Richmond Riots – credit JAMES H. WALLACE/TIMES-DISPATCH
by James C. Sherlock
Progressives everywhere consider their precious theories more important than actual outcomes. The fact that people get hurt along the way is part of the price they willingly pay for political power.
To paraphrase James Lindsay:
In fact, you only need to know two key ideas: critical theory is radically skeptical that objective truth exists and can even approximately be known, and it forwards the competing view that knowledge is just an assertion of politics by other means.
That is, the key of critical theory as a social philosophy is that whether a claim is true or not doesn’t matter and misses the point. All that matters is how that claim can be used politically to gain power.
So let’s look at critical race theory in action in public security.
Headlines: Minneapolis Police officers continue to leave force in droves – 20% in August; Record number of Seattle police officers leaving the job – Police Chief Carmen Best resigns – South Dakota recruits departing Seattle cops; Cops flee Chicago in droves – In Chicago, where 24 police officers retire on average each month, 51 were scheduled to leave in September after 59 left in August. More than 100 officers leaving the force in just two months.; Rochester’s Police Chief resigns with entire staff; Exodus of NYPD officers continues; NYPD limits retirement applications amid 400 percent surge this week; Portland Cops Are Retiring in Record Numbers; Antifa-Controlled Portland Police Bureau Faces Mass ‘Exodus’ As 50+ Officers Quit; Portland city council is consulting with a Baltimore based Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson to strategize over how the next police contract should be written; ‘You won’t need to abolish us – we won’t be around for it’: Why many police officers like me are quitting the force; Austin Tx cuts police budget – Houston recruits Austin cops; Police crisis as cops quit in huge numbers (UK); Cops quitting in droves – (Victoria Australia); 10 officers resigned from Hollandale Beach’s SWAT unit because of politicization; In Buffalo, New York, nearly 60 officers resigned from the force’s emergency response team; Richmond mayor forces police chief to resign amid citywide protests; Richmond City Councilman requests to defund police.
American is turning into the haves and have nots in terms of policing. Cops are leaving progressive-run cities for more welcoming locations.
No wonder there are 5,000,000 new gun owners this year. I count myself among them. I learned how to use weapons in the military but never thought to own one in my 25 years of retirement until this year.
What will happen in progressive cities is that the wealthier parts of each city and their commercial sector will hire private security. That is already happening at a breakneck pace in NYC and other cities.
And the poorer sections of those cities and poorer businesses will be left to fend for themselves. How exactly does any thinking person imagine that will work out?
But progressive destruction of the culture is not limited to public security and order.
As is their want, progressive leaders, in their cocktail party chatter-driven search for approbation among their like-minded friends, hurt the people they claim to be helping.
That is true:
- in public order and security;
- in the schools where they want to abolish standards, individual accountability and agency and replace them with chaos rather than considering the pedagogy of Success Academies, which by the superb performance of its poor minority students thoroughly refutes critical race theory and critical pedagogy;
- in the drug epidemic where they view enforcement as racist;
- in healthcare, where progressives and Republican allies expanded Medicaid, a good thing, but now overspend Medicaid by hundreds of millions annually in Virginia for hospitalizations of poor people by not raising a finger to ensure access to primary care for those they purport to assist; and
- in food security, where progressive leaders levy punishing taxes and regulations on grocers rather than proving support to those businesses to stay and cry racism when the results are food deserts.
So, seriously, take account of where you live. If you are in a progressive-run city, move if you value public order, good schools, drug-free places for your children to play, and all the rest of what we consider a supportive culture and civil society.
That is not a political statement, but rather an acknowledgement of the facts on the ground.
