2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 111,970
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This is a two part piece looking at the effects of crime.....and this is what the democrats have done to us...
There is an environmentâwe feel it intuitivelyâthat breeds crime, an element in which crime ineluctably thrives. The âbadâ neighborhood, the street where itâs unsafe to walk at night, the urban dystopia where the victims who are ostensibly âasking for itâ receive their unwelcome answers. Those forced to endure it try to pretend it doesnât exist. The demoralizing effect of streets filled with trash and vagrants, of sidewalks land-mined with feces (animal or human), of storefronts marred by graffitiâthese, the city-dweller tries to ignore. In traversing the city, he selectively edits his visual field. Like the straphangers in Hazzardâs novel, he affects indifference. A security guard on Market Street in San Francisco recently told New York, âWhat it really feels like living in San Francisco is that youâre lying to yourself. Oh, I live in San Francisco. Itâs so nice. When you walk by the junkies youâre like, They donât exist. They donât exist. Youâre lying to yourself.â Humankind cannot bear too much urban reality.
----
There is a link, definite but hard to define, between moral ugliness and the physical ugliness it feeds on and perpetuates. There is a disquiet that comes from realizing you live in the same city and neighborhood as people interested only in destruction. In late May 2020, I watched online as Minneapolis rioters reduced a 189-unit affordable-housing complex to smoldering ashes, burning the unfinished building down to its concrete foundation. Afterward, I texted a dramatic picture of the fire to a friend, a committed progressive who works as a federal prosecutor, to ask what he thought. âThat is an incredible photo,â he remarked. âIâm not going to comment on the propriety [of] rioting tho.â I challenged him: What propriety would that be? The propriety of burning homes and police stations to the ground? âWeâve already established,â he said, âI have a soft heart.â As if this admission excused everything, the arsonists, the wanton destruction, himself. As if any condemnation of others would leave him exposed.
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And the lies continue from the left....
In popular culture, the face of criminality has changed. Twenty years ago, FXâs The Shield, a Shakespearean tragedy disguised as a cop showâin many ways superior to another crime drama that debuted the same year, HBOâs The Wireâwas unsparing in its depiction of black and Latino gangbangers as self-interested lowlifes, warring with one another while preying mostly on their racial and ethnic cohorts. The Shield gave poverty and prejudice and police brutality their due, but not to the extent of denying human agency; the harsh reality of street crime was never subordinated to a comforting ideology.
In Hollywood productions now, beholden to âsensitivity readers,â this seems no longer the case. From Showtimeâs Your Honor to Netflixâs The Lincoln Lawyer to FXâs Justified: City Primeval, from The Batman to Rian Johnsonâs whodunit Knives Out and its glossy sequel, Glass Onion, ethical judges, competent attorneys, honorable politicians, and other sympathetic characters tend to be nonwhite, usually black, while the villains are overwhelmingly white and male: brutal white gangsters, mendacious white billionaires, corrupt white cops. It is not enough, in the Justified sequel, to make the central villain a white hick (the âOklahoma Wildmanâ); the secondary threat must take the form of the all-white Albanian mob, this in Detroit, a city more than three-fourths black and only 10 percent white.
It is not enough, in The Lincoln Lawyer, to make the white-male tech bro a murderous sociopath; he must be unmasked as a preening fraud, who rose to fame by stealing credit for his wifeâs codeâhis murdered wife being the true genius of the pair. (How gratified progressives would be if this proved true of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, or if female faux visionaries like Elizabeth Holmes and Charlie Javice had proven to be their equals.) In like manner, the deranged Riddler, in The Batman, must of course be stopped by Gothamâs vigilante, but in the end, his serial murders have done the city a service, removing crooked white men from positions of power and clearing the way for an upright new mayorâa black woman, naturallyâto lead Gotham into a brighter tomorrow.
----
Offscreen, the face of murder, of violent assault, of robbery remains much as it was 20 years ago, only more so. The FBI estimates that African Americans, who make up only 13 percent of the population, accounted for 59 percent of all known homicide offenders in 2022. In Minneapolis, fewer than one in five residents is black, yet blacks in 2022 accounted for 84 percent of known violent-crime and homicide suspectsâand a similarly outsize share of victims. In Albuquerque, a very different city, where white and black Americans commit about equal numbers of homicides, the enormous disparity is clear when you look at population data. White people (including Hispanic whites) make up more than six in ten of the cityâs populace, while black residentsâpunching way above their weight, murder-wiseâare a mere 3.2 percent.
www.city-journal.org
Here is part one.....
www.city-journal.org
There is an environmentâwe feel it intuitivelyâthat breeds crime, an element in which crime ineluctably thrives. The âbadâ neighborhood, the street where itâs unsafe to walk at night, the urban dystopia where the victims who are ostensibly âasking for itâ receive their unwelcome answers. Those forced to endure it try to pretend it doesnât exist. The demoralizing effect of streets filled with trash and vagrants, of sidewalks land-mined with feces (animal or human), of storefronts marred by graffitiâthese, the city-dweller tries to ignore. In traversing the city, he selectively edits his visual field. Like the straphangers in Hazzardâs novel, he affects indifference. A security guard on Market Street in San Francisco recently told New York, âWhat it really feels like living in San Francisco is that youâre lying to yourself. Oh, I live in San Francisco. Itâs so nice. When you walk by the junkies youâre like, They donât exist. They donât exist. Youâre lying to yourself.â Humankind cannot bear too much urban reality.
----
There is a link, definite but hard to define, between moral ugliness and the physical ugliness it feeds on and perpetuates. There is a disquiet that comes from realizing you live in the same city and neighborhood as people interested only in destruction. In late May 2020, I watched online as Minneapolis rioters reduced a 189-unit affordable-housing complex to smoldering ashes, burning the unfinished building down to its concrete foundation. Afterward, I texted a dramatic picture of the fire to a friend, a committed progressive who works as a federal prosecutor, to ask what he thought. âThat is an incredible photo,â he remarked. âIâm not going to comment on the propriety [of] rioting tho.â I challenged him: What propriety would that be? The propriety of burning homes and police stations to the ground? âWeâve already established,â he said, âI have a soft heart.â As if this admission excused everything, the arsonists, the wanton destruction, himself. As if any condemnation of others would leave him exposed.
------
And the lies continue from the left....
In popular culture, the face of criminality has changed. Twenty years ago, FXâs The Shield, a Shakespearean tragedy disguised as a cop showâin many ways superior to another crime drama that debuted the same year, HBOâs The Wireâwas unsparing in its depiction of black and Latino gangbangers as self-interested lowlifes, warring with one another while preying mostly on their racial and ethnic cohorts. The Shield gave poverty and prejudice and police brutality their due, but not to the extent of denying human agency; the harsh reality of street crime was never subordinated to a comforting ideology.
In Hollywood productions now, beholden to âsensitivity readers,â this seems no longer the case. From Showtimeâs Your Honor to Netflixâs The Lincoln Lawyer to FXâs Justified: City Primeval, from The Batman to Rian Johnsonâs whodunit Knives Out and its glossy sequel, Glass Onion, ethical judges, competent attorneys, honorable politicians, and other sympathetic characters tend to be nonwhite, usually black, while the villains are overwhelmingly white and male: brutal white gangsters, mendacious white billionaires, corrupt white cops. It is not enough, in the Justified sequel, to make the central villain a white hick (the âOklahoma Wildmanâ); the secondary threat must take the form of the all-white Albanian mob, this in Detroit, a city more than three-fourths black and only 10 percent white.
It is not enough, in The Lincoln Lawyer, to make the white-male tech bro a murderous sociopath; he must be unmasked as a preening fraud, who rose to fame by stealing credit for his wifeâs codeâhis murdered wife being the true genius of the pair. (How gratified progressives would be if this proved true of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, or if female faux visionaries like Elizabeth Holmes and Charlie Javice had proven to be their equals.) In like manner, the deranged Riddler, in The Batman, must of course be stopped by Gothamâs vigilante, but in the end, his serial murders have done the city a service, removing crooked white men from positions of power and clearing the way for an upright new mayorâa black woman, naturallyâto lead Gotham into a brighter tomorrow.
----
Offscreen, the face of murder, of violent assault, of robbery remains much as it was 20 years ago, only more so. The FBI estimates that African Americans, who make up only 13 percent of the population, accounted for 59 percent of all known homicide offenders in 2022. In Minneapolis, fewer than one in five residents is black, yet blacks in 2022 accounted for 84 percent of known violent-crime and homicide suspectsâand a similarly outsize share of victims. In Albuquerque, a very different city, where white and black Americans commit about equal numbers of homicides, the enormous disparity is clear when you look at population data. White people (including Hispanic whites) make up more than six in ten of the cityâs populace, while black residentsâpunching way above their weight, murder-wiseâare a mere 3.2 percent.
The Element of Crime, Part Two
Across America, the social fabric looks increasingly threadbare.
www.city-journal.org
Here is part one.....
The Element of Crime, Part One
Reflections on the impact that lawlessnessâand an inescapable awareness of itâhas on society and the psyche
www.city-journal.org
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