Idle Hands are the Devil's Workshop


Posted On: Saturday - May 30th 2020 11:12AM MST
In Topics: 
  Economics  Race/Genetics  Bible/Religion  Socialism/Communism  Bread and Circuses

Subtitle: Kung Flu LOCKDOWN, Trial UBI, and Black Riots

Site note first: As the reader may have guessed, your blogger here really is not a customer of the 24/7 news cycle Infotainment. There are things I hear well after the fact. One that I heard about, then read about, just a short while back, is that the Minneapolis rioting has spread to other cities. I may not have written the lighthearted post on hand washing yesterday knowing how serious things are getting. This one is an attempt at an explanation for what's going on.



Thinking back on what the subjects have been of many of the Peak Stupidity posts has me realizing I"m putting a number of our favorites together here. Socialism is a big one, and what's wrong it for America is the main point of this post.

I don't thing the Corona virus itself was part of some big plan. The response to it, what I call the Infotainment Panic-Fest, may or may not have been to some degree. I think that'd be the case less so on the Lyin' Press end (they are just stupid, sensationalist, and hungry for viewers), but possibly more so on the government, maybe Deep State side. Other than all the advisories about warding off the Kung Flu that Governors and such have taken too much to heart, it's the quick implementation (billed as temporary) of Socialism that has been the Feral Gov't's big response.

After State and local jurisdictions mandated the LOCKDOWNS, came out with shelter-in-place orders, and generally went all Totalitarian-like on us, the US Gov't reaction was to "help" us out of the bad situation all that caused by throwing us borrowed money. (Welfare used to be up to the States till 30 years ago or so, in general.) There were the CARE stimulus checks. The $600/week Federal unemployment money was the bigger factor in implementing temporary(?) Socialism, however, as it has been a big incentive for people to take those leaves or stay home at least till it ends. What it is really is a trial run of the UBI (Universal Basic Income).

Going back only 20 years, going at least through the moderate left, no serious politician would have proposed the UBI, and not many Americans would have had anything but disdain for it. We all know that's the beginning of serious Socialism. On the other hand, over the last 2 decades, Americans have realized that the good or decent jobs are no longer there for all Americans who want them. Not coincidentally at all, this was the time of the giving away of America's manufacturing ability and prowess to China.

Even knowing this, I have major problems with Socialism and a permanent UBI, and the rest here will explain one of them. Without even considering whether it's economically viable in the long run for lots of Americans to sit home or go out for the Bread & Circuses at the expense of work done by others around the world, what will be the effect of having a hundred million Americans on the permanent dole?

Here's some opinion about black males, when it comes down to the truth. I see these rioters, and the type is in all American inner cities. Yet I know plenty of hard-working black men who I can't imagine would participate in this, at least the real rioting part of these protests. My thoughts from observation over many years tell me that these men are a perfect example of the Biblical Proverb "Idle hands are the devil's workshop" (Proverbs 16:27). The "idle hands" part really does seem to matter, as it seems the black guys that do physical work are the ones with the best attitudes. There IS something about doing physical work - it does make us too tired to be up for raising hell.

Now, the Biblical book of Proverbs was not written specifically for black men, but it sure seems to apply here. I've known white men out of work for long periods. There are whole regions of the country with big numbers of rural white men that are not really participating in the productive economy too. They get on drugs sometimes, they may steal from Wal-Mart on occasion, or even jack cars. However, they just don't seem to get into this mindless* violence, as the black men do.

Was this current spread of rioting really caused by the death of George Floyd alone? Well, there's always a reason to loot a Target, I guess, but this time, we need to remember that a significant number of Americans have been home with no work for the last 2 to 2 1/2 months. That is in addition to the already significant number of already unemployed men (again, I don't believe BLS numbers**), always higher for black males.

In the meantime, along comes the "free" money from Uncle Sugar. Did that keep everybody satisfied? They could stay home or visit here and there, with plenty of money for food, bills deferred, and all this time on their hands. It's been a trial run of a Socialist UBI-America. This unintended(?) experiment seems to have some unforeseen results, there in Minneapolis, now New York City, Washington, FS, Los Angeles, Atlanta ...

Is this what we'd see from the black areas regularly as a Socialist economy with a large mass of unemployed, but fed, sheltered and clothed Americans? About the only thing missing during this experiment is much of the Bread & Circuses, due to the shutdown of normal life because of this bad Kung Flu year. Could that be the missing ingredient that would allow a UBI-powered Socialist society to flourish in diverse 2020's America? People who push it had damn well better hope so.



* "Mindless" is important, as, sure, the riots are supposedly about this one guy, likely killed due to the militarized manner of some cops nowadays, but that doesn't explain anything more than loud protesting. The rioting and looting is mindless violence. Now, the reader may bring up the antifa types that are out there. It's political for those people. They simply wish for destruction of American society. That's not mindless.

** The reason here is much simpler than my problem with their Inflation numbers. The numbers come from unemployment benefits counts. People who roll off the end of those benefits, after 1/2 a year or 1 year are simply not counted anymore. Others do not bother applying. It's been a pretty bogus count for a long time.

Comments:
ganderson
Tuesday - June 2nd 2020 9:12AM MST
PS- Mr. Hail, I really appreciate your comments here and other places. I hope Mr. Moderator doesn't think you're plotting a coup!

One question I have for you, because we live in a world, unfortunately, where "Hey, I dunno who this guy is, but his data makes sense" is not an acceptable argument- so is there a way I can indicate in what way you're not just a guy on the internet? To repeat being "just a guy on the web", when you put out the data and arguments you do is just dandy with me, but I'd love to be able to heave around a credential or two.
Hope that wasn't an insulting question!
MBlanc46
Monday - June 1st 2020 7:00AM MST
PS I’m sure that you’re correct that if the tough men showed up, the women would follow them. I’m a bit skeptical about tough men showing up, though.
Ganderson
Sunday - May 31st 2020 7:43PM MST
PS I have trouble seeing a way through this. We have collectively lost our minds.
Moderator
Sunday - May 31st 2020 11:14AM MST
PS: Thanks for writing in, Mr. Hail. Re: your 2nd comment (mostly), I think that's the case, that this wouldn't have happened right now had the LOCKDOWN not happened. Things like this get ginned up by the media anyway, but this time people all around seem to be in a hell-raising mood.

Of course, they mis-direct their rage by a wide mark, due to their ideologies. Instead of taking it out on government officials, as the peaceful Michigan militia types did in Lansing, the blacks (well, lots of them just like free sneakers and TVs) rage against the white man, as always, while the antifa types rage against the Establishment (which conveniently for them, is pretty much filled with people that support them, so no harm/no foul).

All of them like to smash stuff. That's always easier and more fulfilling in the short run than building stuff.

On Andrew Yang and UBI, I guess his assumption is that the Bread & Circuses would keep people in line, even with no work. Not only do I think it won't, but I haven't even considered the economic factors.
Hail
Sunday - May 31st 2020 9:20AM MST
PS --
"In the meantime, along comes the "free" money from Uncle Sugar."

Did you ever see Andrew Yang's explanation in 2019, to an East Asian audience, of why he became the UBI guy? He explained it in racial-violence terms. He said poor whites would target Asians unless they were given UBI in the 2020s, as more and more poor whites are marginalized in an immigrant-oriented economy in which Asians would be highly successful (paraphrasing).

Yang wouldn't dare, of course, say anything like this about Blacks, but the obvious subtext is, "Appease potential rioters/criminals with payoffs/bribes not to riot or commit too many crimes."

That is the point of UBI.

On UBI and rioting, as you suggest and the end of the post, at least in this case the more proximate cause is definitely the Corona Lockdown itself and the (very predictable) psychological effect it had as well as all the direct economic effects.

In four words: No Lockdown from mid-March to late May, no riots in late May 2020 as soon as the lockdowns started to lift.
Hail
Sunday - May 31st 2020 9:07AM MST
PS--

"Was this current spread of rioting really caused by the death of George Floyd alone?"

Of course not.

People don't actually get upset about some ambiguous incident involving an unknown person a thousand or more miles away from them (and if they do, I think the culture has become too unserious to continue; it really has become a social-media-dictated reality).

I view the riots as a follow-on of Corona, and a very direct continuation of the Corona-Response. I don't think this is hard to see. The lockdowns were starting to be lifted, people had been out of work and out of school for two months, many with little prospect of anything good for the coming period because of the extremists' Lockdowns and economic dislocation. Exactly _then_, this grievanceless series of so-called protests comes seemingly out of nowhere, a union of Black Power racialists and racial solidarity with an extreme case of white (and immigrant) virtue-signalling with the media and most elites entirely on their side. All on the fluff of one ambiguous case. Not at all.

Facts Last. Emotion First. Always cave in to Moral Panics.
Moderator
Saturday - May 30th 2020 6:51PM MST
PS: Agreed, Mr. Blanc, that America's future doesn't look bright. What a difference that is from 20 years back, or especially 21, during the middle of the dot-com 1.0 times. I was somewhat involved in that.

Apropos my subsequent post to this, were we to get some tough men, with some tough talk for these tough times, maybe the women would follow. They need to follow, as their leading isn't working, and it's not really what they want to do anyway.
MBlanc46
Saturday - May 30th 2020 5:08PM MST
PS I have some pretty grave reservations about the so-called Universal Basic Income, too. It will almost certainly be an economic and social catastrophe. That said, if it’s not that catastrophe, it will very likely be some other catastrophe. Easy for me to say, I’ll be checking out in 12-15 years, tops. For those of you are hoping to be around considerably longer than that, the outlook isn’t brilliant. It seems to me that your only hope is the breakup of the former USA, one part of which might be something like the republic that our ancestors built. I’ve got to say that I don’t see much chance of that, as the women won’t buy it, and what normal guy wants to live without women, even in an economic and social catastrophe.
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