Mock

 I had other priorities, so I missed Joe Biden's speech to a mostly empty House chamber last night. It appears to have been his usual mixture of bad faith, kabuki and crap, so that's probably just as well. People are starting to realize what a dumpster fire we have in Washington, but the official line will remain that competence and unity are rising in Washington. Hunger Games all the way down, frankly.

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

NFL draft is tonight. I expect the locals to draft an offensive lineman and I hope the Packers pick a butt-kicking linebacker. I don't know who the Lions will pick, but the guy will likely fail. The Bears? Who knows? Guess we'll find out soon enough.

Guilty on all three counts

 Derek Chauvin found guilty on all three charges -- manslaughter, 3rd degree murder, 2nd degree murder. A few thoughts:

• I am somewhat surprised Chauvin got Murder Two, but given the enormous fear this region has been feeling ever since this all began, it's not a complete surprise. A jury that did not deliver what the mob wanted was gonna get doxxed and threatened. 
• Chauvin may have a chance at an appeal because of Maxine Waters, but he'd have had a better chance in a state where the judiciary isn't a wholly owned subsidiary of the DFL. This would have gone down very differently across the St. Croix, I think.
• And that's part of what sticks in my craw about all this. I don't hold any brief for Chauvin, who was the bully boy cop from central casting. Police are, at best, a necessary evil, and this dude was not a hero by any means. Having said that, Chauvin was doing what he was asked to do. And that means we should stop asking the Chauvins of the world to do such bidding. All regimes hire rough men to protect the vulnerable, but if we're not serious about protecting the vulnerable any more, and based on the available evidence we aren't serious, we should stop with the bullshit half measures.
• And therein lies the larger question: why are Chauvin, and by extension all police, doing the things they are asked to do? George Floyd might have died that day anyway, given that he had a likely lethal amount of fentanyl in his system. The danger to the public, I suppose, is if he drove off and caused a pileup on the interstate. That's a hypothetical. What officers actually do is more about financial considerations. Many of the tasks police pursue are revenue generation and not public safety. That question is even more relevant in the Daunte Wright case -- he was stopped because of an expired license tab. That's not a public safety issue, but the Wright case became a public safety issue because we ask our law enforcement to do these penny ante shakedowns. And since the cop in that instance had a brain fart and shot the guy, we've been living in fear for weeks.
• Finally, we need to be honest about the precise reasons we live in fear around there. We have seen vast swathes of our city burned and looted and our elected (not be me, mind you) representatives have ceded control of the city to the woke and their grasping acolytes. This town is chock full of grifters and grievance entrepreneurs at all times, but we also now import 'em, too. This screen shot (h/t Mitch Berg) sums things up nicely:

Grievance is lucrative

• Seriously, get back on yer plane and leave us alone, Al. 

Where we are

 Writing for PJ Media, Victoria Taft says it out loud:

When antifa and BLM stir as much fear as Pablo Escobar and his henchmen, which prevents you from doing your damned job and following the Constitution, we’ve arrived at Banana Republic status.

Welcome to Medellín, Minnesota, where judges, elected officials, and cops are afraid of the race cartels.

Do you dispute that idea? If so, tell me why. 

Dreary Brearley and the Brooklyn Center Extravaganza

 I have no idea who Andrew Gutmann is, but he has been paying north of 50K/year to have his daughter educated at Brearley, a hyper-exclusive all-girls prep school in New York. But he's had enough. Bari Weiss has the details:

I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died. 

He's just getting warmed up:

I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley really cared about “inclusiveness,” the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto “One Brearley,” instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors.

In the current environment, mentioning the Chinese Cultural Revolution is likely prima facie evidence of racism. Stop Asian Hate, pal. But let's keep going:

We have today in our country, from both political parties, and at all levels of government, the most unwise and unvirtuous leaders in our nation’s history. Schools like Brearley are supposed to be the training grounds for those leaders. Our nation will not survive a generation of leadership even more poorly educated than we have now, nor will we survive a generation of students taught to hate its own country and despise its history. 

There are obvious consequences to all this and we are seeing it unfold on our doorstep now. Our leaders in Minnesota are as Mr. Gutmann describes -- unwise and unvirtuous. We have the specter of mob rule hanging over Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center. And beyond the lack of virtue, there's also a lack of competence:

Initially, the city planned no curfew for the first time this week to "take a different approach," the mayor said in a statement. But around 10:30 p.m., Operation Safety Net announced the mayor had declared an emergency curfew that starts at 11 p.m. Friday until 6 a.m. Saturday.

The curfew followed unrest outside the police department. Shortly after 9:30 p.m. Friday, protesters breached the secondary barrier surrounding the Brooklyn Center police department. In response, law enforcement used flash bangs and pepper spray to push the crowd back. Officials repaired the fence. Protesters continued to throw items, such as glass bottles, over the barricades.

And the officials are pointing fingers at one another:

 Col. Matt Langer of the Minnesota State Patrol expressed frustration that the same strategy was not as effective Friday night. Authorities say a small group carrying bats were among the agitators.

At an overnight press conference, law enforcement laid out items, including cans, umbrellas, paint cans and wooden shields, that had been brought into the rally by protesters.

"If we want change in policing, we want reform in policing - let's do that. Let's get together and start reform," said Hennepin County David Hutchinson. "This profession needs help. We can admit that. We're not perfect. We can be better. But these people are not people you should be supporting." 

You can't act clearly unless you operate from clear moral principles. Unfortunately, at our current moment, the principle in place is might makes right. We may not have as many Mean Tweets, but there's a meanness in the land. We're at a tipping point.

Under Curfew

 We're okay here. I don't think a curfew is necessary, but whatever. About the only way our neighborhood would go up in flames is if we were in the midst of an apocalypse. And despite some of the rhetoric we're hearing lately, we are not in an apocalypse. We are, most certainly, in a time where cynics and opportunists are in the saddle.