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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

A Quick Run Around the Web (8/11/2020)

"Navy SEAL and Army Special Forces Operator discuss Fighting Rifle Setup"--Garand Thumb (35 min.) They explain what they used, what worked well and what they would do different, sling options and set up. Basic setup now is a low-power variable (1-6x or 1-8x) paired with an offset red-dot.

Making the standard AR-15 into something more than an intermediate carbine is an old concept, going back to nearly the genesis of the weapon itself. It really hit its stride in the early 2000s with the Special Purpose Rifle (SPR) concept- a Small Unit level Designated Marksman’s rifle. It’s advantages are numerous; light weight, accurate and fast. While the original Mk 12 is a bit dated now, the concept of having a rifle that shares magazines and ammo with the other weapons on the team remains tactically sound and one that is particularly appealing to potential guerrilla forces, working with limited manpower and supplies. Among those of us that actually understand small unit warfare, the role of the sniper- remaining in the shadows and timing his attack when and where its most favorable to him- is the largest force multiplier. His weapon is just as important. The AR, when done right, can serve this role well.

The author envisions such weapons being used at the 300-500 yard range, explaining:

 Why 300-500 meters? For the guerrilla, one of the most important considerations that needs to be made on patrol is concerning indirect fire. In case you didn’t know, standing there and shooting it out with conventional or even special operations forces is suicidal. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve rehearsed your immediate action drills, you have to always assume that the team you attacked has artillery and close air support. If its a Light Infantry unit, they’ll have mortars at the Company and Battalion level. 600 meters and closer is what’s known as Danger Close range. They’ll still rain steel on target, but it’ll take a bit longer to double check the calculations. But 300-500 meters is a happy medium for another reason. Panicked troops will have a much harder time spotting your team’s firing positions, and the hit probability from their weapons at 500 is much less than yours. The conventional Army’s basic rifle qualification is 300m, and often the 300m popup target gets ignored. And that’s out in the open. A guerrilla effectively employing the principles of camouflage and concealment is a serious menace.

Read the whole thing.

  • "A Study That Gets it Right: Gun Laws Change Nothing"--The Truth About Guns. A look at a study done of Canadian suicide and homicide rates and what impact, if any, gun restrictions had on those rates. As you can already guess, the gun restrictions had no impact on suicides or homicides:

The results: “No associated benefit from firearms legislation on aggregate rates of . . . suicide” was found for either males or females, though there were increases in rates of hanging suicide and poisoning. “No beneficial association was found between legislation and female or male homicide rates.” On the other hand, “an increased association with suicide rates was found with rates of low income, increased unemployment, and the percentage of aboriginals.”

  • Video: "Cameras Don't Lie: 9mm vs .45 ACP"--Guns & Ammo. "Using nearly identical guns, both from the Remington family of polymer-frame, striker-fired RP pistols, loaded with Hornady ammunition, our shooters set out to compare often unseen measures such as muzzle rise and slide-lock time." As you would expect, the 9mm had shorter slide-lock time and less muzzle rise making it faster to bring back on target. Enough to make a difference? Perhaps in competition, but not in a gun fight. 
  • "How Barrels Are Rifled"--Shooting Times. A look at single-point, broach, button, and hammer-forged barrels.
  • "First Look: Barnaul Ammunition .300 BLK FMJ"--Shooting Illustrated. The ammunition will employ steel cases using a 145-grain FMJ round with a reported 1,985 fps-rated muzzle velocity, although the article doesn't mention what barrel length was used for the testing. And, although the article mentions the "attractive" price-point more than once, no MSRP is included.
  • "ESCAPING A REAR NAKED CHOKE"--USCCA. The video embedded in the article takes a look at using a knife to escape the rear naked choke hold. As to why you would resort to lethal force, the article explains:

In the surveillance video shown here, you can see that the victim is rendered unconscious in just about five seconds as the attacker is choking her. At that point, she is at his mercy. A knife, rigged as shown in this video, allows you to quickly take defensive action against any attacker who is choking you from behind. You could also use this same knife and movements to stop a choke from the front or side. As long as you can get to the knife and get the knife to some part of the attacker’s body, you have a fighting chance.

Again, it’s a process of trial and error, using various carry system with your normal clothes. All your clothes. You may have different clothing for different occasions that require different carry systems. A scrubs-wearing doctor with an ankle holster may switch to an IWB holster when he changes into casual clothes. Women wear dresses, skirts, shorts and pants; all of which may require a different carry system.

  • Some gunfighting history: "The Life and Times of the Brain-Damaged Gunslinger Clay Allison"--Guns America. Allison suffered a blow to the head as a youth that left him with brain damage, including reduced impulse control. In addition, he had a club foot and, later in life, was left with a limp after accidentally shooting himself in the foot.

Just in case anybody thought of denigrating the man over his physical shortcomings, Allison was legendarily accomplished with both a knife and a handgun. On two different occasions Allison, while drunk, threw his Bowie knife and pinned men to the wall by their shirts. The first was a county clerk named John Lee. The second was a local attorney named Melvin Mills. In both cases, the men were otherwise unharmed.

An interesting read.

  • "Don’t Feed The Gun Prohibitionists!"--CCRKBA. A list of businesses that are anti-gun. 
  • "8 Ways To Increase Rifle Accuracy"--Rifleshooter. The 8 things or factors he lists are (i) a good stock or chassis, (ii) bedding the action, (iii) what he terms "critical scope features", (iv) bases and rings for said scopes, (v) some additional scope accessories, (vi) cheek rests, (vii) bipods, and (viii) using a good trigger.
  • "The What & the Why – Rack It – Methods of Closing the Slide"--Guns America. "For this article, we will consider three ways of closing the slide. We will call them the Sling Shot, Slide Release, and Thumb To The Rear methods." As the author suggests, you should all be familiar with them. I had the occasion to be shooting a friend's 1911 style pistol at a shooting match and discovered, when it came time to reload, I could not reach the slide release with my thumb. I just switched to the sling shot method and used that for the rest of the match.
  • "Head to Head: .38 Super vs. 9 mm"--Shooting Illustrated. The author's conclusion? "The .38 Super is cool, loud  and powerful, but is it really a better all-around option for self-defense than 9 mm? Probably not." What we are seeing here is something that we've seen with a lot of other rounds which have a slightly more powerful cousin: with modern bullets intended for self-defense or law enforcement, the penetration and expansion at higher velocities is not really any better than at lower velocities. That's why we don't see much performance gain, for instance, between 9mm and .357 Sig. Where there would be a payoff, however, would be for hunting loads or loads designed for defensive use against bears or other large animals where you want deep penetration. 
  • "How to Win a Street Fight" by Tom Marlowe at The Survivalist Blog. Marlowe begins:
      As it turns out, most people have a whole lot of ideas about street fights, and virtually no experience. Heck, most people have never even suffered an honest-to-god punch in the mouth before.

      This is, as you might expect, a serious problem that must be rectified if you really want to survive the dangers of the world, and especially the dangers that will be present during an SHTF event.

      Not every problem can be solved by a firearm, and even if the problem does need solving with a gun, oftentimes you will have to engage in some good old hand-to-hand combat in order to access your gun and get it in gear.

      Considering how dangerous street fights are, and how likely they are to result in disfiguring or even crippling damage whether or not you win or lose, it is definitely in your best interest to know how to prevail in a violent encounter. We will talk about doing exactly that in this article.

Read the whole thing. In fact, you might want to print it up or save it for future reference.

Examining history teaches us one important fact.  That without laws groups of men and even cultures normally resort to a “Culture of Honor”.  Sounds cool, right – Honor and all.  Not exactly.  The honor that  those men and cultures resorted to was not the honor you see all the patriot movement and liberty bloggers write about.   The cultures of honor that emerged and existed were the ones that gave birth to the concept of standing as determined by possessions (which creates an Aristocratic class that eventually becomes beyond reach of the honor law) and the notion that inspiring fear forms a better strategy than promoting kinship; and the concept that creating a reputation for swift and disproportionate retaliation increases the safety of one persons family and property.  As an example look at the western Land Baron that perceived a wrong for smaller ranchers grazing their cattle on his property.  The land baron had the resources through hired hands to beat, rob, and burn the smaller ranchers out – and they had no repercussions because of their lack of resources.  The fundamental reason cultures and groups with their foundation in this kind of rule of honor collapse easily because that honor concept is so easily perverted for one parties gain and the other members eventually revolt against those that have morally wronged them.  Another aspect of the historical rule of honor is the emergence of “Honor Killing” – think Sharia law on that one.


"Different Types of AR 15 Reloads with Former Navy SEAL & Pro Shooter Fred Ruiz"--Tactical Hyve (5 min.). A look at 3 different variants on reloading an AR.
The traditional family is increasingly viewed as oppressive, a relic of the patriarchy that must be abolished to achieve a just (read: communist) society. What the American family will look like in another decade is anyone’s guess. No society in the history of civilization has ever experienced such a rapid, all-encompassing moral revolution. We’re all guinea pigs in an ongoing social experiment, the results of which will be rained down on our children and our children’s children.
       The TV cable-news network MSNBC runs sermonettes from its anchors during commercial breaks. They are like public-service announcements illuminating the progressive mind, and perhaps none has ever been as revealing and remarkable as the one cut by weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry.

       Harris-Perry set out to explain what is, by her lights, the failure to invest adequately in public education. She located the source of the problem in the insidious idea of parental responsibility for children.

      “We’ve always had kind of a private notion of children,” she said, in the tone of an anthropologist explaining a strange practice she discovered when out doing far-flung fieldwork. “Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility.” So long as this retrograde conception prevails, according to Harris-Perry, we will never spend enough money on children. “We have to break through,” she urged, “our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.”
       In the death of George Floyd, the State of Minnesota has charged former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin with second-degree murder and former officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao with aiding and abetting that murder. But, as will be shown in detail below, the physical, scientific, and electronically recorded evidence in the case overwhelmingly and conclusively proves that these defendants are not guilty of the charges and, in fact, played no material role in bringing about Floyd’s death.

       Instead, the evidence proves that, when he first encountered the police, George Floyd was well on his way to dying from a self-administered drug overdose. Moreover, far from publicly, brazenly, and against their own self-interest slowly and sadistically killing Floyd in broad daylight before civilian witnesses with video cameras, the evidence proves that the defendants exhibited concern for Floyd’s condition and twice called for emergency medical services to render aid to him. Strange behavior, indeed, for supposedly brutal law officers allegedly intent on causing him harm.

       Similarly, the evidence recorded by the body cameras worn by the police conclusively establishes that Floyd repeatedly complained that he couldn’t breathe before the police restrained him on the ground. As documented by Floyd’s autopsy and toxicology reports, his breathing difficulty was caused not by a knee on his neck or pressure on his back, but by the fact that he had in his bloodstream over three times the potentially lethal limit of fentanyl, a powerful and dangerous pain medication known to shut down the respiratory system and cause coma and death. He also had in his system a lesser dose of methamphetamine, which can cause paranoia, respiratory distress, coma, and death.

       Beyond those findings, his autopsy disclosed no physical injuries that could in any way account for his demise.

              My new assumption is that this is a year-round virus that’s eventually going to infect 100 million people and kill roughly 1/4 of one percent of those infected. I’ve accepted those numbers. Unfortunately, millions of others have not. Many people have no sense of where this is headed, and I understand why. They’ve been betrayed by a hysterical media that insists on covering each new reported case as if it were the first case.

                    The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded bat-coronavirus research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China to the tune of US$3.7 million, a recent article in the British newspaper Daily Mail revealed.

                   Back in October 2014, the US government had placed a federal moratorium on gain-of-function (GOF) research – altering natural pathogens to make them more deadly and infectious – as a result of rising fears about a possible pandemic caused by an accidental or deliberate release of these genetically engineered monster germs.

                   This was in part due to lab accidents at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in July 2014 that raised questions about biosafety at US high-containment labs. 

              * * *

                    In the face of a moratorium in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci – the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and currently the leading doctor in the US Coronavirus Task Force – outsourced in 2015 the GOF research to China’s Wuhan lab and licensed the lab to continue receiving US government funding.

              • Lies, damn lies, and statistics: "U.S. Economy Shrank at Record-Breaking 33% Rate Late Quarter Due to Coronavirus Outbreak"--Time Magazine. Note: the economy did not actually shrink by 33% last quarter. Rather, the 33% reflects an annualized rate; that is, if the economy shrank at the same rate for a whole year (4 quarters), it would be a 33% decline in GDP. The actual decline was about 9% for the quarter. Still terrible, but not the doom that the MSM would have you believe. The article adds: "So dizzying was the contraction last quarter that most analysts expect the economy to produce a sharp bounce-back in the current July-September quarter, perhaps of as much as 17% or higher on an annual basis." 
                     The second quarter GDP was much better than in the euro area (–9.5 percent quarterly [for the United States] compared to –12.1 percent in the eurozone), although it reflects a notable quarterly drop, and well below the one seen in 2008.
                
                     This comparison is important because most mainstream economists believe that higher government spending and public sector help offset the blow of a recession. They do not. The United States quarterly GDP fall, at –9.5 percent, is small compared to Germany’s –10.1 percent, France’s –13.8 percent, Italy’s –12.4 percent, Spain’s –18.5 percent and the European Union 27’s at –11.9 percent.

                     You may have read about the quarterly annualized –32.9 percent figure for the United States, but it is misleading to compare it with the European published figures, which are not annualized. The annualized rate estimates how much the economy would grow or shrink if the rate of change seen in the quarter continued for four consecutive quarters. If we compared apples to apples, the quarterly annualized GDP collapse would be from –40 percent in Germany to –55 percent in Spain compared to the US’s –32.9 percent.

                     In any case, it seems relevant to insist on three points: 1) the United States GDP decline was smaller than consensus estimates; 2) it is notably lower than the eurozone figure, which was worse than consensus expected; and 3) the advanced US data points to one of the strongest recoveries in the world.
                                The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean said Wednesday the region’s per-capita gross domestic product is likely to drop by 9.1% in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

                                That would take the region back to GDP levels of 2010, something the U.N. commission called “a lost decade.”

                                Unemployment rates in the region will probably average 13.5% by the end of the year, up from 8.1% in 2019. The number of unemployed people in the region is likely to rise from 26.1 million at the end of 2019, to 44.1 million by the end of 2020.

                                The value of the region’s exports are expected to fall by 23% compared to the year before.
                                The latest financial data comes just a week after AMC and Universal Studios agreed to shorten the exclusive theatrical window to just 17 days for its films.

                                The standard window of theatrical exclusivity typically runs about 90 days.

                                Up until now, the largest chains have steadfastly refused to screen films that don’t give releases a lengthy and exclusive run in theaters before moving onto video-on-demand or streaming services.

                                Studios, meanwhile, have increasingly sought to deliver new movies more quickly into the home.

                                 The new deal covers Universal films — which include the Fast & Furious franchise, Jurassic Park movies and the Despicable Me series — in the US over the next three years.

                                After a run of at least three weekends, Universal (and its specialty label, Focus Features) will have the option of steering a film to premium on-demand, including AMC’s own service.

                                The shortened window only applies to premium video-on-demand — which often means digital rentals of $20 — not standard on-demand or other home platforms.

                                 The deal has potentially profound ramifications for an industry reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.

                                It’s all but certain to lead other studios to press for similar terms from AMC and other exhibitors.

                               Netflix, which hasn’t been able to previously agree with major chains over briefer runs for its premier releases, could now find deals more palatable.

                                If widely embraced, a three-week window would also put further pressure on independent theaters which tend to rely on longer runs for films.

                                Aron called it ‘a historic, industry-changing agreement.’

                                Large scale protests and unrest have broken out in Chicago, including mass looting taking place across the city.

                                There is a heavy police presence on the streets following reports of people breaking into businesses and setting vehicles on fire.

                                Videos posted on social media show police dealing with the unrest. Among the videos is footage of several people breaking into a bank after smashing windows with baseball bats and another showing crowds of people fleeing after gunshots are heard outside a store.

                                Several clips also show people walking out of businesses and stores after allegedly stealing goods and items from inside. The unrest shows no sign of stopping as of the early hours on Monday morning.

                          And what was the Chicago Mayor's response? "'It's called a pandemic, people!' Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot calls out 'reckless' crowds packed into a park over the weekend as she threatens to shut down the city's lakefront"--Daily Mail. People see the disconnect and hypocrisy here, and correctly reason that if the riots pose no threat due to COVID-19, then hitting the parks and beaches is of no concern either.

                                 While it’s certainly easy picking on and beating up elderly people, one group of black-clad Antifa and Black Lives Matter extremists just learned the hard way that it ain’t so easy picking on and beating up grown, die-hard American patriots.

                                 During a pro-police rally Saturday in Fort Collins, Colorado, a contingent of left-wing extremists reportedly showed up and stepped into the neighborhood across from the Fort Collins Police Services building where the rally was being held.

                                In response, the rallygoers apparently rushed into the neighborhood and chased the extremists right out, but not without first treating them to some fist sandwiches.

                          "Clash of Civilizations & Turkish Neo-Caliphate RISING"--Felix Rex (17 min.)
                          Time has proven Francis Fukuyama wrong and Samuel P. Huntington correct. The conflict lines of this century will be along civilizational lines, and no where is this more apparent than in Turkey's attempt to distance itself from the secular West and try to revive the Ottoman Empire. 
                                 Far more interesting, and totally unnoticed, is the behavior of former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Podesta also took part in the simulations, and unlike the anti-Trump Republicans, he wasn’t pretending to be someone he hates. Instead, organizers did the sensible thing: they had an anti-Trump Democrat portray an anti-Trump Democrat. Because the simulation designers apparently wanted to torment him as much as possible, Podesta had to endure an exact 2016 repeat: he played Joe Biden in a simulation where Trump loses the popular vote but wins a close but convincing victory in the Electoral College.

                                Buried at the bottom of a New York Times article, the paper describes what Podesta did:

                          ‘Mr Podesta, playing Mr Biden, shocked the organizers by saying he felt his party wouldn’t let him concede. Alleging voter suppression, he persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College.

                          ‘In that scenario, California, Oregon, and Washington then threatened to secede from the United States if Mr Trump took office as planned.’

                          This was so astonishing that Cockburn’s monocle nearly popped off reading it — and he doesn’t even wear one. The actual text of the final report is even more jarring. According to a summary of the game, while acting as Biden — rather than accept defeat — Podesta actively instigated secession, and then issued an ultimatum: Trump could only begin his second term if Puerto Rico and DC became states, California was cut into five pieces, and the Electoral College was abolished. When the ultimatum was refused, Podesta got the Democratic House (played by other Democrats) to declare Biden the president, and then watched to see how the military would react. 

                                  Many got their vision of slavery from the book and miniseries Roots, by Alex Haley. When confronted with his lack of historical accuracy the author said, “I tried to give my people a myth to live by.” Think about that.

                                 Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution, in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, provides a great deal of depth and clarity about race and slavery.

                                 Slavery's salient points:

                          • Slavery’s been part of every culture on every inhabited continent throughout history
                          • Africans conquered other Africans, enslaved them, and sold them for profit
                          • It existed in Western indigenous peoples for centuries before Columbus arrived
                          • Considered a fact of life until 17th century Christians attacked its immorality

                                 During the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, Africans retained more slaves for themselves than were sold to the West

                                Our Founders were born into a world they did not make. Inherited agricultural estates included slaves as property. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison detested the institution. Records of their writings and actions are clear on this. Washington freed his slaves upon the death of his wife. His will stipulated that those who were infirm or disabled were to be cared for by his estate.

                                Efforts continued regarding abolition by the Founders. Their depth of character, persistence, and resolve on this issue is unassailable.

                                Even if they could abolish slavery, they faced the problem of what to do with an uneducated population that was not likely to assimilate easily into society. A race riot like the 1791 Santo Domingo rebellion was a real concern.

                                Thomas Jefferson’s pursuit to end slavery was relentless. His first draft of the Declaration of Independence included a mocking condemnation of King George III for enslaving Africans and disallowing emancipation. How many Americans know this? This language was removed due to pressure from Southern colonies. In 1778 Jefferson introduced a bill in the Virginia House to stop further importation of slaves. It was approved.

                                 Perhaps, they thought, by stopping the slave trade, the institution would begin to wither on the vine, and later generations would deal it a fatal blow.

                               Moving forward, the United States and Great Britain went to great lengths to eradicate the slave trade. For decades, England made slave ship interdiction a priority. Great Britain entered Brazilian waters in 1849 to destroy Brazilian slave ships that ignored cease and desist orders.

                                 Captaining a slave ship was made a capital offense in America. Then there came the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation.

                                 So, the United States and Great Britain are the first countries in the history of the world to eradicate slavery while influencing others to follow suit. 

                          "What's the deal with the Nephilim?"--Trey the Explainer (28 min.)

                                 The most widely used dry blasting agent is a mixture of ammonium nitrate prills (porous grains) and fuel oil. The fuel oil is not precisely CH2, but this is sufficiently accurate to characterize the reaction. The right side of the equation contains only the desirable gases of detonation, although some CO and N02 are always formed. Weight proportions of ingredients for the equation are 94.5 percent ammonium nitrate and 5.5 percent fuel oil. In actual practice the proportions are 94 percent and 6 percent to assure an efficient chemical reaction of the nitrate.

                               For this purpose, about 1 gal of fuel oil for each 100 lb of ammonium nitrate will equal approximately 6 percent by weight of oil. The oil can be added after each bag or two of prills, and it will disperse relatively rapidly and uniformly. Inadequate priming imparts a low initial detonation velocity to a blasting agent, and the reaction may die out and cause a misfire. High explosive boosters are sometimes spaced along the borehole to as sure propagation throughout the column.

                          The article goes on to discuss some other details about using ANFO, including some ways to boost the explosive power. As I've noted before, there is a difference between fertilizer and explosive grades of ammonium nitrate. The fertilizer comes in prills that are larger and less porous than explosive grade prills. That is why the IRA, for instance, would grind up the fertilizer prills in coffee grinders to get smaller prills and break up the coating.

                                The Book of Ecclesiastes says that there is nothing new under the sun. And while many have spoken of the “unprecedented” nature of the rioting in the early summer of 2020, it is actually quite precedented.

                                The Long, Hot Summer of 1967 was the peak of urban unrest and rioting in the United States in the lead up to the 1968 election. While there are certainly a number of key differences, there are also a number of striking parallels that make the topic worthy of discussion and examination.

                               The long-term impact of the urban unrest of the summer of 2020 is unclear, but the long-term impact of the Long, Hot Summer of 1967 and related urban rioting was a victory for Richard Nixon in 1968, and a landslide re-election in 1972. One must resist the temptation to make mechanistic comparisons between the two, and we will refrain from doing so here. But the reader is encouraged to look for connections between these events and more recent ones.

                          The article goes on to provide some background to the race riots in 1967, and the aftermath: race riots in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Hard Hat Riot of 1970 when construction workers in New York decided that they'd had enough and began knocking the heads of anti-war demonstrators.

                                After this, the construction workers stormed city hall and raised the flag, which had been at half mast for the Kent State students, back to full mast. They were joined by city workers, including a postal worker who raised an American flag on the roof of city hall. Most of the rioters were Catholic and turned their attention to the nearby Episcopal church in the neighborhood.

                                 Six rioters were arrested and Mayor John Lindsay denounced the rioters, as well as police for their lack of action. A massive influx of phone calls to local union offices were 20 to 1 in support of the rioters. On May 11 and May 16, there were additional protests denouncing Mayor Lindsay as a “commie” and a “rat.” It’s worth noting that “rat” is a term approximating “scab” in the building trades. On May 20, 150,000 pro-war demonstrators marched through the city without opposition. Many workers who were on the job showered the demonstration with ticker tape.

                                 Peter J. Brennan met with Nixon and 22 other labor leaders on May 26, presenting the president with a hard hat. Brennan later met privately with the president on Labor Day. He is considered instrumental in securing a second term in the White House for President Nixon, and was rewarded for his efforts with the Secretary of Labor position.

                          It's a good article, and good history, so be sure to read the whole thing.

                                 The author brings up the inevitable comparison between the events of those days and the protests and riots of 2020. "One must resist the temptation to make mechanistic comparisons between the two, and we will refrain from doing so here. But the reader is encouraged to look for connections between these events and more recent ones."

                                 The similarities are large and, hence, obvious: the two sets of riots are, ostensibly, based on race; the underlying strategy is simple extortion--"Give us what we want or we burn your cities down"; and most of the rioters are there because the experience is exciting and they can get free stuff. Less apparent is that in both instances the riots were intended to influence Democrat politicians. These riots are not occurring in Republican controlled cities, because they would be ineffective. Republican politicians would shut down the riots quickly. Democrats are fearful to do so because they don't want to lose the support of their most devoted voting blocs. It isn't that blacks will vote Republican, but that they might just stay home and not vote at all. Thus, just as in the late 1960s, the riots and protests were a reflection of a war going on within the Democratic party.

                                 There are differences as well. The riots of the 1960s were, we are told, to gain equal rights (i.e., equal opportunity) for blacks with the belief that equal opportunity would lead to equality of outcome. We are now some 55 years into the civil rights era, and equal opportunity has not resulted in equality of outcome, and it is becoming obvious that it never will. For instance, there is yet another scientific study showing that there are racial (i.e., genetic) differences in intelligence between blacks and whites. And, whether you think it is the result of culture or genetics, there are significant differences in time preference, self-control, child rearing, etc., that yield higher crime rates and below average education outcomes for blacks versus all other races. Black culture is an "honor culture," with the resultant violence due to "disrespect" which that brings. Consequently, while the riots of the 1960s sought equal opportunity, the riots today are straight up anti-white.

                                 And that brings me to the key difference. Today's riots are the Left's kristallnacht. The iconoclasm directed at white statues and memorials (even Christian icons), the sudden prevalence of people of color in advertising and media, the purge of whites (particularly males) from Hollywood, the demands that everyone must be "woke" and that it is not good enough to not be racist against blacks but we must be "anti-racist" against whites, are not the protests of a people banging on the door to get in, but the exultation of the victorious over the defeated. 

                          By at

                          2 comments:

                          1. John WilderAugust 13, 2020 at 8:57 PM

                            Another excellent list!!!

                            It seems to be as simple as clockwork that when a society tolerates great amounts of non-traditional sexuality? That society is quickly eradicated.

                            Hmmm. If only there was a book that talked about that.

                            ReplyDelete

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