In recent decades, attitudes toward crime from the right and the left have diverged, not because the GOP has moved a lot, but because the Dems have raced to their extreme left.
Conservatives have always been enthusiastic about law and order, and prone to more vigorous law enforcement, and it’s no coincidence that red states are the ones who allow the death penalty. The attitude of many conservatives has been parodied as, “If you kill someone in a red state, we’ll kill you back.”
And most of us don’t mind that jibe one bit.
While old-school Dems also wanted to live in crime-free communities, their approach to the justice system was heavy on the rehabilitation and light on the punishment. They had some good points, and for prisoners who were willing to make changes in their lives and rehabilitate themselves, some good came out of that approach. But nobody can say the results weren’t mixed, at best.
However, conservatives’ attitudes toward law enforcement have also been complicated, due to our instinctive skepticism about the encroachments of the power-hungry State. Tensions were brought to the fore during covid, when conservatives in blue states had repeated and increasingly contentious run-ins with states who quickly instituted draconian restrictions, and then held onto them like grim Pelosi.
Sorry, that’s “grim death.”
Most blue states imposed mandatory lock-downs, mandatory school and business closings, mandatory masking, and Rube Goldberg rules about everything. You had to wear a mask on a plane, but the airline served snacks…which you could eat by lowering your mask…but only for long enough to stuff some snacks into your mouth. After which you should yank your mask back up, so you could aspirate a mouthful of peanuts and choke your way to a covid-less death. Hooray for science!
You had to stay 6 feet apart, and could only occupy some buildings at 25% capacity – two numbers that were plucked out of thin air, and meant nothing.
California filled skate parks with sand…because young kids who were at no risk from the virus needed to be prevented from getting fresh air and exercise, lest they be slain by the virus that was no threat to them in the first place.
California also arrested a guy who was paddle boarding. Alone. In the ocean.
So normally pro-law-enforcement conservatives became scofflaws during Covid. Most of them will explain the contrast by drawing a distinction between laws – which we support pretty enthusiastically – and regulations – some of which are reasonable…but not many.
Traditional Democrats/leftists have usually been much more fond of regulations in general – they love to tell you what kinds of toilets or light bulbs or cars you may buy, and (recently) that you ladies must allow a creepy dude to watch you shower, while he levitates a towel in front of him without the use of his hands.
And you are legally required to call him “Crystal.”
What has changed lately is that what had been the extreme fringe of the left has wrested away control of the Democrat party. They have not just energetically piled into the lefty clown car, they’re now driving it!
Consider the dramatic changes in just the last several decades. In the early 1990s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously coined the phrase “defining deviancy down,” by which he meant permissively normalizing bad behaviors. Some of those were social – removing the stigma from out-of-wedlock births, allowing “social promotion” of under-performing students in schools – but many involved the greater acceptance of criminal behavior.
Think about that. Not that long ago – not in Pilgrim America, or Victorian England, but when Kurt Cobain was still alive! – one of the most influential Dems could write an essay calling for more stringent enforcement of traditional social and legal norms, and get a respectful hearing and a lot of support from elected and influential lefties all over the country.
Today, that world seems as dead and gone as Julius Caesar, or Joe Biden.
The dominant far-left – the group who cheers on the murder of a CEO by a trust-fund coward, who will elect Commie Mamdani in NYC, and who has stage-four TDS – has lost its ethical moorings when it comes to crime. They’ll ignore and deny that crime is happening, and dare you to disagree.
Baltimore and New York City are as safe as Pennsylvania Dutch country during Amish-Fest. Publicly defecating meth-enthusiasts in San Francisco are “outdoorsmen.” Shambling armies of mentally ill addicts living in filthy tents all over LA and Seattle and Portland are “urban campers.” Brother’s-widow-jumping addict Hunter Biden is “the smartest person I know.”
Nearly a century ago, four gunmen killed seven rival gangsters in Chicago in the still-infamous “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” Today, seven Chicagoans are killed every other weekend, and it barely makes the papers. And if you do notice it, Mayor Brandon will call you a racist.
Even worse, lefty pols and media actively excuse the most brutal acts if they’re perpetrated by one of their pet victim groups. The half-dozen black criminals who beat and stomped three defenseless middle-aged white folks in Cincinnati were defended by a black elected official on racial solidarity grounds, and by a black police official because the video you watched “lacked context.”
There is a silver lining in this mess, though, because the legacy media’s ridiculous crime coverage is giving them even more opportunities to discredit themselves. They’ve already greatly decreased their ability to harm their enemies and help their friends. Accusations of racism used to end careers; now they elicit mostly eye rolls. Reports that some leftist project is succeeding or some rightist action is bringing about the apocalypse are both greeted with instinctive skepticism or outright disbelief.
And the Left’s doubling down on crime is putting them even more behind the 8-ball. Trump’s move into DC has maneuvered them into insisting that DC is super safe, and the residents there resent law enforcement coming in and ham-handedly arresting all of the violent criminals who weren’t really there, and confiscating all the illegally-owned guns that don’t exist. Or something.
The infamous covid-era “mostly peaceful protests” (spoken by a leftist reporter in front of a block full of burning buildings) has now got two new contenders in dishonest cluelessness. The first was CNN empty head Erin Burnett’s idiotic description of the whacko who killed three people in NYC a couple of weeks ago: “male, mustache, sunglasses, possibly white.”
Burnett immediately became a laughingstock, because viewers could see a picture in real time of the killer walking into the building while carrying a rifle. Burnett was referencing that picture, and she got the male, facial hair, and sunglasses parts right.
But that guy was as white as Liz Warren is Cherokee. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
The sunglasses hid his eyes – which in subsequently released pics had an Asian look to them – but he was clearly black, and it wasn’t a close call. He had a short Afro, and he looked like if John Shaft and Billy Dee Williams had had a baby.
By the way, this just in from Cincinnati: Seven people have been arrested in the beatings, and they include a Montianez, a Jermaine, a Dekyra, a Dominique, and an Aisha.
Or, as Erin Burnett would put it, “they’re all possibly white.”
The second contender in the leftist cover-up sweepstakes comes to us from New Jersey, courtesy of a “journalist” named Dana DiFilippo. Dana was covering the story of an illegal alien named Raul Luna-Perez, who was picked up for DWI three times in four months. The third time, he caused a wreck that killed a woman and her daughter.
So Perez is an illegal who could have been detained and deported just for that. And he should have been arrested, detained, convicted and eventually deported for either of his first two DWIs. But it’s a blue state, so he was able to go for the drunk driving hat-trick, and kill two innocent people. But at least he was jailed and held for trial and eventual deportation then, right?
Have you not been paying attention? Blue state. Leftist judge.
So he was released pending his trial. (Fortunately, Biden and Que Mala lost last November, so he was quickly picked up by ICE, and is no longer on our streets.)
So how did Dana cover this story? First, she called Perez an “undocumented immigrant.” Because of course she did.
Then she said that he was “at the center of an immigration fight between Trump and NJ’s Governor.” Nice use of the passive voice there. He’s not an illegal immigrant serial drunk-driving killer. He’s just caught up in a fight between Bad Orange Man and NJ governor of indeterminate political persuasion.
But the part of her one-paragraph post that caused Dana to quickly delete her entire X account and flee into the night came next, when she claimed that Perez “had a largely clean driving record, despite prior DUI arrests.”
Let that sink in.
Wouldn’t Dana make a great defense lawyer?
“Your Honor, members of the jury, my client Mr. Bundy has met literally THOUSANDS of women in his lifetime, and he’s accused of murdering no more than a few dozen of them, tops. I’d call that a largely clean dating record. I rest my case.”
Ugh. We don’t hate the media enough, people.
But we’re getting there.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 