The Sinister and the Stupid

Freshman NYC Mayor Eric Adams inadvertently echoed a gun rights talking point yesterday when he bewailed the revolving-door policy that the state legislature and ex-governor Andrew Cuomo instituted as part of their criminal justice reform efforts.

We took 2,600 guns off our streets. The shooters of those guns are back on the streets.

Adams went on to blame ghost guns and begged for more federal help, even as his people were unable to tell us how many of those seized guns were of the Casper variety.

His Kinsley gaffe? Validating the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" aphorism.

Yes, indeed, "taking guns off the street" doesn't do diddly if the people who weren't supposed to have them are free-ranged despite breaking multiple laws. Prohibitions don't do diddly either - the illegal drug trade is proof-positive of that, so prosecuting the object instead of the person is simply stupid.

Adams is hamstrung by unrepentant "reformers," both in Albany and in general. The state government, run entirely by a Democratic Party in thrall to the Left, doesn't care to undo the damage it did. Meanwhile, we bear witness to that Left, the Justice Democrats and candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), calling for the actual abolishment of prisons.

This is not "reform," this is insanity. What do you do with murderers, rapists, arsonists, and other violent criminals?

America grossly over-incarcerates its citizens. There are many reforms that can remediate this, starting with scrubbing many of the laws that lead to this off the books. Crime should be understood to be "crime against others," and the criminal justice system should limit itself to that. But, to reduce the punishment for crimes against others, especially the violent sort, to social worker counseling (as at least one City Council member wishes), is either mind-bogglingly naive or something else.

It's disheartening to contemplate just how rapidly the far-Left has insinuated its views into the culture. Despite their relatively small numbers, such as the Squad and other DSA-backed politicians and activists have had a sizable effect on culture and policy, and the nation is reaping the rotten fruit of that which they sowed.

Beyond the botched criminal justice reform, we witness gender radicals wreaking havoc on a generation of children, Critical Race Theory agitators teaching and demanding racism, reckless spending producing inflation, green obsession killing the energy sector, rampant regulation slowing the economy, and countless other "for our own good" interventions degrading our living standards. Add to that the endless incendiary rhetoric that seeks to divide rather than unify. It's no surprise that many Americans are wondering whether this is all part of a plan to actually destroy the country.

In some cases, it is.

I wrote of an updated version of the Cloward-Piven strategy a couple years ago, wherein national collapse is to be precipitated by deliberately destructive policies, to be replaced by a Marxist structure. The DSA has similar goals, including the elimination of corporations and a (forcible, obviously) transfer of ownership of the means of production to the workers and the State.

I figure that most people who lean left don't embrace all this radicalism, that they buy into the snake-oil hucksters' promises of kumbaya and shared prosperity (if only all those horrid Republicans, conservatives, and alt-right types could simply be put under the boot) without delving too deeply or critically into the details. We want to believe what sounds good to us, and that often clouds our skepticism.

Buying snake oil is stupid. You don't reduce crime by letting criminals run free. You don't cure inflation by printing more money. You don't cure shortages with more regulations, restrictions, and mandates. You don't reduce gas prices by impeding drilling. You don't benefit the nation by prioritizing the selfish interests of narrow special interest groups. You don't end racism by teaching it. You don't promote comity by being divisive.

Selling snake oil is sinister. You don't promote long-term health by offering feel-good-in-the-moment poison (many "snake oils" were simply recreational drugs like laudanum (opium+alcohol)). That poison creates addiction and accelerates decline. Drug dealers know they're not doing the junkies any good, and in fact are only strengthening their toxic habits, yet they persist.

That "sinister," in latin, means "on the left side" is one of those convenient cosmic alignments that lend themselves to apt metaphors. That a "bar sinister" was colloquially believed to mean "bastard" is another. We are beset by bastards looking to wreck the nation, bastards who have conned a passel of otherwise-well-intentioned people into buying their poison.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.