The government has no authority to say you can’t protest — even in a pandemic — and it doesn’t matter what the protest is about.

Just because you care about one issue doesn’t mean you have to be a complete sociopath about everything else.

Well, we’ve successfully moved the debate from how to reform the police to whether to not people are overreacting to their cities being looted and set on fire.
It isn’t the protestors fault. I don’t know what they can do to keep rioters from taking all the headlines. Does seem like someone has to take charge, though, with some actionable proposals other than everybody post a bunch of black squares to demonstrate how much they care.
Wish I knew how to turn enthusiasm into long lasting political change, but I don’t have a lot of experience at it. Hopefully someone will figure it out!
I do have one recommendation, though: Stop all the chiding of people getting too worried about their property being stolen and burned down. It makes you look like sociopaths and gets everyone to hate you.
It also seems to implicitly imply the looters and rioters are the same as the protestors, which is really counterproductive.

You’re can’t use stats to tell people they’re too worried about the horrific killings of unarmed black men they keep seeing and you’re not going to convince people horrified by rioting that they’re focusing on the wrong things. Telling other people what to feel doesn’t work.
A common political fantasy is that you amass so much power you can just completely ignore the cares and concerns of your political rivals, and that is a constant recipe for disaster.

Is that really how murder charges work? You can’t go “We think it was 2nd degree murder, but it was at least 3rd degree.”? You have to pick one, and if you get it wrong, he gets off scott free?

I’ve never used the term “snowflakes” unironically, but it’s pretty tempting anytime you see the left completely freaking out that they were exposed to an opinion they really really disagreed with in a left-wing publication.
Let me tell you: You all have numerous opinions just as terrible as Tom Cotton’s, but we’ve all learned to tolerate you. Calm down.

People each day are seeing looters stealing with impunity and rioters attacking people. Of course they’re scared and want the military to do something.
It might be a bad idea, but to convince anyone of that, you have to stop being a bunch of sociopathic dummies about everything.

This is a golden age for people who were worried about whether or not their condiment manufacturer likes racism.

If you defund the police, how are you going to take people’s plastic straws and AR-15s?

And you can’t have socialism without a lot of people with guns. You’re not going to get everyone to voluntarily go along with your idiotic ideas.

I don’t know why the store Target has found itself such a… Oh.

To actually make things better takes humility. You have to actually listen to the other side and not just dismiss their concerns.
It’s too high a price to pay.

Are the left going to be able to admit that police unions are bad without also admitting that teachers’ unions are bad for many of the same reasons?
It’s not a popular value, but being able to fire people who are bad at their job is extremely important. There are countries where it’s difficult for any company to do that—no matter how incompetent the person is—and it’s terrible for everyone.
Except the incompetent.

The NYT should run an editorial called “We’re Gonna Make Ya Squeal!” and it just be a list of right-wing talking points like “Guns make you safer” and “Abortion is this nation’s greatest evil.”

A bunch of really terrible people think they know what opinions should be allowed to be expressed and which shouldn’t.

Libertarians should develop echo chambers like the left so we can pretend “taxation is theft” is a widely-held, unquestionable opinion and then go completely bananas if we’re exposed to anyone saying anything different.

Is there anything more shortsighted and dumb than the left’s flirtation with violence?

Things just keep getting worse. First it was a pandemic. Then it was rioting. And now it’s getting exposed to a contrary opinion in The New York Times.

The frequency of people getting killed by the police is sort of missing the point. There is just this extra horror that there are these people out there who can suddenly decide to victimize you and there is no recourse.
Maybe there is some recourse if it was caught on video. Maybe.

People are coming up with conspiracy theories about the job numbers to avoid the obvious conclusion: Trump is a very good president.

Obviously, Tom Cotton’s great editorial inspired everyone to get back to work.

The left not only surrendered on gun control with the riots, but climate change. Who is going to trust “experts” after they said going to the beach would kill grandma but rioting is just fine? Everyone knows now what they claim is science is just partisan nonsense.

Me after they abolish the police:
“You have to pay your taxes.”
“No.”

Maybe the solution is some sort of reverse Purge where once a year laws apply to the police.

I gather the left’s faith in angry mobs means they’ve never studied history and can’t think more than twenty minutes into the future.

I wasn’t sure what it would be like releasing my first sequel. I was worried because then you’re just selling to the subset of people who read your first book, but it ends up a sequel is all a big scam to sell more of your first book and that works really well.

It seems like it’s easy to be optimistic if you look at history. Man, we’ve been through a lot worse.

Swam in the lake today. There was a sign at the lake, though, that said the lake is full of COVID (unless you’re there to riot).
Not a lot of rioting at the lake. It’s hard to set things on fire in the middle of water. If you can manage, though, it’s a good place to riot because police can’t swim.
Me, I’d riot in the middle of a forest. No one to bother you out there. Can riot in peace.

I think our problem was listening to experts when we should have listened to people who still are perts.

I don’t know if antifa is like the soldiers who stormed the beaches at Normandy but they are kind of like C.H.U.D.s.

Biological sex was invented by religious extremists in the 1950s.

Much of the cultural issues these days are a bunch of people running around yelling “Two plus two equals five!” and everyone else deciding if it’s worth the headache to say anything. I guess the equation changes if you’re a billionaire.
Now you know the real reason the left doesn’t like billionaires.

The fish were biting like crazy this evening, and the kids were identifying the real fish we caught because they had caught the same ones in Animal Crossing.
I recognized some from Red Dead Redemption 2.

LEFT-WING PROTESTORS: “Punch yourself in the groin!”
REGULAR PEOPLE: “You’re saying we should all punch ourselves in the groin?”
LEFT-WING PROTESTORS: “No, idiot. That’s not what that slogan means. It’s much more nuanced than that.”

Always felt like the trans movement went straight to yelling “Bigot!” and skipped over the step of explaining what in the world they’re talking about.

“Two plus two equals Thursday! All right-thinking people know this!”
“I don’t understand.”
“TERF!”
“Wha… What does that mean?”

After listening to The Piano Man for the thousandth time, I think I finally got what the song is about: a guy playing a piano in a bar.

We must abolish the police and leave enforcing the law to personal paramilitary groups funded by billionaires. To be protected, we must win favor with the billionaires, which could perhaps be as simple as subscribing to Amazon Prime.

I remember comic book stories where they blamed all the costume criminals on the existence of Batman, and I guess now people are blaming regular criminals on the existence of police.

Muggers only mug people to get attention to. Without police (or a Batman), they’d stop.

Journalists are debating whether they should keep pretending they’re anything other than political activists.

“Antifa is basically the same as the people who literally fought Nazis but the people who literally fought Nazis are racists and should be cancelled.”

If any newspaper wants me to manage their editorial page, I’ll do it. I think all your opinions are dumb and I will tell that to people’s faces and I will make them cry. Cry for how stupid they are.

I’ve developed something I call “Critical Hit Race Theory.” It says we can end racism if we all roll a 20.

Equality is very much a religious concept. It’s built on the Christian concept of the soul — despite who we may be externally, deep down we are all eternal beings of equal value before God.
It has been treated as a secular value — and people are free to say “There’s no rational basis for this, but I choose to believe it” — though I wonder how long it can last by itself, cut off from a more organized religion.
Now, I very much believe in a secular government — I don’t want other people with force of law deciding what are the right beliefs — but paradoxically that government is built on top of a few religious concepts it’s important everyone buys into.
Equality and rights all stem from the concept of the soul — that there is something special about each and every human life. These are not things you believe thinking people are just some random product of evolution.
Anyway, this is important to keep in mind when we’re trying to figure out how to fight racism. This is a battle about a radical religious concept. You try to un-anchor it to religion, it’s unclear where it could drift off to.

Let’s look at the bright side: We never have to ask: “I wonder what the president is thinking?”

Do you think the Nazis were convinced they were on the right side of history?

So many people think the big distinction between them and the Nazis is that they’re really extra super-duper sure they’re right about everything.

Would have loved to be a conspiracy theorist back when the Titanic sank.
“They want us to believe an iceberg took down the biggest ship ever made. Ice can’t cut steel!”

We need to abolish the police and settle disputes with dueling. If you see someone doing something you don’t cotton to, challenge him to a duel.
“You besmirch my honor, sir. Guns at dawn!”
Doesn’t that sound more civilized?

Man, that would work on me to make sure I was nice and polite to everyone as I don’t want to get up at dawn.
“Can’t we duel in the afternoon?”
“No. Too hot.”

“The police should be replaced with monkeys armed with tasers riding sheepdogs. You need to read this 5,000 word article about how that is not in fact a stupid idea made by a dumb person.”

So we got rid of the police and it ends up we didn’t need them at all. We all imagined crime.

Maybe like how Dexter was a serial killer who killed other serial killers, we need mobs that try to get people fired who join internet mobs.

I think the problem with the “defund the police” idea is that it’s stupid and crazy. The Overton Window can encompass things that are either stupid or crazy, but it’s too ambitious to try to get popular support for an idea that’s both.

When they defund the police, if you’re a serial killer, you’ll get a free pamphlet on how not to serial kill.

I don’t know if I pitch Christianity enough, but a religion with a concept of forgiveness is way better than all those other weird belief systems people buy into these days.

I like how the Mortal Kombat movie on Netflix is promoting itself in its rating.
“PG-13 for NON-STOP MARTIAL ARTS ACTION!”
The actual rating is “PG-13 for non-stop martial arts action and some violence” because I guess martial arts doesn’t count as violence. It’s art.

I just remember the Mortal Kombat movie as the first video game movie that wasn’t unwatchable and also that it was a bit of a ripoff of Enter the Dragon.

Gone with the Wind is one of those movies I always felt I should see but never really wanted to.

Know what would be really progressive? Removing all the movies from this year for all the things in them we won’t know are offensive until 50 years from now.
We’re looking out for you, overly sensitive grandkids.