I wonder if the author of the New York Times essay, Beverly Gage, ever feels unsafe? Women in nice areas typically feel physically unsafe several times a week such as walking to their car in a parking lot. Does Beverly Gage walk alone at night? When does she get scared? How has she altered her behavior because of fear of crime? Does she live in a black neighborhood? Does she spend much time in black neighborhoods?
Steve Sailer writes: Over the last year, by the way, the New York Times has run 555 articles featuring the phrase “gun violence.”
COMMENTS:
* I’ve seen liberals use this canard over and over again. Crime is down, why talk about crime?
Of course, they have no statistical perspective at all when the issue is police shootings. CNN parades out these blacks without any connection to reality talking about how they worry when their sons go out doors because the evil racist police may shoot them. Crime is certainly more common than police shootings.
And that’s putting aside the question of whether we should be happy because we’re below 1990s crack war levels. Compared to other civilized first world countries, American crime rate is through the roof. Liberals like to point that out when they talk about how we need gun control. But when someone focuses on the criminals themselves, all of a sudden it becomes “What are you even worrying about? Crime is down!”
* Some of the decrease in crime was in spite of the government’s pro-crime policies. Vulnerable elderly people moving out of the neighborhood where they raised their children results in less violent crime, but the smug left does not get to take credit for this, and the people forced out of their old houses by violence have every right to demand law and order.
People simply not carrying cash has got to have cut muggings by a large percentage. Cars are also harder to steal and often have lo-jack to locate them after they are stolen.
* The witless BEVERLY GAGE is just another example of the damage that leftist ideology does to seemingly rational people. The argument “I just cut off your arm, but I left your other arm alone and you still have your legs” won’t make the victim pleased to evade a worse outcome.
Working for the NY Times requires that you suspend not just disbelief, but experience, reason and common sense.
* I agree that some of the decrease in crime has to to with technological change. Even the dimmest rapist must know that he’s leaving his DNA evidence all over the crime scene. And muggers know people don’t carry much cash, have cell phones and there are security cameras everywhere.
Not only that, but the segregation between rich and poor has never been greater. In California there are large part of Silicon Valley that simply have no poor people. Most of the blacks seem to have been gentrified away and those that remain live in small pockets off the beaten path. Quite a change from the early 90s when East Palo Alto was – for brief time – one of the top 10 most violent places in the USA and the violence would occasionally spill over into Palo Alto.
* America is gayer than it used to be, so why don’t gays shut up?
(That’s not a good analogy, because while gays are winning, we are not winning against the criminal class.)
* A lot of the decrease in crime is probably due to people changing their behavior. Avoiding certain parts of town, not going for a walk of an evening, beefing up security in homes and businesses. Although it results in less crime, it also represents a restriction of liberty and greatly increased costs.
* America has a lot less slavery than it used to have. So why do we hear about slavery so much?
* Liberals just can’t countenance any criticism of blacks so they have to distort.
Unfortunately though many presumably smart white people fall for this hook, line & sinker which will have disastrous consequences for the country’s future. We are declining towards the black standard of civilization & many just don’t seem to be aware or care.
* Let’s ask Kate Steinle that question. Whoops! We can’t, because she was murdered by a foreign national with a criminal record whose presence in the US could have been easily prevented.
* The rise in street crime during the Warren Court era was a huge practical imposition on the freedom of women.
* The excellent blog ‘Refugee Resettlement Watch’ has an entire category covering this — food stamp fraud — it is widespread and has been going on for many years — see the archive of stories at the link.
* The number of crimes is hard to tabulate. If your car only has liability insurance ( or no insurance) and someone smashes the window to steal an item from it do you make a police report? If you are a dope dealer and someone robs you of your drugs do you notify police? Get punched in the face outside a bar at 2:00 am do you call police? Would a ghetto market report every instance of shop lifting?
Unless your insurance company requires a police report in order to file a claim a lot of minor crime is simply not reported. The police aren’t going to investigate a crime simply because you report it and if you are a petty criminal yourself or have warrants outstanding why would you want to give your name and address to a police officer so he can make a police report?
* A friend of mine who lives in West Philly calls the way you change your behavior and no longer feel at ease doing your old things after being the victim of crime, “the Tax.” The Tax is an underrated portion of the costs of crime.
* All populations start off violent.
When they start crop farming, genes for violence gradually get filtered out.
The level of violence among modern populations is basically a measure of how long their ancestors have been crop farming so the highest levels are
– Africa (and descendants)
– far north (e.g. Russia, Baltics)
– recently foragers (e.g. Native Americans, Aborigines, Eskimo)
– recently herders (various desert / hill / steppe populations
* Video cameras have become ubiquitous where all stores have cameras as well as many homes also being wired up along with street cameras everywhere. Security guards are stationed in every business. People don’t carry cash like they used to or even just walk around at night. Everybody is paranoid and worried about security, adjusting their behavior accordingly. It’s become a low trust society.
* The EU is full of “petty criminals” who commit “petty crimes” — pick-pocketing, burglary, theft — and generally get away with them or suffer the most minor penalties. Petty crimes are not taken seriously because, as the theory goes, there is no violence and losses are generally covered by insurance. Indeed, in Britain, if you encounter a burglar stealing your property and physically constrain him or, let’s say, go at him with a golf club, YOU will be charged with the crime. “Good day, sir, I see you are nicking my TV set. I’m pleading for you to go now. You have at least ten minutes to disappear before the police arrive ….”
Indeed, petty crime is so prevalent in parts of the EU that it constitutes an indirect form of welfare and services an underground economy.
* Due to several disappointing personal experiences and just the general zeitgeist of our times, I’ve been suffering a bad case of Negro Fatigue. So in an attempt at a summer tonic my wife and I spent some time in Nova Scotia. We stayed at coastal resorts, fishing villages and privateer towns like Lunenburg, Chester, Mahone Bay, Liverpool and White Point. We met many friendly locals and tourists from Los Angeles, Atlanta, Germany, Wales and Toronto. We did not see a single Negro or Mexican during the entire holiday. All the locals, all the tourists, all the resort staff…everyone was white. No surly Negroes staring you down. No undisciplined Filippino boys running around the restaurant. No shifty Mexicans hanging around the Home Depot. So you start leaving your car unlocked, waving at passing strangers on rural highways and exploring towns aimlessly without fear. Many restaurants have community dining tables where you can meet and dine with other guests. We met a couple from California who spend the maximum 182 days each year in Nova Scotia just to get away from the overcrowding and the baked-in Mexican culture of home. The German tourists like it so much they are frequently property buyers. I can recommend this part of Nova Scotia as a summer tonic for Negro Fatigue.
* It’s sheer idiocy to bring in people from low-trust societies into ours.
High trust societies like most of the West, have a major benefit in not having to haggle for everything, in not having to be suspicious of the quality of everything they are being sold, in helping their neighbor, etc. It’s stupid throw it all away and impact our lives because it benefits the lives of people from low trust countries to move here.
* Consider the common “Enlightened Europe = Our Moral Exemplar” trope. When lefties want pornography, prostitution or dope legalized they point to “enlightened” Europe. But they never point to Europe regarding abortion because Europe is very restrictive. Nor do they mention Europe regarding birthright citizenship since most European countries deny it.
* Calling any economists and social scientists. I would really like to know how much of the crime decline since the early 90s peak is due to the following factors:
1) the population simply being, on average, older, with a smaller proportion of people in their peak crime committing years
2) crimes being classified to a lower category than they would have historically
3) advances in trauma surgery and other emergency measures which drives the number of homicides down
4) individuals carrying less cash and with credit cards that have automatic fraud detection and shut-down, making muggings and snatchings less attractive
5) a higher proportion of the population having an immigration status that makes them reluctant to interact with the police, and thus to report crimes
6) citizens adjusting their behavior or lifestyle to avoid crime, such as avoiding or leaving certain areas or cities
7) citizens being aware of ‘stranger danger’ from a generation of fixation on crime
8) large increases in police forces in major cities
Only when all of that, and possibly some other stuff, is factored out, we can know how much of the crime decline is actually due to people behaving better. If the latter is low or zero, it means that we don’t have law and order so much as we have a temporary and precarious lid on a problem that may explode.
* Speaking of “vulnerable elderly people moving out of the neighborhood where they raised their children,” Google “Gene Dacus.”
Gene Dacus was an 85-year old Korean war veteran burned alive a few weeks ago by a “teen” due to still living in his old neighborhood. It happened in Birmingham, Alabama.
* Reading about the “catch and release” history of some of the ISIS killers in Europe, I can tell you these people would probably not be on the streets in the USA. Even in liberal states in the USA, a conviction for a 2nd violent crime will usually result in a very long jail time, as will a single carjacking, home invasion, etc. As of 2009, 4.7% of the US black adult male population is in prison. Exclude the elderly and it goes up past 6%, with many more subject to parole/probation monitoring, living in half-way houses, etc.
In 2002, when our incarceration rates were a bit higher, Human Rights Watch claimed that:
In twelve states, between 10 and 15 percent of adult black men are incarcerated.
In nine states, between 4 and nearly 8 percent of adult Latino men are incarcerated.
Finally, for black male high school dropouts between 20-34, about 38% are incarcerated, with the figure for white and hispanic young male dropouts about 10%.
Western Europe just does not have this prison infrastructure or capacity.
* Trump is a major cause of cognitive whiplash.
The Megaphone agrees with itself that poverty, bad schools, and unemployment are scourges of the black population, and must be society’s first priority in social reform.
Trump then says that poverty, bad schools, and unemployment are scourges of the black population, and wants to work on them.
But now the Megaphone declares that Trump is making up these supposed problems of blacks, and that he doesn’t see that they are just like the rest of us.
Next, the Megaphone agrees with itself that crime is a pernicious problem in America because of extraordinary levels of gun violence, and because of the high crime rates in inner city neighborhoods, with minorities the worst hit.
Trump then says that crime is a major problem, and he will do what needs to be done to reduce it.
So the Megaphone disputes this as a crass, racist and fascist overreach, considering the very reassuring statistics on crime over the decades.
What’s the lesson to be learned here?
It’s obvious:
Why can’t Trump just shut his demagogic mouth, and stop confusing people?
