
I think there’s a grain of truth to this; excessive policing makes people more amenable to proposals for de-policing. I’ve gotten several tickets in my life, and in not one instance was I doing anything that was remotely a threat (or even a nuisance) to others. While I certainly don’t support BLM, I’m also not reflexively pro-cop. To a substantial extent, their job consists of shaking down the citizens who pay their salaries. In general, they’re not on your side.
So while excessive ticketing may not flip someone from a law-and-order conservative to BLM, it does nudge people in that direction.
To its credit, California CHP and other traffic enforcement seem pretty fair regarding speed limit infractions. They do not seem to mind drivers going 5-10 miles over the limit on highways and the interstate as long as it is in a safe manner. Mostly, it is the driver who thinks they are on the Autobahn, weaving through traffic as if the stove was let on at home.
In my home state of Texas, I have been pulled over for going 57 in a 55. No ticket but Officer Billy Bob carried himself with the attitude as if he’d pulled over the ‘Bandit.” After the ten minute lecture I was wishing he would have just written me a ticket.
The speed trap theory may be a stretch, but even among white conservatives the police may be far less popular than you’d guess — From what I read, the feeling often is that they are not there to protect the public but only protect the status quo and their own pensions. And yes, write tickets.
But most children attend schools with black students. People keep underestimating the top 10% rule in Texas that forces high schools to rank all students from top to the bottom. That way, when the black girls who is the daughter of two college educated Nigerian immigrants is admitted to an Ivy League while being ranked 15th, they see first hand how the world really works. No amount of propaganda can outdo that.
However, the schools had a long history of poor teaching of history/politic science. Nothing has really changed.
This post is kind of like drunk dialing, with out the drunk.
If anything it goes like this: BLM is what created the higher rate of normal working class whites getting traffic citations. It was basically the only thing cops could do anymore without risking their job, freedom, or life. Plus having a brand new 60k Ford Explorer squad car every couple years wasn’t so bad either.
Certainly in my gentry-liberal DC suburb, the BLM and “Defund the Police” types make a big deal about traffic stops. They’ll make the usual vague noises about violence to black bodies, but traffic stops are their go-to example. For a while they even fantasized about taking the traffic portfolio away from the police and creating a new, separate, non-police agency for it.
(Granted, that agency would need cars with flashing lights, and since a traffic stop can go sideways without warning, they’d probably need weapons and body armor and powers of arrest… but they would NOT be “police”, perish the thought.)
My broader theory is that affluent white liberals don’t have to interact with police much. When they do it’s a nuisance, like a traffic stop. Even then, they would never respond to a traffic stop with violence. So they naturally assume, based on their (limited) personal experience, that a lot of police work can be done by other agencies — or doesn’t need to be done at all.
Of course, part of that is patronage: not coincidentally, this means shifting public money from cops to lefty white-collar social workers.
Dunno about your ‘Black Lives Matter’ theory — but tickets in California did become absurdly expensive at some point back around then.
They put in a ‘no right turn on red’ sign at the freeway exit by our house…and my wife predictably got nailed. I mean, for fifteen years, we had been exiting and turning right at the bottom of the ramp — she was doomed.
Okay…fine. Life in the big city.
But the ticket wasn’t sixty dollars like back in the day. It was $540.00 or something — $440.00 if you ‘completed traffic school’…on line.
I wanted to fight it. How had the same material offense become nine times more heinous? $540.00? Why not $40,000.00? Surely there’s some limit…
My wife decided to just pay it.
Never liked the term “Speed Trap”. It’s a victim mentality excuse for getting pulled over for…speeding! Either you’re speeding or you’re not according to the road’s zoning. There’s no “Trap”involved. Officers patrolling zones that are speeding-prone do not “Trap” drivers into speeding.
They should take the speed that average drivers normally go on a particular stretch of highway and make that the speed limit. Almost all drivers know what they are doing and are just trying to get home safely.
There's a stretch of highway between Baltimore and DC where, if you drove the posted speed limit, you'd be safety hazard because everyone else is going so much faster.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
Going back a little further…
And what was the CAUSE of that 2008 Financial Crisis, one may ask?
Wasn’t it due to the crash of some reality-denying US government program that pushed unaffordable mortgages on Blacks and others historically under-served by the System? … and this soft-hearted/soft-headed fiasco subsequently brought down the world financial markets.
Our precious resource of Black America is an integral part of every narrative.
Going back a little further…
And what was the CAUSE of that 2008 Financial Crisis, one may ask?
Wasn’t it due to the crash of some reality-denying US government program that pushed unaffordable mortgages on Blacks and others ‘historically under-served by the System’? … and this soft-hearted/soft-headed fiasco subsequently brought down the world financial markets.
Our precious resource of Black America is an integral part of every narrative.
Steve is barking up the wrong tree. This is about the human brain’s inherent religious module and the loss of Christianity. A lot of other things too, but only religious-type behavior gets this nonsensical. The coexistence of Christianity and Western scientific empiricism was a rare and beautiful thing. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that – for a certain segment of the population – the Christianity was also necessary.
John McWhorter has made great and detailed analogies between Mainline Protestantism and Wokeism.
It was the constant media narrative, enforced by the schools and the corporations. White women, like all women, tend to side with who they perceive are the winners, and some of the white guys came along to avoid being “racist”.
If Popeye’s Chicken is a banquet, I guess…
betterworse, parking tickets where I live are only $1 more than they were in the 1990s. That is about a 15% increase. Hey, I'm not the one who loves LA..* "You blew right by me!" the cop said. I almost blew snot out of my nose laughing, as he was doing 20 mph in a 25 zone, so I passed this marked cop car, so's not to seem unusual suspicious tailing his slow ass. I'm glad I didn't say much, as I'd had 2 pint beers within the last couple of hours, and for me, who knows what I'd blow - not "right by him", that's for sure.Replies: @anonymous, @Adam Smith, @kaganovitchIn such a situation it is handy to know how to recite the alphabet backwards.
(You can sing it to the ABC tune if you like.) (Practice makes perfect. )
🎶 ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 🎶
🎶 Now I know my Z Y X’s… 🎶
I’ve only used this life hack once on the side of the road…
And it worked like a charm!
Cop said I was funny and didn’t write the speeding ticket…
Or give me any shit about underage drinking.
(This was before the cops embraced their inner Nazi. Circa 1996)
Good times. 🙃
☮
Meh. My belief is that sobriety tests are primarily to get you to agree you are drunk and stop arguing.
The time I came closest to a DUI was when I narrowly missed hitting a stopped cop car...that got their attention.
First they amused themselves having me fail their sobriety test, then they asked me where I lived, and since it was about four blocks away, let me park the car and walk home.
Those were the days. Anyway, I experimented with their sobriety test the next morning. I couldn't pass it sober either.Replies: @Adam Smith
betterworse, parking tickets where I live are only $1 more than they were in the 1990s. That is about a 15% increase. Hey, I'm not the one who loves LA..* "You blew right by me!" the cop said. I almost blew snot out of my nose laughing, as he was doing 20 mph in a 25 zone, so I passed this marked cop car, so's not to seem unusual suspicious tailing his slow ass. I'm glad I didn't say much, as I'd had 2 pint beers within the last couple of hours, and for me, who knows what I'd blow - not "right by him", that's for sure.Replies: @anonymous, @Adam Smith, @kaganovitchI’ve been against that-time-of-the-month revenue generation by traffic cops since the 1980s.
Alright Mr. Newman you are free from speeding ticket but canceled for misogyny.
Fear of black riots destroying all those lovely cities white liberals live in and the Media-Democrat Party must try, somehow, to govern and prevent from becoming deserted tax-eating shells.
Dependency of the Media-Democrat Party on black votes in elections and black eyeballs to prop up TV, video and pop music.
Guilt at being luckier genetically and in family background than blacks, which white liberals certainly know they are.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Shamu, @Hypnotoad666
Far too inventive a theory. Whites fell for it just like they fell all other of the claims of unparalleled black suffering at the hands of the many bad whites. Once the Yankees made their version of ‘the civil war’ to have been about freeing the dark angels from slavery, America was cast with a mouths of always seeing Negroes as innocent victims and any whites that Elite whites hated as the ultimate bad guys.
I think it’s a stretch Steve.
You playing Twister lately or something?
If conservatives want to be successful in culture production they need to construct a compelling narrative, and whatever meaning they wish to imbue should come from the natural behavior of its characters. Don't force feed pre-determined messaging for that will only warp the story and hollow out the characters. Let it flow. If your story and characters have vitality they will eventually come to life outside of you, and from that point on you're basically taking dictation. The best work is derived from this process. This is why most creative types suffer from some kind of divine madness.Replies: @Shamu
‘Conservatives’ in America are at base conserving the ‘winners’ of a liberal war: that civil one to make the elites of the northeast the Mandarin class and their special pets, the Negroes, the nation’s mascots. There is no compelling narrative there that Liberal cannot better.
What the post Reconstruction northeastern Elites realized is that white Southerners made by far the most compelling characters in any national story that was not some rank promotion of liberalism. And that’s why America worked so well then. American began falling apart in the 1960s when its Elites began attacking the South and Southerners once again.
I submit that the nation can never right itself until it has made Robert E. Lee a national hero once again. And that means telling the truth about all the black trash our recent Elites have canonized.
There is a Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery (which faces South) that has a beautiful statue which is in danger of being torn down in the name of something or other. I'd never heard of it until I went on a walking tour of the ANC led by a knowledgeable person. Go see it before it's gone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_Memorial_(Arlington_National_Cemetery)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Confederate_Monument_-_S_face_tight_-_Arlington_National_Cemetery_-_2011.jpg/500px-Confederate_Monument_-_S_face_tight_-_Arlington_National_Cemetery_-_2011.jpg
“For example I’ve seen them pile their and their neighbors’ little kids into the backseats of SUVs with nary a car seat in sight, to go get ice cream or whatever. That is an automatic ticket if you get pulled over – state law gives no discretion to cops for violating kid car seat laws.”
Perhaps this is part of the animus towards the police state. Why must children be placed in ridiculous car seats in the back seat? Look at this child car seat:
F1 and IndyCar drivers don’t have this much protection around them. And per Our Benevolent Guv’ment your child should ride in the back seat of your car or SUV until age 12:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/car-seats-and-booster-seats
Why until age 12? “Um, remember those MANDATORY airbags we forced automakers to add to every vehicle they make? Yeah, um, turns out these “safety devices” can maim or kill a child younger than that if they sit in the front seat. Our Bad!”
Here’s a novel idea, how about we back off on the mandatory idiocy and let people decide what’s best for them. And oh, not have a safety device that causes an explosion in a confined area.
(I always dreaded the idea that on my last car, a Ford Mustang, if the driver’s airbag deployed the nice METAL “running pony 🐎” Mustang emblem dead center of the steering wheel airbag cover would be embedded in my face.)
But no, we need SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFETY as Eric Peters at https://www.ericpetersautos.com/ says so airbags and car seats and mandatory tickets for no seatbelt and no car seats.
(Note, for those people building high dudgeon that I am advocating killing little kiddies I am not. When they are small they need protection. However, at a certain point your child shouldn’t NEED to be buckled in as if they are going for a qualifying run for the Indianapolis 500. When that point is should be YOUR decision and not some faceless bureaucrat’s)
I have seen several opinions that one of the reasons the US TFR has fallen is that it is impossible to put three car seats in most cars.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
Not all that many years ago this was generally realized and publicized, looking at Wikipedia's pozzed article and my vague memory this was in the late 1990s. Specifically states the NHTSA got less prescriptive about what the system would be, as opposed to what it should accomplish.
I came of age in the 80's. My entire peer group was obsessed with cars and getting a license. Well, maybe not teen-girls - but they sure wanted a boyfriend who could drive!
It may describe 99% of black cops and lesbian cops and maybe even nearly as high a percentage of under age 30 white male cops. But it does not describe 99% of all cops.
I don't know how much it has to do with race. I suspect it is more to do with bodycams and dashcams. The police know that all their actions and statements are now recorded and reviewable, so they don't want a record of not doing things "by the book". The more candid and freewheeling discussions with highway officers at a traffic stop are a thing of the past now.
My father, a mid-20th century modern, lived for a time in a notoriously corrupt (blue) city. He found he could avoid traffic tickets by paying ... shall we say, a small gratuity on the spot. At some point, there was a big police corruption scandal in the media, as one has in those places, and as a result for a while the police had to wear recording devices during traffic stops, which devices in those pre-miniaturization days were ostentatious and obvious. That put an end to their pay-and-go service, at least until the recording devices were discontinued.
Basically, it's now like that plus video plus open radio channels, everywhere. The police don't even want to have a discussion about extenuating circumstances or alternative charges. They just say the minimum, write the ticket, and move on, grateful that the all-seeing digital eye didn't record them misgendering anyone.
The surveillance/police state has affected the police at least as much as the rest of us.Replies: @mmack
“My father, a mid-20th century modern, lived for a time in a notoriously corrupt (blue) city. He found he could avoid traffic tickets by paying … shall we say, a small gratuity on the spot. ”
It wasn’t Chicago was it? Steve could back me up but CPD officers patrolling the expressways in Chicago city limits were so on the take the Illinois State Police were brought in to replace them:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-12-05-8503240194-story.html
Standard joke was to hand a CPD copper your license wrapped in a $50 or $100.
"It was a different time, you understand ..."Replies: @mmack
So this would have been about 1950. He recounted frustrating a New York traffic cop because he simply failed to grasp that he was supposed to offer a bribe -- the cop finally gave up and just let him go. I wonder if the cop even knew how to write an actual ticket or just always solicited a bribe.
Another example of the way things were was the LAPD in the same era. Later on -- in my years in LA in the eighties -- it was a commonplace that the LAPD had no contact with the community; officers didn't patrol a fixed beat on foot, get to know people, etc.
Well, apparently, that was not a bug, but a feature. LAPD used to be notoriously corrupt -- one of the steps taken to clean it up was to break that pattern where the beat cop could go along, getting his understood payoffs for ignoring this and that.
https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/1617718565427085313?cxt=HHwWgoCw7dqdpfMsAAAAReplies: @Reg Cæsar
Great. When will this be applied to beer?
Washington DC is crawling with speed cameras, some right after the speed limit drops 15 mph. The fine is $100. It’s the only thing the local government does well.
(Granted, that agency would need cars with flashing lights, and since a traffic stop can go sideways without warning, they'd probably need weapons and body armor and powers of arrest... but they would NOT be "police", perish the thought.)
My broader theory is that affluent white liberals don't have to interact with police much. When they do it's a nuisance, like a traffic stop. Even then, they would never respond to a traffic stop with violence. So they naturally assume, based on their (limited) personal experience, that a lot of police work can be done by other agencies -- or doesn't need to be done at all.
Of course, part of that is patronage: not coincidentally, this means shifting public money from cops to lefty white-collar social workers.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
There was an Arlington cop who sat in a shopping center at the top of Spout Run. The speed limit on SR is 45 coming up from the GW parkway but drops to 30 by the shopping center. He pulled over so many women in their SUVs that Arlington put him on another assignment. Too bad.
2) One of the private companies who put in red light cameras colluded with the city (not Arlington) to shorten the length of the yellow light resulting in more cars caught leaving the intersection as the yellow expired and more red light tickets of which they got a percentage. Public/private partnership indeed.
What the post Reconstruction northeastern Elites realized is that white Southerners made by far the most compelling characters in any national story that was not some rank promotion of liberalism. And that's why America worked so well then. American began falling apart in the 1960s when its Elites began attacking the South and Southerners once again.
I submit that the nation can never right itself until it has made Robert E. Lee a national hero once again. And that means telling the truth about all the black trash our recent Elites have canonized.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
I wouldn’t hold your breath. West Point, where he was superintendent, is erasing all trace of him as part of DoD’s great renaming of all things remotely Confederate so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings.
There is a Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery (which faces South) that has a beautiful statue which is in danger of being torn down in the name of something or other. I’d never heard of it until I went on a walking tour of the ANC led by a knowledgeable person. Go see it before it’s gone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_Memorial_(Arlington_National_Cemetery)
Wrong again, Steve, in pretty much every particular.
Indeed if one examines the anti-fa people in Atlanta fighting and shooting at cops, you get a pretty good picture of who these people are.
1. The spawn of rich and privileged Whites who raised their kids to find and fight the ghost of Adolf Hitler wherever he may be found: in the safety and security of ordinary people from thugs, especially black ones. I count the kids of millionaires, and Democratic Congresswomen, and Democratic Senators, and other high flying upper class people as the ones notably arrested.
2. Assorted underclass weirdos, generally sacred transgender, often from the Third World, like the lunatic who shot it out with Atlanta cops and lost.
Hatred of ordinary White people and worship of blacks, gays, trannies etc. is baked into the Upper Class. That is who they are and in fighting the ghost of Adolf Hitler they are trying their best to emulate him in their own final solutions for the problem of White people existing. As part of the Upper Class of course they are honorary non Whites eager to prove their conversion and salvation from the original sin of Whiteness.
The Western Upper Class is built on hate. Hate of ordinary middle class White people in particular, which is why they do what they do. Out of hate and spite. No other reason.
FIFY. ;-)
Glad to see you back. I've missed your, ah, peculiar brand of invective.
Fear of black riots destroying all those lovely cities white liberals live in and the Media-Democrat Party must try, somehow, to govern and prevent from becoming deserted tax-eating shells.
Dependency of the Media-Democrat Party on black votes in elections and black eyeballs to prop up TV, video and pop music.
Guilt at being luckier genetically and in family background than blacks, which white liberals certainly know they are.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Shamu, @Hypnotoad666
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between “recent history” and “old news.”
Perhaps this is part of the animus towards the police state. Why must children be placed in ridiculous car seats in the back seat? Look at this child car seat:
https://www.kidsroom.de/WebRoot/KidsroomDE/Shops/Kidsroom/5E67/5C52/81CB/FD8A/7761/AC1E/0705/169E/BILD3_2000033-111072/IC_IMAGE/en-britax-roemer-child-car-seat-advansafix-i-size-storm-grey-2023-Storm-Grey.jpg
F1 and IndyCar drivers don't have this much protection around them. And per Our Benevolent Guv'ment your child should ride in the back seat of your car or SUV until age 12:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/car-seats-and-booster-seats
Why until age 12? "Um, remember those MANDATORY airbags we forced automakers to add to every vehicle they make? Yeah, um, turns out these "safety devices" can maim or kill a child younger than that if they sit in the front seat. Our Bad!"
Here's a novel idea, how about we back off on the mandatory idiocy and let people decide what's best for them. And oh, not have a safety device that causes an explosion in a confined area.
(I always dreaded the idea that on my last car, a Ford Mustang, if the driver's airbag deployed the nice METAL "running pony 🐎" Mustang emblem dead center of the steering wheel airbag cover would be embedded in my face.)
But no, we need SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFETY as Eric Peters at https://www.ericpetersautos.com/ says so airbags and car seats and mandatory tickets for no seatbelt and no car seats.
(Note, for those people building high dudgeon that I am advocating killing little kiddies I am not. When they are small they need protection. However, at a certain point your child shouldn't NEED to be buckled in as if they are going for a qualifying run for the Indianapolis 500. When that point is should be YOUR decision and not some faceless bureaucrat's)Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @That Would Be Telling, @mikeInThe716
In Canuckistan, kids’ car seats must be installed so that they face backwards, which makes it difficult to soothe a crying child from the front seat since you can’t even see him.
I have seen several opinions that one of the reasons the US TFR has fallen is that it is impossible to put three car seats in most cars.
Yes, I’d say increased exposure to modern police for any reason would increase negative sentiment. They’re trained to be super wary, aggressive , sticklers for rules and self interested. Traffic enforcement is a major conduit for this engagement. So is the enhanced DWI enforcement of the past few decades. Experiencing the tender mercies of employees of the correctional system, even overnight, will create a permanent anti-police advocate out of most whitebread of suburbanites.
As to why American liberals have embraced the toxic 1619 mindset, it is a political calculation and transaction Racial spoils system for the power to impose socialism.
People are willing to burn a cop to keep the wolves at bay. They’re also willing to trade — “Wilson and Pantaleo escaped conviction, so we’ll give you Slager and Chauvin”. The same goes for civilians — Zimmerman and Rittenhouse had to be balanced with Scarsella and Drejka.
The problem is blacks won’t swelled for parity. They got Potter and Dean, Drejka and Wafer, among others, and they got their Bronx jury nullifications for their brothas
They want the whole hog, and they’ll eventually get it.
It’s partly that, but it’s also the black megalomania coupled with white guilt that produces a fairly sincere belief that black Americans are the center of our society’s universe now and forever. Asians and Latinos care far less about blacks and although efforts to indoctrinate them are an effort to forestall the de-centering of blacks, I do think it will happen regardless as the ascendant groups have less and less reason to enter into coalitions with blacks for political power.
traffic coprevenuerhighwayman that began about 20 years ago. Maybe this is what you get when you prevent intelligent people from being cops and instead select for dominance and coldheartedness. The traffic court administrators masquerading as "judges" seem to have become more corrupt and callous around the same time.These people should go get productive jobs and stop preying on the public.
☮Replies: @S. Anonyia
I’d say it’s the opposite. Cops have become more laidback within the past 5-10 years. They were scary when I first started driving in the mid 200os- they’d grill you, accuse you of being on drugs, yell, shine flashlights in your face etc just for a routine speeding ticket. Nothing like that generally happens today. I was pulled over 12 times between age 17-26 (got ticketed of 7 of those times). In my 30s now and haven’t been pulled over once since then. I go slower on interstates but drive the same speeds in city traffic and on rural roads, so my driving hasn’t changed that much.
Nowadays a lot of cops are Gen X or Millennials, who are more disengaged than Boomers.
What in the heck?
‘…I believe that the black political sponsors understand that if they don’t indoctrinate the young, they’re going to lose white guilt as a weapon…’
You are giving blacks way too much credit here.
(You can sing it to the ABC tune if you like.) (Practice makes perfect. )
🎶 ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 🎶
🎶 Now I know my Z Y X's... 🎶
I've only used this life hack once on the side of the road...
And it worked like a charm!
Cop said I was funny and didn't write the speeding ticket...
Or give me any shit about underage drinking.
(This was before the cops embraced their inner Nazi. Circa 1996)
Good times. 🙃
☮Replies: @Colin Wright, @Achmed E. Newman
‘In such a situation it is handy to know how to recite the alphabet backwards.’
Meh. My belief is that sobriety tests are primarily to get you to agree you are drunk and stop arguing.
The time I came closest to a DUI was when I narrowly missed hitting a stopped cop car…that got their attention.
First they amused themselves having me fail their sobriety test, then they asked me where I lived, and since it was about four blocks away, let me park the car and walk home.
Those were the days. Anyway, I experimented with their sobriety test the next morning. I couldn’t pass it sober either.
That was the day she learned that if she is ever pulled over you simply do not play simon says on the side of the road or blow into their breathalyzer. She was instructed to be very polite, answer no questions, call her attorney and otherwise keep her mouth shut.
☮
Indeed if one examines the anti-fa people in Atlanta fighting and shooting at cops, you get a pretty good picture of who these people are.
1. The spawn of rich and privileged Whites who raised their kids to find and fight the ghost of Adolf Hitler wherever he may be found: in the safety and security of ordinary people from thugs, especially black ones. I count the kids of millionaires, and Democratic Congresswomen, and Democratic Senators, and other high flying upper class people as the ones notably arrested.
2. Assorted underclass weirdos, generally sacred transgender, often from the Third World, like the lunatic who shot it out with Atlanta cops and lost.
Hatred of ordinary White people and worship of blacks, gays, trannies etc. is baked into the Upper Class. That is who they are and in fighting the ghost of Adolf Hitler they are trying their best to emulate him in their own final solutions for the problem of White people existing. As part of the Upper Class of course they are honorary non Whites eager to prove their conversion and salvation from the original sin of Whiteness.
The Western Upper Class is built on hate. Hate of ordinary middle class White people in particular, which is why they do what they do. Out of hate and spite. No other reason.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Joe Joe
The Western Upper Class is built on HATE HATE HATE. HATE HATE HATE of ordinary middle class White people in particular, which is why they do what they do. Out of HATE HATE HATE and spite. No other reason.
FIFY. 😉
Glad to see you back. I’ve missed your, ah, peculiar brand of invective.
This reads like a Ron Unz idea, for which he wrote out a blog post, and then sent to Sailer for a re-write and to float the idea to iSteve readers.
Not quite as blatantly obvious as that ‘letter from a friend’ a while back, but there’s still an Unz-ness to the prose.
However, the schools had a long history of poor teaching of history/politic science. Nothing has really changed.Replies: @Ian Smith
People doublethink. When white liberals see black dysfunction, they explain it away as further evidence of white privilege, blah blah.
If conservatives were the least big intelligent, they would have stolen the idea of "curated diversity" to verbally beat progressives with it. Also, if conservatives were intelligent, they would be talking much more about affirmative action at UNC-Chapel Hill than Harvard since it is the government that is doing the discriminating.Replies: @Ian Smith
Perhaps this is part of the animus towards the police state. Why must children be placed in ridiculous car seats in the back seat? Look at this child car seat:
https://www.kidsroom.de/WebRoot/KidsroomDE/Shops/Kidsroom/5E67/5C52/81CB/FD8A/7761/AC1E/0705/169E/BILD3_2000033-111072/IC_IMAGE/en-britax-roemer-child-car-seat-advansafix-i-size-storm-grey-2023-Storm-Grey.jpg
F1 and IndyCar drivers don't have this much protection around them. And per Our Benevolent Guv'ment your child should ride in the back seat of your car or SUV until age 12:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/car-seats-and-booster-seats
Why until age 12? "Um, remember those MANDATORY airbags we forced automakers to add to every vehicle they make? Yeah, um, turns out these "safety devices" can maim or kill a child younger than that if they sit in the front seat. Our Bad!"
Here's a novel idea, how about we back off on the mandatory idiocy and let people decide what's best for them. And oh, not have a safety device that causes an explosion in a confined area.
(I always dreaded the idea that on my last car, a Ford Mustang, if the driver's airbag deployed the nice METAL "running pony 🐎" Mustang emblem dead center of the steering wheel airbag cover would be embedded in my face.)
But no, we need SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFETY as Eric Peters at https://www.ericpetersautos.com/ says so airbags and car seats and mandatory tickets for no seatbelt and no car seats.
(Note, for those people building high dudgeon that I am advocating killing little kiddies I am not. When they are small they need protection. However, at a certain point your child shouldn't NEED to be buckled in as if they are going for a qualifying run for the Indianapolis 500. When that point is should be YOUR decision and not some faceless bureaucrat's)Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @That Would Be Telling, @mikeInThe716
From memory, this is thanks to Jimmy Carter making zealot Joan Claybrook head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Which insisted airbags protect drivers and passengers who weren’t belted. Based on tests with young pigs, the automakers said this is going to kill a lot of short people; they were evil and of course ignored.
Not all that many years ago this was generally realized and publicized, looking at Wikipedia’s pozzed article and my vague memory this was in the late 1990s. Specifically states the NHTSA got less prescriptive about what the system would be, as opposed to what it should accomplish.
I have seen several opinions that one of the reasons the US TFR has fallen is that it is impossible to put three car seats in most cars.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
It’s now official social SCIENCE!!!, see “Car Seats as Contraception” with this abstract (line breaks added):
That said, morbidity also needs to be weighed to get a sufficient picture of all this, but that data would be very hard to generate.
They put in a 'no right turn on red' sign at the freeway exit by our house...and my wife predictably got nailed. I mean, for fifteen years, we had been exiting and turning right at the bottom of the ramp -- she was doomed.
Okay...fine. Life in the big city.
But the ticket wasn't sixty dollars like back in the day. It was $540.00 or something -- $440.00 if you 'completed traffic school'...on line.
I wanted to fight it. How had the same material offense become nine times more heinous? $540.00? Why not $40,000.00? Surely there's some limit...
My wife decided to just pay it.Replies: @anonymous
How about this story: It’s May ’93 and I’ve just moved back to SF after some years away. I go to a day game at Candlestick, where the Giants beat the Phillies 10-2 and Barry Bonds goes 4-4 but no homer. To get on the bridge back to Berkeley, I take Second St., which unknown to me is now HOV only. CHP pulls me over, black guy. I reach for my wallet and it’s not there. I tell him it must have fallen out at the game, and in a nasty voice he says, “Sure, you probably never even had a license.” I drive back to the stadium and miraculously find the wallet under my seat just as the sweep crew is getting started. I go to court to protest the extra fine for not possessing my license, and as I’m seated there’s a guy standing off to the side who keeps giving me a hard stare. So I get up and ask him if there’s a problem and it turns out he was the second baseman on my PAL team in 1966. He’s undercover protecting the judge.
As a retired cop, let me give you a small bit of insight as to how traffic enforcement works at many police departments. Traffic Units are generally a special assignment for patrol officers, thus someone wanting a traffic unit assignment would have to apply and test for the position. The guys that gravitated to traffic did so for various reasons. Many just want to ride motorcycles all day. Others like traffic because it’s easy and takes you out of the drudgery of patrol. There’s very little paper (reports) and while traffic stops can sometimes be dangerous, a vast majority of the time, you’re not dealing with the normal demographic that patrol sees day in and day out.
My primary beef with traffic enforcement was that it always became a stat driven type of endeavor. Not for revenue, but to demonstrate productivity. How else is your sergeant going to know you are working hard unless you are generating good numbers? Most would subsequently default to working radar ‘honey holes’ instead of places where traffic enforcement might mitigate actual problems, like chronic red light violations causing collisions. The traffic guys who worked nights almost always focused on DUI arrests. Again, they wanted stats and would end up pulling a lot of people over for minor equipment violations and then do the sniff test when talking to the driver. If they smelled alcohol, they would then administer field sobriety tests. Many people ended up getting arrested for DUI who displayed no impaired driving whatsoever. But hey, who cares? If they get 100 in a year they get to adorn their uniform with a gold DUI pin awarded by the ladies at MADD?Replies: @mikeInThe716, @Libre
In my area of NY State, many localities have a traffic ticket form / system that allows you to plead to a $75+ parking ticket – none of which goes to the state.
Stats driven traffic enforcement grinds my gears. And the tendency of pulling over easy ‘marks’. And the retreat to the donut shop during AM/PM rush hours.
Lone speeders on empty highways are ticket magnets. The unlicensed, drugged-up dope weaving thru crowded rush hour traffic won’t be touched. Unless he maims or kills someone.
Two rules I try to follow.
1. Don't seriously speed until somebody goes by going even faster and disappears up ahead. Hopefully he'll draw any cops waiting up there.
2. Watch the trucks. When they're all going 10 mph over the limit, the road's probably clear. When they drop down to exactly the limit, you slow down too.
Perhaps this is part of the animus towards the police state. Why must children be placed in ridiculous car seats in the back seat? Look at this child car seat:
https://www.kidsroom.de/WebRoot/KidsroomDE/Shops/Kidsroom/5E67/5C52/81CB/FD8A/7761/AC1E/0705/169E/BILD3_2000033-111072/IC_IMAGE/en-britax-roemer-child-car-seat-advansafix-i-size-storm-grey-2023-Storm-Grey.jpg
F1 and IndyCar drivers don't have this much protection around them. And per Our Benevolent Guv'ment your child should ride in the back seat of your car or SUV until age 12:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/car-seats-and-booster-seats
Why until age 12? "Um, remember those MANDATORY airbags we forced automakers to add to every vehicle they make? Yeah, um, turns out these "safety devices" can maim or kill a child younger than that if they sit in the front seat. Our Bad!"
Here's a novel idea, how about we back off on the mandatory idiocy and let people decide what's best for them. And oh, not have a safety device that causes an explosion in a confined area.
(I always dreaded the idea that on my last car, a Ford Mustang, if the driver's airbag deployed the nice METAL "running pony 🐎" Mustang emblem dead center of the steering wheel airbag cover would be embedded in my face.)
But no, we need SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFETY as Eric Peters at https://www.ericpetersautos.com/ says so airbags and car seats and mandatory tickets for no seatbelt and no car seats.
(Note, for those people building high dudgeon that I am advocating killing little kiddies I am not. When they are small they need protection. However, at a certain point your child shouldn't NEED to be buckled in as if they are going for a qualifying run for the Indianapolis 500. When that point is should be YOUR decision and not some faceless bureaucrat's)Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @That Would Be Telling, @mikeInThe716
That may be part of the reason so many older teens have little interest in learning to drive.
I came of age in the 80’s. My entire peer group was obsessed with cars and getting a license. Well, maybe not teen-girls – but they sure wanted a boyfriend who could drive!
I remember whites getting all woke after George Zimmerman was aquitted of killing Trayvon Martin.
Whites suddenly were more in favor of reparations than black people were.
I stopped consuming modern mass market TV/movies when almost everything started being shot on digital. BTW, calling movies “films” nowadays makes no sense. They don’t use literal film anymore, with the exception of a handful of directors. I stopped listening to mass market music when I realized that since about 1997 it’s become very repetitive, lacking in melody, and lacking virtuoso musicianship.
I think the marketing that anything modern is truly intelligent, “prestigious”, or otherwise worthwhile is due to the desperate attempt to conceal how aesthetically awful modern media is. Nothing sounds or looks good anymore.
In the 90’s and 2000’s you had a lot of Boomer cops and this was the peak of the For the Children/protect Millennials at all costs era (Boomers really did pull an astonishing 180 after the hedonistic corruption of the 60’s-80’s). So society in general really did crackdown on any real or perceived threat to safety and order.
Nowadays a lot of cops are Gen X or Millennials, who are more disengaged than Boomers.
People are prepping for the next BLM riots after a recent incident. This time I couldn’t help noticing that one of the (black) officers doing the beating was called Emmitt Ill.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64421704
White progressives are the type of people who send their children to 80% white private schools and then brag about how diverse their children’s school really is. White progressives would never send their children to a university that is more than 10% black or 20% Asian. White progressives help their children get jobs at some of the whitest employers and with the whitest companies.
If conservatives were the least big intelligent, they would have stolen the idea of “curated diversity” to verbally beat progressives with it. Also, if conservatives were intelligent, they would be talking much more about affirmative action at UNC-Chapel Hill than Harvard since it is the government that is doing the discriminating.
“If conservatives were the least bit intelligent, they would have stolen the idea of ‘curated diversity’ to verbally beat progressives with it.’ Well, they try that. Hence the careers of Candace Owens, Hershel Walker, Diamond and Silk, Ben Carson, etc.Replies: @Guest007
If that were true the response wouldn’t have been so partisan. Republicans get tickets too.
If the BLM movement had wanted bipartisan support, they could have gotten it. Waco and Ruby Ridge were both white rightist examples of unreasonable uses of force by cops that could have easily been conflated with what goes on in the ghetto to build a case against out of control government violence in general. There are even plenty of examples of whites being gunned down unarmed by cops under circumstances similar to Floyd et al. But the point of BLM was never to reign in the police; it was to start a low-grade civil war that could be exploited for electoral advantage. It’s not an organic political movement; it’s a cynical strategy for Democrats to win elections.
Indeed if one examines the anti-fa people in Atlanta fighting and shooting at cops, you get a pretty good picture of who these people are.
1. The spawn of rich and privileged Whites who raised their kids to find and fight the ghost of Adolf Hitler wherever he may be found: in the safety and security of ordinary people from thugs, especially black ones. I count the kids of millionaires, and Democratic Congresswomen, and Democratic Senators, and other high flying upper class people as the ones notably arrested.
2. Assorted underclass weirdos, generally sacred transgender, often from the Third World, like the lunatic who shot it out with Atlanta cops and lost.
Hatred of ordinary White people and worship of blacks, gays, trannies etc. is baked into the Upper Class. That is who they are and in fighting the ghost of Adolf Hitler they are trying their best to emulate him in their own final solutions for the problem of White people existing. As part of the Upper Class of course they are honorary non Whites eager to prove their conversion and salvation from the original sin of Whiteness.
The Western Upper Class is built on hate. Hate of ordinary middle class White people in particular, which is why they do what they do. Out of hate and spite. No other reason.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Joe Joe
welcome back Whiskey!!! where have you been???
If conservatives were the least big intelligent, they would have stolen the idea of "curated diversity" to verbally beat progressives with it. Also, if conservatives were intelligent, they would be talking much more about affirmative action at UNC-Chapel Hill than Harvard since it is the government that is doing the discriminating.Replies: @Ian Smith
I agree. Nice suburban liberals engage in hypocrisy AND double-think.
“If conservatives were the least bit intelligent, they would have stolen the idea of ‘curated diversity’ to verbally beat progressives with it.’ Well, they try that. Hence the careers of Candace Owens, Hershel Walker, Diamond and Silk, Ben Carson, etc.
I was pulled over three times before I was thirty and got one ticket. I haven’t been pulled over once since then.
What in the heck?
At one time, police officers were known as "peace officers", hired to "keep the peace", nothing more. Quite often they were residents of the very neighborhood that they were patrolling, knew everyone and tended to keep the local troublemakers and miscreants in line without resorting to the official "justice system".
That all changed when the "escalation of force" system was abandoned for the present "command and control" system in which a police officer's commands are to be followed instantaneously and without exception or discussion.
Failure to do so will result in death or serious injury to those who do not obey "fast enough". For a good example of this, google Philip Brailsford and Daniel Shaver.
It is interesting to note that the "command and control" system is right out of the israeli military "playbook" which is used to enforce control of the Palestinians.
It would seem that "we are all Palestinians now".
There are two more abuses in the American "law enforcement" system that deserve to be abolished.
"Qualified immunity" is a concept in which "law enforcement officers" and other officials are shielded from the consequences of their actions and lawsuits due to their (illegal) actions. It is almost impossible to sue a police officer for his personal behavior under the present scheme. One has to sue under "deprivation of civil-rights" statutes which are almost impossible to prove. In addition, the "system" protects its own with police-friendly prosecutors and municipality-supplied attorneys that "protect" rogue police officers.
"Asset forfeiture" makes police officers no better than criminal "highwaymen".
A person who carries large sums of cash and is stopped for a traffic infraction can and quite often does have his assets (money) seized without any proof of wrongdoing. Just carrying a large sum of cash is enough to trigger "asset forfeiture" which is "legalized robbery under color of authority". It is extremely difficult to fight "asset forfeiture" as the state "holds all of the cards" and can easily bankrupt the individual whose funds were seized.
American "law enforcement" has a lot to answer for.Replies: @Rob Lee
‘John Wick’ shows us the ideal version of a law enforcement response to a noise complaint…
It wasn't Chicago was it? Steve could back me up but CPD officers patrolling the expressways in Chicago city limits were so on the take the Illinois State Police were brought in to replace them:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-12-05-8503240194-story.html
Standard joke was to hand a CPD copper your license wrapped in a $50 or $100.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Colin Wright
Dad said his lowest accepted bid was two dollars.
“It was a different time, you understand …”
Did he tie an onion 🧅 to his belt? (which was the style at the time).
https://youtu.be/PUvztu4UW9A
Seriously, love ❤️ the story, and the confirmation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/01/26/memphis-officers-charged-tyre-nichols/Replies: @Guest007
Steve, your favorite Benjamin Crump is now on center stage for the Memphis police beating. Will Crump make the situation go sideways like he usually does.
Meh. My belief is that sobriety tests are primarily to get you to agree you are drunk and stop arguing.
The time I came closest to a DUI was when I narrowly missed hitting a stopped cop car...that got their attention.
First they amused themselves having me fail their sobriety test, then they asked me where I lived, and since it was about four blocks away, let me park the car and walk home.
Those were the days. Anyway, I experimented with their sobriety test the next morning. I couldn't pass it sober either.Replies: @Adam Smith
My wife used to work for a local attorney, and once met one of the gentleman who helped devise the road side simon says sobriety test for the state of Georgia. He administered the test on her, while she was well rested and stone cold sober. She failed, because the test is designed in such a way that almost everyone will fail. (When he shined the flashlight in her eyes one of her eyes supposedly twitched, allegedly suggesting she was impaired.) (She is prone to migraines when subjected to flashing lights.)
That was the day she learned that if she is ever pulled over you simply do not play simon says on the side of the road or blow into their breathalyzer. She was instructed to be very polite, answer no questions, call her attorney and otherwise keep her mouth shut.
☮
"It was a different time, you understand ..."Replies: @mmack
“It was a different time, you understand …”
Did he tie an onion 🧅 to his belt? (which was the style at the time).
Seriously, love ❤️ the story, and the confirmation.
Add Benton Harbor/Saint Joseph to your list.
I like your theory, Steve.
(You can sing it to the ABC tune if you like.) (Practice makes perfect. )
🎶 ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 🎶
🎶 Now I know my Z Y X's... 🎶
I've only used this life hack once on the side of the road...
And it worked like a charm!
Cop said I was funny and didn't write the speeding ticket...
Or give me any shit about underage drinking.
(This was before the cops embraced their inner Nazi. Circa 1996)
Good times. 🙃
☮Replies: @Colin Wright, @Achmed E. Newman
I shouldn’t have to, but maybe I should work on that one, Adam. I can probably do the hopping-round-on-the road-centerline thing pretty well, drunk or not. What else have they got?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e68CoE70Mk8Replies: @bomag, @Galloway (From NI)
I’m not sure how else to tell you this and let you down gently, but the gact of the matter is that Nikole Hannah Jones and any other modern greviance activist makes her money offering any other explanation than what is most obvious: a large percentage of black underacheivement in American society is a direct result of having an unfavorable IQ distribution.
You have had years to prove racism is to blame, and all you have are various opinion columns calling neuroscience racist and people lying about hereditarians.
Nah, it’s a trap. They do things like drop the speed abruptly from 60 to 35 and then sit 100 feet past the 35 mph sign catching driver’s still slowing down. Stuff like that.
They should take the speed that average drivers normally go on a particular stretch of highway and make that the speed limit. Almost all drivers know what they are doing and are just trying to get home safely.
There’s a stretch of highway between Baltimore and DC where, if you drove the posted speed limit, you’d be safety hazard because everyone else is going so much faster.
It wasn't Chicago was it? Steve could back me up but CPD officers patrolling the expressways in Chicago city limits were so on the take the Illinois State Police were brought in to replace them:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-12-05-8503240194-story.html
Standard joke was to hand a CPD copper your license wrapped in a $50 or $100.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Colin Wright
I read the memoirs of the Anglo-Indian author John Masters, who emigrated to the United States after India became independent and his career as a British officer in the Indian Army evaporated.
So this would have been about 1950. He recounted frustrating a New York traffic cop because he simply failed to grasp that he was supposed to offer a bribe — the cop finally gave up and just let him go. I wonder if the cop even knew how to write an actual ticket or just always solicited a bribe.
Another example of the way things were was the LAPD in the same era. Later on — in my years in LA in the eighties — it was a commonplace that the LAPD had no contact with the community; officers didn’t patrol a fixed beat on foot, get to know people, etc.
Well, apparently, that was not a bug, but a feature. LAPD used to be notoriously corrupt — one of the steps taken to clean it up was to break that pattern where the beat cop could go along, getting his understood payoffs for ignoring this and that.
Wow Steve, you finally took the boot out of your mouth? Now you get it. People don’t like being harassed by armed psychopaths. So yea if BLM is the group fighting to reduce pig budgets, a lot of of people will be on board with that.
As a retired cop, let me give you a small bit of insight as to how traffic enforcement works at many police departments. Traffic Units are generally a special assignment for patrol officers, thus someone wanting a traffic unit assignment would have to apply and test for the position. The guys that gravitated to traffic did so for various reasons. Many just want to ride motorcycles all day. Others like traffic because it’s easy and takes you out of the drudgery of patrol. There’s very little paper (reports) and while traffic stops can sometimes be dangerous, a vast majority of the time, you’re not dealing with the normal demographic that patrol sees day in and day out.
My primary beef with traffic enforcement was that it always became a stat driven type of endeavor. Not for revenue, but to demonstrate productivity. How else is your sergeant going to know you are working hard unless you are generating good numbers? Most would subsequently default to working radar ‘honey holes’ instead of places where traffic enforcement might mitigate actual problems, like chronic red light violations causing collisions. The traffic guys who worked nights almost always focused on DUI arrests. Again, they wanted stats and would end up pulling a lot of people over for minor equipment violations and then do the sniff test when talking to the driver. If they smelled alcohol, they would then administer field sobriety tests. Many people ended up getting arrested for DUI who displayed no impaired driving whatsoever. But hey, who cares? If they get 100 in a year they get to adorn their uniform with a gold DUI pin awarded by the ladies at MADD?Replies: @mikeInThe716, @Libre
Listen here, bacon boy, you’re full of it. Revenue destination varies by state. Some states it goes to the state, some it goes to the town. Going to the state reduces but doesn’t eliminate traps. The state still benefits, still has troopers, and still defends the piracy. That’s what it is: armed robbery on the highways.
If it had anything to do with safety, they wouldn’t need the money or they would put it towards victims and crash funds 100%. It’s just another revenue generation for the state. And one of a particularly insidious type.
It’s had pretty much the pretty much the opposite effect on me.
I was much more hostile to the police before I saw who was opposing them.
Now, I still object in principle (man really can survive without a local police department) — but I can live with them. I can’t live with Black Lives Matter, etc. In fact, it’s all to the good if they alienate the police. This is a heavily armed, trained, organized body of men.
This is a war. We can nit-pick after we’ve won.
There were 2 turning points which have made the current brand of racial politics come to life: 1971 & 1991.
In 1971 the outbreak of stagflation caused the Democrats to shift political gears. For 4 decades previously the Democrats had presented themselves as a labor party, champion of the working man. Whether or not you agree with the specific policies which they promoted, this was how they sold themselves back then. With stagflation it was decided that they needed to shift away from that. Presenting themselves as the party which promotes underprivileged segments of the population without any notice of labor became the new look.
In 1991 the Cold War ended. As long as there seemed to be a significant rival power to the US, the elite elements still saw a need to try to appeal to people. While the Cold War was on it was considered necessary that both blacks and Confederate-flag-waving whites should be made happy enough to go lose a leg in Vietnam. With the Cold War gone, the ramblings about “anti-racism” began to take on a different tone.
The shift which the Democrats made in 1971 can be seen as a rationally calculated public relations maneuver. You stop promoting labor interests, but you disguise this by saying that you are concerned about “prejudice.” The developments since 1991 are certainly not some well-calculated maneuvers designed simply to draw the working class into dying for Israel in Iran or whatever. The tendency now is to insult working people who gladly voted for a pro-Israel candidate like Donald Trump.
None of this is a properly calibrated plan to maneuver silly proles into dying for the bourgeoisie. It reflects some of the most irrational arrogance by a ruling elite towards its own people. While the shift in 1971 was mainly a shift by Democrats towards labor, the shift since 1991 is much broader. The triumphant bourgeoisie no longer saw it as necessary that the proles should be given some sop to tide them over.
Because the big thing I note about the post-1968 Democratic party at the national level is the New Left's capture of it. By 1971 they'd noticed the labor you note they shifted from didn't for example agree with them on the Vietnam War; for one minor example of that see the 1970 Hard Hat Riot which also included a lot of Wall Street area office workers.
And while it wasn't a sea change, the Democrats were also more overtly on the side of Communists from the Soviet Union to the latter's many "projects" in Latin America, plus of course gave South Vietnam to the North. Before then, their price for allowing us to fight the Evil Empire was various social programs and the like.
Your general thesis, especially after we defeated said empire is correct, although I again point to the cultural forces inside the Democratic party that meant this allowed them to more freely do what they really wanted to do to the proles.Replies: @Patrick McNally
In 1971 the outbreak of stagflation caused the Democrats to shift political gears. For 4 decades previously the Democrats had presented themselves as a labor party, champion of the working man. Whether or not you agree with the specific policies which they promoted, this was how they sold themselves back then. With stagflation it was decided that they needed to shift away from that. Presenting themselves as the party which promotes underprivileged segments of the population without any notice of labor became the new look.
In 1991 the Cold War ended. As long as there seemed to be a significant rival power to the US, the elite elements still saw a need to try to appeal to people. While the Cold War was on it was considered necessary that both blacks and Confederate-flag-waving whites should be made happy enough to go lose a leg in Vietnam. With the Cold War gone, the ramblings about "anti-racism" began to take on a different tone.
The shift which the Democrats made in 1971 can be seen as a rationally calculated public relations maneuver. You stop promoting labor interests, but you disguise this by saying that you are concerned about "prejudice." The developments since 1991 are certainly not some well-calculated maneuvers designed simply to draw the working class into dying for Israel in Iran or whatever. The tendency now is to insult working people who gladly voted for a pro-Israel candidate like Donald Trump.
None of this is a properly calibrated plan to maneuver silly proles into dying for the bourgeoisie. It reflects some of the most irrational arrogance by a ruling elite towards its own people. While the shift in 1971 was mainly a shift by Democrats towards labor, the shift since 1991 is much broader. The triumphant bourgeoisie no longer saw it as necessary that the proles should be given some sop to tide them over.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
That’s an interesting, although perhaps overly rational way of looking at this sea change. Or maybe I should follow the advice of Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds I often repeat and “Embrace the healing power of ‘and’.”
Because the big thing I note about the post-1968 Democratic party at the national level is the New Left’s capture of it. By 1971 they’d noticed the labor you note they shifted from didn’t for example agree with them on the Vietnam War; for one minor example of that see the 1970 Hard Hat Riot which also included a lot of Wall Street area office workers.
And while it wasn’t a sea change, the Democrats were also more overtly on the side of Communists from the Soviet Union to the latter’s many “projects” in Latin America, plus of course gave South Vietnam to the North. Before then, their price for allowing us to fight the Evil Empire was various social programs and the like.
Your general thesis, especially after we defeated said empire is correct, although I again point to the cultural forces inside the Democratic party that meant this allowed them to more freely do what they really wanted to do to the proles.
That's not how Zbigniew Brzezinski came across in this interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140313094715/https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview
-----
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention ... We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. ... That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. ... What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
-----
Sure, there were lots of grassroots activists who opposed things like counter-insurgency in El Salvador and voted for Democrats as a lesser evil. But these people were not calling the shots then, nor do they now.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
They should take the speed that average drivers normally go on a particular stretch of highway and make that the speed limit. Almost all drivers know what they are doing and are just trying to get home safely.
There's a stretch of highway between Baltimore and DC where, if you drove the posted speed limit, you'd be safety hazard because everyone else is going so much faster.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
Same thing is true of I-270 between Frederick MD and the DC Beltway. The default speed these days is 70+ no matter what is posted.
“If conservatives were the least bit intelligent, they would have stolen the idea of ‘curated diversity’ to verbally beat progressives with it.’ Well, they try that. Hence the careers of Candace Owens, Hershel Walker, Diamond and Silk, Ben Carson, etc.Replies: @Guest007
Candace Owens, Hershel Walker, Diamond and Silk are some of the Stepin Fetchit types types of politics. Owens is particular is used by the Dailywire as a form of passive-aggressive mocking of blacks.
The Democratic Party is a religious movement as much as a political party. It’s not enough to vote for them, you have to believe in a creed as well. They don’t want your vote otherwise. They periodically drive out (purity tests) groups that they deem insufficiently ‘devout’. This is archetypal behavior for a religious movement.
This happened to Southerners in the 1960s. The NYC liberals who’ve run the party since Roosevelt never liked these people and were glad to be rid of them. (Driving them into the arms of the Party of Lincoln.)
Christians who take their religion seriously are another group. Again, the party leaders don’t feel comfortable with displays of intense Christian devotion, at least from white people.
(They have to be subtle about this though, as there are also lots of devout non-whites. This is arguably what sank Hillary Clinton in 2016. The “spirit cooking” affair revealed to the world that the party is run by people who are privately contemptuous of Christianity and its adherents. The black church ladies who turned out in droves for Obama in 2008 and 2012 stayed home in 2016.)
Working class white men are another group that have been driven out. (And into the arms of the Party of the Bosses.) As with Southerners, the party leaders regard these people as irredeemable bigots and don’t want them on their side. They were followed by middle class white men. Affirmative action and related programs have hit them hard, and their complaints are met with only scorn from Democrats. (Losing these groups also damaged Hillary in 2016.)
The next group to go will probably be non-elite white women. The vilification of “Karens” suggests they’re next in line.
The end result of all these purges will be an ideologically pure white elite (the elect!) allied to a coalition of non-white/non-Christian groups.
That 2nd Street on ramp was great. For some reason, trucks could use it even when it was HOV. A lot of moving jobs, that saved me serious time getting back to the East Bay during the rush hour — and one time, I saw the police pulling over and ticketing all the single drivers.
Stats driven traffic enforcement grinds my gears. And the tendency of pulling over easy 'marks'. And the retreat to the donut shop during AM/PM rush hours.
Lone speeders on empty highways are ticket magnets. The unlicensed, drugged-up dope weaving thru crowded rush hour traffic won't be touched. Unless he maims or kills someone.Replies: @Colin Wright
Well, I haven’t got a ticket for close to ten years now (knock on wood).
Two rules I try to follow.
1. Don’t seriously speed until somebody goes by going even faster and disappears up ahead. Hopefully he’ll draw any cops waiting up there.
2. Watch the trucks. When they’re all going 10 mph over the limit, the road’s probably clear. When they drop down to exactly the limit, you slow down too.
Are tickets really a significant part of a budget?
Because the big thing I note about the post-1968 Democratic party at the national level is the New Left's capture of it. By 1971 they'd noticed the labor you note they shifted from didn't for example agree with them on the Vietnam War; for one minor example of that see the 1970 Hard Hat Riot which also included a lot of Wall Street area office workers.
And while it wasn't a sea change, the Democrats were also more overtly on the side of Communists from the Soviet Union to the latter's many "projects" in Latin America, plus of course gave South Vietnam to the North. Before then, their price for allowing us to fight the Evil Empire was various social programs and the like.
Your general thesis, especially after we defeated said empire is correct, although I again point to the cultural forces inside the Democratic party that meant this allowed them to more freely do what they really wanted to do to the proles.Replies: @Patrick McNally
> the Democrats were also more overtly on the side of Communists from the Soviet Union
That’s not how Zbigniew Brzezinski came across in this interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140313094715/https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview
—–
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention … We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. … That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. … What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
—–
Sure, there were lots of grassroots activists who opposed things like counter-insurgency in El Salvador and voted for Democrats as a lesser evil. But these people were not calling the shots then, nor do they now.
That's not how Zbigniew Brzezinski came across in this interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140313094715/https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview
-----
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention ... We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. ... That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. ... What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
-----
Sure, there were lots of grassroots activists who opposed things like counter-insurgency in El Salvador and voted for Democrats as a lesser evil. But these people were not calling the shots then, nor do they now.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
Sorry but I’ve got to call BULLSHIT! on this gross revisionism.
A claim of a single President’s covert action of one type with a brushoff of every other player for over two decades does not even begin to make the case. Close to bedtime, but for starters the New Left captured cancellation of our latest ABM system a day after it officially started operation (important because such ruin first strike plans and we believed, perhaps mistakenly in decades later hindsight WRT to bad resource allocations that the Soviets were preparing for one).
And how can you forget or not know of the end of the Vietnam War after the Congress stripped that nation of supplies and US air support, allowing the second full scale armored invasion to succeed? For Carter, the string of existential blunders was long, forget about his canceling the B-1 bomber?
Fast forward to “Warmonger Reagan” and it was nearly full scale opposition to, you know, the first president who decided to end the Evil Empire. The major caveat there in my thesis that needs addressing is funding of the military buildup.