I'm a Gen X (Rod's age) parent. I have 3 kids. I was quite fair and attentive to all three. 2 of the three are self-sufficient, hard working, responsible adults. The other is, like you, looking for excuses. I was similar at his age. I turned out ok. I recognized my shortcomings over time and slowly worked on them as you most likely will. Now take out the garbage.
Life is like that. The generational garbage explains nothing. I never had a purpose or goal in life but I persisted and here I am. My flaws are mine. They aren’t my parents fault or for Gods sake some generational consciousnesses. All will be well.All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Have you read Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation"? Anything by Nicholas Carr? Christine Rosen? The kids that have grown up without knowing what it was like to live digitally unconnected are definitely different. You see it if you're out there among them. Even the millennials notice it (if they're not digitally addicted themselves).
To unmotivated young people (and as an educator I’ve dealt with tons of those) I recommend reading “Awaken the Giant Within” by life coach Tony Robbins, and attending Tony’s workshops. True, this is part of the New Thought Movement, rather than traditional Christianity, but anything is better than sitting around, and feeling like a victim of one’s own circumstances. New Thought has a powerful message “You are so strong you create your own reality, so reject any limiting beliefs about yourself.” Focus on your strength (start lifting) and your invulnerability. Traditional Christianity is too weak and too feminized to motivate young men. This doesn’t mean you have to reject Christianity, simply augment it by rejecting any limiting beliefs - I am God’s child, and therefore I share God’s divine nature with Him, which means I am a divine being having a human experience (as life coach Wayne Dyer first said). It’s simple logic - how can God create anything that’s not Divine?
If we're talking about the US I don;t see Islamization as a threat. We get fewer immigrants from the Middle East than from any other world region. Most of our immigrants derive from Latin America and East Asia.
There something bizarre about the emergence of the Palestine issue in American politics. It wasn’t that long ago that criticism of Israel was extremely risky for any politician. Those with long memories might want to remember what happened to William Fullbright. Now it’s functioning as a wedge issue that can be a political advantage. There is a sense in which it’s utterly ridiculous. It’s hardly the most important issue facing Americans. Further Americans can fulminate all they want to about Israel , as the Will Rahn article Rod cites points out , Israel has nuclear weapons. Draw your conclusions. It’s fascinating that blowhard Dan Goldman was defeated by blowhard Brad Lander over Palestine! They’re both Jewish leftists and both really hard to take.
So what is going on? Is this simply antisemitism being legitimated . To some degree. By the way it’s more striking in the context of the rent freeze which apparently was influenced by people who stirred up resentment towards Jewish landlords- that’s a bit more chill inducing.Something symbolic is going on. It’s a push to decisively break with the old order. No borders , no Israel, no prisons. It’s the beginning of a new age.
From the little I've read, Chavez and Chevalier ran on bread & butter issues; their opponents brought up the Hamas issue. Nonetheless, when affordability legislation hits a brick wall -- doesn't it always? -- they'll no doubt revert to identity politics because irrationality is easier, as Ballard points out.
FWIW, Chevalier seems the nuttier of the two. She tweeted an expletive about Kamala Harris (not necessarily a bad thing) and chastised black and Arab men for lusting after colonialist white women.
It’s not unusual in the context that white Christians are a minority population in NYC and because the majority are foreigners they are going to vote the tribe.
It's the end result when there are too many foreigners here and they are in control. They bring their issues with them when they come over and those issues then become our issues.
I recall that some people called the movie “straw dogs” fascist for much of the same reasons. Workers rape a woman and Dustin Hoffman becomes a vigilante killer.
I saw "Straw Dogs" in the mid-70's with my best friend, when we were high school seniors. We were so sick at the end that it took us a few minutes to get out of our chairs.
Yeah, its probably the roughest of Peckinpahs films. Still love them though. Both "The Wild Bunch" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" would make my all time favorites list.
I'm fond of that one, too. (In fact, it's the only time I actually liked Randolph Scott in a film.) Originally, the leads were cast the opposite way but McCrea and Scott wisely asked to switch.
Exactly, Sandra. "Ride the High Country" was considered a second rate Western in America and the studio used it as a second feature. The people at Cannes were wiser. They named it film of the year. When I first watched it many years ago in a college class, I had a hard time keeping my eyes dry. I used to sit in the back so I wasn't conspicuous.
I saw it at college during a symposium on violence in films. It was shocking, and my boyfriend (future husband) and I found ourselves arguing and fighting after it for no reason. Violence like that tears at your soul.
And the Bronson flick Death Wish. The cop who chases him is Vincent Gardenia, Cosmo Castorini to you. I haven't seen the film in more than 50 years, but I remember thinking it was a cop out because so many of Bronson's targets were white.
Pauline Kael wrote that while it pained her to say so, Sam Peckinpaugh had created "a Fascist work of art." That was in 1971.
There's a delightful anecdote of John Cassavetes' and Ben Gazzara's sharing a taxi with Kael, and the two men overpowering Kael, removing her shoes, and throwing them out the window.
I think that all in Pauline Kael's effect on the "culture" or what's left of it, is completely malign. Her point de départ was always a negation of art and an elevation of audience "reaction". This led to her championing hacks like DePalma.
I never could understand her rapturousness about DePalma, somebody I do rate more highly than you do. If you haven't seen "Obsession," his mid seventies ode to "Vertigo," I urge you to give it a chance. I liked "Sisters," too.
I believe there is a message in Straw Dogs pertinent to today. Hoffman is not a hero in that movie. He entered the world of the locals with, shall we say, what he would regard as more refined attitudes and disdain for the common; and they saw that. He refused to protect his wife or defend her, provoking the attack. Then he reacted in rage against the attackers. Not congruent with, but sort of an analog to, the way British authorities have treated ordinary Britons; and with violence resulting on both sides. ISTM Dreher and Best see that kind of violence, from both sides, brewing today.
About fifty years ago, Charles Bronson made a series of films called "Death Wish." Crime seemed out of control in America in the 70s and courts were filled with "turn 'em loose" judges. At the beginning of the first "Death Wish", Bronson's wife is murdered and his daughter is raped. Bronson becomes a vigilante and takes it to the criminals. The Bronson films were wildly popular and captured a large audience who were sick and tired of leftist justice. So, it is with Armie Hammer- someone I had never heard of until two days ago- and "Citizen Vigilante." Millions of Europeans and Americans are sick and tired of Third World immigration into their countries. "Citizen Vigilante" was created by an arrogant elite unreceptive to the concerns of their fellow citizens.
Same! I watched it with my son last night. He liked it and asked me what I thought. I said "Eh, Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood did it much better back in the 1970s." I then had to explain, and now he wants us to watch all of the Death Wish and Dirty Harry movies. So, I just inadvertently booked up my summer weekends. LOL
The part of Dirty Harry was first offered to Paul Newman. He thought the first script too right-wing and he passed. John Wayne was considered. Wisely, Wayne was passed. He was too old for the athleticism required plus he had a persona that wasn't made for the hard-edged, cynical, unsentimental Harry Callahan. Eastwood was the perfect choice because his persona was made in those Spaghetti Westerns where he's the hard-boiled gunman.
I've read they offered it to Frank Sinatra, and find it impossible to believe they didn't offer it to Steve McQueen. I believe that God wants great creative work to abound, and that's why Eastwood got the part.
My favorite scene in any of those films is the "Do you feel lucky, punk?" scene at the beginning of the first. After he succeeds in disarming the bad guy by convincing him that he, Harry, is unsure whether he's run out of ammunition, and "fires" the gun which he knows is empty, he snickers.
One thing people missed about Django Unchained is that the plot was a pretty typical spaghetti western. Improbable sequence of events producing a lot more shoot up scenes and blood than one would otherwise find credible. There were lots of Djangos before. This plot happened to be one that Jamie Fox could fill the leading role.
Perhaps that is why he wasn't promptly surrounded and gunned down by law enforcement... which Sanders certainly would have been, as you point out in your review.
Rod- Hope you made it back to B’ham. Finally got around to watching Jonathan Pegeau’s talk at ARC. Well worth the listen - thanks for the recommendation.
Dirty Harry had a great cast also. The actor who played "Scorpio", seemingly tried to escape being typecast as a psychopath in future roles. Harry Guardino, as the "my hands are tied" middle man, and John Vernon as the mayor, milked similar roles for years after. "Dean Wormer" is basically the San Fran mayor on steroids.
Brian, you are on double, secret probation for mentioning the great Dean Wormer.
You are right. Andy Robinson was type-cast and did low-budget films the rest of his life. He was married 56 years and his wife just recently died so he did succeed in his way.
But what a performance! Robinson's Scorpio was a mixture of Manson-like psychopath: "I've change my mind. I'm going to let her die!" and pathetic victim: "I have rights, I want a lawyer."
I also love how Clint looked out for the lesser known actors in his movies. I think that Dirty Harry gave him the cache to have casting influence. John Mitchum (Robert's brother) played "DiGiogio" in 3 movies. Albert Popwell ("I gots to know") was in many Eastwood movies. Geoffrey Lewis (father of Juliette) also comes to mind in later films.
Eastwood did get many actors small roles in films. Funny, Lee Van Cleef was unhappy with Eastwood for not including him in Eastwood's films. Van Cleef and Eastwood worked very well together in "For a Few Dollars More."
While the Death Wish series may have made vigilantism attractive, the same cannot be said of the Dirty Harry series, as Harry Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood) takes a decidedly anti-vigilante stand in Magnum Force, the second film in the series.
Death Wish was a $hitty move too, no matter, the viewers cheered (I know of people that viewed this happen at the time). Boll doesn't have to do it better. In fact, there is now way to do this movie "good". Rod makes this point. The fact that he's doing it is the harbinger, but they won't pay any heed. Things will slide out of control.
Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" films and Bronson's "Death Wish" films added to the mood of the 70s. Did they lead to Ronald Reagan's presidency? Perhaps slightly. Inflation, the Cold War, bracket creep high taxes, the Iran hostage situation and the hapless Jimmy Carter led to Reagan more than crime but crime didn't help the Democrats in the 70s and 80s.
Yes, thanks for emphasizing this. The point I was trying to make is not to judge CV on its artistic merits or lack thereof, but to point to its existence as a sign of the times.
Very true. In its way, "Midnight Cowboy" was a sign of its times. Just as "The Deer Hunter", "Coming Home" and "Apocalypse Now" were films about how America was dealing with the defeat in Vietnam.
A lot of commenters seem to be confusing (possible fuzzy Boomer memories) Bronson/Eastwood and Death Wish/Dirty Harry . . . but maybe the main point is, both film series celebrated vigilante violence against thugs and derided the weak and useless vessels of institutional "justice." Audiences cheered . . . but nothing happened, it's just gotten worse.
Harry's vigilantism act, was the scene on the football field, in which he tortures Scorpio to get him to divulge the whereabouts of his dying kidnap victim. For most of the movie he is "on the edge" of justice. The final scene is one of the best of this genre (Death Wish is pretty great also).
Scorpio kidnaps a bus full of school children.....this puts me in mind of the Texas trans school shooting, where law enforcement allowed the shooting to continue for a ridiculous amount of time. Harry, of course, knows that Scorpio must be ultimately dealt with, even if he has a gun to a child's head. Risk and violence, in such cases, is proper. Harry tosses his badge at the end....disillusioned.
The soundtrack is great as well. Particularly the Scorpio-rooftop scene.
It is the best of the three early Dirty Harry films. As much as I liked Duke Wayne, he couldn't have done some of the athletic events that Eastwood did in "Dirty Harry." Eastwood was 23 years younger.
I thought it was pretty obvious from my comment that my judgment of Citizen Vigilante was based on Mr. Dreher's description, not on having seen the film myself.
True. Crime rates were higher in the 70s. The Boomers weren't all just spoiled, long-haired, pot-smoking college students. They were criminals in the heart of our cities.
My first year as a big city paramedic in the early 90s was the year with the second highest number of murders in U.S. history. I was whining once back then to an old cop nearing retirement. He said "You should've seen things 20 years ago. At least now we actually send people to prison." Apparently the whole criminal courts judges slap-on-the-wrist thing in 70s movies and TV was real, even in urban Texas.
I was just going to say that crime rates peaked in the 90s, not the 70s. But we remember the 70s as a time of disorder while the 80s and the 90s, apart from some ideological sniping, are remembered as good times.
We had a serious recession at the beginning of the 80s, and where I lived in Michigan there was never a full recovery, at least for working class people. It may have been "Morning in America," but in my state it was a cloudy, drizzly one.
The 90s also started with a recession-- and the first "jobless recovery", exploited by the Clinton campaign ("It's the economy stupid!") to beat HW Bush.
Er, the late 90s? We had an employment boom, which set the record for the highest labor force participation rate. Wages were on the rise. Manufacturing stopped hemorrhaging jobs. The powerhouse IT industry wasn't limited to Silicon Valley and a few big coastal cities-- there were IT start ups everywhere.
Not your intention but this provoked a laugh . See when boomers aren’t bad decadent parents or pot smoking hippies, they are urban criminals. What a diverse group!
Just by the size of the Boomers, there was bound to be more crime. Add in the drop in manufacturing jobs for the working-class and the increase in drugs and illegitimate children, America was probably destined for a crime wave lasting from very roughly 1970 to 2000.
Drugs, absolutely. In fact I think issues in the illicit drug market played a big role in the crime spike of the late 2010s and the Pandemic years.
I have some skepticism that growing up not in a two parent family (for whatever reason) necessarily turns people into delinquents. I know people who grew up that way and they were not all bad people (and contrawise people with two parents who ended up being "bad seeds")
Two things that cut down on the crime wave were getting lead out of gas and the availability of abortion. I know pro-lifers don't want to hear it, but my mother (a life-long Republican and a Planned Parenthood volunteer) pointed out a revealing study in Denmark. For a time, abortion was available, but a pregnant woman had to make her case to a review board. The study tracked the lives of children born to mothers who applied for abortion but were denied. They had a much higher rate of dysfunctional, anti-social incidents and serious crimes. Conclusion: Mothers who want to abort are statistically likely to do a bad job of raising their child, with results that are inflicted on the general community for years. Now if there were a system in place to take every baby born to a mother who wanted an abortion and place them with a stable, loving pro-life family (and weed out the "pro-life" Christians who believe in whipping any child who lacks a smile on their face), that might not be a problem. I say all that as an older adult acquainted with a young lady who recently discovered she is pregnant, who says "I don't want to abort my baby." There is nothing to do but support her -- that is her choice.
The difference, in 1970s NYC (and elsewhere) they were "our" criminals, they weren't imported from third world lands to seemingly oppress and terrorize the native peoples. In fact, immigration was hardly noticed or commented on in 1974.
Saw a recent claim that 2/3rds of the 20k murders in America were done by non citizens. I haven't looked up the stats or attempted to verify, but even one death from an noncitizen is too many.
I don't know where you got that claim, but it a big fat lie (not yours; I am NOT accusing you). It's not PC to say it, but we all know that America's crime problem is rooted in a demographic whose ancestors have been in this country since the the 17th and 18th century.
And death is death, and murder is murder regardless of who the perp or who the victim is.
As an aside, 20K is too high a number. I just googled the stats and was pleasantly surprised to find that for 2025 there were c. 14K murders (not counting vehicular homicide and other negligent homicide stats)
I'm glad you didn't accuse Pete as being dishonest. But the crime stat he writes of seems very much incorrect. I would guess that non-citizens might have contributed 20-25 % of murders, not two-thirds.
If only we could tell when admitting an immigrant just which ones were going to commit crimes. (A lot of immigrants during years when the USA was eagerly recruiting them also committed crimes.) If the USA had admitted large numbers of Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazis, some among them would have committed crimes, even murder. Its statistically inevitable in any large population. That's why cities measure progress in how low the murder rate is... there is no such thing as zero. Never has been in human history.
For me it was a big issue, already in 1986, and I already anticipated/predicted the dire circumstances of today back then. I correctly anticipated that states like CA, NJ, CT and even TX would eventually be lots to the GOP forever (and they are or will be) and I had front row seats to the sleazy machinations of the GOP/Pete Wilson in gutting the effectiveness of the amnesty from the get go. Was in 1986 that I came to truly loathe and distrust the GOP deeply, figured they were all con-men, which they are. Whatever, matters are going to get worse, much worse.
You know when I realized things were changing on the immigration issue was when I was driving with my wife in rural southeastern North Carolina in 1992 and saw a half-dozen Mexicans working on a car in an abandoned gas station. I had never seen any Mexicans in North Carolina beofre.
Well, Texas is hanging in there. IMO, the bigger problem was that the GOP became too "Southern" in culture and policy preferences, and eventually too eager to kick the "RINOs" out, which lost them the old cohort of moderate northern Republicans. And good grief look at what Trump is doing during this primary season! He's doing his best to tank the careers of even stalwart conservatives who refuse to join the line to kiss his ample behind. Recall the line about healthy movements seeking coverts while failing ones hunt heretics.
That last line is worth remembering. I've been pointing out to liberals for years that after three 50:50 elections, any coalition capable of delivering a substantial majority for any platform is going to need a substantial fraction of Trump voters. Also, who would you rather have in the senate: Joe Manchin, or an out and out Republican?
Just 25% of grade school children in Texas are white. That composition will surely shift further, to even less white, every year. The GOP is literally a dead man walking in Texas. Good 'effen riddance. Texas, as will Arizona, CA, Oregon, Guatemala, Honduras.... will just become a satrapy of the greater Mexican empire, nominally under custody of the USA but in reality Mexican. The real power will reside in Sinaloa, as it does today.
USA people take comfort and refuge in the familiar. They see Sheinbaum and they see a smart, savvy, liberal, Jewish girl-boss, not maybe to their liking, but familiar enough. Nothing is further from the truth with this one, she is owned thoroughly by the cartels and as time progresses the reach of the cartels will become permanently implanted, north of the Rio Grande. All the tough talking, all the lethal injections in Huntsville won't change this. Thank you GOP.
Well, yes, to some extent. But it was the tail end of the imported Italian criminal syndicates, and by the 1990s we had Russian criminal syndicates, and there were a few others that weren't so high profile.
Wasn't the man who killed the Ukrainian gal in Charlotte convicted of twenty or so crimes? Sadly, I think the man is going to escape true justice in that gal's case.
I doubt it. This crime was too horrific, and too widely publicized. He'll be nailed this time. Somewhere between five and ten, or after his string of crimes included two with a weapon or violence, he should have been put away for a long time. But the first time, its hard to tell. A lot of people do one and then go straight. Even two or three that don't involve a weapon there is a lot to consider. I think everyone in the country read about the somewhat dark man who drove a van into a Christmas parade in Waukesha a few years ago. He was out on $500 bail after running over a black woman trying to kill her. Everyone was breathlessly waiting for someone to broadcast that his prosecution was somehow racist, but almost nobody wanted to go there. A friend of mine astutely noted where the real racism was: If the life of the woman he ran over mattered more to the judicial system, he wouldn't have been out on the street to drive his van into a parade of white folks. He had nothing against the people in the parade. He was in a blind rage that the woman he tried to visit, contrary to a restraining order, had refused to admit him to her apartment. More than imposing significant sentences, I think he was an example of why we need asylums -- he needed to be in a secured treatment facility, not in "community treatment" long before his last few crimes were committed.
He is a schizophrenic. The psychiatric evaluation he received post murder indicated he is incompetent to stand trial. You are right that is a repeat offender.
Escaping war-torn Ukraine only to die at the hands of career criminal in North Carolina. The irony.
And the not-so ironic? The owners of a nearby gay bar wanted to paint a mural in honor to Iryna Zarutska. Initially, everyone thought it was a great idea, even officials in local government, but then social media warriors started grumbling about the optics -- crazed black man kills beautiful Ukrainian refugee -- and the project was dropped.
But don't worry. There's surely a mural of George Floyd within a 25-mile radius of every American!
It's heartbreaking Paul. For the safety of society he should have been locked up and kept locked up and I heard how the murals of her were defaced. Truly despicable. Her father has been fighting in Ukraine and could not come to her funeral. Her mother was introduced at Trump's State of the Union. She broke down in sobs while Democrats sat there stonily. Disgusting.
Clearly something is wrong when that happens. "Three strikes and you're out" failed because laws were sloppily written. A jury once changed their verdict when a defendant pointed out that conviction for theft after a couple of priors for disorderly conduct meant a mandatory life without parole sentence. But two priors for burglary or armed robbery should mean almost any felony results in somewhere between five and twenty years, with a substantial period of supervised release after.
What a lazy knee-jerk reflex. A large number of prosecuted crimes, perhaps even a majority, are not the result of someone deciding, I think I'll commit a crime today. They result from unanticipated encounters, negligence which can rise to the level of criminal, unanticipated impulse, and even interpretation, e.g., am I loitering, or am I enjoying a public amenity? Am I engaged in disorderly conduct? Or being a little too boisterous about my team's victory? The possibilities are legion. Whether life in prison constitutes justice, or even whether the protection of the public requires it, depend on a variety of facts.
No. I am a pathologist who can be “deputized” to do autopsies for the coroner’s office. When I was a resident, we (pathology residents) were deputized to perform many autopsies, some of which turned out to be quite obvious murders. We were, shall we say, “strongly discouraged” from categorizing them as such. This was generally when the person was very poor/homeless and appeared to have no family, so it was very unlikely anyone would call the news or a lawyer to investigate. It would have cost the city too much effort/resources to bother.
Also I am certain you are aware that many crimes such as car theft, small burglaries, and so on are simply not reported or declined an investigation by the police—or the police DO do their jobs and our fine DAs erase the incidents.
Thank you. That's very helpful. I think if I were setting policy, I might say, if its a homicide, say so, but, if there is little to no evidence as to who might have done it, we won't put a lot of police resources into it. That last half of that is harsh, but police should focus on crimes they can solve, producing a net gain for community safety. Yes, many crimes are not reported, because the damage is slight and not worth the trouble. Police declining to investigate is a different matter -- I realize police dealing with murders and armed robberies will not have much time for hit and run accidents resulting in no injuries, but I do have a sense that people who commit such acts should not get away with it. I was hit by a car making a hasty lane change where the freeway split into two different routes, but since I had only a memory of the license plate and could give no description of the driver, the police didn't really follow up, even after I reported it.
This started about 20 years ago in blue cities and has since spread nationwide. So many crimes have been mostly decriminalized through refusal to enforce. The "no bail" movement didn't help.
Even a decade ago, a small time criminal in a blue state told me that everyone knew what they could get away with and that only the worst cases resulted in arrests.
A deputy in the same deep red state told me that they were not allowed to arrest for drug dealing or theft unless there was violence around.
Crime is high and accepted because they do not want to enforce.
True story from New Orleans: a couple decades ago my friend’s brother got his car stolen. NOPD took his report, but did exactly **diddly** to find it. (NOPD is exactly as depicted in Van Damme’s 1994 film Hard Target.)
A couple weeks later, he found it several blocks away (which was in the ‘hood—N.O. neighborhoods fluidly flow in and out of the ‘hood) and called the police to report it.
Instead of sending anyone out to retrieve it the legal way, they said, “Well just go get it then.” So he retrieved it with some friends—but they were taking a risk retrieving the car from the hood.
Anyway, I would bet money the original theft report was ripped up (this was back in the days of paper).
There was a whole wave or two of films, made in the wake of the massive rise of crime and urban disorder caused by the liberal ascendancy in the 1960s, that absolutely enraged the critics. Pauline Kael wrote: "“Dirty Harry” is not about the actual San Francisco police force; it’s about a right-wing fantasy of that police force as a group helplessly emasculated by unrealistic liberals."
The real problem is not "Lock them up" v. "Turn em Loose judges." The real problem is responding to trends rather than taking a hard look at individual cases and defendants and plaintiffs. Right now there are two young people charged with a serious violent crime who I absolutely do NOT want doing any state prison time. They've had a couple months already in local custody, and its probably been a salutary shock treatment. Its always different when you know a defendant personally (and one of them has a step-father who knows the mother of the victim). Complicating matters, there are two more hard-core perps who are still at large. Prior record, presence or absence of gang affiliations (a lot of gangs are rather loose and short term, but it still matters), role in the crime, personal history, all make a real difference. A few years ago the local paper did a comprehensive story about the wave of Kia carjackings: it turns out a majority of those convicted only did it once, a large minority did it twice, and that was it, but the overwhelming majority of carjackings were done by about one out of six with the m.o. of responding to home confinement by cutting off the bracelet, slipping out into the night, and doing it again, seven or more times each. Clearly home confinement worked for quite a few, some could have used a month in jail, and the rest needed several years off the street.
Charlie, I'm wondering what you think of 35 years for 19-year-old Karmelo Anthony. He had no prior arrest record and seems to have been a decent enough kid in many ways ... until he went pissed-off nuts with a knife, angry enough to stab a peer through the heart. Zero to 100 at the speed of sound. Do you think 35 years is too little, too much or just enough?
Wonder what you think because prison time isn't supposed to be purely punitive; it's also supposed to be a means of protecting law-abiding citizens and residents from criminals, especially violent ones at elevated risk of striking again.
I've posted two articles on that very topic. Click on my name and you can find both of them. Never in my brief time on Substack have I gotten so many views, almost 400 for one, close to 700 for the other. My first impression was that Anthony had definitely committed a criminal homicide, but that 35 years was excessive. Initially I thought 5-10 years. When I wrote that, I had a distinct sense that Anthony had been bullied by several athletic young men and had a claim to what lawyers call impaired self defense, or excessive response to a real threat. As more comments, some well-informed, others less so, and reference to a good deal of news coverage developed a more comprehensive set of facts, I posted that the gap between justice and Anthony's sentence seemed considerably narrower. The case for Anthony having been seriously threatened dissipated to a great extent. Facts matter. I think there are some valid issues on appeal, but from the available information, it seems he was challenging Austin Metcalf "put your hands on me, see what happens" with his hand on a knife in his backpack.
To me, protection of the public is the main reason for a long prison sentence. Trying to define the seriousness of the crime by how many years a court metes out becomes a fool's game after a while. If someone is NOT a danger, some sort of community supervision is all right at times. A close second though is, sometimes its necessary to take someone OUT of their environment in order to even begin a process of any kind of rehabilitation. There was no way Karla Faye Tucker should have gotten out of prison, but she shaped up into a decent human being pretty quickly after getting off drugs, being removed from the company of her accomplices, and, not least, finding Jesus. The sister of one of her victims forgave her, having had his own born again experience, and the same victim's husband crowed over her execution. I'm inclined to think Anthony should have gotten 20 years, perhaps with parole hearings beginning at 10 or 15 years. Done right, parole considers carefully what a man or woman has become, rather than what they did. Done wrong, it is either a flat "We must given everyone a second chance," or "Parole is unreasonable for such a serious crime."
Nicely stated. Facts matter even though the “Free Karmelo” mobs won’t listen to the facts, just as the “He should have gotten life w/no parole” camp is unlikely to consider the relevant sentencing guidelines. In any case, Karmelo Anthony will first come up for parole about halfway through his sentence. That seems about right to me, given his young age at the time of the crime and his clean record up until then. Just have to hope the parole board takes seriously its No. 1 job: protecting the community against potentially violent criminals.
On that same track, hope for Anthony’s own sake that he can learn effective anger self-management — or even better, how to love his neighbor as himself — over the next 17.5 years. He’ll probably have to admit guilt, explain that he lost his temper out of all proportion to the situation, and show that he’s had some sort of spiritual conversion experience while in prison. Let’s pray for him as well as the soul of Austin Metcalf and the spiritual/emotional healing of his traumatized & grieving loved ones.
One error in many commentaries is failure to check the structure of Texas penal law. Many Americans intuitively rely on California law, because that's what we hear in so many movies, in Perry Mason, etc. But every state structures and defines different offenses in their own way. In Texas, murder does not require premeditation or malice, and murder is different from capital murder. Manslaughter and negligent homicide are the only other options, and they are defined rather broadly.
Derek, there's got to be sane & Christianly moral middle ground between the two extremes for the 21st century. Don't you think? Ensouled teenager, first offense.
I think 15 years is about right. In the "soft America" you reference (I lived through it), he might have been paroled after six months, with a few years of home confinement. Fifteen years is a LONG time for someone his age. I wouldn't quibble about twenty, which is even longer than he has lived so far. IF the claims that he was being bullied by four big tough athletes turned out to be credible, I would have said five years. Criminal, but impaired or excessive self-defense. However, it seems more credible that he was daring them to touch him, with his hand already on the knife. I don't believe he meant to kill -- asking the officer "Is he all right?" suggests otherwise. But it was a reckless act that did kill. Hanging would be wrong for all kinds of reasons.
I just finished watching "Death Wish" a few minutes ago. It is an interesting film but not a great film. The way Vincent Gardinia as Detective Ochoa tracks down Paul Kersey is fascinating.
Precisely. Democrats offer a cheap high, not violent suppression. Its how the drug was used I can't recall clearly -- but nonconformity was severely discouraged, in a pleasant, benevolent, but inexorable sort of way.
Yes. They have proven themselves violent more than once in the past 15. All the antifa rioters got off easy, Harris was urging donations to get them bailed out or defended. CHOP in Seattle, Trans shooters-violence is a leftist signature.
Our petty wannabe antifa aren't organized or focused enough to be vigilantes. They have appropriated a theme from people who were capable of taking on Nazi brownshirts and stormtroopers, while the pale American version can only muster the strength to beat up a fellow protester for carrying the same flag the 54th Massachusetts carried against the walls of Fort Wagner.
I am two-thirds into the Shriver novel. It is not a great novel but Miss Shriver has a good feel for the mentality of your average leftist. Gloria Bunoventura is your typical left-wing bleeding heart who surrenders her home to a bunch of Honduran hoodlums.
I don't think the character sounds typical of much in real life. Touting a "free zone" a thousand miles away where in point of fact drug dealers reign supreme and old scores are settled by firearms is one thing, surrendering one's own home to a bunch of Honduran hoodlums is quite another. Even liberals believe in the sanctity of their own private property.
I just saw the movie today. It was definitely intense. My reaction was that those mollyhunkas got what they deserved. I don't have the stomach or heart to do it myself unless I caught someone in the act and I happened to pick up something and knock him silly but I would not be a juror to convict anyone that I felt had been driven to extremes by the manifest failure of those who were supposed to be our guardians. If our rulers don't wield the sword against evildoers, then someone else ultimately will.
Yeah, I took pleasure in the criminals getting what they had coming to them, but an entire family?!? And murdering judges — man, even if they in some sense deserve it, that’s too far. But Betz has been warning that that is exactly what’s coming.
It really seems you really are grooming yourself to become a cheerleader for the "right side" when the violence shows up. Why do you feel the need to do this? Your credentials lie in being thoughtful and emotionally sensitive. You really think you can perform the full split on this topic? To be a good cheerleader for violence, you need to have the intellectual and emotional range of a football commentator. Going further than that actively harms you, because it makes you feel wishy-washy and with spurious allegiances, whereas the midwit meathead can produce much more simple and reliable tribal grunts and jeers.
If your Benedict Option ever emerges, it's clear it would emerge as a refuge from the violence and division, not as the blood-stained armed camp of the "based chuds". How you miss this obvious point is rather bizarre to me. Do you want to miss this point?
Is maybe violence what you want, as opposed to what you would reluctantly accept? Bloodlust is a dangerous and tempting drug you know. It's just like sexual perversion - it's a deep, dark lust that can consume someone's mind. And because civilization (rightly) represses this dark lust so intensely, the thought of releasing the repression can feel ecstatic, thus possessing the mind and soul. I sure hope that's not what is happening to you. I sure hope you can recognize the source - you would call the source Satan.
"And because civilization (rightly) represses this dark lust so intensely, the thought of releasing the repression can feel ecstatic, thus possessing the mind and soul. I sure hope that's not what is happening to you. I sure hope you can recognize the source - you would call the source Satan."
I don't think you have to worry about this in Rod's case, but I fully agree with your general point. Revenge fantasies, no matter how well written or well crafted are dangerous in forming one's moral imagination. (As an aside, this is why I don't like Tarantino's movies. They're all revenge fantasies in a way.)
Good point, Rob, in re: revenge fantasy and Tarantino, but Quentin has nothing on the Icelandic sagas of 600-700 years ago. Robert Egger's "The Northman" gives an idea of the times, as Rod has written. A student of Rene Girard could mine "Njal's Saga" alone for PhD dissertation or two. You almost need a 3D scorecard/diagram to track the endless interlocking blood feuds.
I agree. I turned off "Pulp Fiction" five minutes into watching it. All of the foul language I've heard before in a high school boys' locker room. And a sissy like Travolta breaking bad was as ridiculous as Montgomery Clift knocking John Wayne on his ass in "Red River" or Tony Curtis killing Kirk Douglas at the end of "The Vikings."
Tarantino once called the long dead John Ford a "racist." I bet he wouldn't tell that to Woody Strode who, at least in his youth, would have torn Tarantino apart. As a director, Tarantino would be lucky enough to kiss Ford's handkerchief. Or maybe Ford's ass.
I actually liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood until the ending, which I though absolutely horrendous -- way over-the-top violent and misogynistic to boot. His revenge fantasy on the Manson Family for ruining the 60's.
Yeah I liked it too. The ending was much more palatable when I realized it was a live-action cartoon, like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Everyone I know was laughing through the entire scene. The violence had ceased to be real in any way.
Yes, that's the point I try to make in my piece! All of this is really dangerous, socially and morally. If one can't understand why vigilantism (and its depiction) is satisfying to people who have had to endure the systemic injustice that British and European peoples have, coming from lawless migrants and the corrupt institutions that protect migrant interests over natives (and the law), then one is dangerously out of touch with social and cultural reality.
However, if one thinks there's nothing problematic about vigilantism, or enjoying its depiction, then one is not thinking through the deeper and broader moral implications of surrendering the Law to the passions.
It would have been wise to add the context to why anyone should care about Uwe Boll's murder fantasy movie to begin with. Just start the post saying it was a big thing on Twitter (which it was).
Not all of us like to waste our time in one of the most toxic, negative and discreditable places on the internet. So don't take for granted we just happen to know what goes on in that sewer.
I honestly am giving up trying to understand why you read me, or when you do, come up with this kind of wacky psychoanalysis. I say quite clearly in my essay that I have serious moral qualms about this movie, and explain why ... but at the same time understand why it gives one pleasure to see Sanders do what he does. It is important to understand all of this if one wants to understand these times we are in. I would hope people who see the film would come out thinking, "We have to do whatever we can to avoid that fate for our society. We have to insist that our politicians stop mass migration, deport all who can be, and enforce the damn law effectively and without prejudice. If not, then we are bound to get something like 'Citizen Vigilante'."
I suppose you might be the sort of person who would tell David Betz that he's grooming himself to be a cheerleader for the right side when the violence shows up, simply because he's trying to sound the alarm, based on his professional expertise. If so, you would be wrong. As I've said several times in this space, I was present when Betz warned a audience member in a Budapest speech that he should not look forward to civil war as some sort of wish fulfillment. Millions would likely die, Betz said, and it would take Europe a century to recover economically.
Do you even know what the reputation of Uwe Boll is? Not just in Germany, but especially there? He is basically the Ed Wood of Germany.
I mean at least David Betz is a professor. Not representative of everyone in his field, but still credible. What are Uwe Boll's credentials supposed to be? Why am I supposed to care about the German Tommy Wiseau and his murder fantasy movie, again? Because someone packaged it into an outrage bait Tweet on X?
Also, I'd feel bad for doing "wacky psychoanalysis" on a different writer. But not on you, because all you do is perform amateur psychoanalysis on a continent you don't care to understand, only preach down to. Seems fair to me.
If you Americans want to use Europe as your spit bucket, fair enough. We all have neuroses, sometimes we have to act them out. And yeah - Europe made some mistakes, so we're not fully innocent either. But don't go and play the victim when you get some friction in return. If you want to play "hardball", consider accepting the fact that you will get the same treatment in return.
Of course that was your reaction. Its a movie. My reaction to watching "Exodus" is still sympathy for Israel as the underdog fighting British imperialism and Nazis... which is PART of the truth. But I know its not the whole truth.
Citizen Vigilante is not a great movie because the theme is obvious, but it is a compelling movie. If our Western judicial systems will not work, then, eventually, vigilantes will emerge. This does not take a seer or fortune teller to predict. It is just common sense.
Not really. First, vigilante actions don't always result in civil war, particularly when enough elites are united in tacit support. Second, civil wars require massive resources, far more than the kind of vigilante revenge fantasies offered by the movie under discussion.
That aside, the ominous hysteria about impending civil war are blind to realities on the ground. Most states have quite a mix of opinions, aspirations, and attitudes on almost every controversial subject -- there is no state or region of any substantial resources with an overwhelming majority one way or another. Also, we have a very complex long distance economy. When grocery trucks stop arriving at supermarkets from all over the country, people will be having food riots, which will actually make it impossible to organize a civil war. The confederacy was done when housewives were rioting for bread, and all Jefferson Davis could do is throw then the change from his pocket. He actually had kept an army in the field for a few years before it reached that pass.
No, I think Rod and Betz are right about this. Any civil war in Europe would not be the kind we're used thinking about. It would take the form of fed up country people sabotaging critical infrasture--easy to do and hard to defend against. It would create food riots in the cities as you say, and that is the idea: destabilize things to the point that the people in the cities lose all confidence in the government. And I think there is a growing majority in favor of drastic action to deal with the immigrants in most Western European countries. The AfD is now the most popular party in Germany. If the elites there continue to try to suppress it, it could easily lead to violence. Same in Britain and France. As Rod has said, talking to the French, they all say it isn't whether, but when a civil war will break out. The French, like the Germans, do have experience with these things, not necessarily good. None of this is good, but even if Rod and Betz are only half right, the pressure is continuing to build, and the Brussels people are continuing to pretend that they can impose their will no matter how much the citizens suffer or must pay. That is what is unsustainable.
Perhaps if what occurs "would not be the kind we're used to thinking about" it would not be a civil war at all. Words mean something. One trend in the 21st century I've pushed back against is the idea that we can redefine words to mean whatever suits us at the moment.
An example from an unrelated topic: The small midwestern city I grew up in has been fatuously described as a "Sundown Town." However, nobody has ever produced an ordinance forbidding people of specified complexions from being in city limits between sunset and sunrise. A friend who leans more conventionally "left" than I do quoted some sociological speculation intoning that "If we broaden the definition..." Well that is just the problem. Words mean nothing if anyone can "broaden the definition" whenever it is convenient. "Sundown Town" has a specific meaning; it isn't a broad reference to "there was some racism going on there sometimes."
We could debate exactly what constitutes a War, as distinct from a Riot, or a Civil Disturbance," but it doesn't became A Civil War just because someone is emotionally invested in using the phrase.
Now, on the the substance of your case. You over-estimate the independence of the rural areas from the cities. They are utterly dependent on financing, supplies, equipment, markets... not even a small family farm is going to hunker down on a subsistence basis and wait it out. If they try, millions of urban residents will trample the countryside in a desperate search for food. It won't be organized, but it will be destructive, and it won't end with anyone "winning" any kind of "victory." You also overstate the "demand" for "drastic action." There probably is a majority that wants significant changed in immigration policy, but there are frequent reports of districts that voted overwhelmingly for Trump who bemoan any action to deport the owner of the popular Mexican restaurant they all love to patronize. Also, tourist businesses in Door County WI complain about a shortage of short-term immigrant labor, and dairy farmers are worried about losing the year-round workers they depend on. The USA is not in the same situation as Europe, and I suspect the situation in Europe, while out of whack, is not so dire as it can be made to seem long distance. Most people in Europe are mostly living their lives rather normally most of the time. Brussels has a lot wrong with it, but immigration is only one reason.
Re: destabilize things to the point that the people in the cities lose all confidence in the government.
They wouldn't lose confidence in the government., They would feel a white hot hatred for the terrorists who are ravaging their lives. Tim McVeigh imagined he could stir up a race war with the OKC bombing. Instead the country united in revulsion against him and anyone who seemed to be with him ideologically.
Consider the entire landscape of the former confederate states in the 1890s. This was not right after Reconstruction, but a decade or two down the road. There were many localities where elected governments were overthrown by armed vigilantes, and new white supremacist governments installed. Then, we have the ordinary run of the mill lynchings. Many judges in the southern region tried to do their job, administer justice, follow due process, but if a mob could be got up that objected, people would be forcibly removed from law enforcement control and lynched. Now it must be said, not everyone lynched was innocent. Some were, but there were powerful forces who insisted otherwise. Some were guilty, but of a rather lesser offense, but powerful forces wanted them dead anyway. Some were guilty, but entitled to due process, and/or the lawful sentence, applying judicial discretion, might be less than death. Don't make the mistake of thinking that lynch mobs were a rag-tag band of poor white trash. Solid middle class men and women, business leaders, the pillars of the community, were generally involved, and there were always elites prodding, hinting, motivating, and tolerating it.
I am overjoyed with the victory of Darializa Avila Chevalier, hater of Western Civilization at the same time that she lives in a country part of Western Civilization. May she join Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes as the spokesmodels of the Democratic Party. It was smashing that Brad Lander crushed leftist Dan Goldman in the primary largely because Goldman supports Israel's right to exist and Lander doesn't. The Republican Party is often ugly but it is fortunate that the Democratic Party may actually be collectively insane.
Just a thought. Darializi Avila Chevalier can go back to the Dominican Republic, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes can back to Puerto Rico and Ilhan Omar can go back to Somalia if they find Western Civilization so hateful.
The average Democrat thought he was on solid ground with his TDS, but now finds he is being flanked by fellow Democrats' intense hate of Jews and traditional Western cultural norms. It's to the point that James Carville is talking of a schism among Democrats. Things are moving fast. The Dem party seems to be unraveling. So be it.
I'm glad to see Carville so perplexed. He's a phony working-class sort. I don't know any working-class lefties. I was shocked to learn he did a stint in the Marines. Just goes to prove that jackasses can make it in the Marine Corps.
I gave up on Carville when he compared New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to Judas Iscariot after he endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Hey, I thought, you've been sleeping with the enemy ever since you married Mary Matalin. He is now saying the right thing for the wrong reasons. He is one of the reasons I want nothing to do with the Democratic Party.
I don't know anything else about him, but Brad Lander sounds like a fool for thinking that he can cozy up to these rabid antisemites and that his opposition to the existence of Israel will protect him.
He might as well tattoo "Please don't kill me...I'm a good Jew" on his forehead.
Scott Wiener thought being the great legislative champion of all things queer would protect him from the virulent Jew hatred because of some magic word like "intersectionality." Guess not...
Puerto Rico is part of the United States. I've visited the place. It's a bit schizoid (signs in both metric and English measurements as well as decidedly "Spanglish") but it is very much part and parcel of Western civilization.
Yes, mayor Momdani and the governor of New York have a 1.2 billion commitment to universal child care from 6 weeks to 5 years old for New York. The rollout is over the next four years. This will undoubtedly destroy the entire city of New York and make it harder for families to live in the city. Families need to pay for child care in order to gain respect for capitalism. If you get free child care it will destroy those families that use it. Just look at how it has destroyed Europe!
LOL. I have zero problems with universal child care, but you can't just magically make $1.2B appear, even over four years. Where do you get it? Even if you try to soak the rich and the corporations, they'll just leave. Then where are you?
Plus, let us grant for a millisecond that Mamdani's plan actually works. How does that help the rest of the city, which is turning to shit? Does he try to get another $1.2B for another "Four Year Plan" to clean things up?
And yet 150 billion magically appeared to blow up people in your war and another 300 billion was promised to stop it. You have paid billions extra for gas in the last few months.
New York is has been getting destroyed in the dreams of conservatives for generations. The rich have always been leaving New York and destroying it. Immigrants have been destroying it for generations. It’s your white whale. It’s what you live for. Any day now it’s going to disappear.
I seem to vaguely remember a saying from back in my benighted youth, one that my dear mother used to repeat. What was it? Oh yes! -- Two wrongs don't make a right!
In other words, one can simultaneously reject both disastrous warmongering AND phony socialist "reforms." Try it -- you might like it!
But you’re supposed to be family friendly! Isn’t day care going to help families have children? I thought that the costs of having children was a huge problem that was destroying families in America! You sound like you hate children, so sad.
The problem isn't with the intention, it's with the implementation. I'm all for the intention, but as proposed it's a major instance of robbing one apostle to pay another.
Which is not to say that a lot of these problems couldn't be handled better if we spent less on the military and more on more human concerns. See? That we are the richest country in the world and still can't manage to feed and clothe our poor is a travesty. But trying to tax our way to solutions isn't the answer. As someone said long ago, hunger is not usually a supply problem it's a distribution problem.
So the mayor of New York and the governor of New York are allocating tax dollars for child care just like they allocated tax money for centuries and all of a sudden your bent out of shape because its socialism? And how do you think that police, fire, schools, libraries etc are funded? Really?
And you even appear to at least claim to care about helping families and are concerned about “distribution”. Then distributing tax dollars to care for children and supporting families is somehow wrong and you have to find another way. Just exactly how is that? Bake sales?
Even better, you don’t live there, you’re never going to live there and those residents voted for someone who promised to deal with affordability, I.e. child care and is doing exactly what he promised!
Aside from Rob's ethical response, money spent out of the federal treasury does not automatically became available for New York City to fund a daycare program. Mamdani has to deal with the revenues available to his government. Railing about wasteful spending in Washington, while it has its place, will not fund his day care program.
Basically true, but not an insuperable obstacle. It is possible to budget for measures like this, then write a realistic tax code to pay for it. The problem is that we have people proposing all kinds of goodies, without being sober about exactly how to pay for it, and people demanding tax cuts, without being honest about what will no longer be funded. "Tax the rich" doesn't cut it -- the devil is in the details. What do we really want done, how much will it cost to do it right, and how are we going to distribute the necessary tax burden?
I am reminded of the time my mother, the Republican in the family, was serving on the board of a non-profit day care center. All the liberals expected the necessary paid staff to work for minimum wage, which would reduce the need for funding. Mom said no, if we need to hire people, we pay them a good wage for their work.
The governor of New York allocated the funding to the city to pay for the child care and that is the same as any other allocation of money that the state makes. It is no different than any other state funded project. It was a budget request, it was added to the requests and it ended up getting to the part of the list that was approved.
Note that the state of New York is required to balance the budget for each cycle.
The details were taken care of, no devil was missed. I am sure that some requests did not make the cut, just like each budgeting session.
The funniest thing about this story is the utterly simple nature of it. The largest city in the country, the one that produces the most tax revenue for the entire state asked for money to help it make its workers more productive and its children better taken care of and they said OK. What a concept.
Fair enough. That would, in my opinion, answer Rob's objection in the short term. Also, paying for it from an income tax base, rather than property taxes, makes sense to me. (It is harder, although not impossible, to move out of a state entirely to escape taxation, than to move from NYC to Westchester, and income tax is a fairer way to distribute the tax burden.) Whether the state can sustain this cost indefinitely would be worth considering.
I didn't come out and say it but the sustainability issue is implied in my critique. Anyone with big dreams and enough money can start something. Keeping it going is another story.
Its a fair question, but whether it will be difficult to sustain needs to be established. One could argue that expanding the number of police is unsustainable, but that depends on long term revenue expectations and an overview of priorities. I did notice that a local dance troupe which recently lost a good deal of funding from federal arts and humanities sources had announced "We can never rely on federal funding again." That's not a bad philosophy -- building your own funding sources and endowments can be more reliable. Politics fluctuates.
Capitalism needs to pay for child care in order to get women into the workforce. Why should anyone who works for a living "gain respect" for capitalism?
More analytically: Taking care of children and raising them properly takes time and money. On a family farm, you can to an extent have them underfoot and running around, starting to take on part of the work as they grow up. If daddy works at a factory or office, and mom stays home, the costs are "off the books" as far as the financial economy is concerned. But, a lot of families ALWAYS depended upon two incomes, even in the Victorian era. Now, with liberals for one set of reasons and conservatives for another set of reasons depending that women he in the workforce, we have to face the real costs of raising children.
(By the time I finished writing this, I realized your comment was sarcasm, but it was a very good parody.)
The boomers undoubtedly corrupted Gen X leaving millennials and zoomers in the slough of despond!
Your comment is so broad brush nonsensical that it’s basically worthless.
It was meant to be!
There is more truth in it than you'd admit.
There is a measure of truth in it, however, although I'm sure he didn't intend it.
Parenting did change after the 60's, and it did have an effect on GenX. Saw it among my own friends growing up.
😂
I'm a Gen X (Rod's age) parent. I have 3 kids. I was quite fair and attentive to all three. 2 of the three are self-sufficient, hard working, responsible adults. The other is, like you, looking for excuses. I was similar at his age. I turned out ok. I recognized my shortcomings over time and slowly worked on them as you most likely will. Now take out the garbage.
Life is like that. The generational garbage explains nothing. I never had a purpose or goal in life but I persisted and here I am. My flaws are mine. They aren’t my parents fault or for Gods sake some generational consciousnesses. All will be well.All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Have you read Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation"? Anything by Nicholas Carr? Christine Rosen? The kids that have grown up without knowing what it was like to live digitally unconnected are definitely different. You see it if you're out there among them. Even the millennials notice it (if they're not digitally addicted themselves).
To unmotivated young people (and as an educator I’ve dealt with tons of those) I recommend reading “Awaken the Giant Within” by life coach Tony Robbins, and attending Tony’s workshops. True, this is part of the New Thought Movement, rather than traditional Christianity, but anything is better than sitting around, and feeling like a victim of one’s own circumstances. New Thought has a powerful message “You are so strong you create your own reality, so reject any limiting beliefs about yourself.” Focus on your strength (start lifting) and your invulnerability. Traditional Christianity is too weak and too feminized to motivate young men. This doesn’t mean you have to reject Christianity, simply augment it by rejecting any limiting beliefs - I am God’s child, and therefore I share God’s divine nature with Him, which means I am a divine being having a human experience (as life coach Wayne Dyer first said). It’s simple logic - how can God create anything that’s not Divine?
If we're talking about the US I don;t see Islamization as a threat. We get fewer immigrants from the Middle East than from any other world region. Most of our immigrants derive from Latin America and East Asia.
JG Ballard does seem pertinent to this.
There something bizarre about the emergence of the Palestine issue in American politics. It wasn’t that long ago that criticism of Israel was extremely risky for any politician. Those with long memories might want to remember what happened to William Fullbright. Now it’s functioning as a wedge issue that can be a political advantage. There is a sense in which it’s utterly ridiculous. It’s hardly the most important issue facing Americans. Further Americans can fulminate all they want to about Israel , as the Will Rahn article Rod cites points out , Israel has nuclear weapons. Draw your conclusions. It’s fascinating that blowhard Dan Goldman was defeated by blowhard Brad Lander over Palestine! They’re both Jewish leftists and both really hard to take.
So what is going on? Is this simply antisemitism being legitimated . To some degree. By the way it’s more striking in the context of the rent freeze which apparently was influenced by people who stirred up resentment towards Jewish landlords- that’s a bit more chill inducing.Something symbolic is going on. It’s a push to decisively break with the old order. No borders , no Israel, no prisons. It’s the beginning of a new age.
Ballard’s High Rise captures this particularly well (both the book and the movie)
Cocaine Nights? Crash?
From the little I've read, Chavez and Chevalier ran on bread & butter issues; their opponents brought up the Hamas issue. Nonetheless, when affordability legislation hits a brick wall -- doesn't it always? -- they'll no doubt revert to identity politics because irrationality is easier, as Ballard points out.
FWIW, Chevalier seems the nuttier of the two. She tweeted an expletive about Kamala Harris (not necessarily a bad thing) and chastised black and Arab men for lusting after colonialist white women.
Bread and Butter? Namely what will you give me in my cycle of endless dependency.
Back in 2024 the it was the GOP was trumpeting (hey) affordability and "bread and butter" (or maybe eggs and gasoline).
It’s not unusual in the context that white Christians are a minority population in NYC and because the majority are foreigners they are going to vote the tribe.
It's the end result when there are too many foreigners here and they are in control. They bring their issues with them when they come over and those issues then become our issues.
Welcome to Mayor momdani and the DSA politics.
Allhoop snakbar Baby 🤯
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQpT9-zoWzc&list=RDfQpT9-zoWzc&start_radio=1
Hero and heroine.
I recall that some people called the movie “straw dogs” fascist for much of the same reasons. Workers rape a woman and Dustin Hoffman becomes a vigilante killer.
I forgot about Straw Dogs! A Peckinpah flick. I may have to tell my son about that one.
I saw "Straw Dogs" in the mid-70's with my best friend, when we were high school seniors. We were so sick at the end that it took us a few minutes to get out of our chairs.
Yeah, its probably the roughest of Peckinpahs films. Still love them though. Both "The Wild Bunch" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" would make my all time favorites list.
My favorite of Peckinpah's is "Ride the High Country", definitely not as much of a shoot 'em up film.
Every time I think about that movie I remember the scene in "Blazing Saddles" where the entire town removes their hats and sings "Randolph Scott".
We watched that the other night…
I'm fond of that one, too. (In fact, it's the only time I actually liked Randolph Scott in a film.) Originally, the leads were cast the opposite way but McCrea and Scott wisely asked to switch.
He's pretty good in "My Favorite Wife," though it was an undemanding role in a great movie.
Exactly, Sandra. "Ride the High Country" was considered a second rate Western in America and the studio used it as a second feature. The people at Cannes were wiser. They named it film of the year. When I first watched it many years ago in a college class, I had a hard time keeping my eyes dry. I used to sit in the back so I wasn't conspicuous.
I saw it at college during a symposium on violence in films. It was shocking, and my boyfriend (future husband) and I found ourselves arguing and fighting after it for no reason. Violence like that tears at your soul.
And the Bronson flick Death Wish. The cop who chases him is Vincent Gardenia, Cosmo Castorini to you. I haven't seen the film in more than 50 years, but I remember thinking it was a cop out because so many of Bronson's targets were white.
The bit players in Death Wish include: Paul Dooley (great in "Breaking Away"), Jeff Goldblum (as a mugger?...not buying it), and Christopher Guest.
Goldblum did mug Laura Dern. Legally.
Right, there is nothing new in this genre. Seen the plot many times before.
Pauline Kael wrote that while it pained her to say so, Sam Peckinpaugh had created "a Fascist work of art." That was in 1971.
There's a delightful anecdote of John Cassavetes' and Ben Gazzara's sharing a taxi with Kael, and the two men overpowering Kael, removing her shoes, and throwing them out the window.
Bingo! That’s it! Thank you.
I think that all in Pauline Kael's effect on the "culture" or what's left of it, is completely malign. Her point de départ was always a negation of art and an elevation of audience "reaction". This led to her championing hacks like DePalma.
I never could understand her rapturousness about DePalma, somebody I do rate more highly than you do. If you haven't seen "Obsession," his mid seventies ode to "Vertigo," I urge you to give it a chance. I liked "Sisters," too.
One loner does not amount to a fascist movement.
I believe there is a message in Straw Dogs pertinent to today. Hoffman is not a hero in that movie. He entered the world of the locals with, shall we say, what he would regard as more refined attitudes and disdain for the common; and they saw that. He refused to protect his wife or defend her, provoking the attack. Then he reacted in rage against the attackers. Not congruent with, but sort of an analog to, the way British authorities have treated ordinary Britons; and with violence resulting on both sides. ISTM Dreher and Best see that kind of violence, from both sides, brewing today.
About fifty years ago, Charles Bronson made a series of films called "Death Wish." Crime seemed out of control in America in the 70s and courts were filled with "turn 'em loose" judges. At the beginning of the first "Death Wish", Bronson's wife is murdered and his daughter is raped. Bronson becomes a vigilante and takes it to the criminals. The Bronson films were wildly popular and captured a large audience who were sick and tired of leftist justice. So, it is with Armie Hammer- someone I had never heard of until two days ago- and "Citizen Vigilante." Millions of Europeans and Americans are sick and tired of Third World immigration into their countries. "Citizen Vigilante" was created by an arrogant elite unreceptive to the concerns of their fellow citizens.
When I read the description of Citizen Vigilante in the main article, all I could think was, "Death Wish did it better in 1974."
Same! I watched it with my son last night. He liked it and asked me what I thought. I said "Eh, Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood did it much better back in the 1970s." I then had to explain, and now he wants us to watch all of the Death Wish and Dirty Harry movies. So, I just inadvertently booked up my summer weekends. LOL
I've watched the first three Dirty Harry films earlier this year. Wonderful movies.
I’m gonna watch the Dirty Harry movies this weekend. I’m guessing that Eastwood’s character did not execute judges and law enforcement— or did he?
No. Eastwood is not a vigilante, which one of the three films makes clear. But I don't want to spoil your viewing and will say no more.
MAGNUM FORCE was a very clever way to follow-up DIRTY HARRY (and the over-the-top criticisms it received from Pauline Kael and others).
Well, in one of the movies he's hunting down a gang of dirty cops. Soo...sort of?
Shh. By the way, a young Suzanne Somers makes her film debut in the film in which you are speaking.
The part of Dirty Harry was first offered to Paul Newman. He thought the first script too right-wing and he passed. John Wayne was considered. Wisely, Wayne was passed. He was too old for the athleticism required plus he had a persona that wasn't made for the hard-edged, cynical, unsentimental Harry Callahan. Eastwood was the perfect choice because his persona was made in those Spaghetti Westerns where he's the hard-boiled gunman.
I've read they offered it to Frank Sinatra, and find it impossible to believe they didn't offer it to Steve McQueen. I believe that God wants great creative work to abound, and that's why Eastwood got the part.
My favorite scene in any of those films is the "Do you feel lucky, punk?" scene at the beginning of the first. After he succeeds in disarming the bad guy by convincing him that he, Harry, is unsure whether he's run out of ammunition, and "fires" the gun which he knows is empty, he snickers.
One thing people missed about Django Unchained is that the plot was a pretty typical spaghetti western. Improbable sequence of events producing a lot more shoot up scenes and blood than one would otherwise find credible. There were lots of Djangos before. This plot happened to be one that Jamie Fox could fill the leading role.
Oh Rod, it pains me to learn that these movies are not in your cultural repertoire! I'd never have guessed it.
That he missed these and Predator really shows why "film critics" lack a broad understanding of their alleged field of focus.
Perhaps that is why he wasn't promptly surrounded and gunned down by law enforcement... which Sanders certainly would have been, as you point out in your review.
Rod- Hope you made it back to B’ham. Finally got around to watching Jonathan Pegeau’s talk at ARC. Well worth the listen - thanks for the recommendation.
Without spoiling it, Eastwood is not a vigilante. He's just a cop who doesn't feel sorry for criminals.
Dirty Harry had a great cast also. The actor who played "Scorpio", seemingly tried to escape being typecast as a psychopath in future roles. Harry Guardino, as the "my hands are tied" middle man, and John Vernon as the mayor, milked similar roles for years after. "Dean Wormer" is basically the San Fran mayor on steroids.
Brian, you are on double, secret probation for mentioning the great Dean Wormer.
You are right. Andy Robinson was type-cast and did low-budget films the rest of his life. He was married 56 years and his wife just recently died so he did succeed in his way.
But what a performance! Robinson's Scorpio was a mixture of Manson-like psychopath: "I've change my mind. I'm going to let her die!" and pathetic victim: "I have rights, I want a lawyer."
The actor who played Scorpio recently appeared in the Spider-Noir show on Amazon Prime starring Nicholas Cage.
I also love how Clint looked out for the lesser known actors in his movies. I think that Dirty Harry gave him the cache to have casting influence. John Mitchum (Robert's brother) played "DiGiogio" in 3 movies. Albert Popwell ("I gots to know") was in many Eastwood movies. Geoffrey Lewis (father of Juliette) also comes to mind in later films.
Eastwood did get many actors small roles in films. Funny, Lee Van Cleef was unhappy with Eastwood for not including him in Eastwood's films. Van Cleef and Eastwood worked very well together in "For a Few Dollars More."
The first four are great. Eastwood directed the fourth one. The fifth one is not nearly as good as the others.
While the Death Wish series may have made vigilantism attractive, the same cannot be said of the Dirty Harry series, as Harry Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood) takes a decidedly anti-vigilante stand in Magnum Force, the second film in the series.
Death Wish was a $hitty move too, no matter, the viewers cheered (I know of people that viewed this happen at the time). Boll doesn't have to do it better. In fact, there is now way to do this movie "good". Rod makes this point. The fact that he's doing it is the harbinger, but they won't pay any heed. Things will slide out of control.
Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" films and Bronson's "Death Wish" films added to the mood of the 70s. Did they lead to Ronald Reagan's presidency? Perhaps slightly. Inflation, the Cold War, bracket creep high taxes, the Iran hostage situation and the hapless Jimmy Carter led to Reagan more than crime but crime didn't help the Democrats in the 70s and 80s.
Yes, thanks for emphasizing this. The point I was trying to make is not to judge CV on its artistic merits or lack thereof, but to point to its existence as a sign of the times.
Very true. In its way, "Midnight Cowboy" was a sign of its times. Just as "The Deer Hunter", "Coming Home" and "Apocalypse Now" were films about how America was dealing with the defeat in Vietnam.
A lot of commenters seem to be confusing (possible fuzzy Boomer memories) Bronson/Eastwood and Death Wish/Dirty Harry . . . but maybe the main point is, both film series celebrated vigilante violence against thugs and derided the weak and useless vessels of institutional "justice." Audiences cheered . . . but nothing happened, it's just gotten worse.
Harry's vigilantism act, was the scene on the football field, in which he tortures Scorpio to get him to divulge the whereabouts of his dying kidnap victim. For most of the movie he is "on the edge" of justice. The final scene is one of the best of this genre (Death Wish is pretty great also).
Scorpio kidnaps a bus full of school children.....this puts me in mind of the Texas trans school shooting, where law enforcement allowed the shooting to continue for a ridiculous amount of time. Harry, of course, knows that Scorpio must be ultimately dealt with, even if he has a gun to a child's head. Risk and violence, in such cases, is proper. Harry tosses his badge at the end....disillusioned.
The soundtrack is great as well. Particularly the Scorpio-rooftop scene.
I will rewatch Dirty Harry soon.
It is the best of the three early Dirty Harry films. As much as I liked Duke Wayne, he couldn't have done some of the athletic events that Eastwood did in "Dirty Harry." Eastwood was 23 years younger.
"Harry, come on, let's call for backup" etc ...
"Take a hike, fatso!"
Not a line you'd hear in films these days.
"Take a hike, my weight-challenged colleague."
Death Wishes III through V are terrible but kind of a treat
I kind of thought that... but, been there, done that, seen it all before.
Did you actually watch Citizen Vigilante?
I thought it was pretty obvious from my comment that my judgment of Citizen Vigilante was based on Mr. Dreher's description, not on having seen the film myself.
Minor quibble: crime WAS out of control in the 1970s. The stats from that time dwarf what is going on now.
True. Crime rates were higher in the 70s. The Boomers weren't all just spoiled, long-haired, pot-smoking college students. They were criminals in the heart of our cities.
My first year as a big city paramedic in the early 90s was the year with the second highest number of murders in U.S. history. I was whining once back then to an old cop nearing retirement. He said "You should've seen things 20 years ago. At least now we actually send people to prison." Apparently the whole criminal courts judges slap-on-the-wrist thing in 70s movies and TV was real, even in urban Texas.
The year I married in 1991, Washington DC had something like 475 murders, the highest in its history. Blood ran through the streets.
I had no problems in DC 2000-2002, and I was mostly in SE and NE, or Capitol Heights. I relied on Metro and buses.
I was just going to say that crime rates peaked in the 90s, not the 70s. But we remember the 70s as a time of disorder while the 80s and the 90s, apart from some ideological sniping, are remembered as good times.
Economy on the way up, not down or barely up from the bottom.
We had a serious recession at the beginning of the 80s, and where I lived in Michigan there was never a full recovery, at least for working class people. It may have been "Morning in America," but in my state it was a cloudy, drizzly one.
The 90s also started with a recession-- and the first "jobless recovery", exploited by the Clinton campaign ("It's the economy stupid!") to beat HW Bush.
What good times?
Er, the late 90s? We had an employment boom, which set the record for the highest labor force participation rate. Wages were on the rise. Manufacturing stopped hemorrhaging jobs. The powerhouse IT industry wasn't limited to Silicon Valley and a few big coastal cities-- there were IT start ups everywhere.
Not your intention but this provoked a laugh . See when boomers aren’t bad decadent parents or pot smoking hippies, they are urban criminals. What a diverse group!
The criminals in the 70s were overwhelmingly not pot-smoking college students.
The sheer size of the Boomer generation probably contributed to the crime wave, as that generation was in its most crime-prone years.
Just by the size of the Boomers, there was bound to be more crime. Add in the drop in manufacturing jobs for the working-class and the increase in drugs and illegitimate children, America was probably destined for a crime wave lasting from very roughly 1970 to 2000.
Drugs, absolutely. In fact I think issues in the illicit drug market played a big role in the crime spike of the late 2010s and the Pandemic years.
I have some skepticism that growing up not in a two parent family (for whatever reason) necessarily turns people into delinquents. I know people who grew up that way and they were not all bad people (and contrawise people with two parents who ended up being "bad seeds")
Two things that cut down on the crime wave were getting lead out of gas and the availability of abortion. I know pro-lifers don't want to hear it, but my mother (a life-long Republican and a Planned Parenthood volunteer) pointed out a revealing study in Denmark. For a time, abortion was available, but a pregnant woman had to make her case to a review board. The study tracked the lives of children born to mothers who applied for abortion but were denied. They had a much higher rate of dysfunctional, anti-social incidents and serious crimes. Conclusion: Mothers who want to abort are statistically likely to do a bad job of raising their child, with results that are inflicted on the general community for years. Now if there were a system in place to take every baby born to a mother who wanted an abortion and place them with a stable, loving pro-life family (and weed out the "pro-life" Christians who believe in whipping any child who lacks a smile on their face), that might not be a problem. I say all that as an older adult acquainted with a young lady who recently discovered she is pregnant, who says "I don't want to abort my baby." There is nothing to do but support her -- that is her choice.
Many times the spoiled, long-haired, pot-smoking (ex-)college students were the criminals.
The difference, in 1970s NYC (and elsewhere) they were "our" criminals, they weren't imported from third world lands to seemingly oppress and terrorize the native peoples. In fact, immigration was hardly noticed or commented on in 1974.
Saw a recent claim that 2/3rds of the 20k murders in America were done by non citizens. I haven't looked up the stats or attempted to verify, but even one death from an noncitizen is too many.
I don't know where you got that claim, but it a big fat lie (not yours; I am NOT accusing you). It's not PC to say it, but we all know that America's crime problem is rooted in a demographic whose ancestors have been in this country since the the 17th and 18th century.
And death is death, and murder is murder regardless of who the perp or who the victim is.
As an aside, 20K is too high a number. I just googled the stats and was pleasantly surprised to find that for 2025 there were c. 14K murders (not counting vehicular homicide and other negligent homicide stats)
I'm glad you didn't accuse Pete as being dishonest. But the crime stat he writes of seems very much incorrect. I would guess that non-citizens might have contributed 20-25 % of murders, not two-thirds.
I very much do not like accusing anyone of personal dishonesty and I do my best to avoid it.
We've had multiple discussions right in Rod's blogs on the fact that low income young black men are the most crime-prone demographic in our nation.
If only we could tell when admitting an immigrant just which ones were going to commit crimes. (A lot of immigrants during years when the USA was eagerly recruiting them also committed crimes.) If the USA had admitted large numbers of Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazis, some among them would have committed crimes, even murder. Its statistically inevitable in any large population. That's why cities measure progress in how low the murder rate is... there is no such thing as zero. Never has been in human history.
You're right. It wasn't an issue. It wasn't much of an issue even in 1986 when Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to 2-3 million mostly Mexicans.
For me it was a big issue, already in 1986, and I already anticipated/predicted the dire circumstances of today back then. I correctly anticipated that states like CA, NJ, CT and even TX would eventually be lots to the GOP forever (and they are or will be) and I had front row seats to the sleazy machinations of the GOP/Pete Wilson in gutting the effectiveness of the amnesty from the get go. Was in 1986 that I came to truly loathe and distrust the GOP deeply, figured they were all con-men, which they are. Whatever, matters are going to get worse, much worse.
You know when I realized things were changing on the immigration issue was when I was driving with my wife in rural southeastern North Carolina in 1992 and saw a half-dozen Mexicans working on a car in an abandoned gas station. I had never seen any Mexicans in North Carolina beofre.
Farm Labor Organizing Committee started in Ohio, but its second focus for organizing was North Carolina -- that was in the 1970s and 1980s.
Well, Texas is hanging in there. IMO, the bigger problem was that the GOP became too "Southern" in culture and policy preferences, and eventually too eager to kick the "RINOs" out, which lost them the old cohort of moderate northern Republicans. And good grief look at what Trump is doing during this primary season! He's doing his best to tank the careers of even stalwart conservatives who refuse to join the line to kiss his ample behind. Recall the line about healthy movements seeking coverts while failing ones hunt heretics.
That last line is worth remembering. I've been pointing out to liberals for years that after three 50:50 elections, any coalition capable of delivering a substantial majority for any platform is going to need a substantial fraction of Trump voters. Also, who would you rather have in the senate: Joe Manchin, or an out and out Republican?
Just 25% of grade school children in Texas are white. That composition will surely shift further, to even less white, every year. The GOP is literally a dead man walking in Texas. Good 'effen riddance. Texas, as will Arizona, CA, Oregon, Guatemala, Honduras.... will just become a satrapy of the greater Mexican empire, nominally under custody of the USA but in reality Mexican. The real power will reside in Sinaloa, as it does today.
USA people take comfort and refuge in the familiar. They see Sheinbaum and they see a smart, savvy, liberal, Jewish girl-boss, not maybe to their liking, but familiar enough. Nothing is further from the truth with this one, she is owned thoroughly by the cartels and as time progresses the reach of the cartels will become permanently implanted, north of the Rio Grande. All the tough talking, all the lethal injections in Huntsville won't change this. Thank you GOP.
One of his worst decisions as president.
Well, yes, to some extent. But it was the tail end of the imported Italian criminal syndicates, and by the 1990s we had Russian criminal syndicates, and there were a few others that weren't so high profile.
Thing is, this all depends on impressions...feelings. Also very often we read someone is arrested for the 14th time.
Wasn't the man who killed the Ukrainian gal in Charlotte convicted of twenty or so crimes? Sadly, I think the man is going to escape true justice in that gal's case.
Haven't looked for the number BUT I do recall reading He Was Known to the authorities.
Alpha News (Minnesota)
Man out on bail in assault case newly charged with threatening to kill store clerk in Rochester
https://alphanews.org/man-out-on-bail-in-assault-case-newly-charged-with-threatening-to-kill-store-clerk-in-rochester/
Here in Mn, we see this ALL THE TIME.
I doubt it. This crime was too horrific, and too widely publicized. He'll be nailed this time. Somewhere between five and ten, or after his string of crimes included two with a weapon or violence, he should have been put away for a long time. But the first time, its hard to tell. A lot of people do one and then go straight. Even two or three that don't involve a weapon there is a lot to consider. I think everyone in the country read about the somewhat dark man who drove a van into a Christmas parade in Waukesha a few years ago. He was out on $500 bail after running over a black woman trying to kill her. Everyone was breathlessly waiting for someone to broadcast that his prosecution was somehow racist, but almost nobody wanted to go there. A friend of mine astutely noted where the real racism was: If the life of the woman he ran over mattered more to the judicial system, he wouldn't have been out on the street to drive his van into a parade of white folks. He had nothing against the people in the parade. He was in a blind rage that the woman he tried to visit, contrary to a restraining order, had refused to admit him to her apartment. More than imposing significant sentences, I think he was an example of why we need asylums -- he needed to be in a secured treatment facility, not in "community treatment" long before his last few crimes were committed.
He is a schizophrenic. The psychiatric evaluation he received post murder indicated he is incompetent to stand trial. You are right that is a repeat offender.
Escaping war-torn Ukraine only to die at the hands of career criminal in North Carolina. The irony.
And the not-so ironic? The owners of a nearby gay bar wanted to paint a mural in honor to Iryna Zarutska. Initially, everyone thought it was a great idea, even officials in local government, but then social media warriors started grumbling about the optics -- crazed black man kills beautiful Ukrainian refugee -- and the project was dropped.
But don't worry. There's surely a mural of George Floyd within a 25-mile radius of every American!
It's heartbreaking Paul. For the safety of society he should have been locked up and kept locked up and I heard how the murals of her were defaced. Truly despicable. Her father has been fighting in Ukraine and could not come to her funeral. Her mother was introduced at Trump's State of the Union. She broke down in sobs while Democrats sat there stonily. Disgusting.
Hopefully he gets what he deserves someday.
Clearly something is wrong when that happens. "Three strikes and you're out" failed because laws were sloppily written. A jury once changed their verdict when a defendant pointed out that conviction for theft after a couple of priors for disorderly conduct meant a mandatory life without parole sentence. But two priors for burglary or armed robbery should mean almost any felony results in somewhere between five and twenty years, with a substantial period of supervised release after.
Simple IF you have 2 convictions DO NOT do anything that would get you a 3rd.
What a lazy knee-jerk reflex. A large number of prosecuted crimes, perhaps even a majority, are not the result of someone deciding, I think I'll commit a crime today. They result from unanticipated encounters, negligence which can rise to the level of criminal, unanticipated impulse, and even interpretation, e.g., am I loitering, or am I enjoying a public amenity? Am I engaged in disorderly conduct? Or being a little too boisterous about my team's victory? The possibilities are legion. Whether life in prison constitutes justice, or even whether the protection of the public requires it, depend on a variety of facts.
They result from unanticipated encounters,...While committing a crime.
Crime is also severely underreported now. I have personal experience with this.
Your statement is dripping with unstated implication. Do you mean you declined to report a crime?
No. I am a pathologist who can be “deputized” to do autopsies for the coroner’s office. When I was a resident, we (pathology residents) were deputized to perform many autopsies, some of which turned out to be quite obvious murders. We were, shall we say, “strongly discouraged” from categorizing them as such. This was generally when the person was very poor/homeless and appeared to have no family, so it was very unlikely anyone would call the news or a lawyer to investigate. It would have cost the city too much effort/resources to bother.
Also I am certain you are aware that many crimes such as car theft, small burglaries, and so on are simply not reported or declined an investigation by the police—or the police DO do their jobs and our fine DAs erase the incidents.
Thank you. That's very helpful. I think if I were setting policy, I might say, if its a homicide, say so, but, if there is little to no evidence as to who might have done it, we won't put a lot of police resources into it. That last half of that is harsh, but police should focus on crimes they can solve, producing a net gain for community safety. Yes, many crimes are not reported, because the damage is slight and not worth the trouble. Police declining to investigate is a different matter -- I realize police dealing with murders and armed robberies will not have much time for hit and run accidents resulting in no injuries, but I do have a sense that people who commit such acts should not get away with it. I was hit by a car making a hasty lane change where the freeway split into two different routes, but since I had only a memory of the license plate and could give no description of the driver, the police didn't really follow up, even after I reported it.
This started about 20 years ago in blue cities and has since spread nationwide. So many crimes have been mostly decriminalized through refusal to enforce. The "no bail" movement didn't help.
Even a decade ago, a small time criminal in a blue state told me that everyone knew what they could get away with and that only the worst cases resulted in arrests.
A deputy in the same deep red state told me that they were not allowed to arrest for drug dealing or theft unless there was violence around.
Crime is high and accepted because they do not want to enforce.
Yes! They don’t even categorize crime as crime anymore!
I did business with many wealthy lefties in Washington DC. They knew not to leave anything outside their house that could be stolen.
Unless it goes to a "chop shop" a stolen car will surface eventually and there will be some sort of paper work done on it, if only through the DMV.
Any substantial theft will need a police report for insurance purposes.
Shop lifting may not be reported but it shows up as "shrink" in financial reports.
True story from New Orleans: a couple decades ago my friend’s brother got his car stolen. NOPD took his report, but did exactly **diddly** to find it. (NOPD is exactly as depicted in Van Damme’s 1994 film Hard Target.)
A couple weeks later, he found it several blocks away (which was in the ‘hood—N.O. neighborhoods fluidly flow in and out of the ‘hood) and called the police to report it.
Instead of sending anyone out to retrieve it the legal way, they said, “Well just go get it then.” So he retrieved it with some friends—but they were taking a risk retrieving the car from the hood.
Anyway, I would bet money the original theft report was ripped up (this was back in the days of paper).
This is the theme of hundreds of Hollywood movies.
Slingblade is a riff on the same theme.
Oh yes, the villain there absolutely got what he deserved
Dwight Yoakam said his own mother wanted to see his character killed.
There was a whole wave or two of films, made in the wake of the massive rise of crime and urban disorder caused by the liberal ascendancy in the 1960s, that absolutely enraged the critics. Pauline Kael wrote: "“Dirty Harry” is not about the actual San Francisco police force; it’s about a right-wing fantasy of that police force as a group helplessly emasculated by unrealistic liberals."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1972/01/15/saint-cop
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/vital-signs/outside-the-law/
Sort of like Woody Allen's "The Front" is a lot of blacklisted writers fantasizing about how they wish they had stood up to HUAC?
I’d much rather watch Disclosure Day than this.
Not me
And those Death Wish movies didn’t lead to a fascist America and neither did David Duke.
The real problem is not "Lock them up" v. "Turn em Loose judges." The real problem is responding to trends rather than taking a hard look at individual cases and defendants and plaintiffs. Right now there are two young people charged with a serious violent crime who I absolutely do NOT want doing any state prison time. They've had a couple months already in local custody, and its probably been a salutary shock treatment. Its always different when you know a defendant personally (and one of them has a step-father who knows the mother of the victim). Complicating matters, there are two more hard-core perps who are still at large. Prior record, presence or absence of gang affiliations (a lot of gangs are rather loose and short term, but it still matters), role in the crime, personal history, all make a real difference. A few years ago the local paper did a comprehensive story about the wave of Kia carjackings: it turns out a majority of those convicted only did it once, a large minority did it twice, and that was it, but the overwhelming majority of carjackings were done by about one out of six with the m.o. of responding to home confinement by cutting off the bracelet, slipping out into the night, and doing it again, seven or more times each. Clearly home confinement worked for quite a few, some could have used a month in jail, and the rest needed several years off the street.
Charlie, I'm wondering what you think of 35 years for 19-year-old Karmelo Anthony. He had no prior arrest record and seems to have been a decent enough kid in many ways ... until he went pissed-off nuts with a knife, angry enough to stab a peer through the heart. Zero to 100 at the speed of sound. Do you think 35 years is too little, too much or just enough?
Wonder what you think because prison time isn't supposed to be purely punitive; it's also supposed to be a means of protecting law-abiding citizens and residents from criminals, especially violent ones at elevated risk of striking again.
I've posted two articles on that very topic. Click on my name and you can find both of them. Never in my brief time on Substack have I gotten so many views, almost 400 for one, close to 700 for the other. My first impression was that Anthony had definitely committed a criminal homicide, but that 35 years was excessive. Initially I thought 5-10 years. When I wrote that, I had a distinct sense that Anthony had been bullied by several athletic young men and had a claim to what lawyers call impaired self defense, or excessive response to a real threat. As more comments, some well-informed, others less so, and reference to a good deal of news coverage developed a more comprehensive set of facts, I posted that the gap between justice and Anthony's sentence seemed considerably narrower. The case for Anthony having been seriously threatened dissipated to a great extent. Facts matter. I think there are some valid issues on appeal, but from the available information, it seems he was challenging Austin Metcalf "put your hands on me, see what happens" with his hand on a knife in his backpack.
To me, protection of the public is the main reason for a long prison sentence. Trying to define the seriousness of the crime by how many years a court metes out becomes a fool's game after a while. If someone is NOT a danger, some sort of community supervision is all right at times. A close second though is, sometimes its necessary to take someone OUT of their environment in order to even begin a process of any kind of rehabilitation. There was no way Karla Faye Tucker should have gotten out of prison, but she shaped up into a decent human being pretty quickly after getting off drugs, being removed from the company of her accomplices, and, not least, finding Jesus. The sister of one of her victims forgave her, having had his own born again experience, and the same victim's husband crowed over her execution. I'm inclined to think Anthony should have gotten 20 years, perhaps with parole hearings beginning at 10 or 15 years. Done right, parole considers carefully what a man or woman has become, rather than what they did. Done wrong, it is either a flat "We must given everyone a second chance," or "Parole is unreasonable for such a serious crime."
Nicely stated. Facts matter even though the “Free Karmelo” mobs won’t listen to the facts, just as the “He should have gotten life w/no parole” camp is unlikely to consider the relevant sentencing guidelines. In any case, Karmelo Anthony will first come up for parole about halfway through his sentence. That seems about right to me, given his young age at the time of the crime and his clean record up until then. Just have to hope the parole board takes seriously its No. 1 job: protecting the community against potentially violent criminals.
On that same track, hope for Anthony’s own sake that he can learn effective anger self-management — or even better, how to love his neighbor as himself — over the next 17.5 years. He’ll probably have to admit guilt, explain that he lost his temper out of all proportion to the situation, and show that he’s had some sort of spiritual conversion experience while in prison. Let’s pray for him as well as the soul of Austin Metcalf and the spiritual/emotional healing of his traumatized & grieving loved ones.
One error in many commentaries is failure to check the structure of Texas penal law. Many Americans intuitively rely on California law, because that's what we hear in so many movies, in Perry Mason, etc. But every state structures and defines different offenses in their own way. In Texas, murder does not require premeditation or malice, and murder is different from capital murder. Manslaughter and negligent homicide are the only other options, and they are defined rather broadly.
In a different America, Karmelo Anthony would have been hanged. That's what he deserves but in a soft America, he'll get out in fifteen years.
Derek, there's got to be sane & Christianly moral middle ground between the two extremes for the 21st century. Don't you think? Ensouled teenager, first offense.
I think 15 years is about right. In the "soft America" you reference (I lived through it), he might have been paroled after six months, with a few years of home confinement. Fifteen years is a LONG time for someone his age. I wouldn't quibble about twenty, which is even longer than he has lived so far. IF the claims that he was being bullied by four big tough athletes turned out to be credible, I would have said five years. Criminal, but impaired or excessive self-defense. However, it seems more credible that he was daring them to touch him, with his hand already on the knife. I don't believe he meant to kill -- asking the officer "Is he all right?" suggests otherwise. But it was a reckless act that did kill. Hanging would be wrong for all kinds of reasons.
I just finished watching "Death Wish" a few minutes ago. It is an interesting film but not a great film. The way Vincent Gardinia as Detective Ochoa tracks down Paul Kersey is fascinating.
Wasn't/isn't "antifa" basically far left vigilantism?
They were acting for the government (Democrats) not the people.
Antifa is the SA of the left.
If the Dems win in 2026 and/or 2028 do we get the SS?
Nah. More like the Soma police. Whatever it was in Brave New World.
I think Soma is correct, but it was a drug if I recall correctly.
Precisely. Democrats offer a cheap high, not violent suppression. Its how the drug was used I can't recall clearly -- but nonconformity was severely discouraged, in a pleasant, benevolent, but inexorable sort of way.
Yes. They have proven themselves violent more than once in the past 15. All the antifa rioters got off easy, Harris was urging donations to get them bailed out or defended. CHOP in Seattle, Trans shooters-violence is a leftist signature.
You flatter them.
Yes. Good call.
Sometimes, but not often.
Our petty wannabe antifa aren't organized or focused enough to be vigilantes. They have appropriated a theme from people who were capable of taking on Nazi brownshirts and stormtroopers, while the pale American version can only muster the strength to beat up a fellow protester for carrying the same flag the 54th Massachusetts carried against the walls of Fort Wagner.
Meanwhile, on another front:
https://spectator.com/article/the-catholic-church-has-turned-on-the-faithful/?edition=us
Well, that's what Martin Luther said. Five hundred years later...
Thismakes me think of the Lionel Shriver book A Better Life. It is coming to us.
I am two-thirds into the Shriver novel. It is not a great novel but Miss Shriver has a good feel for the mentality of your average leftist. Gloria Bunoventura is your typical left-wing bleeding heart who surrenders her home to a bunch of Honduran hoodlums.
Seriously? Do you know of anyone who actually does that?
It isn't a particularly good novel.
I don't think the character sounds typical of much in real life. Touting a "free zone" a thousand miles away where in point of fact drug dealers reign supreme and old scores are settled by firearms is one thing, surrendering one's own home to a bunch of Honduran hoodlums is quite another. Even liberals believe in the sanctity of their own private property.
So basically “Camp of the Saints” in film version.
Who plays the "Sh-teater" pray tell.
I just saw the movie today. It was definitely intense. My reaction was that those mollyhunkas got what they deserved. I don't have the stomach or heart to do it myself unless I caught someone in the act and I happened to pick up something and knock him silly but I would not be a juror to convict anyone that I felt had been driven to extremes by the manifest failure of those who were supposed to be our guardians. If our rulers don't wield the sword against evildoers, then someone else ultimately will.
Yeah, I took pleasure in the criminals getting what they had coming to them, but an entire family?!? And murdering judges — man, even if they in some sense deserve it, that’s too far. But Betz has been warning that that is exactly what’s coming.
It really seems you really are grooming yourself to become a cheerleader for the "right side" when the violence shows up. Why do you feel the need to do this? Your credentials lie in being thoughtful and emotionally sensitive. You really think you can perform the full split on this topic? To be a good cheerleader for violence, you need to have the intellectual and emotional range of a football commentator. Going further than that actively harms you, because it makes you feel wishy-washy and with spurious allegiances, whereas the midwit meathead can produce much more simple and reliable tribal grunts and jeers.
If your Benedict Option ever emerges, it's clear it would emerge as a refuge from the violence and division, not as the blood-stained armed camp of the "based chuds". How you miss this obvious point is rather bizarre to me. Do you want to miss this point?
Is maybe violence what you want, as opposed to what you would reluctantly accept? Bloodlust is a dangerous and tempting drug you know. It's just like sexual perversion - it's a deep, dark lust that can consume someone's mind. And because civilization (rightly) represses this dark lust so intensely, the thought of releasing the repression can feel ecstatic, thus possessing the mind and soul. I sure hope that's not what is happening to you. I sure hope you can recognize the source - you would call the source Satan.
"And because civilization (rightly) represses this dark lust so intensely, the thought of releasing the repression can feel ecstatic, thus possessing the mind and soul. I sure hope that's not what is happening to you. I sure hope you can recognize the source - you would call the source Satan."
I don't think you have to worry about this in Rod's case, but I fully agree with your general point. Revenge fantasies, no matter how well written or well crafted are dangerous in forming one's moral imagination. (As an aside, this is why I don't like Tarantino's movies. They're all revenge fantasies in a way.)
Good point, Rob, in re: revenge fantasy and Tarantino, but Quentin has nothing on the Icelandic sagas of 600-700 years ago. Robert Egger's "The Northman" gives an idea of the times, as Rod has written. A student of Rene Girard could mine "Njal's Saga" alone for PhD dissertation or two. You almost need a 3D scorecard/diagram to track the endless interlocking blood feuds.
Oh, I know. QT is just a very strong contemporary example.
Or Sigurd Undset’s Icelandic novel.
Her trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter was an amazing book IMO.
Gunnar's Daughter? That's the grimmest thing I ever read. The revenge goes horribly wrong.
In Iceland, the most respected man was the one who negotiated disputes, not the slickest killer.
Tarantino revels in the violence too much.
I doubt that even children of Holocaust victims find "The Bear Jew" a heroic figure.
Tarantino brags about violence arousing him--you know, that kind of arousal. He's a jerk.
I had to turn off The Hateful Eight. The way Jennifer Jason Leigh was slapped and punched during the first 15 minutes was enough for me.
I agree. I turned off "Pulp Fiction" five minutes into watching it. All of the foul language I've heard before in a high school boys' locker room. And a sissy like Travolta breaking bad was as ridiculous as Montgomery Clift knocking John Wayne on his ass in "Red River" or Tony Curtis killing Kirk Douglas at the end of "The Vikings."
Tarantino once called the long dead John Ford a "racist." I bet he wouldn't tell that to Woody Strode who, at least in his youth, would have torn Tarantino apart. As a director, Tarantino would be lucky enough to kiss Ford's handkerchief. Or maybe Ford's ass.
I actually liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood until the ending, which I though absolutely horrendous -- way over-the-top violent and misogynistic to boot. His revenge fantasy on the Manson Family for ruining the 60's.
Yeah I liked it too. The ending was much more palatable when I realized it was a live-action cartoon, like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Everyone I know was laughing through the entire scene. The violence had ceased to be real in any way.
Yes, that's the point I try to make in my piece! All of this is really dangerous, socially and morally. If one can't understand why vigilantism (and its depiction) is satisfying to people who have had to endure the systemic injustice that British and European peoples have, coming from lawless migrants and the corrupt institutions that protect migrant interests over natives (and the law), then one is dangerously out of touch with social and cultural reality.
However, if one thinks there's nothing problematic about vigilantism, or enjoying its depiction, then one is not thinking through the deeper and broader moral implications of surrendering the Law to the passions.
It would have been wise to add the context to why anyone should care about Uwe Boll's murder fantasy movie to begin with. Just start the post saying it was a big thing on Twitter (which it was).
Not all of us like to waste our time in one of the most toxic, negative and discreditable places on the internet. So don't take for granted we just happen to know what goes on in that sewer.
I honestly am giving up trying to understand why you read me, or when you do, come up with this kind of wacky psychoanalysis. I say quite clearly in my essay that I have serious moral qualms about this movie, and explain why ... but at the same time understand why it gives one pleasure to see Sanders do what he does. It is important to understand all of this if one wants to understand these times we are in. I would hope people who see the film would come out thinking, "We have to do whatever we can to avoid that fate for our society. We have to insist that our politicians stop mass migration, deport all who can be, and enforce the damn law effectively and without prejudice. If not, then we are bound to get something like 'Citizen Vigilante'."
I suppose you might be the sort of person who would tell David Betz that he's grooming himself to be a cheerleader for the right side when the violence shows up, simply because he's trying to sound the alarm, based on his professional expertise. If so, you would be wrong. As I've said several times in this space, I was present when Betz warned a audience member in a Budapest speech that he should not look forward to civil war as some sort of wish fulfillment. Millions would likely die, Betz said, and it would take Europe a century to recover economically.
Do you even know what the reputation of Uwe Boll is? Not just in Germany, but especially there? He is basically the Ed Wood of Germany.
I mean at least David Betz is a professor. Not representative of everyone in his field, but still credible. What are Uwe Boll's credentials supposed to be? Why am I supposed to care about the German Tommy Wiseau and his murder fantasy movie, again? Because someone packaged it into an outrage bait Tweet on X?
Also, I'd feel bad for doing "wacky psychoanalysis" on a different writer. But not on you, because all you do is perform amateur psychoanalysis on a continent you don't care to understand, only preach down to. Seems fair to me.
If you Americans want to use Europe as your spit bucket, fair enough. We all have neuroses, sometimes we have to act them out. And yeah - Europe made some mistakes, so we're not fully innocent either. But don't go and play the victim when you get some friction in return. If you want to play "hardball", consider accepting the fact that you will get the same treatment in return.
Murdering judges... Trump will love that.
Of course that was your reaction. Its a movie. My reaction to watching "Exodus" is still sympathy for Israel as the underdog fighting British imperialism and Nazis... which is PART of the truth. But I know its not the whole truth.
Citizen Vigilante is not a great movie because the theme is obvious, but it is a compelling movie. If our Western judicial systems will not work, then, eventually, vigilantes will emerge. This does not take a seer or fortune teller to predict. It is just common sense.
Exactly.
It is a "shot across the bow" to the elites. That's its value. Whether they will wake up in time is not known, but dubious.
If any kind of sustained vigilante action gets underway, rest assured there will be elites behind it, for their own reasons.
Another name for this is "civil war." That is what Rod and Betz have been warning about.
Not really. First, vigilante actions don't always result in civil war, particularly when enough elites are united in tacit support. Second, civil wars require massive resources, far more than the kind of vigilante revenge fantasies offered by the movie under discussion.
That aside, the ominous hysteria about impending civil war are blind to realities on the ground. Most states have quite a mix of opinions, aspirations, and attitudes on almost every controversial subject -- there is no state or region of any substantial resources with an overwhelming majority one way or another. Also, we have a very complex long distance economy. When grocery trucks stop arriving at supermarkets from all over the country, people will be having food riots, which will actually make it impossible to organize a civil war. The confederacy was done when housewives were rioting for bread, and all Jefferson Davis could do is throw then the change from his pocket. He actually had kept an army in the field for a few years before it reached that pass.
No, I think Rod and Betz are right about this. Any civil war in Europe would not be the kind we're used thinking about. It would take the form of fed up country people sabotaging critical infrasture--easy to do and hard to defend against. It would create food riots in the cities as you say, and that is the idea: destabilize things to the point that the people in the cities lose all confidence in the government. And I think there is a growing majority in favor of drastic action to deal with the immigrants in most Western European countries. The AfD is now the most popular party in Germany. If the elites there continue to try to suppress it, it could easily lead to violence. Same in Britain and France. As Rod has said, talking to the French, they all say it isn't whether, but when a civil war will break out. The French, like the Germans, do have experience with these things, not necessarily good. None of this is good, but even if Rod and Betz are only half right, the pressure is continuing to build, and the Brussels people are continuing to pretend that they can impose their will no matter how much the citizens suffer or must pay. That is what is unsustainable.
Perhaps if what occurs "would not be the kind we're used to thinking about" it would not be a civil war at all. Words mean something. One trend in the 21st century I've pushed back against is the idea that we can redefine words to mean whatever suits us at the moment.
An example from an unrelated topic: The small midwestern city I grew up in has been fatuously described as a "Sundown Town." However, nobody has ever produced an ordinance forbidding people of specified complexions from being in city limits between sunset and sunrise. A friend who leans more conventionally "left" than I do quoted some sociological speculation intoning that "If we broaden the definition..." Well that is just the problem. Words mean nothing if anyone can "broaden the definition" whenever it is convenient. "Sundown Town" has a specific meaning; it isn't a broad reference to "there was some racism going on there sometimes."
We could debate exactly what constitutes a War, as distinct from a Riot, or a Civil Disturbance," but it doesn't became A Civil War just because someone is emotionally invested in using the phrase.
Now, on the the substance of your case. You over-estimate the independence of the rural areas from the cities. They are utterly dependent on financing, supplies, equipment, markets... not even a small family farm is going to hunker down on a subsistence basis and wait it out. If they try, millions of urban residents will trample the countryside in a desperate search for food. It won't be organized, but it will be destructive, and it won't end with anyone "winning" any kind of "victory." You also overstate the "demand" for "drastic action." There probably is a majority that wants significant changed in immigration policy, but there are frequent reports of districts that voted overwhelmingly for Trump who bemoan any action to deport the owner of the popular Mexican restaurant they all love to patronize. Also, tourist businesses in Door County WI complain about a shortage of short-term immigrant labor, and dairy farmers are worried about losing the year-round workers they depend on. The USA is not in the same situation as Europe, and I suspect the situation in Europe, while out of whack, is not so dire as it can be made to seem long distance. Most people in Europe are mostly living their lives rather normally most of the time. Brussels has a lot wrong with it, but immigration is only one reason.
Re: destabilize things to the point that the people in the cities lose all confidence in the government.
They wouldn't lose confidence in the government., They would feel a white hot hatred for the terrorists who are ravaging their lives. Tim McVeigh imagined he could stir up a race war with the OKC bombing. Instead the country united in revulsion against him and anyone who seemed to be with him ideologically.
Vigilantes also emerge when judges do their job properly, and special interests don't approve.
What do you mean? Examples?
Consider the entire landscape of the former confederate states in the 1890s. This was not right after Reconstruction, but a decade or two down the road. There were many localities where elected governments were overthrown by armed vigilantes, and new white supremacist governments installed. Then, we have the ordinary run of the mill lynchings. Many judges in the southern region tried to do their job, administer justice, follow due process, but if a mob could be got up that objected, people would be forcibly removed from law enforcement control and lynched. Now it must be said, not everyone lynched was innocent. Some were, but there were powerful forces who insisted otherwise. Some were guilty, but of a rather lesser offense, but powerful forces wanted them dead anyway. Some were guilty, but entitled to due process, and/or the lawful sentence, applying judicial discretion, might be less than death. Don't make the mistake of thinking that lynch mobs were a rag-tag band of poor white trash. Solid middle class men and women, business leaders, the pillars of the community, were generally involved, and there were always elites prodding, hinting, motivating, and tolerating it.
I am overjoyed with the victory of Darializa Avila Chevalier, hater of Western Civilization at the same time that she lives in a country part of Western Civilization. May she join Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes as the spokesmodels of the Democratic Party. It was smashing that Brad Lander crushed leftist Dan Goldman in the primary largely because Goldman supports Israel's right to exist and Lander doesn't. The Republican Party is often ugly but it is fortunate that the Democratic Party may actually be collectively insane.
Just a thought. Darializi Avila Chevalier can go back to the Dominican Republic, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes can back to Puerto Rico and Ilhan Omar can go back to Somalia if they find Western Civilization so hateful.
The average Democrat thought he was on solid ground with his TDS, but now finds he is being flanked by fellow Democrats' intense hate of Jews and traditional Western cultural norms. It's to the point that James Carville is talking of a schism among Democrats. Things are moving fast. The Dem party seems to be unraveling. So be it.
I'm glad to see Carville so perplexed. He's a phony working-class sort. I don't know any working-class lefties. I was shocked to learn he did a stint in the Marines. Just goes to prove that jackasses can make it in the Marine Corps.
Maybe he ate one too many crayons while in uniform
(You know we love our Marine brethren...)
Almost all Marines are better men than I. But not Carville. He's sort of in the Clayton Lonetree category. Traitor to his nation.
I gave up on Carville when he compared New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to Judas Iscariot after he endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Hey, I thought, you've been sleeping with the enemy ever since you married Mary Matalin. He is now saying the right thing for the wrong reasons. He is one of the reasons I want nothing to do with the Democratic Party.
I don't know anything else about him, but Brad Lander sounds like a fool for thinking that he can cozy up to these rabid antisemites and that his opposition to the existence of Israel will protect him.
He might as well tattoo "Please don't kill me...I'm a good Jew" on his forehead.
Useful idiot. And a fool.
Exhibit A:
https://nypost.com/2026/06/27/us-news/humiliation-for-scott-wiener-as-hes-chased-from-san-francisco-trans-march/
Scott Wiener thought being the great legislative champion of all things queer would protect him from the virulent Jew hatred because of some magic word like "intersectionality." Guess not...
Wow. No one raised an eyebrow when Weiner was OK giving 12 year olds puberty blockers but remaining silent on Gaza really worked up the crowd.
They won't--they get too many cheers and too much money from the left.
Puerto Rico is part of the United States. I've visited the place. It's a bit schizoid (signs in both metric and English measurements as well as decidedly "Spanglish") but it is very much part and parcel of Western civilization.
Momdani…
Yes, mayor Momdani and the governor of New York have a 1.2 billion commitment to universal child care from 6 weeks to 5 years old for New York. The rollout is over the next four years. This will undoubtedly destroy the entire city of New York and make it harder for families to live in the city. Families need to pay for child care in order to gain respect for capitalism. If you get free child care it will destroy those families that use it. Just look at how it has destroyed Europe!
LOL. I have zero problems with universal child care, but you can't just magically make $1.2B appear, even over four years. Where do you get it? Even if you try to soak the rich and the corporations, they'll just leave. Then where are you?
Plus, let us grant for a millisecond that Mamdani's plan actually works. How does that help the rest of the city, which is turning to shit? Does he try to get another $1.2B for another "Four Year Plan" to clean things up?
C'mon man.
And yet 150 billion magically appeared to blow up people in your war and another 300 billion was promised to stop it. You have paid billions extra for gas in the last few months.
New York is has been getting destroyed in the dreams of conservatives for generations. The rich have always been leaving New York and destroying it. Immigrants have been destroying it for generations. It’s your white whale. It’s what you live for. Any day now it’s going to disappear.
I seem to vaguely remember a saying from back in my benighted youth, one that my dear mother used to repeat. What was it? Oh yes! -- Two wrongs don't make a right!
In other words, one can simultaneously reject both disastrous warmongering AND phony socialist "reforms." Try it -- you might like it!
But you’re supposed to be family friendly! Isn’t day care going to help families have children? I thought that the costs of having children was a huge problem that was destroying families in America! You sound like you hate children, so sad.
The problem isn't with the intention, it's with the implementation. I'm all for the intention, but as proposed it's a major instance of robbing one apostle to pay another.
Which is not to say that a lot of these problems couldn't be handled better if we spent less on the military and more on more human concerns. See? That we are the richest country in the world and still can't manage to feed and clothe our poor is a travesty. But trying to tax our way to solutions isn't the answer. As someone said long ago, hunger is not usually a supply problem it's a distribution problem.
So the mayor of New York and the governor of New York are allocating tax dollars for child care just like they allocated tax money for centuries and all of a sudden your bent out of shape because its socialism? And how do you think that police, fire, schools, libraries etc are funded? Really?
And you even appear to at least claim to care about helping families and are concerned about “distribution”. Then distributing tax dollars to care for children and supporting families is somehow wrong and you have to find another way. Just exactly how is that? Bake sales?
Even better, you don’t live there, you’re never going to live there and those residents voted for someone who promised to deal with affordability, I.e. child care and is doing exactly what he promised!
Aside from Rob's ethical response, money spent out of the federal treasury does not automatically became available for New York City to fund a daycare program. Mamdani has to deal with the revenues available to his government. Railing about wasteful spending in Washington, while it has its place, will not fund his day care program.
Basically true, but not an insuperable obstacle. It is possible to budget for measures like this, then write a realistic tax code to pay for it. The problem is that we have people proposing all kinds of goodies, without being sober about exactly how to pay for it, and people demanding tax cuts, without being honest about what will no longer be funded. "Tax the rich" doesn't cut it -- the devil is in the details. What do we really want done, how much will it cost to do it right, and how are we going to distribute the necessary tax burden?
I am reminded of the time my mother, the Republican in the family, was serving on the board of a non-profit day care center. All the liberals expected the necessary paid staff to work for minimum wage, which would reduce the need for funding. Mom said no, if we need to hire people, we pay them a good wage for their work.
The governor of New York allocated the funding to the city to pay for the child care and that is the same as any other allocation of money that the state makes. It is no different than any other state funded project. It was a budget request, it was added to the requests and it ended up getting to the part of the list that was approved.
Note that the state of New York is required to balance the budget for each cycle.
The details were taken care of, no devil was missed. I am sure that some requests did not make the cut, just like each budgeting session.
The funniest thing about this story is the utterly simple nature of it. The largest city in the country, the one that produces the most tax revenue for the entire state asked for money to help it make its workers more productive and its children better taken care of and they said OK. What a concept.
Fair enough. That would, in my opinion, answer Rob's objection in the short term. Also, paying for it from an income tax base, rather than property taxes, makes sense to me. (It is harder, although not impossible, to move out of a state entirely to escape taxation, than to move from NYC to Westchester, and income tax is a fairer way to distribute the tax burden.) Whether the state can sustain this cost indefinitely would be worth considering.
I didn't come out and say it but the sustainability issue is implied in my critique. Anyone with big dreams and enough money can start something. Keeping it going is another story.
Its a fair question, but whether it will be difficult to sustain needs to be established. One could argue that expanding the number of police is unsustainable, but that depends on long term revenue expectations and an overview of priorities. I did notice that a local dance troupe which recently lost a good deal of funding from federal arts and humanities sources had announced "We can never rely on federal funding again." That's not a bad philosophy -- building your own funding sources and endowments can be more reliable. Politics fluctuates.
Child care will destroy NYC? Come on, how does that pass the laugh test?
And since you seem to be preaching a Randite gospel are you also opposed to free" police and fire fighting service?
he is being sarcastic.
It took me a while to figure that out. His initial comment was a very realistic parody.
Capitalism needs to pay for child care in order to get women into the workforce. Why should anyone who works for a living "gain respect" for capitalism?
More analytically: Taking care of children and raising them properly takes time and money. On a family farm, you can to an extent have them underfoot and running around, starting to take on part of the work as they grow up. If daddy works at a factory or office, and mom stays home, the costs are "off the books" as far as the financial economy is concerned. But, a lot of families ALWAYS depended upon two incomes, even in the Victorian era. Now, with liberals for one set of reasons and conservatives for another set of reasons depending that women he in the workforce, we have to face the real costs of raising children.
(By the time I finished writing this, I realized your comment was sarcasm, but it was a very good parody.)
Will this movie be Europe’s Birth of a Nation?
That is the highest level it might rise to.
So, it’s getting a White House screening, someday?
I'm sure the entire cabinet would love it.
Osama bin Laden would win the Democratic primary in New York and the election.
Osama bin Laden could have been a contender.
He coulda been somebody, "tonight's not your night..." (sorry, couldn't help it)
I love that film.