Alert! Alert! Be Scared! Very, Very Scared!
The making you afraid game
Facts be damned. Bad guys are coming for YOU and your STUFF, so we’re being told. Donald Trump says they’re criminals. Jim Desmond says they’re migrants.
More than three quarters of all Americans believe crime is up over last year. Should there actually be a presidential debate on June 27, I can guarantee the wannabe authoritarian on the stage will amplify this falsehood.
According to the latest FBI statistics, violent crime along with property crime are down sharply in 2024. The new data shows substantial drops in every category, including murder (-26.4%), rape (-25.7%), robbery (-17.8%), and property crime (-15.1%). These declines follow steep drops in violent crime and property crime in 2023. In fact, crime has dropped every single year President Biden has been in office.
Attributing the frequency and severity of crime to any one individual candidate is a bipartisan sport, but what makes it galling in this particular presidential campaign is that one candidate (a convicted felon) is using this sort of misinformation to justify his prescription for authoritarian rule.
Last weekend’s farcical visit by candidate Trump to a Black church (with an amazingly white audience) in Detroit included a speech where he decried the supposed high local crime rate. Lacking in the media coverage was any challenge to the (untrue) inferences uttered by Trump, which were untrue.
Here’s Judd Legum at Popular Information, referring to the headline and coverage in the Washington Post:
Note that if readers simply read this headline, they would not know that Trump's claims about "rampant crime" are false. Worse, you would not know that Trump's claims about crime are false if you read the entire article. You do learn that "recent polls show Trump has made gains with Black men, alarming some Democrats because even a small change in Black turnout or preferences could tip such pivotal states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia." The Washington Post also notes that the event included two Black men Trump is considering as his running mate, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson (R) and Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL). The piece also criticizes Trump for "playing on racial stereotypes, such as his suggestion that Black voters will look more favorably on his candidacy now that he has a mug shot and has faced criminal prosecution." But accurate information on crime in Detroit — and the nation — is completely missing.
The fact is that, in 2023, homicides in Detroit reached a 57-year low, recording the fewest homicides since 1966. There were also double-digit declines in non-fatal shootings and carjackings. And a smaller decline (-1%) in total violent crime. In 2024, homicides in Detroit are down an additional 21.7% through June 12.
NOTE: The Detroit Free Press fact checked the ‘57 year low’ assertion, and, while it’s correct, the per capita rate is higher due to the city’s shrinking population. This bit of context does not reflect that nationally, violent crime is falling.
As is true with virtually all social ills, the causes and solutions are narrowly defined to avoid the larger implications of their connections with the economy.
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A Republican County Supervisor in San Diego is all over social media demanding that the President of the United States declare a “National Terrorism Alert,” which he thinks will inform and protect the public.
The basis for Jim Desmond’s insistence are news reports concerning the arrest of eight people in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles who are suspected to have ties to the Islamic State group. Anonymous sources (betcha it’s ICE) have told reporters that the arrestees came to the US through the Southern Border.
Here’s what we actually know, according to the Associated Press:
The nature of their suspected connections to the IS was not immediately clear, but the individuals were being tracked by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF. They were in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which made the arrests while working with the JTTF, pending proceedings to remove them from the country.
I’d be willing to bet Jim Desmond’s flip phone against my 1980s pager that there is a much larger picture here, starting with the fact law enforcement agencies nationwide have been on high alert since last October 13. To be sure, the war in Gaza has and is provoking the kinds of heightened emotions believed to increase susceptibility of people inclined to violence, and even terrorism.
Desmond’s not actually worried about terrorism; it’s the whole idea of “others” entering the US. Day after day, he whines about thousands of aliens landing in San Diego County, hoping to trigger constituents inclined to being afraid. The reality that the vast majority of those detained at the border end up quickly going to other places where they believe people are waiting to help them is something the County Supervisor doesn’t share.
Yesterday Desmond was promoting an article from the Daily Caller, a right wing misinformation distribution outlet, about Chinese people being smuggled into the US via a Telegram account. When he’s not otherwise occupied, the County Supervisor also drives along the border, looking for likely migrants to photograph and abase via social media.
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Why do Republicans play the fear game so often? For one, the media’s (if it bleeds it leads) a sucker for it. And secondly, when your programs are indefensible, your only move is to attack the other side.
This week has seen a flood of selectively edited videos, some of which came fro0m the Republican Party itself, portraying President Biden in ways suggesting he’s having age-related mental issues. They’ve all been proven fakes, but there is apparently no shame on the right these days.
What aren’t fakes are the widely observed instances where Donald Trump has mentally lost his place in the middle of speeches and makes nonsensical observations.
The Biden campaign’s decision to make Trump’s felony convictions at the forefront of their advertising overlaps with new polling showing Independent voters increasingly concerned about the 34 guilty verdicts.
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Tuesday’s Other News to Think About
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I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes - Satire at McSweeny’s
Listen, I know that the unholy concentration of wealth in America is a big, big problem, but so is having to constantly say no to people asking for change as I whizz into Whole Foods in my Tesla or Prius (depending on how my startup investments pan out). What’s the point of having all this money if I have to feel bad about it? Also, has anyone actually verified that the homeless people claiming to be veterans aren’t just pulling some elaborate fraud? I’ve never actually met a veteran and I forget for, like, decades at a time that the military even exists because the bubble of privilege where I reside is literally impregnable, but I’m suspicious nonetheless.
I know we need more housing, but I was here first, and I’m not giving up even one blade of grass on my water-guzzling, pesticide-leaching lawn or a single burner on my twelve-burner Viking range that I never actually use to house another human soul. Tough luck, homeless people. You and your allies can call me names, but I won’t hear you over the lushness of my climate-inappropriate rose bushes and the stucco walls I’m paying some desperate immigrant under the table to build for me on the cheap before I low-key call ICE and have them deported.
Look, if you give people homes, the next thing you know they’re going to start to get their lives together and then get jobs and start organizing. Then they’ll expand Medicare to everyone and build a fucking light rail line instead of a goddamn border wall, and no one will drive anymore, and cars will die out, and the air will get clean, and can you imagine the problems we’ll have then?
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The Religion of Whiteness - Book review by Beau Underwood at A Public Witness
Employing the language of Emile Durkheim, Emerson and Bracey assert that this race-defining religion provides participants with an experience of “collective effervescence.” They gather to enjoy a shared euphoria rooted in the celebration of their own perceived normative status and racial superiority.”
In the book, they unpack “the Religion of Whiteness” as having all the common marks of a faith group: beliefs (White supremacy and its related tenets), practices (selective use of Scripture reinforcing beliefs, deliberate ignorance around issues of race and racial inequality, the veneration of sacred symbols [e.g. a White Jesus, Confederate flags], protecting Whiteness, and opposing non-White Christians who push back against this established racial hierarchy), and social organizations (churches and parachurch organizations that operate according to these beliefs and undertake these practices).
Of course, the authors acknowledge that “no one goes around saying that they believe in the Religion of Whiteness. There is no Church of Whiteness that people attend on Sundays.” To test their theory, Emerson and Bracy conducted their own surveys and focus groups — along with drawing on existing data and research — to provide statistical support to validate their claims. Those wanting to doubt their findings or cast aspersions on their findings will have to wrestle with the evidence they marshall.
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Matt Gaetz's sexual misconduct probe just got more serious via Business Insider
The House Ethics Committee made clear on Tuesday that it's still investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz.
In addition to the long-standing sexual misconduct allegations, the panel said it's now looking into whether the controversial Florida congressman has "sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct."
The rare public statement came after Gaetz, who led the charge to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, denounced the committee and blamed the former speaker for the ongoing probe in a Monday post on X.
The thing that collapses me about "Whiteness" is that anyone whose ancestors have been in America for several generations actually has no idea how "white" they are. Genealogy almost always concentrates on the male line. Who the WOMEN were who married into the "family name" gets really murky for most people once you get past great grandparents. And who the mothers of those women were--even feeding into the known great grandparents--is also lost since they took another "family name." And so on, the further back you go.
My maternal ancestor came to America in 1637. My mom always said he simply swam after the Mayflower. Her birthname is traced all the way back to him. There is a big fat book about it. But for the women who married into that name in most instances, nor their mothers, nor their mothers--no sign. In going on 500 years, who these women were and what THEIR female lineage was is simply not known. They could have been slaves or indigenous Americans or any other kind of "non-white" who may have ventured here--or had ancestors themselves back in whatever Old Country they came from. Rape, passing, other illegitimacy, whatever-- none shows up and so presumably kept the Family Name is pure because those women didn't count.
My mother is listed in the book, along with her brothers, as child of Family Name. My cousins, sons of her brothers, are. But myself and my brother--not mentioned. We have a different family name.
So I have no clue what my ancestry is in full. I am far from being a WASP--I am a motley mess, and proud of it. I did one of those DNA tests years ago and came up with "Middle Eastern origin" as the greatest part (along with a touch of Neanderthal). Gee Whiz--my DNA stretches back to Mesopotamia--fancy that! Along with pretty much every other human on the planet.