Tag: hate crime hoaxes

Lazy Sunday LXV: Rioting

The Portly Politico13 Comments

The rioting and looting in major American cities continues as mobs continue to demand—and get—the “defunding” (effectively, the abolition) of police departments and occupy city blocks as “autonomous zones.”  It’s a dark time for the United States, but we’ve been through worse and have survived.  I’ve been a bit blackpilled these past couple of weeks with everything going on, but it’s important to remember that God is in control.

It’s also important that we don’t forget about these violations when the Leftist mobs inevitably (one hopes) disintegrate in a couple of weeks or so.  As such, this week’s Lazy Sunday looks back at some of my recent posts on the looters:

  • “Disorder” – Americans love to focus on our rights and our freedoms, but we often do so at the cost of understanding our obligations that flow from those rights.  We also tend to neglect that Burkean wisdom that liberty, to be truly liberty, must be ordered.  One of the most shocking elements of these riots is the continued violation of legitimate authority—of order.  The disorder and chaos these looters have unleashed threatens not just real people and property, but the very foundations of a stable, free society.
  • “Lessons from the Riots” – In school, occasionally some student will have the perennial insight that “we can’t all get in trouble.”  As usual, the Code of the School Yard has some kernel of Truth to it.  The Leftists have demonstrated that their sheer numbers (as well as having all of officialdom on their side in some of these cities) have made them somewhat impervious to police action.  But a determined show of resistance from conservatives can bolster the police and keep wild Lefties at bay.
  • “Dignity” – Never grovel to the Left.  It does not work, and they will only demand more.  Maintain your dignity.  Apologizing to the Left is like being a medieval flagellant, constantly whipping yourself in a vain attempt at progressive salvation.
  • “SubscribeStar Saturday – Leftist Utopia” – The “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” or “CHAZ,” is an example of Leftist mob foolishness that is so cartoonish, it’s as if a conservative created it as a rhetorical straw man in some collegiate debate.  Unfortunately, this cartoonish nightmare is all too real—and the animation is coming our way if we don’t act now.

Well, that’s it for this Sunday.  Hopefully it’s not too much of a downer.  On the plus side, the horrid humidity here in South Carolina has broken, at least briefly, so it’s possible to go outside again without immediately gaining a dewy aura of salty sweat.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT: Hump Day Hoax

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Last year, my little town made national headlines when our mayor claimed that a mysterious, sticky yellow substance on her vehicle was evidence of a “hate crime.”  The investigation—which involved a Darlington County Sheriff’s deputy looking at the car—revealed it was pollen.

At the time, I thought that the mayor was pandering for headlines (even though what I wrote at the time was more generous).  But the likelier answer is she’s just stupid—sweet, to be sure, but stupid.

Also, it’s sad that many black Americans exist in a world so haunted by race-hustlers that they see hooded Klansmen committing acts of racially-motivated pollination around every corner.  That’s surely the vast minority of black Americans, but that such blinkered conspiratorial thinking is so prevalent is disconcerting (and that’s coming from someone with a conspiratorial cast of mind).

I decided to revive this piece for TBT because filing opens tomorrow for an open Town Council seat in Lamar.  One of our local councilmen resigned, so the town is holding an open election on 12 May 2020.  The filing fee is just $31.

Lamar Town Council Special Election

I’m still a newcomer to town, but for $31, my thinking is, “Why not run?”  I see a great deal of potential for my adoptive home town.  I also believe everyday citizens—not just well-heeled businessmen and attorneys—should run for public office.

We’ll see.  Regardless, here’s 2019’s “Hump Day Hoax“:

It’s that point in the semester where everything is coming to a head all at once, so today’s post is about 12-14 hours late to the party.  Indeed, it was only about fifteen minutes before writing this post that I stumbled upon an article with a local flavor.

It seems the mayor of my adopted hometown, Lamar, South Carolina, believes that a racial hate crime was committed against her.  Her vehicle was covered in a sticky yellow substance that resembled spray paint, she claimed.

After a brief investigation—it probably involved running a finger across the hood of the car—the Darlington County sheriff’s deputy determined the mystery substance was—GASP!—pollen.

You can read the full story here: http://www.gopusa.com/hate-crime-against-darnell-mcpherson-s-c-mayor-turns-out-to-be-pollen/

I’ve met Lamar’s mayor—my mayor—before, and Mayor McPherson is a pleasant and welcoming lady.  I met her when I went to town hall to setup garbage and sewage service at my home.

Lamar is a very small town—the population, according to the 2010 census, was slightly less than 1000—and it still functions on a timetable that is even slower than the rest of the South.  In true, old-school Southern tradition, local government offices shut down on Wednesday (as do some local businesses, if I’m not mistaken), and many folks get their mail at the Post Office, rather than a mailbox (my mail wasn’t delivered for about two weeks, until a neighbor told me I had to move the box across the street, otherwise our rural route carrier wasn’t going to stop).

Needless to say, it runs on a small staff, so Mayor McPherson was in there with the town’s two administrative assistants, processing water bills and the like.  I appreciated her dedication and friendliness, and she encouraged me to get involved in the community.

As such, it’s disappointing to see this kind of hysteria from her.  From the tone of the article, she sounds like she sincerely believes some misdeed was done against her—although I’m probably being overly generous.  The Jussie Smollett hoax was clearly too ludicrous to be true; maybe the Case of the Hooded Pollinator is the same situation.

TPP Review: First Half of 2019

The Portly Politico1 Comment

It’s been a busy week for yours portly as I’ve been on uncle duty.  The little ones are back to their folks, and TPP is wiping away the baby spittle and Cheerios dust—and, hopefully, getting back on schedule.

This Monday, July 1 will kick off , which will be a SubscribeStar exclusive.  Just subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more to get access to these posts about the men, women, and ideas that made America great [again]!  And don’t forget tomorrow is SubscribeStar Saturday, the day of the week subscribers get a post just for them.

July 1 will also mark the halfway point of this year, so I thought I’d use tonight’s post to do a little looking back.  This post will be the 180th consecutive post, which means I have an entire secondary school academic year’s worth of posts in 2019.  I might should start compiling those into a book—the Portly Manifesto, perhaps?

Regardless, here are the five most viewed posts of 2019 up to this point.  Enjoy!

5.) “Nehemiah and National Renewal” – Not only is this post about Nehemiah, the great leader of the Israelites who coordinated the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s dilapidated walls in the face of overwhelming opposition, a reader favorite; it’s one of my favorites as well.  Nehemiah trusted in God, and when God commanded him to rebuild the walls, Nehemiah did so faithfully.  The parallels with the Trumpean program of building a wall and seeking national renewal are hard to miss.  I also wrote a fairly popular follow-up to this post, which explores the spiritual aspects of Nehemiah more thoroughly.

4.) “Hump Day Hoax” – This post garnered a great deal of attention because I linked to it in the “comments” section of GOPUSA, a conservative news and opinion website.  The site featured a piece on my adopted home town’s mayor, who claimed that the heavy pollen on her car was part of a deliberate hate crime.  You can’t make this stuff up.  In the wake of the Jussie Smollett hoax, it seemed at the time like Her Dishonor the Mayor was grasping for some race-based discrimination fame of her own.  I’m pretty sure my mayor reported the story to Newsweek herself, even though county and State law enforcement confirmed that the mystery substance was, indeed, pollen.  Gesundheit!

3.) “Secession Saturday” – This post explored the totalitarian nature of Leftism, particularly the idea that, should our cold cultural civil war ever turn hot, the Left would never allow for a peaceful separation.  Even though they hate us, part of that hate is due to their unwillingness to let us live our lives as we see fit.  As such, there would never be an amicable parting of ways, because progressives can’t stand for people to disagree with them.

2.) “Gay Totalitarianism” – This piece pulled from—as all of my best posts do—the excellent American Greatness website.  It explored a couple of hoaxes involving gays or lesbians concocting incidents of violence to garner media attention and fawning support, all in the service of pushing an increasingly unhinged queer agenda.  Jussie Smollett’s ability to stage a ridiculously clumsy “hate crime” against himself, then to walk scot-free, shows how being gay, black, and famous serves as a talisman against even criminal prosecution.

1.) “The Desperate Search for Meaning” – The most popular post of this year owes its popularity to clicks from Dalrock’s blog.  I posted the link to it in a comment on one of his pieces, and his superior content and traffic spilled over to this piece, which focused on the antics of a New Age charlatan and her female acolytes.  The posts discusses how people (and, in this context, specifically women) are desperately searching for something deeper than empty materialism, to the point that they will endure abuse and slave-like work conditions for the chance to be close to someone offering spiritual fulfillment, even if it’s counterfeit.

So, there you have it.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog this year.  Here’s hoping I can keep the momentum going.

Happy Fourth of July!

–TPP

Gay Totalitarianism

The Portly Politico7 Comments

I’ve been writing a good bit lately about the inherent totalitarianism of the Left.  Christopher Roach’s piece about secession—and how the Left would never allow it—argues that, even if a peaceful separation of traditional and progressive Americans were desirable or feasible, the latter group would not—philosophically could not—permit it.

That’s because the Left is, at bottom, all about power, and forcing blind acceptance to its cause du’jour.  Actually, it seems to be about power and something else, because even blind power wouldn’t participate in some of the insanity, the outright depraved lunacy, of progressive Leftism.

Consider Pedro Gonzalez’s recent piece for American Greatness, “Our Queer Decline.”  He writes about Nikki Joly, a lesbian activist in Jackson, Michigan, who secured the passage of a “nondiscrimination law” (which, Gonzalez perceptively notes, “institutionalized discrimination against the heteronormative”).  Ms. Joly, crestfallen that the conservative town didn’t start rioting, supplied the victimhood herself by burning down her own home.

There’s a sick logic at play here:  preferred “victim” groups know they can stage hoaxes, immediately eliciting widespread sympathy (and media attention, and perhaps money).  The pendulum of justice may ultimately swing in their direction, but as we’ve seen with high-profile hoaxer Jussie Smollett, if you’re the right color (not white) and sexuality (not straight), you’ll get a pass.

The Jussie Smollett case is particularly infuriating, not least of all for the Chicago Police Department.  Smollett’s original claims were cartoonishly over-the-top—wearing a noose around his neck, claiming his attackers tried to bleach his skin—but they were treated seriously and investigated thoroughly.  The evidence against him is airtight:  he wrote a personal check to two Nigerian cast members from his show, Empire, and staged the whole thing.

Then, all the charges against poor Jussie were dropped.  State’s Attorney Kim Foxx dropped the prosecution’s case, perhaps at the behest of the Obama Crime Family.

You get what you incentivize.  There was always a pull to fake a hate crime against yourself if you were a visible minority or engaged in some sexually deviant behavior.  But the push against it was the threat of eventual prosecution.

Now, if you’re kind-of-black, sort-of-gay enough, you have reason to believe you can cast about wild accusations with few concerns.

Of course, questioning this unfortunate situation aloud in mixed company is a social—even professional—death sentence.  Don’t want to bake a cake for a gay couple’s “wedding”?  Better be ready to take it to the Supreme Court, buddy.

Do what you want in your personal life.  But stop using the power of the state in a vain attempt to normalize your deviancy.  No one cares what you do, until you use the implied (and explicit) threats of violence and financial ruin to foist your bedroom antics on the rest of us.

Dr. Bradley Campbell on Tucker

The Portly Politico2 Comments

A very quick post today, as my time is somewhat limited:  a guy that I went to church with way back in the day, Dr. Bradley Campbell, was on Tucker Carlson’s show recently to talk about hate crime hoaxes in the wake of the Jussie Smollett incident.

Dr. Campbell is ten years older than me, so I didn’t know him as well as my older brother, who, like Campbell, is an academic.  Campbell is a sociologist, and works at California State University-Los Angeles.

You can watch Campbell’s appearance below (about halfway through the four-minute video):

He offers a solid, two-minute summary of his latest book, The Rise of Victimhood Culture:  Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars, which is available on Amazon (and very affordable for an academic work).  Essentially, Campbell explains to Tucker Carlson why we’re seeing a rise in hate crime hoaxes.

Campbell has another book on Amazon, The Geometry of Genocide:  A Study in Pure Sociology, which sounds interesting based on the description.  An interesting quotation from the description:

Campbell considers genocide in relation to three features of social life: diversity, inequality, and intimacy. According to this theory, genocidal conflicts begin with changes in diversity and inequality, such as when two previously separated ethnic groups come into contact, or when a subordinate ethnic group attempts to rise in status.

It sounds like a more scholarly, nuanced version of the Internet formulation “Diversity + Proximity = War.”

Regardless, kudos to Campbell.  It’s good to see someone from back home comport himself well on national television.  Tucker didn’t rip into him about anything, which is always a good sign.  Congratulations, Brad!