Liberal Protests

[B-Man]

 

Serf’s Up.

 

By JOEL KOTKIN

 

 

 

Like so many before them, our recent disorders have been rooted in issues of race. But in the longer run, the underlying causes of our growing civic breakdown go beyond the brutal police killing of George Floyd. Particularly in our core cities, our dysfunction is a result of our increasingly large, and increasingly multi-racial, class of neo-serfs.

Like its Medieval counterpart, today’s serf class consists of the permanently marginalized—like the peasants of feudal times, these people are unlikely to move to a higher station. This does not only apply to the residents of our ghettos and barrios. Many of our young people, white and otherwise, appear to have little or no hope of attaining the usual milestones of entry into the middle class—gaining a useful and marketable skill, starting a small business, or buying a home or other property.

 

Throughout much of the 20th century, this aspiration was very much alive as more and more people, including racial minorities and immigrants, entered the middle ranks. Now, in contrast, the doors are slamming shut for millions of Americans.

 

This trend has been made worse by the lockdowns surrounding the pandemic. Almost 40% of those Americans making under $40,000 a year have lost their jobs. The unemployment rate of those with less than a high-school diploma jumped from 6.8% on the month to 21.2%. For college graduates, it rose from 2.5% to 8.4%. Salaried workers have been laid off at roughly half the rate of hourly workers.

 

The biggest drops in hiring have been concentrated in recreation and travel, largely “personal contact” jobs that employ many low-wage workers. Employment in this sector has dropped 70% while remaining remarkably stable throughout the public sector and in such fields as computer networking.

 

Many young people, including college graduates, are now often employed in these low-wage industries. They are suffering the largest share of our job losses for any age group. In a new report, Data for Progress found that a staggering 52% of people under the age of 45 have lost a job, been put on leave, or had their hours reduced due to the pandemic.

 

This class of underemployed and unemployed youths appears to be represented among the rioters and looters that took advantage of peaceful and legitimate protests. Particularly telling has been the role played by predominately white radicals—whom Mike Lind hilariously labels “riot ninjas.” Although often emerging from largely privileged backgrounds, radicals—whether part of anti-fa or just freelance—can be seen as putting into action the political indoctrination they imbibed in college and, increasingly, even earlier.

 

The agenda of the new activists is nothing less than a total assault on the bourgeoisie. Protest leaders, such as Black Lives Matter-LA’s Melina Abdulla, believe that “the rebellion” must extend into upscale urban areas. This approach works well not only for socialist revolutionaries but for the financial advantage of criminal gangs exploiting the chaos.

 

Hence the trashing of iconic L.A. shopping destinations like The Grove, the Beverly Center, and Rodeo Drive, as well as such upper-income bastions as Uptown in Minneapolis, Atlanta’s Buckhead, Seattle’s suburban Bellevue, historic Washington, D.C., and the Barclay Center in downtown Brooklyn. In Chicago, city officials, much like Medieval counterparts, raised the bridges over the Chicago River to keep the protestors out of the swanky part of the central city.

 

History also Regresses

 

More than the race riots of the 1960s or previous modern social explosions, which mainly were confined to ghettos and barrios, the current wave resembles the peasant rebellions that periodically swept Medieval societies. These upheavals—such as Watt Tyler’s rebellion in England and the Jacquerie in France—devolved into brazen attacks on the property and persons of the upper classes which led to bloody aristocratic reprisals. The heads of rebels were sometimes hung on spikes as a warning to others.

 

Such a “back to the future” regression contradicts notions, held dear by many heirs of the Bush Right and Obama Left, of an “arc of history” bending inexorably toward greater social progress. Like Rome in the waning years of classical civilization, our society seems to be moving backward, away from greater prosperity and enlightenment and toward a more hierarchical, controlled, and economically and demographically stagnant reality.

 

We appear to be watching the end of a remarkable period which saw, first, the ascendency of the middle class and then, particularly after World War II, the steady improvement of conditions for the working class. Now this progress has ground to a halt, a trend greatly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States, long seen as the great land of opportunity, the chance of middle-class earners moving up to the top rungs of the earnings ladder has dropped by approximately 20% since the early 1980s.

 

 

MUCH more at the link:

 

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by B-Man

[Dante]

43 minutes ago, Buffalo Timmy said:

Was anyone taking this seriously? I just wish all fake news was so obvious

Billions take a fake virus seriously so why not? A entire world full of dupes. 

56 minutes ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

Language, but this woman speaks the truth...
 

 

That was awesome.

[Teddy KGB]

All the “activists” cheer as this man catches a blow that will probably kill him 

 

22k go fund me and rising 

[The Guy In Pants]

3 hours ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

Language, but this woman speaks the truth...
 

 

 

Be still my heart ❤️ 

[Unforgiven]

3 hours ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

Language, but this woman speaks the truth...
 

 

You’re here because you’re dumb as f***”

...all the ppp dimwits....

[Dante]

1 hour ago, Teddy KGB said:

All the “activists” cheer as this man catches a blow that will probably kill him 

 

22k go fund me and rising 

Stupid games get stupid prizes. Can't say it was disturbing like the disclaimer warned me at the start of this gem. This may be better than the moron that set himself on fire last week.

Edited June 11, 2020 by Dante

[BillStime]

Trump continues to embrace white supremacy. What a tactic. 

 

Such a uniter, right @Buffalogal?

Edited June 11, 2020 by BillStime

[Reality Check]

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/seattle-autonomous-zone-now-has-heavily-armed-warlord-governor-clueless

[Wacka]

5 hours ago, Golden*Wheels said:

I winced watching that dude getting hit by the statue. Oof.

HE CODED TWICE ON THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL. HAVENT SEEN ANYTHIG ON THIS ON THE NATIONAL (ABC, CBS, NBC) NEWS.

Too lazy to retype  (I'm not yelling),

Edited June 12, 2020 by Wacka

[SydneyBillsFan]

9 hours ago, B-Man said:

 

 

You can just picture the rabid leftists chanting " BUILD - THE - WA.....errr, temporary fence..."

[B-Man]

SEATTLE MAYOR COMPARES ARMED OCCUPATION OF HER OWN CITY TO A ‘BLOCK PARTY:’

Police in Seattle returned to the East Precinct which was abandoned when Antifa-led protestors took over a six-block area of the city earlier this week. On Thursday afternoon, officers entered the precinct and tensions remain high at this hour.

 

During a joint press conference with Chief of Police Carmen Best and Mayor Jenny Durkan, Durkan blamed Trump and his narrative for everything that’s happening in downtown Seattle. She denied that there are armed militants, even though press has covered it.

 

Durkan compared the abandoning of the East Precinct and the the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone to a block party.

 

When asked about the occupation, she said, “We’ve had blocks of Seattle and Capitol Hill shut down every summer from everything from block parties to Pride and this is really not much of an operational challenge.”

 

Meanwhile, this is how AP describes the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone:”

 

Following days of violent confrontations with protesters, police in Seattle have largely withdrawn from a neighborhood where protesters have created a festival-like scene that has President Donald Trump fuming.

 

The kicker? That AP article is on the Snopes.com(!) Website. As Frank J. Fleming tweets, “You can only trust The Babylon Bee any more.”

 

Related: The Warlord Will See You Now. Armed Rebels Illegally Require ID to Get Into Seattle ‘Autonomous’ Zone.

 

I’d compare the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” to the Lord of the Flies, but as its author finally admitted, “The real Lord of the Flies is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other.”

 

 

 

 

[Buffalo_Gal]

Wholly Puck:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dante]

42 minutes ago, SydneyBillsFan said:

 

You can just picture the rabid leftists chanting " BUILD - THE - WA.....errr, temporary fence..."

Very good. Now the LIKE walls. lol

[B-Man]

 

NATIONAL GUARD SOLDIERS FOUND GLASS IN PIZZA THEY ORDERED WHILE DEPLOYED IN DC, REPORT SAYS.

 

 

 

 

[SectionC3]

3 hours ago, BillStime said:

Trump continues to embrace white supremacy. What a tactic. 

 

Such a uniter, right @Buffalogal?

 

They were uninvited likely for the same reason that Trump is going to Tulsa during Juneteenth.  Wink wink nudge nudge to the white supremacist scumbags who support him. 

46 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

NATIONAL GUARD SOLDIERS FOUND GLASS IN PIZZA THEY ORDERED WHILE DEPLOYED IN DC, REPORT SAYS.

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile people are protesting because there was yet another in what is becoming an overwhelming number of videos in which a black person was killed for no good reason by someone acting under color of law, and Trump's reaction is to suggest that the victim would have been pleased by some bogus economic numbers that the administration ginned up in a ham-handed attempt to distract from the one thing that has successfully unified the vast majority of this country in the past 3.5 years.  

 

A real Christian would acknowledge the righteousness of people who simply want to be treated the same as everyone else.  

[reddogblitz]

3 hours ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

Wholly Puck:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She has to.  Her seat is very hot. City  Council Person Kshama Sawant says Durkan should resign. If she doesn't, Sawant will impeach her.  Sawant has a lot of support.

 

She's trying to outrun the mob.

Edited June 12, 2020 by reddogblitz

[4merper4mer]

7 hours ago, reddogblitz said:

 

She has to.  Her seat is very hot. City  Council Person Kshama Sawant says Durkan should resign. If she doesn't, Sawant will impeach her.  Sawant has a lot of support.

 

She's trying to outrun the mob.

I'm sure she wouldn't mind if Trump took the action she is baiting him into and a few "block partiers" got killed.  It would help her more if they were black but anyone dead would work.  And the beauty is that it doesn't have to be Trump.  It could be a cop or someone else.  Maybe something could happen like a heart attack and a slow 911 response would do the trick.  If someone dies she'll be all set.

 

Her national status would be elevated and maybe she could even get a cushy cabinet position.  Her weakness in standing up to the smelly hippies in the commie zone is also her strength.  Any worries about impeachment from her left are tempered by bigger ambitions.

 

Side note:. If some right wing block partiers took over some patch of land in Montana in 2014 and declared it sovreign, would Obama have done anything?  Drone strike off the table?

[Buffalo_Gal]

 

 

[BuffaloHokie13]

11 minutes ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

 

 

I'm not defending the CHAZ, but I would absolutely expect the number of calls to artificially inflate when the response from the police is 'we aren't allowed there' rather than resolving the issue.

[Buffalo_Gal]

Tucker doing Tucker-snark. And, he does it well. Unfortunately for the residents of Seattle, the subject matter is horrible.