Okay, How? Part III

I find the spectacle of governors and mayor who have unswervingly kept their states and cities locked down for the last three months but have suddenly become concerned about violating First Amendment rights or the right to freedom of assembly with respect to the sometimes demonstrators, sometimes protesters, sometimes rioters and looters who are destroying their cities baffling. They set aside free speech areas during political conventions why not now?

Yesterday I endured an excruciating presentation by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in which she and city department heads including the police commissioner, one after another, explained to us how hard they were trying. I am not their mother. I honestly don’t care how hard the situation they face is or how hard they’re trying. I did not ask the mayor to take the job. Quite to the contrary she campaigned for it. If it’s too difficult for her, she should resign and let someone else undertake the responsibilities.

I think I understand the predicament they face. They don’t want to undermine their own authority, they don’t want to aggravate the situation, but they don’t want their city to burn, either. There’s quite a bit of knowledge about dealing with crowds although for some reason or other it hasn’t been much studied lately. The main thing to remember is that a crowd can transform into an aggressive mob in which the people are doing things they wouldn’t think of as individuals with frightening suddenness. Really, sometimes all it take is one individual yelling “Hey, let’s start looting!”

If they’re unwilling to limit demonstrations to designated areas, far from shopping areas, they need to be ready to demonstrate overwhelming presence if not overwhelming force and be prepared at the same time for mass arrests, something that should take place the moment the first rock, bottle, or brick is thrown. Something else that surprised me was that they seemed to think that 500 arrests in a day was a lot. It’s a lot if there are only 500 people engaging in mob action or disorderly conduct. If 1,000 people are engaging in such actions, it’s not nearly enough.

They can’t allow the demonstrators to overwhelm the system. They’ll need to cut some corners. They should have a lot of cable ties on hand. And if incarcerating those engaging in disorderly conduct or mob action results in all of them contracting COVID-19, so be it. Certainly exercising their rights of free assembly and speech were worth it.

27 comments… add one
  • GreyShambler Link

    “spectacle of governors and mayors”

    Same issue leaders have in Europe with Muslim riots.
    The governors and mayors when faced with actual violence are cowards.
    Our society all the way up to kneeling police officers have justified black violence, because they fear it.
    The President’s message is clumsy, but quite right.
    The legitimate government must maintain a monopoly on force or cease to be legitimate.

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    As long as the mayors / governors think it is to their partisan advantage (and it is so far, Biden is widening his lead), there is a certain approbation/tolerance for the violence.

    Here is NYC mayor. “400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services”

    Kamala Harris is tweeting to raise money for bail for arrested protestors in Minnesota.

    If (very unlikely) the polls go south for Biden; then watch suddenly the protests get moved 10 miles out into a state park, surrounded by cops with paddy wagons visible.

    I am curious if the protesters will escalate and demand that Trump is removed from office before summer ends.

  • bob sykes Link

    Leftist violence and black riots tend to elect law and order Republicans, so the current chaos should benefit Trump.

    It is interesting that both William Strauss’ and Neil Howe’s “The Fourth Turning” and Peter Turchin’s “Ages of Discord” predict widespread civil unrest in the US during the 2020’s. Straus and Howe use a generational/psychological model, and Turchin’s is socio-economic. The convergence of their analyses is quite disturbing. In both analyses, the racial protests and Antifa revolution are just surface phenomena, being driven by deeper social, generational, and economic forces.

    Their analyses actually apply to the West and probably Asia, too. So this is a world-wide problem. Germans, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese should not gloat. Their turn is coming soon.

    While we’re waiting for the unfolding of history, the riots have probably set back the nascent recovery quite a bit. NYC might have been tipped over into a permanent, ongoing decline. Looting Macy’s is more than symbolic. It is symptomatic. Don’t gloat. Chicago is sliding down, too

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    Law and order works for a challenger candidate when there is chaos.
    Trump is the incumbent.

  • jan Link

    In a new Morning Consult Poll 7 out of 10 registered voters support bringing in the a National Guard to help communities defend themselves from rioters. A smaller majority, but still a majority, support bringing in the military.

    Such polling on policy will reflect on presidential polling as well, especially on law and order candidates, in the wake of the current lawlessness.

  • steve Link

    Maybe we can get a law and order candidate who works on having police not murder people on camera. Maybe, probably not.

    “They should have a lot of cable ties on hand. And if incarcerating those engaging in disorderly conduct or mob action results in all of them contracting COVID-19, so be it.”

    Agree. I am still puzzled as to why they spend so much effort on protestors and not so much on people actively looting. Arrest them and lock them up.

    Steve

  • why they spend so much effort on protestors and not so much on people actively looting

    The rioters and looters are interspersed among the demonstrators, in effect using the demonstrators as shields. They can’t go after the looters without making their way through a bunch of demonstrators who are in many cases trying to impede them.

    I just finished listening to a statement on TV from a representative of the CPD saying just that.

  • Guarneri Link

    “The rioters and looters are interspersed among the demonstators, in effect using the demonstrators as shields. They can’t go after the looters without making their way through a bunch of demonstrators who are in many cases trying to impede them.”

    Steve isn’t even trying to be coherent anymore. The answer wrote itself.

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    I’m trying to game out the possible paths out of this.

    The protests fizzle out
    The protests stay until Nov
    Trump is forced out of office (Color revolution)

    What worries me is if the WSJ is correct, emotions are still building.

  • steve Link

    “The rioters and looters are interspersed among the demonstrators”

    May just be the times I was watching but there were clearly times in MPLS, NYC and LA where the high end stores were being looted and there weren’t any people around carrying protest signs or doing anything that looked like protesting. No police around and they were just running in and out of stores carrying stuff.

    Steve

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    See what I mean by approbation / equivocation of the violence.

    The Governor of Virginia refused the White House request to send national guards into DC. The mayor of DC threatens to sue the President if he tries to take control of the DC Police (which he has the legal authority).

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8381457/Virginia-governor-REFUSED-send-National-Guard-Washington-D-C.html

    I am not liking the feeling of this…

  • steve Link

    OT- Lets not forget Covid. Florida is now one of the states leading the nation in nursing home deaths. Still increasing too.

    https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article243096941.html

  • Greyshambler Link

    Trump’s using the the Bible to emphasize that he’s gonna go all Old Testament on the looters.

  • CStanley Link

    Makes me glad to live near Atlanta instead of Chicago. We’ve watched the last few nights as the police and Nat’l Guard made clear in no uncertain terms that demonstrators were to abide by the 9 pm curfew. The local newscaster noted that last night they began using tear gas at 9:02 pm. Tonight it was just 30 seconds past 9:00.

    Our Democratic female black mayor and our Republican male white governor seem to be on the same page, and handling things as well as possible. I pray it continues.

  • TarsTarkas Link

    Steve: If a cop did what Chauvin did to Floyd in your municipality, would you be OK with your house being looted and burnt down in protest? I am not my brother’s keeper, and neither are you.

    Considering Chauvin’s past record I don’t know why he was still even on the Minneapolis police force. But of course this is the same force that did their absolute best to ensure that Noor avoid justice for his panicked killing of Justine Damond, so maybe it’s part for the course for them. Systemic racism isn’t their problem, it’s circle-the-wagons incompetence coupled with knee-jerk abject crawling to the God of Political Correctness.

    Many of these cities are effectively ‘legally owned gun free zones’, meaning law-abiding citizens are denied their 2A rights whereas the criminals aren’t. These same cities also have done their best to ensure that their law-abiding subjects don’t dare to defend themselves against criminals, for fear of having the book thrown at them for using excessive force or God forbid a firearm. They don’t go after the thugs responsible for 90% plus of the murders in the cities because the thugs are mostly POC and being tarred as a racist or an Uncle Tom instantly destroys political careers in those venues. They are also terrified of the firepower of the criminals. What we are seeing is the revelation of their cowardice and a**kissing PC attitudes to the nation at large live-streamed.

  • Guarneri Link

    Antifa and anarchists have hijacked Floyd protests but left won’t admit it- Jonathon Turley. (The Hill)

    Another whack job Republican conspiracist going on about Antifa. Oh,……..wait.

    You know what we need around here? A guy who reads things professionally. You know, to scrape the wheat from the chaff. Yeah, that’s it.

  • Guarneri Link
  • In Chicago at least I think the preponderance of the evidence suggests that there’s nothing political at all behind the looting and destruction—it’s just plain criminals using the chaos produced by the demonstrations as a screen.

  • Oddly, I think I may have met the CEO of Surgisphere.

  • GreyShambler Link

    “possible paths out of this”
    In my city the police and State Patrol have prostrated themselves before the raging marchers, setting the stage for the next act. Their act of contrition and submission has been accepted for now. No harm will come to them if they stay back, but the protests are far from done, their goals are political.

  • I think the goal of the demonstrators is political but that the “demonstrators” on the one hand and the “rioters and looters” aren’t synonymous on the other. There’s probably some overlap but at least in Chicago they’re actually pretty distinct. It may be different in Omaha.

  • steve Link

    “These same cities also have done their best to ensure that their law-abiding subjects don’t dare to defend themselves against criminals, for fear of having the book thrown at them for using excessive force or God forbid a firearm. ”

    Few, if any such cases actually exist, or at least they arent publicized. What is really happening, I think, is that store owners realize that we have an armed society. If it is one store owner with a gun and 15 looters enter they are likely criminals and some of them have guns. Not good odds. (This was something we talked about when I worked in West Philly and was much younger. Was it a good idea to carry a weapon to protect ourselves? The general consensus is that if you didnt display a weapon people would just go “hands’ with you if you needed to fight, pull out a weapon and people would respond in kind. We weren’t the police so we couldn’t be sure of back up.)

    So if you are running a convenience store in the burbs having a weapon and using it makes sense. Having one in the city to defend yourself if needed makes sense. Standing outside your store and holding a weapon in a big city? Probably makes you a target for someone else with a weapon. Maybe they go somewhere else for easier pickings, maybe not. High risk. Its one thing to talk all badass and another thing to actually go out and kill other people and get shot at.

    “I think the goal of the demonstrators is political but that the “demonstrators” on the one hand and the “rioters and looters” aren’t synonymous on the other. There’s probably some overlap but at least in Chicago they’re actually pretty distinct.”

    Watching from afar thats what it looks like in many places. The people coming out to loot at night look and act different than the people protesting during the day.

    Steve

  • Guarneri Link
  • Guarneri Link

    “I think the goal of the demonstrators is political but that the “demonstrators” on the one hand and the “rioters and looters” aren’t synonymous on the other. There’s probably some overlap….”

    Yes. This is the real debate. And I’ll go one step further. Its fine if demonstrators are political. Its America. But the evidence is becoming overwhelming that those demonstrators of the Antifa stripe have been seeded into the demonstrating crowd to incite violence to achieve their political goals. They loot black owned businesses. They shot a black retired policeman yesterday. I thought black lives mattered? They don’t give a damn about blacks.

    That’s all it takes; a few well placed agitators to incite a hyped up mob. I posted a link to a video yesterday anyone can see with their own two eyes. An Antifa guy egging on people. I see no reason to believe Chicago is any different. Its just that the Antifa crowd need be only a minority to accomplish their objectives. Hard to ID. Raw body count statistics is not real analysis.

    The Steves of the world can polly parrott the Don Lemons of the world if they like. It simply shreds what thin shred of credibility they might have. And it calls into question character. This has nothing to do with Floyd or police abuses now. Its all about anarchy to achieve a political goal.

    These things have a way of sorting themselves out. The white supremacist garbage has been relegated to the idiot class. The NY mayor, speaking of idiots, is in open warfare with his citizens, his governor and his police force. Well done steve, er, Bill. Only the crazed partisans don’t see what is happening. Let me correct that, they see it in spades; the ends justify the means in their warped heads.

  • GreyShambler Link

    And there’s something else. Threatening mobs are not conducive to people wanting to go out in the evening to spend money and have a good time. And a group of young Blacks heading my way on the sidewalk was always a threat, now it’s cause for alarm. With their speed it’s too late to hobble for the door, so you keep eyes on the ground, move off the sidewalk and hope. They will do exactly what they feel like doing to me.

  • GreyShambler Link
  • steve Link

    “Sweden’s top epidemiologist has admitted his strategy to fight Covid-19 resulted in too many deaths, after persuading his country to avoid a strict lockdown. “If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with Swedish Radio.”

    Steve 1. Drew- Not even in the game.

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