Something you’re seeing from Hogan on down is that the response to a statue being pulled down is the same as when they invoke “the murders” and that’s because again, these folks don’t care about Baltimore or its homicide victims—it is entirely a means to bashing the city

This is important to remember as attitudes about incarceration and police gain more support—people like Hogan see Baltimore’s homicide rate as a useful rhetorical tool. They have no interest in using their power to make changes only to use it to arrest more people and seize power

It isn’t a difference of how to respond to something like our staggering homicide rate it is rhetoric and occasionally policy that only exists to punish more ppl and add to a sense that Baltimore is beneath them. For these ppl it is useful when people are killed in Baltimore.

It’s also an especially insincere fearmongering surrounding property damage where one statue is treated the same as say rioting. One of the early George Floyd protests where some windows were broken was referred to as “a riot” by FOP. They are losing, they realize it.

Media has also enabled this bc embracing useless language like “peaceful” protests—a word that means nothing and is always changing (which makes it real easy for Hogan to discuss a dumb hateful statue as if it matters or says anything about the state of the city).

Related: this piece is going around and being shared by plenty of goofs but also ppl who should know better https://www.city-journal.org/ferguson-effect-inner-cities it is from the author of "The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture"

Both big issues such as homicides and meaningless issues like "universities have gone too far" are red meat for a certain kind of reactionary who smooths it over with a layer of pseudo-intellectualism and only operates in bad faith

You see this in Baltimore where nontroversies such as fireworks or bike lanes are examples by law and order types of how doomed the city is but also "the left" are clueless ninnies worried about the wrong things? None of this parses, none of it is supposed to.

So if you ask for even just police reform, you need to shut up. If you focus on "smaller" things such as say, bike lanes, you're accused of not worrying about what matters like homicides. But your only take on crime can be "loosen the leash on cops" or you don't care about crime.

Setting aside that one can simultaneously care about bike lanes and police and crime—the game here is to provide police with even more power and this is done in part by focusing on the kind of chickenshit issues right wingers claim the left is so upset about. It's incoherent.

And what the right says of the left is actually true of the right: hyper-reactive maniacs who have no sense of scale or scope when it comes to problems so bike lanes and property damage and college campuses and crime and rioting is all the same

And whereas how even bike lanes tie to transportation which ties to access which ties to more opportunity which ties to crime reduction is clear, the law and order type's only throughline is "the internet told me to be mad at all these things blah blah snowflakes"

So Hogan, your least favorite right wing Twitter egg, and even many of the centrist types kvetching about "cancel culture" are all using the same tools to render actual debates about actual issues meaningless. Don't let them!