Two Countries

Scott Adams recently proposed looking at the US murder rate as if the US was two countries, one white and one black.  Sounds like a plan to get himself canceled.  However, I had seen a graphic on the internet - a known reliable source - that did something like that.  I found some numbers for a variety of countries on Macrotrends.net.  Here are the murder rates for 2018 per 100,000 people.

Yes, the United States looks pretty bad.  It would appear that the further south one travels in North America, the worse the murder rate.  Now, let's take a look at the FBI data for 2018 murders.

Now that we have the raw number of murders by race, let's determine the rate per 100,000 so we can plug it into the previous chart.  Working backwards, we can determine the population by this formula:

Population = Murders/(murder rate/100,000)

Macrotrends used 326,895,161 for the US population.  Let's stick with that number.  According to the Census bureau, Whites made up 73% of the population and blacks accounted for 12.7%.  What does that give us?

Clearly, we have imperfect data but it should give us some ballpark idea.  In order to determine the murder rate by race, we use the reverse of our population formula above:

Murder Rate = Murders/population*100,000

Wow, that's quite the range there.  Scott Adams makes an interesting point.  These numbers certainly demand his cancellation.  Let's plug them into the countries chart and see what we get.

Clearly, the murder rate just for white America is still more than double the rate for any of the European countries.  However, it is around half of what the comprehensive number showed.  As for black America, it is more dangerous than Mexico.  One must consider that the murder rate has spiked in the last two years and the numbers are now much worse.

It's Not About Black Lives Anymore

In the wake of George Floyd's death, protests erupted against the mistreatment of blacks at the hands of police.  This protest quickly went nation-wide and transformed into riots and looting.  Then there was the push to tear down statues.  These pro-slavery statues had to go if we were to really demonstrate that black lives mattered.  Yes, they have a point.  But then Thomas Jefferson had to come down because he was a slave owner.  That becomes a bit murkier.  Then it was George Washington's turn because he too was a slave owner.  When Ulysses Grant, the man who forced General Lee to surrender and end the Civil War, gets torn down, it's not about black lives anymore.  It has since moved on to the removal of Theodore Roosevelt, the toppling of Father Junipero Serra, and even calls to remove an Abraham Lincoln statue that was funded by freed slaves.  There has even been a call to tear down Jesus because he is depicted as European.  The Black Lives Matter movement has been usurped by Antifa and twisted it into an anti-American movement.

Who else tries to erase the past by demolishing monuments and statues?  ISIS did that.  The Taliban used explosives to get rid of a 2,500 year old statue of Buddha.  Russia demolished thousands of churches to make way for the new religion of communism.  Government-run schools in the United States have already stopped teaching American history as anything other than a crime against humanity.  It is time to get rid of monuments to American history.  A clean slate will make it much easier to setup a new way of doing things.  Something more to the tastes of Antifa.

A hundred years ago, virtually every living person was racist, sexist, homophobic, and classist and it gets worse the further back you go.  It has been a very different world through the ages.  We've come a long way.  If every person who ever lived must meet today's moral standards, there will be no historical figures to celebrate.  How many of us living today will meet the standards of 2120?

Hoaxed (2019)

Hoaxed is a movie about the fake news, mainly told by fringe figures of the media landscape.  Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, Scott Adams, Jordan Peterson, James O'Keefe, Tim Pool, and other online personalities provide their perspectives.  Having read two of Scott Adams' books, Jordan Peterson's book, and being a regular viewer of Tim Pool's YouTube channel, I was familiar with most of the complaints leveled.  Of course, the leftist slant of the media is covered, which was old news to me.  However, there were some surprises.

 

Cassie Jaye, an actress turned documentary director, had some success with feminist films.  She decided to tackle the men's rights movement in her next film.  Though she expected to uncover bigotry and misogyny, her interviews and research led her to different conclusions.  To her surprise, she was attacked by former allies for creating a pro-male film and abandoning feminism.  Though I have not seen the film, I did watch her Ted Talk.  She diverged from the party line and was attacked.

 

Multiple personalities noted that the media highlights conflict because it leads to more viewers on TV or more clicks on the internet.  If it bleeds, it leads.  That's hardly a surprise.  However, a Black Lives Matter activist was interviewed.  While in Washington DC with his group, he had seen some All Lives Matter folks and things looked tense.  But he was invited to speak and the two groups found common ground.  He was cheered by the crowd.  Here was the feel-good story of the day and somehow it didn't make it into the news.  The BLM activist was asked if he had heard of Dylan Roof storming into a black church in South Carolina.  Of course.  How about Emanuel Samson (a black man) storming into a church and shooting white people in Tennessee?  No, had not heard that story.  Nor had I.  One fits the America is racist narrative and the other doesn't.

 

The big surprise was that the media hypes conflict.  Conflict generates viewers and viewers generate money.  A war provides a 24/7 news cycle and high ratings.  Does the media provide fake news to lead to war?  The Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.  The media floated the government line and Vietnam escalated dramatically.  Was the media more circumspect the next time government pushed for war?  Well, it has since been proven that the babies being yanked from incubators story that turned opinion for the first Gulf War (1991) was false.  Never happened.  Again, the media was fooled.  Or were they?  CNN had awesome ratings throughout the Gulf War.  Was Saddam really trying to build nukes as George W Bush said?  Judith Miller was eventually dumped by the New York Times because her stories about weapons of mass destruction proved inaccurate.  Oh, but the ratings were fabulous.  This is a really dark view of the media.

 

This only scratches the surface of topics from the two-hour movie.  It is an exploration of what the media has become.  The media has become an echo chamber - best exemplified by Twitter - and it thrives on conflict.  Rather than providing news, it sows division.  At least, that is what is argued here.  Check it out.

Blame Trump?

The man who sent bombs to prominent Democrats turned out to be a Trump fan.  Therefore, Trump is to blame for the bombs being sent.  The man who shot up a synagogue and killed 11 turned out to be a Trump hater.  Therefore, Trump is to blame for the massacre.  It sure looks like if something bad happens, Trump is inevitably the root problem.

Of course, by this logic, Bernie Sanders has to take responsibility for the Bernie Bro crackpot who shot Steve Scalise at the Republican baseball practice and Obama gets credit for the Black Lives Matter nut who killed several police officers in Dallas.

 

Adversarial rhetoric is not the same as incitement.  Hold the person who did the shooting or mailed the bomb responsible.

Hate is not a Crime

In the wake of the spree of cop killings, there is a push to make it a hate crime to kill a police officer.  Blue lives matter.  Like all the previous hate crime legislation that preceded it, this is a bad idea.  The effect of hate crime legislation is to mete out different punishments depending on who the victim is.  Thus, sometimes the same crime is punished more harshly because of 'hate.'  Murder is murder and it should have a set punishment.  The law should not say that it is worse to kill Officer Muldoon than it is to kill Peggy Smith the college student but neither of these is as bad as killing Tyrone Johnson the black man.  And let's not get started on how much worse than all of these it would be to kill a homosexual.  Many of those opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement have replied with All Lives Matter.  However, we are writing laws that are weighting the value of lives depending on who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.

 

If Jack killed Sam, he gets 30 years to life.  But if Jack is white and Sam is black, Jack gets 40 to life.  But if Jack is Black and Sam is Asian, he gets 25 to life.  Now, if Sam is homosexual, Jack gets 35 to life, no possibility of parole.  If Sam is a cop, Jack gets a life sentence.  If both Jack and Sam are black, Jack gets 20 to life.  If it turns out that Sam is short for Samantha, then Jack gets 35 years for misogyny unless Jack is short for Jacquelyn, in which case Jack gets 15 years; women aren't as much of a threat to society and can be released earlier.  If Jack is black and Sam is a white heterosexual male, then there cannot be hate.  In that case, Jack gets the standard 30 to life.  If it isn't obvious, I am randomly generating these sentences but the point remains that the same crime is punished differently, thus making certain lives matter more than others.

 

Thought experiment:  Let us suppose that the standard hate-free sentence for murder is 30 years.  A Klan member kills a black man and gets 30 years for the killing and 5 additional years for the hate.  Well, if that is the case, let's round up all the Klan members and sentence them to 5 years for hate.  After all, the hate is there right now.  If hate crime legislation is a good idea, let's punish the hate before the crime is committed.

 

Hate, like gluttony or greed or even rudeness, is bad but it isn't a crime.  Laws should punish specific acts based upon the act itself, not the motivation of the actor.  If Jack hated Sam or not is irrelevant to Sam being dead.  Whether Sam was white, black, Asian, homosexual, transsexual, female, or a police officer doesn't change the fact that Sam is dead and Jack did it.  If All Lives Matter, then equal punishment should be meted out for all lives.

Manufacturing a Riot

This is a troubling trend.  Seventy percent of the people arrested in Charlotte have out-of-state IDs.  These people were sent to Charlotte for the purpose of rioting and creating a crisis.  As Rahm Emanuel said, one should never let a crisis go to waste.  A crisis provides an opportunity to advance agendas.  A lot of power was ceded to government in the wake of the 9/11 Attacks.  People will accept a bad deal during a crisis that they would never accept under normal circumstances.  This psychological truth is used against the voters by having an endless series of crises, this manufactured riot is just one.  That is not to say that the police shooting should be ignored or overlooked, but nor should it be used as a pretext for a riot with the goal of boosting the African American vote in November.

 

If Black Lives Matter really cared about black lives, they would be spending a lot of time protesting in Chicago.  Why aren't they?  BLM is an arm of the Democratic Party and Illinois is solidly in the Democrat camp.  Why waste the effort?  Now Missouri (Ferguson riots) and North Carolina (Charlotte riots) are states that can go either way.  Consider this: An armed black man was killed by a black cop from a police department with a black police chief; this is a sign of racism and resulted in a riot by out-of-state goons.  In Oklahoma, an unarmed black man was killed by a white officer from a department headed by a white police chief and no riot.  Why?  Oklahoma is solidly Republican; it would be a waste of money to dispatch busloads of out-of-state goons to riot there.

 

It is troubling to admit, but there is a fifth column in the United States that is seeking to undermine the country.  There have long been fifth column groups (e.g. Communist party) but they were never this out in the open and openly funded.  DCLeaks hacked some George Soros emails and it was clear that he wants to transform the country and thinks Black Lives Matter riots are a valid strategy.

Which Life Mattered?

Milwaukee, a city that last had a Republican mayor in 1908, has seen "a night of violent protests" (as opposed to rioting) in the wake of the death of Sylville Smith.  Sylville ran from officers during a traffic stop.  Sylville was armed and reportedly raised the gun in the direction of the pursuing officers.  He was shot in the chest and arm.  The incident was captured on body cam footage though that footage has not yet been released.  The important part to the rioters and the Black Lives Matter crowd is that a black suspect was killed by police.  Anything beyond that is irrelevant.

And now for the rest of the story: the officer who shot Sylville Smith was black.  If the officer had not taken down Sylville but instead had been killed by him, would there still have been a riot?  In either case, a black life would have been lost.  Which life mattered?  Black Lives Matter is an anti-law enforcement group that is presenting itself as a civil rights group.  That the sitting president supports them is a clear message to police across the country.  After decades of declining crime rates, there has been an uptick since Black Lives Matter arose.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Also, isn't it strange how all these 'racist' shootings keep taking place in cities where Democrats have had single-party rule for decades?  Why doesn't anyone ever seem to notice that?

Ouroboros

An ouroborous is a snake that eats its own tail.  Such creatures have existed in many mythologies though the most noted is probably Jormungandr, the Norse serpent that encircles the world.  It is fated to slay Thor during Ragnarok (Norse Doomsday) while also being killed by the thunder god.  I mention this because the Democratic Party is starting to resemble an Ouroboros.  A few months ago, I noted here that most Democratic Presidents would be found lacking as far as racial sensitivity was concerned.  At that time, the problem was Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.  Now the issue is Woodrow Wilson.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/18/princeton-students-take-over-presidents-office-demand-erasure-of-woodrow-wilson/

As more and more Democratic Presidents are attacked by Democratic constituencies, the foundation will erode.  Recall, it was the Democratic Party that defended segregation and Jim Crow into the 1960s.  It was Orval Faubus - Democrat Governor of Arkansas - who opposed racial integration and Dwight Eisenhower - Republican President - who federalized the national guard to enforce Brown vs. Board of Education.  Eisenhower also signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960.  Today, the only one anyone remembers is the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It should be noted that Strom Thurmond - then a Democrat - filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights act for more than 24 hours, setting a record for a one man filibuster.  What about the infamous Bull Connor?  Yeah, he was a Democrat.  Governor George "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" Wallace was a Democrat.

 

The Ku Klux Klan was an ally of the Democratic Party from its founding, achieving its highest membership in the mid 1920s.  Let's look at Klansmen who entered politics:

Harry Truman, Democrat President: Briefly dabbled with the Klan in the mid 20s, when it was at its peak.  If he did join (it is in doubt), it was in order to get votes for his reelection campaign of 1924.

Robert Byrd, Democrat Senator: Achieved title of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops but left organization in 1940s.

Hugo Black, Democrat Supreme Court Justice: Joined in early 1920s to gain votes.

Theodore Bilbo, Democrat Senator: Stated in interview that once a Klansman, always a Klansman.  One had to take an oath to that effect.

Bibb Graves, Democrat Governor: Joined to improve electoral chances.

Clifford Walker, Democrat Governor: Revealed as Klansman in 1924.

George Gordon, Democrat Congressman: First Grand Dragon of Tennessee.

Benjamin Stapleton, Democrat mayor of Denver: Appointed Klan members to most positions in municipal government.

David Duke, Democrat (pre-1989) & Republican (post-1989) Legislator: Democrats' favorite Klansman because he has an R after his name these days.  According to Duke, he left the KKK in 1980, which puts him in the Democrat column.

Truman is going to have to go.  Half the government buildings in West Virginia are named for Robert Byrd; need to rename them all.  Democrats prior to the 1960s are almost certainly going to be unacceptable to the Black Lives Matter crowd.  The ones after 1960s should also be unacceptable but thanks to the deft political skills of LBJ and a compliant media, everyone now thinks that it was the Republicans - party of Lincoln, the party founded to oppose slavery - who were the slave owners and segregationists.

 

The Democrats have championed Political Correctness and been only too happy to attack minor incidents in their opponents' past as a reason such people should be reviled.  They never expected this to be used against them, especially by those they had inculcated with PC.  Oh, the irony.  The poetic justice.  I am curious to see how much more this ouroboros is able to devour itself.