Conservatives love themselves the “slippery slope “ argument. Well here it is playing out before our eyes.
Protect them from what? If they’re not rioting, no one cares. That said, they should be allowed to exercise their rights just like anyone else. The general, escalating tension is 100% a product of the news media. The more concerning thing is the sign in the background with the guys Rittenhouse killed. How deranged does someone have to be to lionize those two scumbags?
I think this kind of thing was inevitable after the whole "defund the police" debacle in 2020, when certain cities were allowed to devolve into mobs. Look at the group of people that rushed Nordstrom's yesterday in San Fran. The next logical step, if the state is not going to adequately moderate crime, is for the citizenry to do it. The problem with mob rule, of course, is that it shoots first and asks questions later. I worry we'll see escalating violence as the small group of criminals in each area gets more brazen and business owners get more fed up.
He's just as likely to shoot the wrong person with that long range glass. I zoomed in, looking for offset sights, but don't see any. The man needs to spend the $200 at SFT2 on an accessory package.
No, he's got that 9mm strapped for the close work. There are more cameras than protestors in that picture.
I’m gonna do a Crown-style aside. Remember Cindy Sheehan? There was a photo of her kneeling at her son’s grave, and when you look at the un-cropped photo, it’s like a Bosch painting 80 cameramen crowded around her. Your comment reminded me of that, anyway, moving along.
Very few places actually defunded their police in any meaningful way, and no city devolved into mobs. I live in one of these supposed lawless cities and 2020 was boring. It's not like that supposed lawless liberal wasteland of San Francisco was the only place this happened; Walnut Creek, which is a NIMBY suburb type with 90k+ average household income, also got hit. It's clearly an organized effort that's planning and hitting multiple locations.
This right here. Besides, when the hell do I ever use the word "merry" the other 364 days a year? Someone is wishing you well, be grateful. If you correct them for not saying "Merry Christmas" you're an asshole of the worst kind.
Given that the current DA for San Francisco is the son of two far-left domestic terrorists, I wouldn’t hold your breath for things to get better there any time soon.
Okay...so how many places does it have to hit for it to be a problem? In 2020, Portland went down the drain. Kenosha obviously had mobs and fires. Los Angeles, Dallas, Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Louisville all had violent protests and at least three people were shot and killed when Breona Taylor happened. Minneapolis had 76 businesses lit on fire. Historically, societies have been built on one of two things: rule by state, or rule by tribe. In order for the state to rule, it must have a monopoly on violence and the governed must disempower themselves and accept the rulings the state issues down. Which is really hard if it's your kid that's been raped or murdered, to accept the judicial system's penalty towards the offender. The covenant in all of this is that the state act responsibly and hold control over civil society. Many of these cities saw the civic leadership issue edicts saying, essentially, "let the protestors act as they will." With that came a myriad of bad actors, because there were no consequences to worry about. Which, in turn, puts the onus on the individual to protect themselves and their property. It also escalates, because if BLM can stage protests that sometimes turn into mobs unchecked throughout the country, then the neo-cons can do the same thing at the Capitol, right? Is the media blowing some shit out of proportion and fanning flames of discord? Most definitely. Is the way the leadership is attempting to deal with a racial reckoning misguided with unintended consequences? Yes. Multiple conflicting things are all true. Where this is escalating to, though, is the next mob of people who tries to break into a department store might get cut in half with a machine gun from some nutty store owner who has decided "not on my watch." I worry, because I don't see a path forward to make this better. One side legitimately thinks that a pedophile who got shot while setting fires and beating a 17-year-old is a hero. The other side thinks that 17-year-olds with AR-style weapons are necessary and heroic when defending property. How do we meet in the middle and course correct?
It is a problem, but it's not due to some breakdown of civil society due to defunding police. It's organized crime using a hard-to-defend-against tactic. They're in getaway cars and gone almost before the store employees can react. Investigators will have to change tactics to identify how these goods are moved, how these raids are planned, and try to disrupt them there. I live in one of the cities you listed, and as I said, it was boring. I think people don't appreciate how big some of these cities are, and therefore how small things are in comparison to the scale of the city. They see something on the news and translate it to happening in their small town. Los Angeles is 10 million people. A crime happening in Los Angeles is basically the equivalent of a crime happening anywhere between Denver and Chicago. But that's not what happened. Police were absolutely beating the shit out of protesters. The playbook of: declare illegal gathering -> order to disperse -> baton practice was run over and over again. One side does not think this. They think he shouldn't have died, and if he had been setting fires he should have had his day in court for it.
The prevailing conspiracy theory is that all of the heavy coverage of this stuff is to distract the public from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial.
I thought a Clinton fix-it man would have gotten to her with piano wire by now. But seriously, what is she going to tell us? Things we already know? Like the higher-ups will do anything about it anyways. Whatever. She made children fuck Alan Dershowitz (the most ugly, awful and obnoxious person alive) so if she ends up dead like her fellow pimp, that’s still a win.
Spoiler This is the kind of shit that's worrying. A man who once took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five innocent teenagers isn't meeting with Rittenhouse because of a longstanding commitment to the presumption of innocence and a deep respect for the judicial system.
Couldn’t follow this at all, but I do like how Trump has his “greatest hits” in picture form on the wall lol.
I can't even pretend to figure out what's going on his head where meeting a brutal dictator was a big moment more worthy of remembrance than meeting the Queen, or the UK prime minister, or the German Chancellor, or the Pope, or whoever isn't else that isn't a legitimate monster. Also not shown in that picture due to angles, but the Mt Rushmore bust down at the bottom has Trump's head added as a fifth head. The room's decor is just shameless narcissism.
I notice his picture of him partying with Don “The Magic” Juan isn’t on the wall. Juan has it on his.