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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34984 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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Epistemic status: cherry-picked predictions for ego stroking.

We are now nearly four years past the beginning of the George Floyd era of BLM activism, so I wanted to check my initial impressions and positions, to see how I'd done in retrospect. This is from the old site, in the immediate aftermath of the Minneapolis riots, and it was interesting to see how people's concerns and predictions played out. Must have been in a cautious mood that day.....

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/gq50mo/comment/fsbmtje/?context=3

Core here:

what has been the result of all that anger and destruction? Black people in Baltimore are worse off, their neighborhoods are less safe, and something like five hundred additional marginal murders have been committed in their communities. This is sad, it's a tragedy, but it's also entirely self-inflicted. It will be no different in Minneapolis unless the authorities come down hard on rioting. Businesses will leave black areas, or close down. Crime will rise, employment will drop. And the people who will suffer most will not be whites or cops, but the very communities the protesters come from, or purport to support.

On the other hand, some people Bought Large Mansions, and I imagine otherwise benefitted from millions poured into the myriad of BLM-affiliated NGOs. So it's not a total waste, a lot of people got worse off, but a small number of people got much better. That's called "politics". Or "community organizing"? Not sure about the proper terminology here.

I've spent a lot of time bashing BLM over the years. I think it's because it was such a waste. A great moment for change and reform was wasted, turned racial and political, for division instead of unity. All that energy was spun by the political, corporate and media machines into bizarre ideological idiocy. rather than sober analysis and practical reform efforts. "Defund the police" my ass. Just like Trumpism, just like Occupy, just like Code Pink. By signal boosting the crazies and granting them legitimacy, any chance for reform was pissed away in a fury of "Black Trans Lives Matter" and "Showing up to work on time is white supremacy".

A little prodding and they all promptly delegitimize themselves (at least in the media/popular imagination).

I'll echo @JarJarJedi here. What is the problem BLM might have reasonably addressed with reasonable methods? That two digits of unarmed people are killed per year by US police? That blacks have worse social outcomes than whites?

Those issue are unsolvable without ripping up the basic social constitution. And to be fair to progressives, that's what they've been trying. They've been trying to gut the 2nd and disarm the populace, decreasing violent crime and making police-civilian interactions safer. They've been trying to decrease the number and funding of the militarized police. They've been try to enact DEI to give status and wealth to blacks regardless of meritocratic outcome. They've been trying keep blacks out of jail by non-prosecution.

Of course, the costs they'd inflict on society to achieve their ends is unconscionable, and their methods wildly contradict my personal values. But what is the approach you'd recommend that's not "bizarre" or "crazy" but would actually put a dent in these problems?

I think there’s a faulty assumption here. I don’t think many NGOs in the western world are meant to solve problems. They might claim so, but looking at their behavior, their choice of tactics, and the people running them, it’s basically a money laundering and make work project for the children of the elite.

First of all, if you walk into the offices of any of these groups, they are not local, ordinary people. They’re rich people with college degrees. They’re not there because they care about the communities they’re working in. They’re there for the donations they can get and the visibility for their cause. And the stuff they propose they’re proposing because it’s the kind of stuff that makes white liberals clap.

Those solutions don’t work. Low arrest rates means that the people living there get robbed and mugged, that no businesses want to be there because of thefts, and that property values remain in the toilet. Disarming and disbanding the police force makes them more likely to escalate as they know there aren’t enough resources for backup if they need it.

Until you deal with the lack of education and training I don’t see an answer. People who can’t read can’t command a high salary. And if nobody in the areas making money, there’s no way to attract businesses even if you got the thefts down.

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