Category Archives: The Second Civil War

Shards

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Chaya Raichik, of the account “Libs of TikTok”, and her seven-digit collection of followers, have gone scorched earth on social media accounts that cheered last weekend’s assassination attempt on former president Trump:

I get the urge. Perhaps more than most. I’ve had at least one job get tanked because some (very “progressive”) management found out about my alter ego life (which I have never, not once in 20 years, mentoined in a workplace. I don’t talk about politics at work – and yet I know of one contract job that didn’t get extended, notwithstanding the fact that I saved the project I was working on (long story for another time) because someone googled up some portion of my shadowy talk-radio existence and complained.

And that’s just the once I know about.  I have suspicions about other jobs. 

It was fine as far as it went – I found better jobs.  But I’m not going to say I was never angry about it. 

I never had the time, bandwidth or following to act on it like Raichik even if I had.   And Raichik has certainly endured plenty of harassment herself.  And the two of us aren’t alone.

Of course, on the right the “cultural memory” of the left’s social oppression is pretty hot and current; “cancellation”, including losing jobs, having professional license challenged, and other active harassment over quesitoning and refusing the Covid vaccine; losing jobs over photos in MAGA caps, having kids harassed because their parents were open conservatives. 

And it is a little disturbing to see some people – doctors, nurses, teachers – not only cheering on the assassination, but actively wishing the same on half the population.   It’d be great to help them recognize how stupid and evil they are being.

But this? 

This is pretty much the definition of “punching down”.

I’ve had a policy on this blog from the beginning; I don’t go after peoples (non-elective) day jobs – and I am absolutely hands-off their families. 

Does that make me a better person than those that don’t have those scruples?

Yes.  Absolutely.

Has it deterred people going after me, my job and family?  Well, not all of them.  I don’t have the means to scorched-earth them all.  WIth some, its irrelevant.  With others?  Karma’s a bitch.  But I’m the one that has to live with myself. 

 

Remedy

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Joe Doakes, no longer from Como Park emails:

In Murthy v. Missouri, the Biden administration was accused of unconstitutional infringement of free speech by pressuring social media to suppress stories unfavorable to the administration.  A lower court found it was the most blatant act of censorship in American history. 

The Supreme Court sidestepped the issue in cowardly fashion and reversed. The court did not say the government’s action was constitutional,  it said citizens have no standing to challenge the unconstitutional action.

 There’s no such thing as “standing” in the Constitution, it is strictly a made-up rule  that courts use to get rid of nuisance cases they don’t want to hear.  It’s a convenient way to avoid making hard decisions. Minnesota courts have used it to rule that ordinary citizens have no standing to challenge the governor’s Covid lock down order, even though it cost them their livelihood or landed them in jail. There is simply no legal remedy for those acts. 

Imagine that Biden stays in the race so  Democrats have to steal the election to keep the Bad Orange Man out of power.  Imagine that the courts act for this instance as they did in 2020 denying that individual citizens have standing to challenge the result and refusing to hear the merits of the election fraud case. What’s the remedy?

 If the court is correct citizens have no peaceful remedy within the constitutional system for unconstitutional government action, then the only remedy available is the one the founders exercised: insurrection leading to revolution.

Plenty of rope in the hinterlands and plenty of lamp poles in Washington. No wonder the elites are terrified.

Joe Doakes

One hopes they are.

Arsenal Of Theocracy

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Joe Doakes, no longer from Como Park, emails:

Biden says Americans do not need firearms to resist government tyranny because we don’t have F15s so can’t win anyway.

Biden surrendered to the Taliban.  How many F15s did they have?

Asking for a friend

Joe Doakes 

Ooh, I can answer that! None!

Lots and lots of other stuff – enough to resist a pretty good-sized government, in fact.

Pogrom

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There’s really no other word to describe what happened in Los Angeles on Sunday:

“Germany? Nope, Los Angeles”. Distinction without all that much difference anymore.

Nothing small or isolated about it.

I’m old enough to remember when Jews feared the right in America. But barely.

This guy…

…looks like a skinhead reliving his “glory days” from the ’80s. That the modern “Palestinian” movement allies with them tells you something.

And the mayor of Berlin…er, Los Angeles had a predictable response:

Of course, that’s scarcely worse than what POTATUS is doing.

The closest thing to good news?

Apparently The New Kristallnacht isn’t polling well outside LA, Dearborn and, probably, south Minneapolis.

Punching Laterally-To-Down

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To: Jason Chavez, Minneapolis DSA/DFL councilbeing
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Punching

Councilbeing Chavez,

You tweeted this on Wednesday:

Let’s talk about the term “uprising”.

It usually connotes a group of subjugated, beaten-down people, “rising up” against their oppressors.

Good examples of uprisings that fit some variant of that definition:

Each of these uprisings have a few things in common: the people doing the uprising were being actively oppressed by those up against whom they rose; the targets of their attacks were the actual oppressors; tax authorities, the SS, the monarchy.

In May of 2020, people who considered themselves oppressed (we’ll accept that for sake of argument) “rose up” and destroyed…

…hundreds of businesses, extremely disproportionately owned by immigrants, people of color, people in the neighborhood. Oh, the Third Precinct got destroyed – after a couple of days of generalized looting and arson, seemingly almost as an afterthought, to give the “uprising” some window-dressing sense of political virtue other than “looting and burning cafes owned by first-generation Americans”.

I may be just an obstreporous peasant, but I think “downrising” might be a better term.

That is all.

Open Letter To MPR’s Jon Collins: Year 4

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To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public Radio
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Anniversary + Findings

Mr. Collins,

As I have every year since 2021, I hope this day finds you well.

It was four years ago yesterday you sent this out on your listener mailing list::

“South Minneapolis: I know this sounds crazy. But it’s 2020. And I’m working on story now about white supremacists coming to Minneapolis to foment race war under cover of the protests. I need your help, and your friends help. Please refer anyone with real, credible info (not rumor or speculation) or sources to me at (I’m gonna redact that)

What the heck – let’s give this a shot:

Now, I know MPR reporters don’t generally deign to respond to the peasantry – in fact, I know MPR News management specifically tells staff not to engage with the unwashed masses. In fact, I have the receipts.

But I’m genuinely curious – did you find anything?

It’s not of idle interest to me.  Mine was one of the neighborhoods that got burned, looted and vandalized in May of 2020 (noting at the time that I saw a lot of “AmeriKKKa” and “Destroy the 1%” graffiti, but not a single swastika or “14 words” reference, I’m thinking the Twin Cities either got the most inept “white supremacists” in the history of bigotry, or they were the most ingenious – fiendishly tricking a whole city full of leftists into doing the job for them – the sort of fieldcraft that’d make a Mossad agent envious).     

While I am a very overt conservative (I went from Bob Collins’ Christmas Card list to…well, very much off of it during his unfortunate unpleasantness a few years ago), I also spent time covering radical groups of all stripes back when I was in the mainstream media.  

I ask because a not-so-cursory look through the last three years of your reporting doesn’t seem to show anything.  

And as I do every year on the anniversary of this event, I’d like to invite you on my show (Saturday, 1-3PM) to talk about your findings.   Because it’s everyone’s city. 

Thanks,

Mitch Berg
Host, WWTC-AM

 

Lab Report

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To: Central Science Bureau, Planet Xymorg.
From: Forward Observation Base, Dark Side of Sole Moon, Planet Terra, Sol System
Re: Initial Observations

Central Bureau,

Enclosed please find the report on our observations of the inhabitants of planet Terra (aka “Earth”).

Methods

Our team observed the inhabitants of Terra via an extensive observation of “Advertisements” – a Terran form of content carefully calibrated to simultaneously reflect and suggest reality.

As Terrans accept this as reality, so shall this experiment.

Findings

According to statistics compiled from ten solar cycles of observation of Terran “Advertising”, we conclude the following:

Social Hierarchy: Terran social hierarchy appears to be organized, in descending order of social standing:

  • Females of the species, of all ages and ethnicities. Observation of human advertisements indicates females of the species comprise the executive, management, professional, warrior and intellectual classes. They appear to be the sole capable decision makers.
  • Children – again of all ages and ethnicities.
  • Males of most age and ethnic classes, who apparently are considerably less capable as executives, managers, professional sand warriors than the women.
  • Males of the “caucasoid” class. Analysis of “advertising” content indicates adult caucasian males are a highly specialized subspecies adapted to and adept in “home improvement” and “hardware stores” and shopping for beer, and otherwise of no value to human social structures.. A subset of this class appear to be predisposed to being masterminds of what terrans call “evil”..

Social structure: Terran families appear to fall into three categories, displayed in descending order of statistial occurrence:

  • Matched pairs of males and females, from different ethnic categories. Regardless of respective ethnicity, the social dynamics observed reflect the observations above; the females are the decision makers, while the males of all ethnicities appear to be incapable of any executive function.
  • Matched pairs of caucasian males and females. In these couples, again, the patterns noted above are observed; the female makes the decisions, with the males apparently unable to function in this capacity outside the aforementioned categories (“home improvement” and “beer”).
  • Matched same-gender pairs, who are apparently the sole classification of coupling comprised of competent equals.

Manifestations of Society: Observations of the “advertising” content indicate that human activity is overwhelmingly focused on:

  • Medicating ailments
  • Preparing and Consuming food
    • An apparently constant, possibly ceremonial refabrication of their dwellings – roofs, windows, floors and waste removal facilities. This appears to take on religious significance .

Social Hierarchy: The Terran social hierarchy as observed in “advertising” content appears to be based around a triune religio-governmental structure:

  • “Real Housewives” – these are apparently centralized councils of female rulers and their retinues of male drones (see observations above)
  • An executive authority composed of a deified “Oprah”, with vice-deities “Beyoncé” and “Taylor Swift”

Further study is warranted.

An American Hero

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For like the 21st year in a row, I didn’t watch the State of the Union. I’ve joined the crowd that considers it a useless exercise at best, a nod to monarchy or worse at worst.

But I almost wish I had tuned in, for this alone:

“Thirteen Marines”

Including his son, LCPL Kareem Nikoui, whom I’ll bring out from under the rug under which he and his comrades were swept:

And I salute you, Steve Nikoui, wherever you are.

Remember…

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…while it’s always the Democrats who fantasize [1] about turning the military loose on Americans…:

…it’s the Republicans who are really the “Fascists”.

Representative Wu went on to bleat…:

That’s right – a guy who openly fantasizes about shooting missiles at Americans is concerned about “dangers to his community”.

Gene Wu may be the modern Democrat party’s intellectual thought leader.

[1] One suspects “arousal” to the level of, uh, showing physical symptoms, at least in Mr. Wu’s case.

Let’s Stir Up Another Republic-Threatening Hornets Nest: Part I

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I saw “The Fall of Minneapolis” again last week.

Now, when I first mentioned seeing it a few months back, a few smart people whose opinions I never discount asked “is there anything new that the courts didn’t settle?”

That brings up a couple of questions.

In our society, we usually think that if a court – an impartial jury of our peers, a couple of adversarial attorneys patiently digging out the facts, a fair and impartial judge facilitating it all via “due proces” – decides something, that’s that. The truth has been found.

There’s problems with that.

The was this guy, James Fleming, a Facebook friend, shooter and criminal defense attorney. He used to snap at people who referred to “due process” by itself as a reason to trust something. Paraphrasing: due process isn’t a guarantee of fairness, much less justice. It means the proceedings all check the same checkboxes and standards. The fairness and justice is all in the details.

So – how can that go wrong?

Years ago, I was *very* tangentially involved in the case of a man who’d been accused of a fairly grisly rape and murder in 1982. He had been kind of a lowlife, a petty criminal and drug addict, the kind of guy you’ve seen on a thousand episodes of “Cops” insisting to the officer “I have NO IDEA whose gun and cocaine that is!” He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

The courts settled the matter.

A decade and change later, a group of people did enough digging and agitating on his behalf to get the attention of “The Innocence Project”, a group of pro-bono lawyers that works on what they believe to be unjust convictions.

The lawyers found that the original conviction had been secured via:
– A jailhouse snitch with a history of perjury whose testimony nonetheless was allowed
– A District Attorney hiding exculpatory evidence.
– An incompetent public defender.

The exculpatory evidence included forensic evidence that, with modern DNA testing, could have shed some light on who the attacker was. But it vanished as completely as whispering “due process” in the wind.

After years of legal wrangling, the lawyers found the evidence – and with more modern DNA testing, determined that the man, who’d been convicted “beyond a reasonable doubt” after “due process”, couldn’t have possibly been the murderer. In 2003 he was released, after 21 years on Death Row.

And he’s not alone. In the past 50 years, *185* inmates have been released from Death Row. Not granted new trials. Not commuted to lesser sentences. *Released* from Death Row to the world – because their “convictions beyond a reasonble doubt” were in error, due to perjury, official misconduct, incompetence, and even some honest but terrible mistakes.

So – do I think the answer to “is it true?” is “the courts have spoken?”

Let’s just say I believe in (grudging, conditional) trust but verification. Throw in a heaping dollop of skepticism about the integrity of public officials and systems.

More later this wee4

I Read Deena Winter In The “Minnesota Reformer” So You Don’t Have To

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Earlier this week, the Minnesota Reformer – a news outlet financed by “progressive” plutocrats iwth deep pockets – did its review of AlphaNews’s “Minneapolis Has Fallen”.

The claims – well, I’ll let the tweet do the talking for the piece, entitled “I Watched Minneapolis Has Fallen So You Don’t Have To”.

Let’s go briefly through Winter’s claims.

Restraint

The biggest hit Winter has against Collin is that, according to her, the movie’s revelation that Chief Arredondo and his training officer lied about whether “Maximal Restraint Technique” was part of the MPD’s training and policy. Collin showed cops, and Chauvin’s mother, opening the manual to the exact section, and showed multiple current and former MPD officers saying they’d been trained in the technique. The movie also said the jurors were not allowed to see the body cam footage that showed that Chauvin did the technique correctly – with his knee on the shoulder blade, rather than on George Floyd’s neck.

Winter claims that yes, the jury saw both.

OK – so if that’s true, and the jurors saw the same training that the officers had, then could someone explain to me why Chief Arredondo still lied about it?

Neither reporter has clarified that for me, so someone else has to.

UPDATE: Danger Close

And as I wrote this in a hurry, I forgot this. But as “Bigman” noted in the comments – why the fact that Cahill failed to sequester the jury – who came to and from a courthouse that was being fortified like the Green Zone in Baghdad, and who were being told more or less directly that if they reached the “wrong verdict” that they were in huge trouble – not being discussed?

I’ll ask the question because Winter didn’t think she had to.

White Riot

Winter goes on to discuss the parts of the film dealing with the riot, most specifically the evacuation of the Third Precinct (on which. apropos nothing much, I scooped the entire Twin Cities media), I’m trying to figure out what Winter’s point is.

I’ll dispense with the fact that Winter…lacks a certain amount of empathy, or at least insight outside her own apparently narrow experience (emphasis added):

Collin also spends considerable time questioning why the MPD and local and state officials were slow to take action as protests devolved into riots and arson that destroyed hundreds of buildings across the metro.

Retired MPD officer Jason Reimer tells Collin what bothered him the most is “they let people throw rocks and bricks and firebombs and we’re supposed to just put on a helmet and take that.”

Well, helmets, but likely also bulletproof vests and eye-irritant spray, handcuffs, Tasers and semi-automatic pistols.

Bulletproof vests don’t keep you from burning to death. Spray and tasers are useful to get control one on one, not against a mob.

And I’ll let Deena Winter’s idea of shooting into a crowd of rioters hang out there, because I sure didn’t want to have to do it for her.

Winter cites some fairly wrenching scenes in the movie (that reflect what I reported in May of 2020), to which I’ll add some emphasis:

“We were in the middle of a war zone,” Herron said. “We were ordered not to do anything.”

She said the fire department wasn’t responding to calls, and officers were “wandering around aimlessly, waiting to be told what not to do next.”

“They weren’t doing anything to control the riot,” she said. “They wouldn’t let us do our jobs.”

All true – but keep the emphasis in mind – the “they” that left them wandering around were the city and MPD leadership. We’ll come back to them.

Winter adds:

The city and state’s failed response and inability to quell the violence and arson are well documented, but it’s inaccurate to claim police were standing down. 

They went on joyrides, fired rubber bullets at protesters (see Jaleel Stallings); an officer, who went on to run an actual banana stand, was caught on video by a journalist macing protesters for no discernible reason; lots of cops in riot gear teargassed crowds. 

They shot protestors like Soren Stevenson with a rubber bullet and blinded him in one eye. They maced a journalist from Vice News in the face. They fired rubber bullets at journalists, including Reformer reporter Max Nesterak and Star Tribune reporter Andy Mannix.

Side note: anyone but me notice how journalists only get really irate about injustice and official overreach when it’s other members of the Journo Club who are affected? Lake Street – and a fair chunk of the Midway, my neighborhood – got burned. The Minneapolis Police Department was, and remains, gutted. Crime soared, and is still double what it was as recently as 2018 – enh. But journalists got attacked ZOMG!

Not that Winter’s article tells you, but the main contention of the cops in the movie was that the city and the. MPD leadership – the “they” in the emphasized text in the first round of quotes, above:

  • Had no plan to deal with the riot
  • More specifically, abandoned the Third Precinct (apparently to “give the rioters ‘space to destroy'”), without having the foggiest idea about what the officers marooned there were supposed to do.

So when Winter snarks:

To the people on the other end of a rubber bullet or tear gas or mace, the police response sure didn’t feel like “standing down.” 

Stop me if I”m wrong, but everything she cites supports the cops contention. Some cops, operating in a complete vacuum, followed the normal human inclination to fucking hit back.

Either way, there was no plan. They were left danging in the breeze.

Winter doesn’t write about that, so I have to.

Who’s The Boss?

Winter goes on (and I’ll add emphasis):

[retired MPD cop Jason] Reimer says the weak response was all a deliberate attempt by politicians to use Floyd’s police killing to their advantage.

“The elections were coming up,” he said. “They were gonna use this incident for a political narrative, and they did.” 

Let’s hope Reimer was a better cop than he is a political analyst: The riots were a political disaster for the mayor, the governor and the entire DFL establishment. DFL political operatives blamed the riots and the defund/abolish police movement for key suburban losses that prevented a 2020 DFL trifecta. 

Although both Frey and Walz won reelection, they did so in part by hitching themselves to police during their reelection campaigns and would soon be accused by partisans on the left of being too cozy with cops.

I’m tempted to get cute and “hope that WInter is a better political analyst than Jason Reimer” – because it’d be more accurate to say the riots were a disaster for one city political establishment; the one where Jacob Frey and Andrea Jenkins and Lisa Bender were the “middle” and Alondra Cano was the loony left.

And for them, the riots were a disaster. For the new establishment, the one that gained huge ground in the ’22 elections and is poised to take the city over, the one led by the Democrat Socialists of America, against which Frey and Jenkins barely survived, and Bender and Cano retired lest they be seen as “too conservative” (literally the language the DSA droogs use to refer to Jacob F*cking Frey and Andrea Jenkins – the riots, and the aftermath (including the far far far left’s well-funded and well-organized response to whatever backlash there was in the ’20 elections) were a prime organizing opportunity.

But I won’t call Winter a myopic political analyst. Someone else will have to.

A Bonus I’ll Answer So You Don’t Need To

“Minneapolis Has Fallen” refers to quite a number of former MPD cops. Winter reminds us that a number of them are living on disability pensions and workmens comp settlements.

Someone needs to explain why that’s relevant (as opposed to, frankly, kinda pointlessly bitchy) since Winter will no doubt say she doesn’t have to.

Settler Projects

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Among the “setter projects” that Americans established as we (yes) conquered the North American continent, along with representative democracy, were universities.

And I’m thinking that those are among the “settler projects”…

…that actually need to be dismantled.

Or at least, it’s time for an actual honest-to-god McCarthy-style purge of Universities.

Mirthy

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SCENE: Mitch BERG is loading some garage junk into a truck. He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, whjo is walking up the alley writing down the addresses of homes without handicap parking spots.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Uh…

LIBRELLE: Christian Nationalists can’t handle freedom of religion! They’re having a cow and melting down over a Satan Club at a school!

BERG: Huh.

LIBRELLE: What do you have to say about that?

BERG: Other than “Satanism is a religion in exactly the same way as “The Onion” is, only even less funny? It exists only to mock faith. Well, to mock Christianity. It’s not a worldview. It’s a running adolescent jape.

LIBRELLE: You’re gonna crrrryyyyyyyyyyyy…

BERG: So, if a school had an “Amos and Andy” club, or a “Speedy Gonzales” club, or an “Apu” Club, or a “Boring Basketball” club, do you think Blacks, Latinos, Indian-Americans or women might take umbrage?

(But LIBRELLE is already skipping, literally, down the alley.

And SCENE>

Converts

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Wonder why Big Left’s noise machine was so quick to try to gundeck The Fall of Minneapolis?

Because they’re smart enough to see that it coud change some minds.

In this case, the minds of academic Glenn Loury and the NYTimes’s John McWhorter – both of whom formerly bought Big Left’s story on the events of May 2020.

And both of whom re-evaluated things pretty radically:

Haven’t seen it yet? Make up your own mind.

The More Things Change, The Less Things Change

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There was a time when I might have asked what a metro school board, like for example Edina, might have done if a bunch of students wandered around the halls bellowing:\

“Uptown
Downtown
We Just Want Our Lebensraum

Or:

We don’t need ethnic pollution
Bring us the Final Solution!

But it occurs to me…:

…it may be the wrong quesiton these days.

Actual Journalism

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Since the entire media will try to suppress it – here’s “The Fall of Minneapolis”, by Liz Collin and the Alphanews crew:

Watch it.

Pass it along.

I won’t give you any spoilers – you already know that Mayor Frey was a hapless stooge at best, a theatrical ninny at worst.

Chief Arradondo lied through his teeth. I always sensed this – the documentary shows us in black and white.

Walz? May he rot in hell.

Watch the whole thing. If you’re not outraged, you’re probably the enemy.

Muslims: Shut Up Or Get Cut Up

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Lest anyone doubted that Big Left today is Marxist to its foetid roots, we now join a white, uppser-middle class white progressive member of the Saint Louis Park School Board pulling intersectional rank on….

…Muslim parents objecting to porn in elementary schools:

That’s the thing about intersectionalism; while more virtue attaches to people the farther they go out on the intersectional tree (the transgender Afro-Muslim handicapped lesbian is the peak), the actual executive authroity is supposed to remain toward the center, with the white “prog” women.

The Enemy Within, Around And Above

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This is this sort of thing that should send Americans to be barricades. This is ample reason to block freeways (in DC and Silicon Valley and Saint Paul’s Government Canyon anyway). This is a reason to break out tar and feathers and lots and lots of harsh tweets.

It’s a thread. Click through in Twitter.

Not that this is news – but here’s one of a wallet full of money quotes:

-EIP [Election Integrity Partnership – Ed.]“stakeholders” (including the federal gov’t) would submit misinformation reports

-EIP would “analyze” the report and find similar content across platforms

-EIP would submit the report to Big Tech, often with a recommendation on how to censor

If you’d told me 15 years ago that voting for candidates attitudes about censorship, lockdowns, mandates and enforcing top-down social cohesion would be as important as stances on spending, immigration, healthcare and foreign policy, I’d have shaken my head and wondered “what else are they going to tell me – CD8 will someday be Republican?”

Review And Revise

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Whatever opposition I’ve had to deportation of illegal immigrants is waning fast:

I’ll work my ass off for the first Presidential candidate to promise to deport aliens who are actively hostile to everything this country stands for.

I said “actively”.

And if the people in this mob are citizens? Deport whatever immigration official or politician OKed their naturalization.

Or at least tar and feather them.

Compromise

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Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.

Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.

Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.

Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”

It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“

You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”

And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”

Who’s right?

You?

The guy with the bat?

Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?

If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?

Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.

The Fix

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A “high trust” society – the kind of society where you can leave your doors unlocked, or at least not keep all your property under constant surveillance at the very least – depends on trusting your neighbors, and the institutions by which we govern ourselves.

When that trust is broken, society becomes “low trust” – a society where people don’t trust their institutions, or each other, to do the right thing; reverting to the “Law of the Jungle” becomes expedient, initially – and, eventually prudent.

And when it’s the criminal justice system?

It never took a rocket scientist to believe the Chauvin trial was swayed by, not so much “public opinion” but by “potential mob rage”.

But it’s actually written down in black and white:

I’m not saying the DFL in this state is trying to create a low trust society.

I’m just at a loss for what they’d be doing different if they were.

It’s A Start

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The Georgia Attorney General is bringing RICO charges against 60+ “Anti”-Fa droogs:

“We contend the 61 defendants together have conspired against the construction of the Atlanta public safety training center by conducting, coordinating, and organizing acts of violence, intimidation, and property destruction,” said AG Carr, in a press conference on Tuesday.

As alleged in the indictment, the defendants are members of Defend the Atlanta Forest, which Carr described Tuesday afternoon as an anarchist, anti-police, and anti-business extremist organization.

Time to remind your “progressive” friends that “Anti”-Fa is the lineal descendant of the German Communist Party’s version of the Brownshirts – and unlike the Brownshirts, they still exist.

Watch for Democrats to claim RICO is an affront to democracy later today.

A Third Rail Made Of Millions Of Third Rails

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SCENE: Mitch BERG is sitting in a Chicago-style Viking restaurant in Richfield, perusing the menu. Devadip Ulysses PLOOBRADOR is escorted in and sits at a table next to BERG. PLOOBRADOR is a mystic prophet and self-described wise man who also doubles as a UPS and Doordash driver.

BERG: Mr. Ploobrador.

PLOOBRADOR: Mr. Berg. So what’s been keeping you busy?

BERG: The usual, Collapse of civil society, mostly.

PLOOBRADOR: The tribalism is truly suffocating.

BERG: Yeah, but it goes beyond that. As Dennis Prager notes, in 1861, when the US split into two nations, and provided you leave out slavery and some of the erosions of federalism that’s happened by that point, they were virtual mirror images of each other, at least in terms of structure and process.

And there is just no way that if this nation split up today that’d be the case. If the US split into two nations, one would largely reflect the Constitution as it is, and the other would likely resemble the French Republic with a little dash of Scandinavian parliamentarianism.

PLOOBRADOR: You are not wrong.

BERG: And of course, the way around that is to renew our commitment to federalism, limited government and checks and balances.

But the GOP is killing those institutions with neglect, and the Democrats are killing them very deliberately.

PLOOBRADOR: I can not argue. Decline and collapse is something that requires a great deal of acquiescence.

BERG: Right. So I’m wondering – at this point, barring a serious “coming to Jesus” re federalism at some point, which seems improbable at best…

PLOOBRADOR: …agreed…

BERG: …that some sort of “National Divorce” is inevitable.

PLOOBRADOR: Which would be the most horrible of all things. It wouldn’t be like the American Civil War, with two sides lining up on opposite sides of the Mason Dixon line. It would be more like Bosnia in the ’90s, with ideological “ethnic” cleansing expelling or removing the “infidels” reds from blue territory and vice versa.

BERG: I keep hearing that from people, saying that massive, eliminationist bloodshed is inevitable. And I have to ask – why?

At the best, it’s a matter of choice. People have to choose to be violent. And as we’ve seen, Big Left has no problem getting violent when they think the ends justify the means.

PLOOBRADOR: Hmmmm.

BERG: And at worst? Well, the notion that populations are so very intermingled means there’s a certain amount of balance of terror involved; would Big Left actually go full-bore Rwanda on conservatives in San Francisco and Chicago while “blues” are stranded in Miami, Austin and Boise?

PLOOBRADOR: That seems like an odd thing to be pollyannaish about.

BERG: I know. I just think ruling out a national divorce on relatively peaceful, if far from “good” terms, is really premature.

PLOOBRADOR: Hm. Interesting.

(WAITER, dressed in a bearskin vest and a horned helmet, approaches the tables).

WAITER: Welcome to Skraeliings Viking Restaurant. Can I take your order

BERG: I’ll have the Chicago Dog with a side of onion rings.

WAITER: Very good. And you, sir?

PLOOBRADOR: Make me one with everything.

(WAITER looks at both BERG and PLOOBRADOR, confused).

BERG: I think he’s talking about a hot dog .

(WAITER and PLOOBRADOR both nod).

And SCENE.

One Day In The Theme Park

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SCENE: Mitch BERG is standing in line at a Mexican fast-food joint when Evan Micah BRYAN walks into the store. BRYAN is 23, a 2022 graduate of Macalester with a degree in Political Science, is the Senior Communications Director for the Senate DFL Caucus.

BRYAN: MeRG.

BERG: Uh, hey…

BRYAN: ZOMGConServaTiveZ aRe tEh HiCks aND ruBEz wHo aRe aFRAID of tEH ciTIes.

BERG: As a conservative who lives in the Midway, I refute you.

BRYAN: HeEre iS TeH PrOOf ZOMG!

BERG: Its a photomeme.

BRYAN: OuR pHiLoSOphY in tEh DFL CoMMUnICatION oFFiCe iS iF wE du iT inna MeMe, iT’s ReALi-T!

BERG: Which is why your entire communications strategery is to show DFL politicians in an endless stream of selfies, and lots of end-zone ball-spiking, with no substance whatsoever?

BRYAN: No cOMMeNT.

BERG: Right. So – back to the costume. Let me guess – you are, as a DFL employee, a middle class white guy…

BRYAN: tHAT’s hOw I iDenTiFY.

BERG: …who lives in a neighborhood like Marcy-Holmes or Longfellow or Merriam Park

BRYAN: RiGHt. TEH cOOl pLaCes.

BERG: which is clogged with other young-ish single non-profit-industrial complex employees with plenty of money…

BRYAN: sURe.

BERG: You take the Green Line to a concert once or twice a year…

BRYAN: HoW ELsE woUld I fINd SaINT PaUl?

BERG: Sort of a “Fifteen Minute City”, where everything you do – your coffee shop, your grocery mart, your restaurants, your coffee shop, your bars, your restaurants, your transit stop, your coffee shop, your restaurants, your coffee shops, are all within a fifteen minute walk.

BRYAN: TeH wAY tEH wHOLe worLd sHouLD bE!

BERG: Where all the workers take the bus or drive hoopties in from Richfield or New Hope or Vadnais Heights.

BRYAN: yEp…ER, wUt?

BERG: Your “fifteen minute city” is actually an “Urban Life” theme park. But, sure, by all means, progsplain me about city life, junior.

BRYAN: HeY, loOk! MaTt RoZnOwSki iS slAshinG yOuR TirEz ZOMG!

BERG: Of course he is.

And SCENE