the lieutenant governor of minnesota is claiming that the riots over the death of the black man are being instigated by white supremacists.

let's just think that through for a minute.

but, you should recognize that this is reflective of the level of much of the discourse coming from the democrats, nowadays, who see themselves as so utterly reliant on black voters that they're willing to bend the truth in any direction possible. and, in a state like minnesota, which is overwhelmingly white, it makes you wonder if that narrative came down from head office.

she then claimed that the white supremacists were working with anarchists, which is an equally ridiculous claim. you might not like us, but try to understand us. we reject any sort of hierarchy - including hierarchies of race - on first principles.

it's literally a suggestion that communists and nazis are working together to burn down the city.

but, what's going on, here, in the wider context? there have been similar deaths recently, but these things only seem to happen during economic recessions, don't they? is this happening separately from the fiasco with the virus?

there's two ways to parse this.

1) this is some kind of disaster capitalism, and it's going to be used as an excuse to bring in martial law. i would have argued loudly against this as recently as two months ago, but i told you to read the handmaid's tale. is this the next phase of this?

2) this is what happens when you have millions and millions of unemployed young people. maybe you sent them checks, but they're still unemployed, and they obviously have nothing better to do.

frankly, i could think of worse ways to waste your time than burning down the police station, but that's only a start. and, i wonder. should i be out there on the street? what kind of revolutionary potential is building right now? and how controlled is it, in the sense of being generated to justify an increasingly draconian lockdown on our civil rights?

well, ok.

these are the right targets.

stay focused, minneapolis - don't turn on each other.

this is not a conspiracy theory.

this is reality.

the tactic was invented by bismarck and has appeared in virtually every public protest for the last 150 years.

https://www.insider.com/minneapolis-protesters-social-media-users-suspicious-of-umbrella-man-2020-5

so, i'm not going to tell people to stay in. go riot.

but, i will ask you to pick your targets more carefully, and question your leadership if they seem to be trying to distract you.

why are they inciting you to burn down a mcdonalds, or a local clothing store? are the people doing that perhaps what is called agents provocateurs? i don't know; i'm not on the ground. work out your own deductions.

instead of burning the shopping district down, why don't you burn down a police station or a city hall, instead?

mike is making what is a common error in reactions to these events - he wants retribution, which he calls "justice". so, he wants to go after the prosecutors. he wants to send these "bad apples" to jail. it's the same response you see over and over...

but, what is the point of sending these cops to jail if the academy just replaces them with four more that think exactly the same way?

this is systemic, and you have to go after the root causes, which are in the way that police are taught to act. it's not an accident that this happens over and over - it's the system. they're not "bad apples". it's by design.

i know you don't want to think of it like this, but sending these cops to jail isn't any more useful than sending some low level crack dealers on the street to jail. it addresses something emotional, it expresses something religious, but it is an absolutely useless step in actually solving the actual problem.

this is complete nonsense.

what are they going to do if i just ignore them and walk right in? are they going to call the police? are they going to charge me with not wearing a mask?

you can be sure they'll end up with a charter case, if they do.

they have no enforcement rights, here. at all. nor does their status as private businesses give them the right to discriminate against customers based on their clothing - that's what human rights laws are for.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/mask-rights-covid-questions-answered-1.5590534

there are plenty of examples of systemic racism out there. i'm not doubting that.

but, this is more of an example of systemic stupidity.

as far as i can tell, what happened in minneapolis was a very stupid police officer. there's a lot of people with a lot of agendas, but the constant that keeps coming up in these cases is that police officers nowadays are, more often than not, of exceedingly low intelligence. there's not really another way to explain what happened.

the thing is that it isn't an accident - the police training specifically pulls out officers that are obedient, and specifically removes officers that demonstrate any sort of independent thinking.

so, the most frustrating thing you're going to hear about this is how he was a "bad apple", and how he "failed" to "protect". that's all rooted in utter nonsense. he's exactly what he was created to be, and he did exactly what he was trained to do.

everything else aside, you'd have to be halfway to being retarded to keep your knee on somebody when they're yelling at you like that.

and, while other scenarios may lead to other recommendations, the basic truth here is that this officer was obviously simply not intelligent enough to do his job.

if we must have cops, we need to stop making them so fucking stupid.

she's a war criminal, and she should be in jail.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/biden-vice-president-susan-rice/612115/

when both candidates have essentially the same position on a specific topic, it's because it's what the money wants.

and why do you think he said that?

something needs to be done to reduce the power of social media companies to police speech, but revoking s. 230 would be a catastrophe for speech advocates.

yet, it seems like the parties agree with each other. so, it's congress' move, and what they do next could very well be horrible.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/29/21274812/joe-biden-donald-trump-twitter-facebook-section-230-moderation-revoke

so, i've been sleepy since wednesday morning and have largely blown the last few days. i mean, i've been working at it, but i've only gotten a few hours done.

the temperature crashed by ten degrees celsius yesterday afternoon, which messed with me, and we're getting a cold and gross weekend. i'm not going to ask for the heat to come on, but it's cold in here, and it really sucks.

i've already used the stove a few times, and i'm going to have to take...i'm probably going to have to shower a few times to warm up. it's just the facts of it.

i've got one last section to cross-reference, and it could really, honestly be done by the morning, or by the afternoon.