* I was riding in a truck through Northeast Baltimore, today. And saw dozens of young men openly selling drugs. And saw at least 5 different women selling themselves on the streets for drug money.
So I’m confused about this narrative of Baltimore being some sort of authoritarian society? What I see on a regular basis is cop cars driving right past drug dealers. 911 operators refusing to send police officers to scenes of crimes in progress. Even when 5 or 6 people on a block call to complain about a fight, or drug dealing. And I’ve personally seen young kids ride illegal motor bikes right in front of police. To the point that they popped wheelies about 20 inches from a cops face. And laughed at the cop while they taunted him with the wheelie
Pot is openly smoked in Baltimore. Many streets and local parks reek of pot smoke.
Young teens openly walk through alleys. Looking into each back yard. Looking for things to steal. Or walk up to each car on the street. Blatantly peering into he car or trying the lock.
I wish that Baltimore was as authoritarian as David Grahm claims. But the sad fact is that criminals in Baltimore are pretty much allowed to do whatever they want to. Up to, and including, burning down a CVS while the police are told to stay out of the way.
* Seen from another perspective, the Blacks in Baltimore will soon get the low-key policing they ask for, balanced with the cliche that you had better be careful about what you ask for because you might get it. The Black citizens of Baltimore will soon get the law and order they deserve. Predict that Baltimore will eventually become another African “bantustan” within the contiguous United States.
One might call all of this … BLM, anti-cop, low marriage rates, high out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates, mindless violence, pervasive drug addiction … a Back to Africa movement. Regardless of affirmative action, diversity, safe spaces, and reparations camouflaged as welfare can make Africans into Northern Europeans. The cultural and social (and perhaps genetic) divide between sub-Saharan Africans and especially Northern Europeans is simply too broad to bridge. It is a permanent condition.
The United States tried a 52-year long experiment in racial and cultural integration costing trillions of dollars. The experiment destroyed model school systems, neighborhoods, communities, and whole cities in a social experiment to change the culture of its citizens … by force. It displaced tens of millions of people as internal refugees as citizens lost the fundamental right of association. The program was perhaps modeled on the Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War, although this time it was imposed on the entire population. It failed.
* It’s been pointed out here many times that one of the most important determinants of a nation’s success is the median IQ…same thing with cities. For most of my adult life I lived in DC and spent a lot of time in Baltimore as well since I had many friends who moved there for cheaper housing. In short, the average black resident of either city is just not smart – I grew up in a large city that was 30% black and both of my parents are from large cities with large black populations and the blacks in all three places are just smarter than those in DC/Baltimore, which also means everyone gets along a lot better too.
I recall the Washington Post pointing out in an article on education that poor black kids in NYC are two grade levels ahead of comparable kids in DC – the piece looked for technocratic reasons why this might be the case, but the simple answer is that one city just has a more intelligent group than the other and no amount of educational “reform” is going to close what is essentially a built in gap. Some cities have an unusual amount of human detritus – the only answer is to try and make them someone else’s problem, which is what administrations in DC and Chicago have tried to do over the last 10-15 years, with some success.
* The criminal trials of the Baltimore cops ended in a debacle, making the (black) mayor and (black) prosecutor look silly. The whole White Cops Killing Blacks narrative is losing momentum as a result. What to do?
Have the politicized Justice Dep’t issue some fabricated report , finding that there are Other Bad Things going on, seize control of the Baltimore Police Dep’t , and move on to the next crisis.
* Let’s see – about ten weeks before a hotly contested general election, the highly politicized Obama Justice Department releases a report detailing widespread abuses and racism in the Baltimore police department. No surprises here – just what we should expect. Baltimore (about two-thirds black) has a black mayor, a black states attorney, a black majority city council and a police department that itself is half black. No wonder there’s such extensive racism. Oh, wait – the police commissioner is white. There, that proves it. I feel better now.
* …having to deal with the dregs of Baltimore society on a daily basis would turn just about anyone into a callous, brutal asshole, if you weren’t one in the first place. How could one even survive in that job without being kind of an overbearing dickhead? That’s why the problem is more or less unsolvable.
* Steve,
if you ever seen the documentary “12 O’Clock Boys” (about black, illegal dirt bike riders who take over Baltimore whenever they want), you know law and order doesn’t exist in 65 percent black Baltimore.
Trailer –> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMQY6k16TU
Worse, the cops KNOW most of the bikes are stolen and do nothing about it, because they fear what would when the black community gets upset that their black sons lose the ability to ride around on stolen bikes unmolested…
http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2015/09/if-almost-all-of-dirt-bikes-in.html
From the above article (http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2015/08/09/police-in-riot-gear-attempt-to-clear-large-crowd-of-dirt-bikers-in-baltimore/):
“They impose a very immediate and extreme danger, to the community as they do not ordinarily follow traffic rules and regulations,” said Marc Partee, Commander North West District.
“This is not a sport, this is not fun, and it continues to drain my resources and the individuals that actually live in the community are not happy with it all,” Partee said.
According to authorities, a majority of these dirt bikes are stolen and encourage people to report them when spotted.
* Since Baltimore’s power structure is almost completely black, and the cops are ignoring crime, I predict the remaining whites and non-welfare blacks will move out of the city to avoid the rise in crime and the tax base will utterly collapse. At this point, Baltimore will turn into Detroit.
The only thing that might potentially bail the city out is its location on the Northeast population corridor, and the extreme high prices of real estate and cost of living in that region. A future Maryland governor may attempt a coup (ala Michigan’s governor) to undermine the city’s black political structure, ship out the poor blacks by refusing to give them new housing vouchers in the city, and in sum, attempt to gentrify the city. Baltimore’s location and housing prices are such that there’s too much potential money to be made by the elite white power structure to allow it to descend into black chaos. It’s not a bad commute from Washington. It could become one big bedroom community for whites and nice whitetopia. It’s located on the water and is well connected by highways. If you could get rid of all the blacks, Baltimore would be great place to live.
* On the subject of whether having more black police officers would be a solution, I recall an interview with Bob Teague, a black reporter who worked for NBC in New York in the 1980s, in which he said, “Blacks are more inclined to create police work than to perform it.”
* Everyone would love to believe that the black community is just filled with untapped potential, with Good Will Hunting type janitors who are secretly math geniuses. It just ain’t so. You could reform the schools (that’s been tried up the wazoo), reform the black community, reform the black family (all easier said than done in a free society), etc. and gentle giant D’Shavious and his girlfriend Jeantel will still have an 85 IQ and will still be best suited for life in an agrarian society and have no useful role to play in a post-industrial society, so they will be, one way or another, wards of the state for their entire life (or else they would literally starve). No matter what you do, you can’t make a housepet out of a hyena.
Yes, there is a smarter fraction in the black community (by smart I don’t mean Feynman smart, just above 100 IQ and capable of working in a modern society smart) of around 15 or 20% but these have moved out of the ghetto long ago so what is left behind is largely devoid of untapped potential.
* I remember DC trying to boost the number of black police officers a decade or so ago.
It didn’t turn out well.
* It’s time for a strategic retreat from blm cauldrons of criminality. Surrounding gated communities and livable suburbs should support a George Kennan inspired version of containment. Odd that such a dated cold war concept like that should now have internal domestic application.
* In a ghetto community, either the police are out there kicking ass and trying to keep some semblance of public order or else they are eating donuts and letting the feral wolves rule the streets. There is no in-between possible. It’s the same as places like Iraq and Egypt – either there is someone there to keep a lid on things or else people will run wild. There’s no internal superego in these places – if there is not some external force keeping them from taking your rims (or maybe even your life), they will take them in a second with no qualms. The idea that you can have a police force in those places that spends its time giving anti-drug lectures in schools (that seemed to be the main job of my local suburban police force) and stopping old white ladies and young black dudes in equal proportions, like some urban TSA, is laughable.
* And smack dab in the middle of this festering reservation: Johns Hopkins University, America’s premier medical college.
The history of prestigious academic institutions once located in white centers of influence and culture that now require their own police forces is an under-reported one.
* The quote pointing out the stench of pot smoke in Baltimore parks lets me bang another drum, for whatever purpose. Has anyone done research on to what degree marijuana usage permeates ghetto culture? In fact, many, if not all, of the blue on black non-compliance shootings seem to involve young guys cooked out of skull on pot, or worse. Yet it’s never noted at time, and if revealed in autopsy it seems as if by fiat it is not a big thing. Add marijuana usage to low IQ, bad decision making and no moral guidance, and you’ve got a young man who is looking to get tagged by a 9mm. Yet again, all these episodes are laid at the feet of the po-po (as the cops are called in Baltimore) and not depicted as the low-character stupidity they really represent, Kid, don’t want to get popped? Don’t go do crime while high. Don’t do ANYTHING while high. In fact, don’t get high at all. That’s only for ironic whites who can giggle, listen to old Garcia vinyl, then go to the Pancake House when it wears off.
* When you look at the agenda of the Black Lives Matter movement, it appears to be that of a lynch mob. If a white cop shoots a black, whatever the circumstances, even if the cop is completely exonerated, they want to lynch him. So to me, “BLM” stands for Black Lynch Mob.
* There may be kids who have potential in the ghetto, but is it really worth the time, effort, and resources spent to identify those “kids with potential” and then do everything we can to make sure they achieve that potential by showering them with affirmative action and letting all the other detritus run wild? We’re at the point we’re an old lady isn’t allowed to clutch her purse and cross the street when she sees “this youth with potential” because of the terrible psychological impact of this heinous microaggression on the poor “youth with potential.”
I say screw it. We all have obstacles to success in our lives. The obstacles to these “youth with potential” are primarily other blacks and the fact that they look like them. They can transcend those obstacles or they can not, but they aren’t being held back by any kind of institutional racism or anything silly like that. Best of luck to them, but I’m not interested in turning everything on its head to pick the grain from the feces. That’s an incredibly stupid thing to do. We should be maximizing the potential of our very best, not sifting through feces.
* “But who cares about the Black Lives Matter movement inspiring a 63% increase in murder victims? The problem with Baltimore, according to the Justice Department, is too much law and order.”
To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Gotta agitate for those Hillary votes- otherwise we might get stuck with Trump and really have a tragedy if we couldn’t bring in more Democrat voters and pool boys for our Overlords.
* I seem to remember Atlantic magazine making a cameo in The Wire. Brother Mouzun – a legendary Nation of Islam hitman-for-hire from NYC – had a couple of lines about finding a copy of the Atlantic before he set to work icing and/or maiming a few baltimore drug dealers.
IIRC his gofer had to go a long way to find a copy of the Atlantic since they were in the hoods of baltimore.
So maybe the Atlantic is just playing to their drug-dealing, islamic, underworld killer-for-hire base with this article?
* There is something impressive about the big media’s ability to pick a patently false story (e.g., police racism in Baltimore, Haven Monahan) and then as the absurdity of it becomes more and more apparent, double-down and triple-down and dodecuple-down on the phony story.
As an aside, this Conor Friedersdorf is a bit of an interesting case. He’s occasionally presented as something of a house conservative by the organs who publish him, yet he’s never written anything conservative that I’ve ever noticed. His initiation into big journalism was as “underblogger” to notorious juicer sodomist Andrew Sullivan, which sounds dangerous as well as uncomfortable.