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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18036 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026

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Two culture war bombs in the upper midwest this week

In May 2025, a woman in Rochester Minnesota uttered the N-word at a child who tried to steal from her, and then again at an adult who confronted her about it while recording with his phone. Both the child and adult are Somali. The video, uploaded to Youtube, went massively viral.

The woman was charged with three counts of disorderly conduct. One of the charges was dropped, the other two just went to trial. After a four day trial and 10 hours of deliberation, the jury found a guilty verdict for one of the charges.

The defendant's lawyer is claiming misconduct by the court and intends to appeal.

Our nation's few remaining principled free speech advocates do not approve of this. This verdict will likely be appealed and may, at minimum, result in Minnesota's disorderly conduct statute being nullified with regard to offenses that are limited to speech and no other disruptive behavior.

In a somewhat ironic twist, apparently the guy who recorded the viral youtube video at the center of all this, was arrested for gang raping a child in 2022, and had those charges dropped "in the interests of justice" by the same prosecutor's office that this year thought it was in the interests of justice to throw the book at somebody for saying a naughty word. What a funny world we live in.

Bomb number two: Police in Madison, WI, responding to reports that someone was casing vehicles to break into, confronted a suspect, who fled, resisted arrest, and finally attacked one officer with a knife, causing that officer to respond with lethal force.

Activists are very clearly trying to turn this into a reprise of the George Floyd moment, including transporting the raised fist monument from Minneapolis' "George Floyd Square" to Madison. The area around the shooting has been barricaded by activists. Activists stormed a police press conference, seizing the podium to deliver a rant about Zionism.

State representative and gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong has thrown her lot fully in with the activists. Whether this helps or hurts her electoral chances will remain to be seen.

Madison's "Independent Police Monitor", who has also thrown her lot in with the activists, is confused about why the Madison Police Department are not involving her in their investigation of the incident.

Attorney Ben Crump, whose list of cases is a who's who of law-enforcement-related racial grievances, is representing the family of the deceased.

And the deceased? Over 40 arrests, multiple felony convictions, including a history of assaults on police officers. (No way to link directly to this, but go here and search for Corey Ruiz).

It never ceases to amaze me how the left is so consistently able to mobilize itself in the defense of the worst people in the world.

Claiming that "the left" mobilizes itself in defense of such people is misleading.

It's not the left as a whole, it is particular subsets of the left.

It's a particular subset of the left that is also gunning for the other half of the left.

I claim it remains to the benefit of the nation (not to mention the median mottizen) that they not succeed at shivving the institutional left. I guess we'll see in Michigan how it goes with AES, although I heard Gretch is going to line up against him.

Most of the Democratic party is a subset of the left. See 2020 for examples of the left mobilizing itself in defense of such people.

Whether I like it or not, about half the country raise up mental defenses just like this to go on voting for this to continue.

Yeah, they'll agree these people are violent (they may even go so far as to admit they should be punished by the law), but it's not as big a deal as the fact that e.g. our hospitals are still not nationalized, which they want, so they will keep voting alongside these activists for the politicians who are sympathetic to both violent crazy criminals AND nationalizing hospitals.

Presently, there's not much to do about that.

If you've got 10 people seated around a table, and a Nazi violent dirtbag leftist sits down, and nobody gets up, you've got 11 Nazis violent dirtbag leftists. The simple truth is that activists can forcefully occupy territory in downtown Madison, a jurisdiction controlled entirely by the left from the city council all the way up to the governor, because they have enough political power within the left coalition to make it politically infeasible to send in riot cops or the national guard.

If you've got 10 people seated around a table, and a Nazi violent dirtbag leftist sits down, and nobody gets up, you've got 11 Nazis violent dirtbag leftists.

This is not true whether we're talking about Nazis or about violent leftists.

The simple truth is that activists can forcefully occupy territory in downtown Madison, a jurisdiction controlled entirely by the left from the city council all the way up to the governor, because sending in the national guard to break it up is not politically feasible.

There are leftist activists in all parts of the US. However, leftist territory occupations that are permitted by the local leftist authorities are extremely rare. And the overwhelming majority of the time, leftist violence is met with police reaction.

This is not true whether we're talking about Nazis or about violent leftists.

Why do you recon not a single leftwinger stood up and said that, back when it was a fashionable thing to say, even on our forum?

The trick however, is that the other subsets absolutely NEVER police or rein in the subsets doing the ridiculous stuff, and will, on occasion, throw their weight behind them. Can you find me a SINGLE prominent lefty who denounced the general celebratory reactions to Charlie Kirk's murder? Just one!

This is so obvious that I don't feel I have to provide supporting examples but believe me I CAN DO SO.

Meanwhile, the right is vociferous and active about expelling those who might be too Nazi-esque. Graham Platner would have been shot out of a trebuchet had he run as a Republican the moment the tattoo issue arose. But since he's a Dem, the hemming and hawing continued until literal forcible rape allegations surfaced.

You tell me how we should differentiate between the hard lefties and the moderates when the hard lefties get to operate unfettered where-ever the moderate lefties have power.

If you tacitly approve of them, I don't see any reason to let you distance yourself from them. The 'subsets' in question are far more cohesive on one side, so they operate more like a single set. Heuristically is much simpler to treat them as one unit, and apply accountability to it as a whole.

You tell me how we should differentiate between the hard lefties and the moderates when the hard lefties get to operate unfettered where-ever the moderate lefties have power.

This seems untrue to me:

  • ChatGPT says that 24 people received prison time in connection to the Kenosha riots, and not all were federal charges.
  • You can't expect to throw a brick through the front window of a bank in San Francisco next to a cop and just walk away.
  • The NYPD arrested more than 70 anti-ICE protestors at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on September 18, 2025.
  • If you murder a rich person in Boston because you are a communist, the cops are actually going to try to arrest you.
  • CHOP/CHAZ in Seattle was shot down by police after 3 weeks, not allowed to continue.

Etcetera.

3 weeks!! Seems to counter your argument

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