Why, yes, as a matter of fact I have seen this sh*t before; several times, as a matter of fact. The first go round of racial/political rioting, looting, arson and general mayhem that I took notice of was that long hot summer of ’68, interspersed with political assassinations and anti-Vietnam War protests, although the Watts riot had taken place three years before. I was fourteen in the year of ’68 mayhem, and already well-aware of current events, through reading the Los Angeles Times when it was still a great and meaningful newspaper. Mom also had subscriptions to Harpers’ and Atlantic Monthly, when they also were still solid and more or less centrist publications, and although Mom and Dad didn’t watch TV news regularly, Granny Jessie did. I believe that it was sometime during that late summer, watching coverage of the riot attendant on the Democrat Party national convention, that I remarked to Granny Jessie that it seemed as if the world were all seriously going to Hell. Recall that I was only fourteen, and had led a comfortable, fairly sheltered middle-class life. Violence was something only seen t a distant remove as part of the plot in movies and TV adventure shows (and pretty anodyne, considering what I would have seen in them back then) and the real-life violence played out on the TV news was shocking. Granny Jessie replied, “It always seems that way, I guess.” Her tone was so jaded, and world-weary, I found it actually rather comforting.
Society
There is a plan here.
The present rioting, which is occurring in cities that have leftist Mayors and administrations, is part of a plan. We have seen this slowly coming together. The “Black Lives Matter” theme goes back for years. It is increasingly radicalized. The election of Donald Trump made everything about politics.
An article in Bazaar from a few days ago: If you are married to a Trump Supporter, Divorce Them:
Supporting Trump at this point does not indicate a difference of opinions. It indicates a difference of values…You do not need to try to make it work with someone who thinks of people as “illegals.” Just divorce them
This would be amusing if it were not behind the latest attack on civilization. Are we becoming the Weimar Republic ?
In 2002, a pro-Israel event at San Francisco State University was interrupted by ‘protestors’, screaming things like “go back to Russia!” and “get out or we will kill you!’ and shoving Hillel students against a wall. Laurie Zoloth, a campus Jewis leader “turned to the police and to every administrator I could find and asked them to remove the counter demonstrators from the Plaza, to maintain the separation of 100 feet that we had been promised. The police told me that they had been told not to arrest anyone, and that if they did, ‘it would start a riot.’ I told them that it already was a riot.”
That, of course, was San Francisco, ground zero in the war on civilization, which is being directed from walled compounds in rich areas.
The insurrection, which is going on now, is an attempt to create another Kent State event, which would radicalize more young people as that event did. The Governor of Minnesota, who daughter seems to be a participant in the riot direction is desperate to find a “white supremacist” to blame.
So far, he has been blaming “outsiders,” a claim that has been proven false. Few of those arrested gave other than Minnesota addresses.
KARE11 reviewed 36 arrests on the Hennepin County Jail roster and found that 86% of the arrests they reviewed had a Minnesota address.
Following the revelation, Mayor Carter and Mayor Frey said that the information about rioters being from out of the area was inaccurate, according to KARE11.
Mayor Carter blamed the police for providing bad information.
Minneapolis Police spokesman John Elder said that he believes many of those arrested gave false addresses.
Oh, OK.
Lament for a Mall
Malls were the latest, trendiest, most oh-there thing in retail development about the time that I was in high school and college. There were a couple of them that I went to, early on, and they were … OK. A nice diversion if one was in the mood or purse for retail therapy. Most of them were enclosed, two or three levels, almost always expensively decorated, adorned with plantings, sometimes with dabs of architectural creativity here and there. All of that made sense in places where the weather was bitterly cold for at least half the year or boiling-hot for three-quarters of it still does, in the upper mid-west and mountain west, especially in snowy winters. It was, however, a serious and time-burning excursion to go to the mall; finding a place to park nearest an entrance, walking … and walking, and walking, and carrying whatever you had purchased. If there was a nice and varied selection of shops, not wall to wall big chain outlets, exactly the same as every other mall so much the better.
Risk Register
There are, of course, many items that could be placed in a risk register for our ongoing management of COVID-19. I find myself drawn to those categorizable as, or perhaps triggered by, human perception and behavior. By way of limiting the scope of this post to reasonable attention spans, here are my current top 3:
The Shape of the Future?
Historian Niall Ferguson cites “the most succinct statement I’ve yet seen of the “massive enduring social and economic change post-pandemic” hypothesis.”
Offices>>Remote Work
NFL, NBA>>Esports
Movie Theaters>>Streaming
TV News>>YouTube stars
College>>ISAs, MOOCs
K-12>>Internet homeschooling
Corporate journalism>>Citizen journalism
EU/EEC>>27 sovereign states
I’m surprised he didn’t also include Stores>>Home delivery.
Of course, the degree to which these changes happen and are sustained will be largely a matter of how long the coronavirus pandemic lasts and how definitively it is suppressed. But even if coronavirus continues as a recurrent plague, none of these trends are likely to be absolute. For example: Offices>>Remote work…my own experience with new-business initiatives, both in existing corporations and in startups, suggests that there really is a lot of advantage in the in-person human interaction. Some of these never would have gotten started in the first place unless such interaction had taken place. And, of course, there are a lot of things that can’t be done at home, including most manufacturing and all construction work. Ditto transportation. And I’m not sure what TV News>>YouTube stars has to do with coronavirus or other epidemics, given that neither modality need involve person-to-person contact.
Assuming that coronavirus is largely or completely suppressed, what are the long-term effects likely to be? Are there now so many people who will have been exposed to the convenience of on-line grocery shopping that they will feel little need to visit physical grocery stores? Will spending half a day at the mall ever again be a thing? Will people want to be densely packed into a movie theater or will they just decide that streaming movies at home (especially with large screens that I bet a lot of people are buying under the current circumstances) is just as good and a lot cheaper? How about airline travel (or sea travel) for vacations?
Colleges..traditionally, the on-campus college experience was (at least supposed to be valued) for free discussion and interaction with professors. Yet much of this has already been suppressed, both via giant lecture classes and by fear of creating offense. College was also valued for its social opportunities, especially those involving dating and mating and the finding of spouses. Yet reports indicate that this has become pretty awkward due to the administrative sex police and their frequent condemnation of people (especially men) with no form of due process. Plus, people are now getting married a lot later, so the pressure to find someone during one’s college years is less-strong than it used to be.
In his tweet, Niall Ferguson also makes the excellent point that “I’d be more persuaded if there were evidence of comparable changes after the (much more lethal) 1918-19 influenza pandemic.” Although media influence in those days was much less comprehensive and continuous; also, many alternatives that exist today (such as work-from-home as opposed to work-at-the-office) really weren’t feasible in those days.
Thoughts?