I love it when people like “Mad Dog” Mattis claim that President Trump is divisive, and then Democratic elected officials pull stunts like this, which is explicitly and intentionally divisive. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser today had “Black Lives Matter” painted in huge letters on the street that leads to the White House. Yes, it’s government by graffiti!
Gee, good one, Mayor. Next, I recommend standing out in front of the White House and farting in its general direction.
The mayor’s move is a slur, just as “Black Lives Matter” itself is an organized racist insult to non-black Americans. In 2015 (I have not been able to find a more recent statistic), 500 white citizens were killed by African Americans, yet I would not presume that blacks needed to be told that “white lives matter.” The group’s subtext has always been that somehow white America doesn’t believe that black lives matter. That’s a lie, easily rebutted, and a racist one.
Nothing President Trump has done or said has ever suggested that he does not believe that “black lives matter.” Meanwhile, in extolling a group that aims at racial division and hostility, Bowser is endorsing the false narratives that BLM continues to advance. Meanwhile, what are the substantive measures this vocal but nearly substance-free activist group is calling for? What is its answer to the 13th Question: “What is the “systemic reform regarding race in America” that the George Floyd protests purport to be seeking?”
Let’s see, I’m on the BLM site now: Oh! Defunding police departments! That will work out well for African American communities—talk about a proposal that suggests that black lives don’t matter. Aaaand…
“We call for an end to the systemic racism that allows this culture of corruption to go unchecked and our lives to be taken.”
Psst…this doesn’t answer the 13th Question. Saying “we want an answer to the question” isn’t answering the question. Then, in addition to the bonkers call to defund police departments, we have,
We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive.
Yeah, people are going to rush out to invest in neighborhoods without a police presence where roving bands of vandals and looters wreck local businesses every time something angers them.
Good plan, BLM!
Mayor Bowser’s petty, counter-productive stunt–how does the President keep goading his foes into making asses of themselves?—reminded me of a similar—but funnier!—episode from 1969. The Cambridge Mass. City Council was always feuding with Harvard over various things, and one councilman in particular, Alfred E. Vellucci, made his name by frequently criticizing the university in all matters great and small. At one point, he got the council to vote to change the name of Harvard Square to “Piazzo Leprechano.” The city even took down the Harvard Square sign and put up a “Piazzo Leprechauno” marker. (I bet you can guess how long THAT sign lasted, as well as its several replacements.)
Boston never changed the name of the subway stop; none of the businesses paid any attention, and eventually the whole silly spat–along with the stupid name— was mostly forgotten. Velucci, meanwhile, is remembered as a jerk.
There is a Harvard Crimson article about this episode: much thanks to Neil Dorr for finding it, and also correcting my faulty memory of the name change and the date.
Ethics Alarms 
I’ve always found the term “divisive” to be loaded to the point of meaninglessness. It typically means no more than that the target refuses to get with the program and agree with your opinions and accede to your wishes. Of course, you wouldn’t be any more divided if you would adopt the targets’s opinions and policy preferences, but that’s never even considered.
Divisive means using wedge issues to promote disunity. Disagreements aren’t divisive. Demonetization is divisive; using attacks on character to argue policy positions is divisive. Using tribal identification to create us vs them dynamics is divisive.
The term isn’t meaningless at all, but it can be defined so broadly as to lose all meaning. “Not my President” is divisive. Black Lives matter” (you racist whites who want us poor or dead) is divisive. “Open the borders” is stupid, but not divisive. “Only racists don’t want to open the borders,” however, is.
I don’t think it’s that difficult a concept.
Did she really have it done or is that a computer generated image?
I wish she’d used the acronym and had it painted out in front of the Bureau of Land Management.
Lori Lightfoot is still up by a point for telling the President eff you.
https://twitter.com/MayorBowser/status/1268943214268030978 short video, still could be fake, but…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-mattis-reached-his-breaking-point-and-decided-to-speak-out-against-trump/ar-BB155Fb9?ocid=msnews
Gossip, anyone?
Group mind-reading and speculation reported as fact?
Jack,
Your internet search proved fruitless because you had forgotten the name change. The councilman in question, one Alfred E. Vellucci, had the area renamed “Piazzo Leprechano.”
However obscure the decision, the Crimson (and therefore the Internet with it) always remembers. Great article.
Thank you! Vellucci! That was him! how you found that artcle with my misnomer I’ll never know. Fixed!
Jack,
You have an astounding memory for such forgotten anecdotes that I much appreciate, even if the details sometimes grow fuzzy. Keep them coming, either way.
By the way, “Vellucci” (and I’m sure this is racial profiling) just sounds like trouble.
It’s a relief to hear you say that. My wife says I have so much useless information stored that she’s expecting a hard drive crash.
Well, we’ll see how disbanding the police works. Minneapolis decided last night to do just such a thing.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/minneapolis-city-council-members-look-to-disband-the-police-department-as-schools-and-other-city-agencies-cut-ties-with-police/ar-BB15272H
The rest of the city is already cutting ties with the police department and the city council is weighing in on alternatives. I’d be surprised if they don’t vote to get rid of them completely.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8384065/Black-Lives-Matter-leader-declares-war-police.html
But this BLM leader wants to arm black people. The title is misleading, he didn’t say he wants to declare war on police. So maybe Minneapolis can get away without a police and having a black supremacist militia instead.
Oh yeah, this is really going to work out well.
Why not go a step further, and establish that neither the Minnesota State Police nor the Hennepin county sheriff’s department may enter the city? It will be a “no-enforcement zone,” where no one can use force to enforce the laws.
Steve-O-in-NJ wrote, “Why not go a step further, and establish that neither the Minnesota State Police nor the Hennepin county sheriff’s department may enter the city? It will be a “no-enforcement zone,” where no one can use force to enforce the laws.”
No-enforcement of laws within a predefined zone is a rough equivalent to the laws don’t exist within that zone. Survival of the fittest and vigilante justice will reign supreme. Businesses will close their doors, there will be a mass exodus of people creating refugee caps in the areas surrounding the zone, public services will cease, insurance companies will raise their rates to exorbitant levels or not insure anyone within the zone and there will be dead people all over the place.
I wonder what would happen if vandals painted over some of this artwork with the words ” White and Latino lives matter too” .
I would love to be fly on the wall when the powers that be decide what to do about it.
Test
Well, I’d have never thought in the chaos of the modern discourse we’d ever get to this topic (which I’m sorry is off topic of the post, but seems most appropriate of all my options).
Who would have ever thought, even among the mess that is the Democrats-unable-to-accept-the-2016-election-train-wreck, we’d be able to have a discussion on the 3rd Amendment. Make no mistake, the riots following the protests are definitely part of the post-election ethics train wreck. But here we are, a real debate about the 3rd Amendment, and the Left again doesn’t understand a component of the Bill of Rights.
I eagerly await what I hope to be an eventual post on the topic.
(Ok, why did THAT post go through and the other draft post on the same subject NOT go through?????!)
For the new, kinder, gentler police organizations, a new definition of SWAT: Social Workers Acting Timidly.
Box five in the graphic below is the core of the Black Lives Matter movement and it’s not provable using real numbers but yet the false narrative persists and people spout the propaganda as if it is proven fact.
Propaganda reigns and real truth has become quaint.
If what that graphic implies was in your face day after day, would you believe what it implies?
Would you believe it if absolutely everyone around you believed what it implies?
What if your family and friends smeared you, demeaned you, said you were a traitor to the human race if you don’t believe it or won’t publicly say you believe it?
Have you heard of brainwashing?
This is exactly what we’re up against with social justice warriors. This narrative has been brainwashed into the minds of social justice warriors and blacks across the United States. We are up against a huge swath of our society that believes what the graphic implies with every bone in their body and anyone that disagrees with them or doesn’t publicly agree with them deserves anything and everything that those perceived to be oppressed can dish out.