Joe Rogan Discusses the Protests/Rioting with Bret Weinstein

Good food for thought when Bret Weinstein sits down with Joe Rogan to discuss the protests and the civil unrest. I haven't been buying the standard line that these sustained protests are driven completely by the homicide of George Floyd. That horrific incident is certainly what triggered the demonstrations. However, the duration and intensity of the unrest , the organic "leaderless" groundswell, the unfocused attacks on virtually every American institution (including universities and STEM) and the unhinged demands (e.g., where "defund the police" doesn't actually mean defund the police) have convinced me this unrest is about far more than police abuses. Weinstein believes that many Occupy Wall Street demonstrators (he supported this movement) turned to anarchy and have now combined with the many demonstrators who fall under the Black Lives Matter umbrella, as well as other participants.

Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist living in exile from Evergreen State with his wife, Heather Heying, also an evolutionary biologist. These two biologists somehow survived intact the abysmal failure of Evergreen to deal with its own unrest in 2016, an incident that gives Weinstein a unique perspective on the ongoing crisis. In the first 30 minutes of this podcast, Weinstein and Rogan focus on the failures of BOTH political parties to represent the interests of the American working class. Ever since Bill Clinton, both parties have catered almost exclusively to the needs of their "clients," large corporations, which have rigged the game to screw small business and working people. This trend of catering to big corporations and screwing workers has continued under the current administration. One result of this: Widespread joblessness and hopelessness in both big cities and small that is now exploding on the streets.   This economic misery has hurt minorities living in urban areas especially hard, exacerbating their many concerns about institutional racism. Weinstein sees no short term or long term solution to this mess given the complete lack of political leadership, especially from the White House.

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Undeniable Research: Cities Are Safer With More Police Officers

What is the relationship between the numbers of police on the street and rate of violent crime? In a recent Vox article, "The End of Policing left me convinced we still need policing," Matthew Yglesias offers some real numbers to counter rampant speculation we are hearing from the many people who are understandably upset with police misconduct. His conclusion: "One of the most robust, most uncomfortable findings in criminology is that putting more officers on the street leads to less violent crime.” Therefore, if you want to increase violent crime in rich and poor neighborhoods alike, simply remove police officers. Here are some specific cases summarized by Yglesias:

"Klick, John MacDonald, and Ben Grunwald looked at an episode when the University of Pennsylvania had its campus police increase patrols within its defined zone of Philadelphia, and used a regression discontinuity design to discover that crime fell about 60 percent (this time with a larger decline for violent crime) where the extra officers went.

Stephen Mello looked at a huge surge in federal funding for local police staffing associated with the 2009 stimulus bill. Exploiting quasi-random variation in which cities got grants, Mello showed that compared to cities that missed out, those that made the cut ended up with police staffing levels that were 3.2 percent higher and crime levels that were 3.5 percent lower — again with a larger drop in violent crime.

John MacDonald, Jeffrey Fagan, and Amanda Geller looked at a program in New York called Operation Impact that would surge additional officers into high-crime neighborhoods and found that a wide range of crime — assaults, robberies, burglaries, violent felonies, violent property crimes, and misdemeanor offenses — fell in response to the surge.

Richard Rosenfeld’s field experiments show that “hot spot” policing, where extra officers go to specific high-crime locations, not only reduces crime in the hot spots but reduces crime (in this case, specifically gun assaults) citywide.

Patrick Sharkey, a Princeton sociologist who is clearly sympathetic to the goals of the defunding movement, writes in a Washington Post piece arguing for a greater role for local leaders and communities in containing violence that “those who argue that the police have no role in maintaining safe streets are arguing against lots of strong evidence."

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Donald Trump’s Vision of Peace on the Streets Through Strength

Donald Trump in 1990:

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world.

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If Only There Were a Well-Funded Peace Lobby as a Counterweight to the Military Industrial Complex

If only there were an industry of businesses that manufactured goods and services specifically geared to maintaining the peace (something more profitable and focused than libraries). Then there would be a weighty lobby to counterbalance the military-industrial complex. This Peace Lobby could sponsor NFL half-time shows. Instead of showing pretty photos of missiles taking off, they could show what happens to human beings when those missiles land. And they could sponsor research to explore the extent to which U.S. articulates meaningful objectives regarding its wars and also set forth detailed metrics to show whether U.S. wars actually achieve those objectives, using (as one example) the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

They could investigate the extent to which the U.S. government has been honest with the citizens regarding the need for each war. They could have teams of analysts assess the risks and benefits of going to war or not going to war. They could warn us that many media outlets uncritically and gullibly join in whenever politicians beat the drums to go to war. They could also explore the effect on diverting massive U.S. tax resources to war, and they could run campaigns showing the lost benefits of failing to spend those tax resources on peaceful uses, such as decaying U.S. infrastructure. They could also educate Americans of the dangers of the sunk cost fallacy.

Related Thought: If only were were better incentives for Hollywood to produce storylines where war was averted. Unfortunately, scripts permeated with visual violent conflict sells, especially visual conflict involving physical fighting.  I wonder about the filtering that likely occurs when Hollywood script-writers and producers want the cooperation of of the military to use military resources in their movies (e,g., military hardware and access to military ships, planes and bases). If only we had the following data: How often does the U.S. military turn down cooperation of a movie-maker because the script puts the military in a bad light or makes war look like a bad idea?

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Trump’s Attack on Iran is a Symptom, not the Disease

From what I understand about Trump's decision to attack Iran's General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, it seems to be a dangerous move, an unforced error that puts the U.S. at risk. There is a lot of outrage on the political left. Before attacking Trump, I think it's important to recognize that the U.S. is a bipartisan war-mongering state, and this includes numerous undeclared wars waged by Barack Obama. It also includes the fact that there are few vocal anti-war Democrats running for President. It also includes widespread Congressional nonchalance in the face of the recent report showing "U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found."

It's also important to recognize that Congress has the power to supervise and control these adventures, but won't. War is job-security for many politicians. It makes them look strong and thus more electable. Thus the waging of wars of discretion continues to be our non-stop horrifically expensive and dangerous hobby. War-mongering is a cancer in our bipartisan body politic. I'd urge everyone who is criticizing Trump to keep this in perspective. The problem runs much deeper than Trump, and the reason you won't see widespread protests in the street in reaction to Trump's terrible decision is the same reason you didn't see such protests while Obama was waging numerous undeclared wars, many of them with no clearly defined metric of success.

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