April 21, 2021 - 5:00pm
Writing about his native Portland in UnHerd this week, evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein painted a bleak picture of the city. What was once a liberal paradise moulded in the image of 1990s Portlandia quickly descended into something much darker: a city overrun by Left-wing rioters appeased by a weak mayor, and a police force who look on and do nothing.
This crisis, according to Weinstein, is largely a result of the city’s mono-political climate in which one party, namely the Democrats, are allowed to operate unchecked. Yesterday, Bret joined Freddie Sayers for an UnHerd members event to discuss whether the events in Portland were a sign of things to come. His answer was chilling:
But the outcome for us will be a game theoretic failure nationally. It’s a very frightening situation. The degree of control over government — it’s not just the Biden administration, but Biden and both houses of Congress, under Democratic control, means that we do effectively have the same conditions that brought such a terrible situation to Portland.
We filmed this conversation hours before the Derek Chauvin verdict was delivered, but not long after the President told reporters that he was “praying for the right verdict”. Now that the verdict is out, Bret’s comments feels especially pertinent:
And yet, we have a political establishment that has advertised that it wishes to see this principle violated, presumably so that there is no violence on the other side. But once you have a violent mob in a position to get the President of the United States to urge a jury to reach a particular verdict, what you effectively have is a kind of governmental witch hunt.
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SubscribeSo we’ve got Animal Farm in Washington and Lord of the Flies in Portland.
Nancy Pelosi should be sent to Salem and despatched as a Witch in the traditional fashion.
And, that would set witches back a hundred years just when they’re riding their brooms to respectability.
Yes, I had rather forgotten the ‘Harry Potter’ syndrome!
Ben Shapiro had the best and to my mind, the most honest analysis of the trial and verdict yesterday on You Tube. I was walking with my dear friends when we heard the verdict which was greeted with cheers. I risked speaking up and said there was no cheering from my corner…only deep sadness and dismay at what we have become.
Democrats are riding the BLM wave but what “wave” are regular Black folks riding? I’m increasingly tired of refuting notions that BLM mirrors the Civil Rights Movement. It does not, repeat, it does not. For God’s sake is it impossible for people to DISCERN? BLM is a arm of the Dem Party, I called out Marc Lamont Hill for his failure to explore fundamental issues in his soft-ball interview with Cullors. I sense a certain “glee” on the part of some White folks to act like ALL Black Americans are all on in Woke/BLM. Guess what? WE’RE NOT ALL IN. Been there, done that. Racism will disappear when humans no longer exist. No sane Black person wakes up every day dwelling on what Whites think and do. That seems to the the province of the Woke mob. That’s why they act insane, that focus will make you insane. Woke damn sure ain’t the province of average working class Black Americans who are being pimped by the BLM/Woke forces. In 2-3 years (if won’t take a decade I promise you) we’ll look back on this farce the same way we look back at the Fukuyama’s “End of History” Farce, and the “pre-Woke” crowd ‘s “Post-Racial Cottage Industry.” Let me enlighten you all. Nothing is really changing, may actually be getting worse. Blacks are used as bludgeons and then discarded. If anything we now have to deal with increasing “protected classes,” minority procurement means NOTHING. One step forward, two back.
I can not quite understand the end of your post, and think it would be a good thing to understand, if you could explain further.
I live and work about 10 miles from Ferguson, Mo in the US. Ferguson is notable for being the place and the incident that spawned the BLM movement. It was the site of the original rioting over a police shooting and BLM started at that time in that place. I work in a Black owned company that takes in about 1.5B a year which was founded here about 30 years ago. It is a privately owned company owned by the original founders one of which is Black and one of which is white.World wide we have about 3000 employees. I work in a facility that has about 350 employees of which about half are black. I am white. I had to describe this for the point to make sense. The point I want to make is that during the Ferguson riots when all the professional race baiters and buses full of agitators where burning down the Ferguson area, many of the people I know at work lived in that area and had to deal with it close up. I didn’t hear any of those people spouting the race stuff, or ranting about police brutality. What I heard from my Black co-workers and friends was about the same that they would have heard from me had it been my town and neighborhood that was on fire. They were angry because they had to leave 45 minutes earlier for work and that the shop where they used to stop for coffee and gasoline was burned down and they now had to go out of their way to find another. They were upset that the streets of their town was full of strangers tearing stuff up and that their lives were totally disrupted. They were tired of picking up trash from their yards. This post Louis, is just to say that I 100% believe what you are saying because I have seen it with my own eyes.
That was my experience as a native Portlander. I worked at the edge of the downtown area. The bus system made many of its connections downtown. Many of my coworkers (black, white, latino) had to take a bus downtown a mile or two to meet their connecting bus to go home. Several coworkers told me of their fear of being pushed into the middle of the rioting while attempting to reach their buses. And none of them wanted the chaos to continue. My view is similar to those of Steve and of Louis. Most of us are just people going about our day. Unfortunately a bad government can have long lasting repercussions. I finally left Portland and I don’t miss it, because there seems to be nothing left to miss.
We are witnessing the death of the USA
I’ve heard that a number of times in my life, but this time I think it’s actually true.
I am a black man who did not watch any of this predictable circus. I loathe what the opportunistic BLM stand for. I cannot believe I used to support the DEMS over a decade ago. Thank God I have left the plantation. I always say ” cancer is progressive while wisdom is conservative.”
Dems created a Frankenstein they cannot even criticize, let alone control.
it’s not just the Biden administration, but Biden and both houses of Congress, under Democratic control, means that we do effectively have the same conditions that brought such a terrible situation to Portland.
but no mean tweets, which is what really matters.
For the present (so far as I can see) the USA is one of civilization’s lost causes.
60+ years of the ‘liberal’ Left marching through ALL the institutions (now most lately the armed forces) have wrecked everything and produced what the Destroyers all along at bottom have desired: eradication of wholesome norms for conduct, education, laws, jurisprudence, the lot.
For a long time the Federal Justice System has been outrageous, with its habit of launching not one or two but MANY charges against each of its victims, so that (a) it can force them to plead guilty (even when innocent) so as not to be financially ruined by the costs of long trials and (b) it has a 97% rate of conviction: something which Kim Il Jong must envy looking on from N. Korea.
The attempt by the Deep State to stop Donald Trump from being elected and then, once elected, to get him unhorsed or unable to govern (I am not saying anything about his fitness or otherwise for office) proved the Dept of Justice, the FBI and the CIA now wholly compromised by partisanship – in the Establishment gravy-trough – and corruption.
I fail to see any difference between the authorities’ use of violent mobs in America now and Mussolini’s thugocracy of the streets; between the total brainwashing disinformation of most of the mainstream media day in day out, and that of Goebbels’ propaganda ministry in Berlin; or the march of woke cancellations and politically correct persecutions on the one hand and the whole apparatus of China’s Cultural Revolution.
Already dissentients have been blacklisted and picked off one by one, eliminated from public life. Next, I suppose, comes re-education camps for people who don’t follow the line Joe Biden is given to utter from day to day.
All the sci-fi dystopias are coming true across the Atlantic.
If you are American yourself, and have the means to leave your country, I urge you not to make the mistake Jews in like case committed 1933-37 and hang on there, hoping things will get better.
If we have the coming economic collapse soon enough, they may. Otherwise they won’t. You will be trapped, sequestrated, imprisoned – or worse.
We are having the same problem-though to a lesser degree in western europe-ironically some people are looking favourably at eastern europe ie the very place many fled from in the first place.
I am an American and I would have to agree with you for the most part.
Yeah, except that the Jews were the minority. We Americans are doing it to ourselves.
Apparently the jurors identity was discovered and revealed (“doxed” in the modern idiom) although it’s unclear if they were aware of that.
They surely would have been aware that discovery was more than a possibility and of the terrible likely consequences.
Surely for that alone the verdict would be overturned or annulled – the jury made their decision under threat.
No time to watch the video, I thought it was members only, but the jury came back guilty on every count!
The mob has become Judge, Jury, and executioner! Pilosi and all the other animal farm pigs are screaming in the MSM about what a saint Floyd was, really, they said that.
I like Peter Schiff’s youtubes on the end of the world as covid response has killed it with MMT money printing and lost productivity, and jobs, and so on – but he did one yesterday on how the cop was just doing his job, it is very persuasive, and he told of how they must convict, that the jury has no option, the scapegoat must be sacrificed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra5xfFvF0A0 and already had to alter the podcast as his sponsor made him alter it – I cannot believe Schiff has not been de-platformed!
I was genuinely shocked at how the President of the United States got involved in the trial. Separation of powers is crucial to America’s healthy functioning.
In Alice in Wonderland they do have ‘sentence first-verdict afterwards’ why shouldn’t the President?
Yes agreed, an absolute disgrace. If he had any moral courage he would do as the Ancient Romans would have done : Take his own life and so rid the Planet of his festering presence.
Maybe he clung to some hope the Trial would not be merely a staged show trial with a preordained verdict. Those Jurors may as well had the red dot of a sniper rifle on their chest when the verdict was read out, it was that dangerous to not give blood to the mob, and no wonder at all the verdict was what it was.
I think it very likely a Juror giving a Not Guilty would pretty much expect death and violence would be inflected on them.
As someone has already said the jury brought in the verdict-please don’t hurt us.Apparently finding him guilty of both murder and manslaughter covers everything in the appeal.
I have only one argument against this reasonable proposal: President Kamala Harris
Sooner than later, she will emerge from Biden’s state funeral as President of the United States and then things will really get worse.
The murder of Saint George Floyd?
Surely this is deicide ( the act of killing a being of a divine nature, a god), a heinous crime that wypipo must pay for eternally.
Forget George Floyd, a worthless career criminal, and remember Ms Alisha Babbitt, a US Veteran, murdered in the Capitol building by a clearly homicidal policeman, who has yet to face any justice.
Despite the “Wild West” image the US likes to portray, this is a case of barbarism pure and simple. I seem to recall the motto “In God we Trust”.
No longer sunshine ‘he’ has obviously given up!
We all accept a number of car deaths, we agree on it as a society, just how many are acceptable, and what measures are worth preventing that, and what are not.
I think cop killings are similar, it is the culmination of odds, situations out of control, microsecond judgements, in a sometimes very dangerous environment.
I think the numbers of deaths at the hands of cops is very acceptable, actually lower than I find acceptable. An apology, a check, and carry on.
If a cop killed me in an error judgement call I would not want him to be punished. I have had the cops beat me, and I do not hold it against them, situations happen. (and I learned a lot by it, like not resisting)
I must disagree. Car deaths are normally by definition accidents.
The killing of Ms Alisha Babbitt was cold blooded murder, no ifs or buts about it.
From my ‘aged’ inspection the video it appears to show that the killer was Black.
Would that by any chance have anything to do with the fact that the killer is not to. charged and granted totally immunity instead?.
If the answer is yes, then so much for The Land of the Free”.
Trump was usually so good at nailing his adversaries in a phrase. Remember Crooked Hillary and Low-Energy Jeb. He badly failed with Biden though, calling him Sleepy Joe instead of Creepy Joe. “Sleepy” didn’t sound so bad to many people who didn’t like the high-decibel politics of the Trump era. The idea of taking a rest for four years didn’t sound so bad. The trouble is, Biden is Creepy Joe, a creepy, creepy man, a menace to the peace and stability of America and the world. His disgraceful interference with the jury in the Chauvin trial is just one example of his general creepiness, made worse by his obvious dementia.
January 6th?