Fifty years ago we had John Lennon’s naiveté-born utopian song “Imagine,” outlining a world without countries, possessions, or religion. Now a big word is “re-imagine,” ostensibly relating to an America without police as we know them.
How it’s working is well-illustrated by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s New York City. After reducing the police budget and morale, crime is skyrocketing, and the latest Exhibit A is a frightening attack on an elderly mother and her middle-age son by a group of youths on bicycles. The Daily Mail summarizes the story:
• A 15-year-old boy has been arrested and charged as a juvenile after he reportedly smashed up a BMW SUV on Tuesday
• He was one of up to 25 teenagers who allegedly carried out the brazen attack which occurred on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in broad daylight
• Dozens of youths on bicycles reportedly attacked and injured a cab driver at Fifth Avenue and 29th Street before riding south
• At Fifth Avenue and 21st Street, the gang were [sic] caught on camera stopping traffic and randomly targeting Max Torgovnick, 36, and his mother, 74, as they drove along in a BMW SUV
• Several of the teens began smashing up the vehicle and tried to open its doors to get inside the car
• ‘That’s something like you would see on the streets of a war zone. I never thought New York would get this bad,’ a shaken Torgovnick stated
• Mayor Bill de Blasio called the attack ‘completely unacceptable’, but has offered no suggestions on how to stop similar incidents from occurring in future
• With police nowhere to be seen, the attack comes as New York struggles to deal with soaring rates of violent crime after officials agreed to slash the NYPD’s budget….
“Unacceptable” is one way to put it, a very tepid, relativism-reflecting way that bespeaks of Bolshevik Bill de Blasio’s dislocation from Truth and lack of resolve. “Unacceptable” describes a poorly made restaurant appetizer, not a violent mob that leaps on a vehicle and stomps on its windshield (video below) as an elderly woman weeps inside, screaming “They are going to kill us.” When characterizing that, “evil” comes to mind.
In 2018, London had surpassed NYC in murders for the first time in two centuries — partially the result of crime-suppressing policing policies instituted by ex-Big Apple mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s — and a British doctor had described his nation’s capital as being like an “Afghan war zone.” But Bolshevik Bill perhaps found it “unacceptable” that his metropolis lost out to London, and now NYC can be like a “war zone,” as Torgovnick had put it.
The stats show it, too. “In the 28 days to December 27 2020 there were 21 murders — an increase of 61.5 percent when compared with the same dates in 2019,” the Mail further informs. “There was also a 4.2 percent increase in rapes, and a staggering 122.4 percent surge in shootings.”
“Violent crime began spiking following a $1 billion cut to the NYPD’s budget which was approved this past summer following passionate protests to defund the police,” the paper continues.
Also contributing to the rising crime is the effort to “end mass incarceration” (as if it’s not reality because we have a mass of miscreants) and the related bail-laws change causing criminals to be released onto the streets.
As for what befell the Torgovnicks, it’s called a “bike out.” (It’s a sign of a declining civilization when species of crime become fashionable enough to be given trendy names — e.g., “wilding.”)
“Bike outs are often organized on social media, and the large groups of teen troublemakers block off streets and fill parks, harassing pedestrians,” the Mail also tells us. “Bike outs have typically been common in the summer, but with school closures still in effect, it appears the roving gangs are now out on the Big Apple streets more regularly.”
Of course, as NYC pols abdicate their responsibility to protect city residents, they also deny the right to protect oneself. The city has gun-control laws strict enough to ensure that only criminals will be armed, and don’t dare plow through a menacing mob with your car. You’ll be arrested — and maybe charged with a “hate crime.”
Just as tragic is that the “re-imagine” policing movement began with and grew on a lie: that blacks are inordinately targeted by police. In reality, not only are more white than black suspects shot every year by cops, but research finds that police are actually more likely to shoot whites relative to the races’ different homicide rates and the rates at which they feloniously shoot police. A study also showed that cops are actually more willing to shoot white suspects than black ones.
Additionally, police shootings of black suspects have declined 75 percent over the last several decades.
This said, don’t think leftists object to police in principle.
They just object to police who aren’t enforcing their agenda.
Note here that the Left has seized virtually every governmental and societal arena, from academia to mainstream media to entertainment to big business to a swath of the military. But police agencies are, generally, still “conservative.”
So if there is method to the anti-police madness, and I suspect there is in some Machiavellian quarters, it’s that certain leftists want to “re-imagine” the police because they want to become the police.
Or, at least, they want their foot soldiers to fill that role.
So whether it’s 1971 or 2021, in a song or a city, watch out when leftists start imagining. For their utopian fantasy just may be your dystopian nightmare.
