Things are reopening here in New Hampshire, with restrictions of restaurants being removed on 6 of the 10 counties in state, and hotels, motels, inns, B&Bs, and seasonal rentals open for for business. People are going back to work, summer attractions, state parks and beaches are open, and there is a feeling of optimism.
It’s a nice feeling.
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The protests over the death of George Floyd have involved Black Lives Matter, a group based upon the premise that police are killing too many black men and women. It does happen. There’s no denying the fact that police have gone too far on occasion. BLM would have you believe it happens every day, that the major cause of intentional deaths among the black American community are racist police officers. It is for that reason that I can in no way support BLM because it is a prevarication.
If BLM was protesting against all homicide deaths of black Americans, I would consider it an organization worthy of support. But they don’t. They ignore the thousands of homicides of black Americans committed by other blacks. The biggest cause of untimely deaths of black men in the US is other black men. Not cops. Not whites. Not ‘others’.
When BLM starts addressing this in earnest, starts working in black communities to help stop the slaughter of black men by others in their community, I will give them my wholehearted support.
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One has to wonder if Professor Joshua Mitchell will lose his job at Georgetown University for exposing some uncomfortable truths such as the following:
George Floyd’s death and the violent aftermath has prompted questions about what sort of world we live in. If we live in a liberal world that Christianity makes possible, George Floyd’s death is a singular transgression, which law can and will punish. George Floyd was a person. So, too, was the policeman who killed him. Persons are protected by the law; and those persons granted policing authority by the liberal state have a somber responsibility to use their vested authority to protect persons rather than to harm them. That is why the death of a civilian by police hands will always attract attention. The same original sin that is the basis for establishing the category of persons is also the reason why a policing force must be vigilantly watched.As Mark Tapscott writes, “[Mitchell] has exposed the stark chasm between those who view America through the bloody lens of collective guilt and those who cherish it for its emphasis on individual innocence and guilt.”
What if we do not live in a liberal world that Christianity makes possible? What if, under the pretext of liberalism and Christianity, America is still pagan? That is, what if America has always been a white nation, and still is? This is the position of many on the American left today. It is a position that holds that the black man, George Floyd, and the white police officer responsible for his death, are representatives of blood nations, not singular persons. The murder of one by the other is representative of the collective murder of one people by the other. American law cannot bring about justice, because each blood nation has its own justice, from which marginalized blood nations can never benefit. American law is white law. Street vengeance, therefore, is the only recourse—whether we call them protests or riots. White people must die, as a just exchange for the black people who have died.
--snip--
Americans today are torn between these two distinctly different understandings of what justice entails: pagan blood payment between peoples, which treats persons as mere proxies; or liberal justice, whose foundation is, finally, the Christian understanding of persons. Paganism, let us remember, is the natural condition of man, the condition for which there is no remedy without the divine antidote that breaks in upon the natural world and informs us that justice entails more than cathartic rage that settles scores. An observer with a trained eye will see in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death an America that cannot decide between pagan justice and liberal justice, and which has settled into a dangerous and unstable intermediate arrangement having elements of both. Logic would dictate that either we go back to guiltless paganism or go forward to guilt-ridden, person-centered, liberalism. We have guilt-ridden paganism instead, another name for which is identity politics.
I expect the “pagans” at Georgetown University will be screaming for Mitchell’s head in 3...2...1...
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As a follow-on there’s this from Intellectual Takeout reminding us that reminding us that in the face of the anarchy we’ve been experiencing during the rioting, looting, vandalism, and beatings/killings, we can count only on ourselves.
Stepping into the wide space of the kitchen and family room, you find three people enjoying themselves as if at a party. One is drinking from the bottle of gin while sitting on the breakfast table, directing his two comrades. “Take the laptop,” he says. “And be careful with that vase. It might be worth something.”I would shoot, too. I wouldn’t be pondering whether or not they’re frustrated by our political system, nor would I appeal to their better natures (they may have none). I would shoot them because they broke into my home, were stealing my property, and were preparing to burn down my home with me in it. That would cancel any accommodation I might have considered. They had no qualms about possibly killing me, so I would have absolutely none about ending their lives.
The girl is gathering up things – the wallet you’d left on your writing table, the cell phone plugged in and recharging by the sink, the checkbook lying by the laptop. The third guy is strolling through the family room spraying the wooden floor with an accelerant from a plastic bottle, the odor of gasoline already filling the air.
You raise the rifle, stock in your shoulder, and order them to stop.
--snip--
What’s next?
--snip--
Some of us might shrug and abandon the house to the flames, telling ourselves that these young intruders were frustrated by our political system.
Others might attempt to appeal to their better natures, explaining that if they destroy and steal all that we own they will leave us homeless and with no means of supporting ourselves.
And some of us, including me, would begin shooting without a qualm in the world.
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As I have mentioned in an earlier post, another side-effect of the rioting has been the expansion of food deserts in places that can least afford them. One of those places is the South Side of Chicago which saw the looting of a number food markets/stores including a Walmart.
The chances are Walmart and the other markets won’t reopen despite the mayor’s urgent plea not to leave.
Why, exactly, would major retailers choose to rebuild and re-open stores that were burned to the ground or otherwise destroyed by rioters? What is there in the current response to riots by big city politicians that provides any assurance that the same thing won’t happen again? If you owned a store in an area that was destroyed by rioters, would you invest more money in the same location?It makes sense for them to cut their losses, even though it will make an already under-served area even more so. All that “free s**t” the looters stole is going to cost them and everyone else in their neighborhood a lot more than they realize.
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The Feral Irishman brings up the subject of how the ‘double standard’ works, specifically regarding the death of Australian Justine Diamond at the hands of black Minneapolis police officer Mohammed Noor, a Somalian immigrant.
Do you remember all the riots after that killing, a police officer killing an innocent and unarmed woman?
Neither do I.
(H/T Pirate’s Cove)
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We’ve been hearing about how the Democrat cities being burned by the “woke” protesters are planning to de-fund their police departments and “replace them with something transformative.” Okay, I’ll bite.
What exactly will Minneapolis and any of the other cities planning to de-fund their police departments replace them with? What will the mission of this “transformative” alternative be? How will it function? Who will staff it? Will it perform the same law enforcement functions as the police department it is meant to replace? Wouldn’t that mean it is still a police department, just using a different name? How will it not be the same as a police department?
If it is not going to act as a law enforcement agency, then what exactly will it be?
No one has explained how law enforcement will be handled. Will it devolve into neighborhood militias? Will there be some version of the Geheim Staatzpolizei or Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti to deal with undesirable “unwoke” citizens? Or will it be handled by brute squads, thugs used to beat down anyone the city government thinks needs it?
All we’re hearing now is that it will supposedly be better than what they have now.
Yeah. Right.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer resorts, camps, restaurants, and amusements are reopening, where summer weather keeps getting even better, and where boating is continuing apace.