So Chicago's lesbian-of-color mayor has decreed that "vigilantism" is a big problem now. The rioters and the looters aren't being stopped by the police (because she will not allow the police to stop them) and so people are banding together into a "well-regulated militia" and keeping looters away from their homes and businesses. To the mayor, this is "vigilantism" and it's a problem.
I don't think she realizes it, but every time that person opens her mouth she reveals that she wants the riots and the looting to be as bad as possible.
That is your world where police have been abolished, by the way--unless you take the steps Lenin took and make up an extra-legal "public safety council" that handles law enforcement. Believe me, while you might think you want that, you really do not...because you will be among the second or third trainload of people shipped off to the gulag. If, that is, you are lucky, and not simply shot, which was Pol Pot's way of handling a surplus of useful idiots who'd served their purpose.
This is what comes immediately after the police are abolished but before the Leninist "public safety council" steps up.
And because I cannot comprehend the naivete here--because it seems impossibly naive to think that "conflict resolution" will work against criminals and lunatics--I'm pretty certain that the Leninist "public safety councils" are the actual aim of this measure.
Second City Cop says it best in his discussion of rule of law:
This country was founded under the Rule of Law. Imperfect as it may be, it is--by far--superior to anything currently (or historically) in existence. And believe it or not, while on duty as police officers (and any government official for that matter) we represent The Law.The "public safety council" does not represent the law. It is a political organization, and it represents the politics of whomever is in charge. You can look at the history of communist Russia to see how that worked out for them.
Someone beats you up for wearing a MAGA hat, and the "council representative" arrests you for incitement. You're white; a black man breaks into your home and threatens your wife and children with a pistol, only you shoot him dead--and the council puts you in jail for committing a hate crime. Not for having the legally-owned and registred firearm, not for killing him, but for the crime of hating black people. And by the way, when the blacks in town riot and burn down your neighborhood and lynch your family, nothing is done about it by the "public safety council" because everyone has a right to protest. Oh--and when your friends counter-protest, they're rounded up and jailed for sedition. The one carrying the "all lives matter" sign is beaten to death by the "public safety council" stormtroopers for "resisting assistance".
That's the real aim, here: making law enforcement into political enforcement.
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I kind of suspected this. Usual caveat about polls, here, but FFS enough is enough already.
When you have 48% of Democrats stating they want the military to help the police stop all the fucking horseshit you know that the populace is getting damned sick and tired of it.
Of course, it's also important to remember that there are a lot of people who identify as Democrat who have been left behind as the party moves ever-leftward. Blue collar guys. The guys who work in auto plants or construction jobs--pretty much any unionized "blue collar" profession is full of people who love Jesus, like guns and fireworks, and believe in freedom and justice for all, the American way, who nonetheless insist on voting Democrat even though the Democrat party calls them "deplorables" and "hicks" and much worse for not being ardent leftists.
Let me make something as clear as I possibly can: there is a difference between "protest" and "riot". The First Amendment guarantees the right of the people to peaceably assemble and protest--it says so, verbatim--and I wouldn't think of standing in anyone's way in the exercise of that right, regardless of what they are trying to say. If all "Black Lives Matter" did was to march while carrying signs, I would support their right to do so, unequivocally.
Where it all falls down is when people start breaking things and stealing. The instant that your march fails to deliver the people doing those things over to the police, you've de-legitimized your protest and are no longer covered under the First Amendment.
Compare, if you will, the men openly carrying firearms to protest the lockdowns, to the rioting and looting going on all over the country. In the former case, they didn't break any laws at all and no one got hurt. In the latter case--
And I know I'm not the only one in the country who thinks so. There are plenty of people who regard "gay pride" parades as a logical extension of the First Amendment. I'm not so sure about that but you might notice that the vast majority of my criticisms of such events fall in the "have some decorum, for fuck's sake!" rather than "they shouldn't be allowed to do that!"
The most dangerous sentiment I know is, "They shouldn't be allowed to say that."
...but violence is not speech, no matter how the left tries to twist things so that they can be conflated to its advantage. There is no legitimate protest in vandalism and theft.
I think that poll--if true--reflects that.
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Incidentally--
One of the things that amuses me about the "train robbery" video I linked to the other day stems from the fact that the people stealing from that train could have stopped the thing in its tracks (literally) if any of them had any education whatsoever.
See, trains have air brakes. Air brakes work on a pressure differential, so that if the brake hose is cut or disconnected, the brakes come on. Secondly, at each end of every railroad car there's a handle which decouples the cars.
Each coupler has a stationary part and a moving part. When a railroad car is coupled to another, the "knuckle" (the moving part) rotates around a pivot. Holes in the knuckle and the coupler align, and a pin (which is about 2.5" across) drops into that hole, locking the cars together. This pin is attached to the handle I mentioned above, so all you need to do is to yank on that handle and the pin will come out. It will take some strength and several tries because it's not easy to decouple a train car that's being pulled along--there needs to be some "slack"--but under the right circumstances it should pop loose, and a train moving at a constant speed won't be under constant tension, so keep trying.
Half the train goes on ahead while basic parasitic friction slows the other half. Eventually, the two halves separate far enough that their brake hoses pop apart, letting the air out, and that applies every brake shoe on the entire train at full force, bringing the entire thing to a stop.
I still want to know how those people knew which container had all the TVs in it, though. Did they just go along the train with bolt cutters, opening boxes until they found something valuable and portable? Or did someone tell them, "car sixty-three, top container, full of brand new LCD TVs!" And if they did, why not tell them how to stop a freight train?
* * *
Today is gloriously cool. I mean, I opened the front door and could not tell the difference between outside and inside air, except that outside felt nicer because it's fresh.
Biking weather....
Oddly, cicadas have emerged. Not a huge brood like in 2007, but early in the year. The annual cicadas usually don't get going before July, around here, but the long-term broods will pop out starting in late May. So, this might be related to the same brood that is emerging down south, I suppose.
A couple crawled up onto the porch, but they seemed small and didn't moult. I'm guessing they either picked the wrong tree to siphon sap from (the elm that Mom had cut down in 2008) or else something else went wrong. One of them fell off the column as I watched.
So, a couple of trees around here are making loud cicada noises, but not all of them--certainly not like 2007--and as I said, we're four years too early for the next brood of 17-year bugs to emerge here.
* * *
Friday I got to work late and spent the entire day feeling embalmed. Despite feeling embalmed, I managed to get quite a few things attended to yesterday, at work, which is encouraging. Even so, I had intended to come home and go right to bed, but Mrs. Fungus convinced me otherwise by ordering a pizza. After dinner I then tried again to go to bed--actually making it into the bed and into a supine position--only Mrs. Fungus again convinced me that going to sleep at that time would be premature.
...so a while later I got up and fiddled in the garage a bit, with the battery stuff I discussed in the previous post.
* * *
Anyway, that'll do for now.