2. A more encouraging case of “divisiveness” supported occurred in relation to this student-made sign celebrating law enforcement:
The horror.
After intervention by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a Torrey Pines High School expunged its suspension of a high school junior for putting up a pro-ICE poster. On Feb. 6, hundreds of students staged a mid-school- day walkout, seeded by teachers, naturally, to protest ICE and U.S. immigration enforcement policy. They held posters said things like, “If You’re an I.C.E. Agent Ya Mom’s a Hoe!!,” “FUCK ICE,” and “ICE is KKK spelled differently.” These sentiments were not deemed divisive because the school in in California, and anyone living there is presumed to be insane. That’s also why the school suspended a student for posting pro-ICE flyers reading “We ❤️ I.C.E. – Real Americans.” The flyers, said the school administrators, constituted “harassment” and “intimidation.” This is the degree to which our public schools bully, brainwash and harass our young into ideological conformity. They knew what they did was unconstitutional: the second the abused student acquired legal representation from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the school district folded like an origami chicken.
“School administrators can’t pick and choose which opinions students are allowed to express,” said FIRE Supervising Senior Attorney Conor Fitzpatrick. “Voicing an opinion which makes others upset is not ‘harassment’ or ‘intimidation,’ it is American democracy in action.” The kind of unity the modern Left wants is universal support for its agenda and policies. Anything that seems to endanger that mission is the “divisiveness” it condemns.
Ethics Alarms 
I was wondering why this privately financed mural was divisive. The tweet below answers this question: Iryna Zarutska is white and the murderer is black. Honoring Iryna with a does not forward the “correct” narrative, namely that the United States is a uniquely racist country where black people are being killed by racist cops at a regular basis. If the mural was in honor of George Floyd, it would have been celebrated in Providence.
“What about black women who die every day?”
They didn’t think that one through. Once you address that issue and ask who’s killing them, the answer is overwhelmingly going to be “black men”.
How many George Floyd statues exist and does the mayor of Providence not see them as divisive?
I suppose we are now obligated to revere drug addled criminals who resist arrest and persons worthy of such memorials. Welcome to the idiocracy
How many George Floyd statues exist and does the mayor of Providence not see them as divisive?
We need more statuary, but honest representations. I propose a statue with Floyd with his gun to the belly of that pregnant woman he threatened to kill if she did not give up the money. She of course cowering in horror and fear and George with a sadistic, enraged look in his eyes.
Telling the truth. There is GLORY in it.
Honoring Iryna with a does not forward the “correct” narrative, namely that the United States is a uniquely racist country where black people are being killed by racist cops at a regular basis.
Since I tend toward the controversial I recently suggested that the entire idea of “reparations” was actually very good. However, they have it set up backwards. The idea is that “we” (i.e. European-descended people in America) owe “them” for “what we did to them”. This is all wrong! I will explain. It is actually the other way around. They owe us for the somewhat brusque invitation to join civilization; comprehend the use of the wheel; eat with a knife and a fork; begin to use a written language, and much else.
Now, getting a one-time “lump sum” payment is unlikely, however I think a government-run collection agency and monthly payments for the entire Black race is an idea whose time has come!
Jokes aside, it is curious when you look at things through alternative lenses. Here is another detail: It is an historic fact that slavery in much of the non-US Americas was incredibly brutal. Like in Cuba and Brasil. Chesper tobwork a slave to death and bring in a new one than to “care for the equipment”. But the fact is that in the South United States there certainly existed an “apartheid” system, quite elaborate, but even the most dedicated exponent of the master-slave relationship between the two races showed actual concern for the spiritual well-being of the slave. Even some churches celebrated services together though of course separated. But in all the writings (pro-slavery, pro-exclusion) the well-being of the slave was always referred to. Though certainly the Black race was not “integrated”.
And relations between the overlord class and the subject class were far more cordial, civil in fact, than nearly anywhere else in the Americas. So, from this perspective, the vilification of the Southerner and the entire culture can be revised. It is when the Southern Black went north that he and she encountered a totalizing, dehumanizing racism. There was no social accord, no “shared cultural experience”, and yet the Northern mythology established the notion of the absolutely evil Southern racist. A great deal of this is projection of course.
Now, the Civil War must be examined since, in truth, it is still being waged; or the vestiges of it still exist, like defining shadows. Lincoln opposed the slavery of any man, that is true, but the man Lincoln was a total and absolute racist. And in the later years he worked very hard to try to organize the export of the Black race out of America! (One place conceived was the Western end of Panama: Chiriqui). The amazing thing? There in the Nations Capital is a literal shrine to the absolutely racist Northern man!
Once you begin to unravel the HYPOCRISiES of (significantly) the Northern power- and cultural-sector — i.e. America’s “civil religion” — and then begin to see straight, it changes literally everything.
The Northern War of Aggression against the Southern civilization being one of Northern America’s first efforts at “Nation Building” through conquest and domination. That ultra-arrogant Americanism which many Americans do not know how to examine.
As we go forward don’t feel embarrassed in reaching out to me. I can help with the deconstruction effort and a soft-landing in general decency! 🤩
I have to wonder, if the mural is “divisive”, what segments is it dividing society into? Do we have a pro-murdering-young-refugee-women faction? And if we did, shouldn’t we be more alarmed at that than at a mural?
I have to wonder, if the mural is “divisive”, what segments is it dividing society into?
:::raises hand:::
Prof. Dave (slightly exasperated): “Yes?”
Alizia: “Into those capable of and willing to tell the truth, and those who seek to remain living in lies: personal, social, cultural, spiritual.”
Ordering a mural down because it is “divisive” is an example of viewpoint discrimination by the mayor. This is viewpoint discrimination, and can be challenged on First Amendment grounds. I hope that the owners of the bar, or the artist making the mural, challenge this order in the courts.
On the whole divisive conversation, I would like to stress that it isn’t the liberal position to avoid division. Liberals divide everyone up into various groups, each group existing at some rung of the oppressor/oppressed hierarchy, with intersectionality sometimes boosting someone into a higher group, sometimes taking someone down a few groups because of some sort of perceived privilege. Division and conflict is currently at the heart of the left-wing end of the political spectrum.
Conversely, overcoming division and seeking unity is by far more a Christian principle, and while seeking unity seems to be falling out of favor in conservative circles (as conservatives start to embrace liberal tactics to fight fire with fire), it is still a value that many on the right hold. Thus it is a value that can be used to bludgeon conservatives. Remember that the Alinsky rules for radicals instructs radicals to hold adversaries to their own standards. “You want unity, don’t you? You wouldn’t do anything that could be divisive, would you?” Thus if a conservative action or initiative can be construed as divisive, liberals will construe it as divisive in order to place conservatives on the defensive. To try to reverse the accusation back at the liberals is futile, because they don’t hold unity as a value. Try to show the hypocrisy, and they will either change subject or walk away. If the accusation of being divisive did not work, it is on to some other tactic that will put the conservative on the defensive.
The only solution is for conservatives to hold firm, not backing down in the face of these accusations. Eventually accusations of divisiveness will fall on deaf ears, just as accusations of racism have pretty been blunted from overuse.
The word of the day is “Invidious.”
First of all, the notion of putting up a mural of Iryna Zarutska is “first class trolling.” Not in a good way, because it really *is* divisive, for reasons I can’t put my finger on offhand. The “trolling” aspect of it creates a situation in which the opponents of the mural are likely to de-legitimize and embarrass themselves as they object to the mural in knee jerk fashion and then have trouble explaining why it’s inappropriate.
The trolling aspect succeeds because during the “Summer of the Great Stupid” (2020) it somehow became possible to put up murals of the late George Floyd. People who think George Floyd was a questionable candidate for lionization haven’t forgotten. Really–they haven’t forgotten. That sets the background for the Iryna Zarutska mural idea.
Second of all, I don’t especially like trolling. Someone here in Monroe County NY, more than 5 years ago, printed up “quarter sheets” with the statement “It’s ok to be white” and went distributing them in various public places. Mostly in the tony suburbs of Brighton and Pittsfored, rather than in the “Hood.” This aroused consternation and unease–especially because (if I recall corectly) it was mostly done anonymously. The police eventually identified the two or three individuals responsible and questioned them. As I understand it they were not charged–because they had committed no offense.
I am reminded of a line from right wing radio host Ken Hamblin. He had a book of musings, _Pick a better country_. He wrote that identity politics is dangerous. “Do not dabble in that devil’s workshop,” he said. It probably didn’t stop him. But to repeat myself, I don’t like the trolling.
It’s invidious. That’s the word. Invidious.
Thinking out loud about this…
I think the problem is that society has somehow awarded certain homicide victims “Special Victim Status.” The phrase “Special Victim Status” is the title of a book by Gregory Mantell, 2024. _Special victim status: The era of woke journalism_. (I glanced at the book but didn’t really read it, long story).
Rather than prattle on, here’s a link to a nice (short) article at Quillette. It may be paywalled. If so, sorry. It discusses statistics, and the author is an expert on crime statistics and how they relate to media coverage.
https://quillette.com/2025/09/13/the-murder-of-iryna-zarutska-media-bias-urban-crime-disorder/
Thanks for reading!
charles w abbott
rochester NY