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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4508 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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I expect the shelves to be emptied out by looters just brazenly and without even trying to hide it walking in, loading up bags, and walking out, leaving the store barren and useless until the next time it restocks.

This has been predicted sufficiently often that I predict that the NYC government will be prepared with defenses to prevent this. A politician can't be seen cracking down on this shoplifting due to the optics, but a politician can still crack down on it without being seen, and Mamdani certainly has a great incentive to crack down on such shoplifting. It would have to just be organized by a politician's orders by private citizens who have no credible link to the politician or his associates or to any organization, and it would have to be performed far away enough from the marts such that journalists can't get bad-looking photos, or journalists would have to be kept sufficiently away. An informal perimeter around each mart where private citizens police both journalists and the types of people who seem likely to loot seem like a decent solution for any sufficiently charismatic politician who wants to create the perception of these marts succeeding.

And that's just me spitballing; I'm sure a real politician who has real experience with power and optics and the time and incentives to use them could come up with better methods for cracking down on the looting while avoiding the bad optics.

In New York these people are called thé guardian angels and they’re loyal to Curtis Sliwa, an opponent of Mamdani.

Average age of a Guardian Angel: 73 years old.

Huh, Mamdani may be laying down the groundwork for the source material of a modernized 21st century remake of Gangs of New York.

And here I was expecting Escape from New York.

Interesting proposal, a squad of goons operating in a legal gray area re: the state’s monopoly on violence, for the purpose of abetting the political fortunes of an avowed socialist. Pink-ertons, if you will.

Pink-ertons, if you will.

Here, take this groan of approbation!

... I don’t think AAQC's are appropriate for puns, but damn that was good.

If I were Mamdani I would let shoppers mob the store and simply make them do it in a semi-"controlled" way. The rush just prove what demand there is for State Grocery and how we need to expand the program, what a huge success. This argument will work on exactly the people it needs to work on.

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