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Passivity Is a Choice, and We Made It
Townhall.com ^ | April 1, 2021 | Kurt Schlichter

Posted on 04/01/2021 4:12:31 AM PDT by Kaslin

There’s always an uproar when we see Asian-Americans being beaten to a pulp or murdered on video and the people around them just stare instead of intervene. But why are we surprised? They are just doing exactly what society has told them to do. It’s not necessarily cowardice. They are making an entirely rational choice based on our society’s unequivocal message that we should stand back and watch.

If we, as a society, want to have people leap into the fray, and I would like that, then we need to do the things that make it a rational choice to do so instead of one that might very well bring ruin, imprisonment, injury, or death.

But we do the opposite, then act stunned when people conform to the reality we create. Let’s look at the logistics. The people pummeling others are usually pretty big, and they’re criminals for whom violence is a way of life. Most normal people are not streetfighters, and taking on the criminals is extremely dangerous and can easily get you hurt or killed. Now, a civilized society would want to encourage people to intervene, and that means not interfering with normal citizens’ right to bear arms. Many states do not, but the Ninth Circuit just informed us that the right to “bear” arms doesn’t actually mean you have a right to bear arms. So, in many places, society has deprived you of the ability to intervene with some measure of safety and effectiveness.

But if you do intervene, your trouble just begins. Even if you are in the right does not mean an intervention will go your way. If you are in the wrong jurisdiction, with one of those leftist-bought district attorneys, then you run the risk of being prosecuted even if you did everything right. Take it from a lawyer – innocent people get shafted all the time by the system, especially when the system wants them shafted. Maybe you eventually get acquitted, after a couple years of hell, some time in jail, and financial ruin – congratulations!

Or, if someone videotapes the encounter, maybe your life gets ruined because the thug you shot is of an SJW-favored group. Do you think the facts matter? Do you think the crook’s criminal record, actions before bystanders started filming, or anything else is going to get in the way of the narrative? Come on.

You cannot rely on objective truth to protect you in a world of subjectivity and lies.

Maybe you just get sued for hurting the poor, misunderstood degenerate – do not for a second think that there is some magic legal defense in most places that is going to keep you from getting dragged into court if you actually hurt the attacker. Oh, and your insurance might not even cover your defense if it’s characterized as an intentional act. You get the privilege of paying to defend a frivolous lawsuit too!

I bet you’re just chomping at the bit to help your fellow citizen right about now.

So, a couple strangers get into a conflict in front of you and you have no weapon and absolutely no assurance that you will not, at a minimum, be dragged through hell if you get involved. What do you do?

Well, as we have seen, people conform to what we ask for as a society, and we could not more clearly be asking folks to just stand there and watch. When we choose, as a society, to punish those who intervene, it’s hard to be shocked when people don’t. People can rationally calculate risk and reward – “Okay, that nice Asian grandma is going to have a black eye, and that’s bad, but I’m going to go home in one piece tonight and not be bankrupted or tossed in jail forever, so I can live with it.”

And this is not merely the rational choice citizens are making. Cops make it too, as we have seen in the last year. They let criminals run rampant, especially in Democrat cities, because to stop the punks puts themselves at an unreasonable risk – not the reasonable risk they signed up for, but the risk of getting stabbed in the spine by the people they protect and serve. The use of force has risks for regular Joes, but they're exponentially greater for a cop. A routine encounter with a guy selling single cigs – which our reps made illegal for some reason – or one with a guy passing counterfeit bills can escalate into violence and maybe death, and where does the cop end up then? With the brass and politicians backing them, or in the defendant’s chair in a murder trial? When’s the last time you saw a blue city mayor stand by his, her, or xir cops? All other facts aside, Derek Chauvin was using the tactics and techniques he was trained in and now he's looking at the rest of his life in jail. His trial is a joke, with no change of venue and biased jurors and an establishment that desperately wants him convicted irrespective of justice because they fear riots. Don’t think every cop in America isn’t seeing that, and many will hit the gas to get out of the bad neighborhood and home to mama – leaving the citizens who elected the people who created these incentives to deal with the carnage.

I guess elections do have consequences.

If you are a cop, why would you go out of your way to risk your future for people who hate you and will not stand behind you? You won’t. And is that a moral failing? This is not mere cowardice like that beta who refused to rush into Parkland and put a slug in that scumbag’s brainpan or die trying. This is about the routine betrayal of America’s janitors in blue. Voters let this happen and they were free to do so. After all, your city has a right to set the parameters of its policing, and their Democrat electorates have made it quite clear that they do not want to accept the risk of ugly incidents where civilians get hurt. That is unequivocal, and that is the priority. Fine. That means that staying in your patrol car and driving on by as chaos reigns is simply following your instructions – implied instructions to be sure, but crystal clear instructions nonetheless.

And if robberies, rape, and murders skyrocket, well, the cities prefer that to videos of petty criminals colliding with the cops, so that’s what they get. Enjoy!

We could do it another way as a society. We could encourage, instead of discourage, heroism. Some parts of America, primarily the ones the Establishment hates, do. And, weirdly, you don’t see chaos there. We could choose to let citizens be armed everywhere to neutralize the criminals’ advantage. We could institute extremely strict laws barring prosecution for interventions at the outset so commie DAs can’t victimize heroes. We could do the same for civil liability. And we could bar employers from jettisoning internet-famous employees who do act to protect others. We could treat these citizens – and cops – as heroes instead of trashing them as racists.

That is, if we wanted interventions. But apparently, many of us don’t.

This abdication is democracy. It’s simply what some voters asked for. Just stop pretending to be surprised that people are doing what they are told to do – nothing.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bidenadmin; commonsense; courage; crimepunishment; fight; gunlaws

1 posted on 04/01/2021 4:12:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Honestly, I would like to see a lot less law enforcement.
I would like to see a lot more emphasis on street justice.
I saw something. It was clearly bad. I shot the guy. I walked away.
Society would be more polite, with a lot less crime.
Not joking.


2 posted on 04/01/2021 4:20:49 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("I see you did something -- why you so racist?")
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To: Kaslin

Kurt is exactly right. We as a society have been totally passive since the 1960’s as the Left marched through our institutions. What’s happening now is ultimately on all of us.


3 posted on 04/01/2021 4:25:19 AM PDT by Avalon Memories (Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...)
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To: ClearCase_guy
I shot the guy. I walked away.

Just walk away???

I call that littering.

4 posted on 04/01/2021 4:34:39 AM PDT by 17th Miss Regt
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To: Kaslin

Passivity and the cowardice of Republican politicians.


5 posted on 04/01/2021 4:45:43 AM PDT by stinkerpot65 (Global warming is a Marxist lie. )
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To: Kaslin

Once again, Colonel Schlichter is right on the money. What he didn’t say is that all of this was done quite deliberately to Americans.

And that’s a big, big problem.

L


6 posted on 04/01/2021 4:51:01 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending that it is. , )
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To: Kaslin

In the modern world, if you have a political group with two members or more, at least one of them is an FBI informant. Or, at the very least, you have to communicate, which means the FBI is listening.

There are two ways to fight them when it’s gotten this far: With violence, which will almost certainly not go well for you, or by pushing it to its ultimate success, where it collapses of it’s own weight. The methodology God used historically, is to let evil reach full fruition so that there is no question who the bad guys are when he takes them down.

I’ve actually mused about voting straight democrat from here on out, solely to hasten their demise. Why are we even on this planet? I think it’s a boot camp or testing ground. The goal is not to make boot camp a better place through violence. It is to share the good news that Jesus is coming and that he offers a better way.
That can get you killed in some parts of the world. So far, it only gets you cancelled in the US.

And the phrase, “It’s always darkest before the dawn” is a real thing. Those that keep the faith until the end are richly rewarded. And the battle does seem to become hardest just before you prevail.

And if I was not a Christian, this would be beyond depressing. Those are the people that concern me.


7 posted on 04/01/2021 4:56:07 AM PDT by cuban leaf (We killed our economy and damaged our culture. In 2021 we will pine for the salad days of 2020.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”
- R. A. Heinlein


8 posted on 04/01/2021 4:56:12 AM PDT by Pollster1 (America is no longer in Claire Wolfe's "awkward stage")
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To: Avalon Memories

I’ve said for decades that bad politicians are the responsibility of the voters. The voters are responsible for where we are. And nobody should be surprised. Look at America. Look at our entertainment. Look at our hobbies. Look at how we respond to other people.

Even in the Christian church we love to gossip or complain about other people. Joe and Cindy are getting a divorce because Cindy slept with her old flame. Can you believe that woman?!

Etc.

Cindy is a sinner. Cindy has problems. We all have problems. What Cindy did is bad, but we all sin. Perhaps we should pray for Cindy and pray for Joe, and love them as Christ loved the woman at the well and the woman that was to be stoned.

All politics is local. If you want to improve your own neighborhood, start by mowing your own lawn.


9 posted on 04/01/2021 5:00:36 AM PDT by cuban leaf (We killed our economy and damaged our culture. In 2021 we will pine for the salad days of 2020.)
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To: cuban leaf

I doubt the will of the voters has been reflected in elections for decades.

One of the reasons we moved out of a blue city was that we saw that voting was pointless when Democrats run the polling infrastructure.

Yes, we could do more, and should. But it’s not quite as simple as “this is what we all voted for”, because, chances are, it isn’t.


10 posted on 04/01/2021 5:04:06 AM PDT by chrisser
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To: chrisser

Harry Callahan had the answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu_LCNLillU


11 posted on 04/01/2021 5:36:20 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET (`)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Once cops were prohibited from doing their jobs, then there was no reason for so many of them. Like the military, police work has become a jobs program for preferred minorities so we can pretend assimilation works. Often these jobs are just wealth transfers from taxpayers to people with no private-sector job skills.


12 posted on 04/01/2021 6:53:51 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: cuban leaf
There are two ways to fight them when it’s gotten this far: With violence, which will almost certainly not go well for you, or by pushing it to its ultimate success, where it collapses of it’s own weight.

False premise. We still have numerous ways to fight, short of those two options

13 posted on 04/01/2021 7:21:17 AM PDT by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries. )
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To: marktwain

We still have numerous ways to fight, short of those two options


I’m all ears...


14 posted on 04/01/2021 8:02:42 AM PDT by cuban leaf (We killed our economy and damaged our culture. In 2021 we will pine for the salad days of 2020.)
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To: Kaslin

I remember in the early 2000s, when analysts and pundits spoke of Al Qaida as “just a small percentage” of Islamic fundamentalists. Yet they dominated, because they were like wolves among sheep. 100 times as many sheep, but who ate who?

That is how we find our situation. It will be heartbreaking, and devastating for every honest citizen and their families if this abomination continues. But it will be like that regardless, resist or no. What does that leave us?


15 posted on 04/01/2021 9:51:34 PM PDT by Richard Axtell (President Asterisk is an ass to risk the economy and rights of all Americans.)
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