Blowback

Baltimore burns, the current and most recent example of violent reaction to perceived injustice.  It is not necessary that there is truth or guilt behind the perception in any one particular instance; it is sufficient that there is truth or guilt behind the perceived injustices often enough.  This is sufficient to create the perception.

There is nothing right, moral, or just about indiscriminant looting and violence – let nothing I write here suggest otherwise; yet, the fall into such violence is understandable.  It is a predictable reaction, blowback, to the policies of the right on the one hand and the left on the other.  In the case of the right, the connection is more obvious as it takes little intellectual capacity to connect the dots – the reaction immediately follows the action; in the case of the left, an elementary understanding of economics, incentives, and logic is required – far too much to expect from most, it seems.

The Right

Police can kill with immunity. 

No statement so broad can be always true, yet it is true often enough.  Wearing the badge offers immunity to the gun-bearer.  There are examples of this almost every day, it seems; yet, only a few such incidents draw national attention – and even here, usually only after video evidence in contradiction to the party line is revealed.

Protect the shield, protect the blue line.  It isn’t only within the police departments; what of the prosecutors, what of the judges, what of the law?  All stand silent, at least when not contributing to the cover-up.  No justice, no peace.

Administrative leave or a quiet retirement with full pension.  If punishment is ever meted out, it is such as this.  Not bad work if you can get it.

Occasionally a community will react – see Baltimore.  It isn’t to condone, only to understand: blowback.  There was a statement by one women, one with very poor command of the English language – so poor that one might instantly put her in the category of an uneducated cretan.  Yet, her words were golden – the most die-hard libertarian (too small a minority) or morally-consistent Christian (an even smaller one) would have no trouble agreeing with the justness of her sentiment, which means that she will be ignored by almost everyone.

I paraphrase her statement: The police should be under the same law as the rest of us.

A nation of laws, not men.  What could this mean other than what this insightfully intelligent woman offered?  There was a time when this was true, in the supposedly horrible, dark days of the Middle Ages, when the law was above all, when even the king was below the law with only the duty to uphold the law – nothing more.

The right only offers sentiments such as: obey orders and you won’t get hurt; if you don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.  Of course, even these admonitions aren’t true – what of the SWAT team breaking down the wrong door?  What of throwing a grenade into a baby’s crib?  Collateral damage.  Cause enough collateral damage and you will get blowback.

Yet, what if the world you live in is one where those you are told to obey often kill with immunity?  What if you have seen this often enough, what if you heard enough stories to make this perception your reality?  In what kind of world is death the penalty for disobeying the one by whom you rightly feel threatened?  It is true in the criminal world.  It was equally true in Stalin’s world.  This is what the right offers. 

I have no idea if death at the hands of the immune is true more often in lower-class black communities than in other communities; however, I suspect if this happened as often in upper-middle-class white communities we would have heard about it – I suspect something would even have been done about it by now.

The Left

Robert Wenzel refers to them as LBJ’s grandkids: those multiple generations who have grown up since the mid-sixties without fathers, without role models, without jobs, without hope, without incentive to improve.  Fruits from the loins of LBJ’s Great Society.  Income guaranteed for proof of feminine fertility and masculine virility, without the need for responsibility. 

On top of this, little chance for legal, introductory employment due to minimum wage requirements.  When legal employment is out of reach, other opportunities are secured.  Peddling drugs is one such option; drug laws have overly impacted (or have been overly enforced against) minority communities, further removing father figures from their responsibilities – victimless crimes resulting in incarceration rates higher than anywhere else on earth.

LBJ isn’t alone with his bone offered to the left in order to have a free hand in prosecuting the genocide of millions of Vietnamese; there is no shortage of voices calling for compassion for those who have had hard times pour down upon their heads.  Compassion with your money, not theirs; compassion with your money whether you want to contribute or not.  Compassion poured down to the point of ensuring the drowning of those being compassioned upon.

Life without consequence or responsibility; one generation after another with this life offered as the model – always another lost generation.  The idea of respect for property and life is lost on those who are able to obtain property and life with no effort necessary – with pay raises offered for promiscuity.

Property without effort results in no respect for property.  Life without effort results in no respect for life.  Two plus two equals four; no respect for property or life results in looting and death.

Don’t point to individual cases of the small handful that have found a way to break out of this hell that the left has created for them – there are always exceptions to expected outcomes for every incentive system.  However, incentives have a way of achieving – far more often than not – that which they incentivize.

Blowback

The right demands order and compliance, hence police are free to kill with immunity; the left demands compassion with your money, hence generations grow without any comprehension of the idea of respect for property and life, no knowledge of how to productively contribute to society.

There is nothing surprising about Baltimore.  Blowback.  Actions have consequences.