What Do You Say to a Progressive Seattle Politician?

I'm scheduled to have a phone conversation this afternoon with my progressive Seattle Councilman Dan Strauss, who was elected in 2019 over a slightly less progressive Heidi Wills. Heidi showed up at my yoga class, where I used to like to zing the teacher Jim, who would always have the conventional wisdom line from The New York Times or The Atlantic.

What should I say to Dan?

I think that I will ask him about Defund the Police.

First, I will ask him which activist groups are pushing it. Is it just Black Lives Matter, or is it a whole phalanx of activist groups?

Then I will ask him what he thinks is the problem? Police brutality? Gang warfare? Systemic racism?

Then I will tell him about my understanding of the problem, from liberal journalist Jill Leovy, author of the 2015 book Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America. I'll tell him that I wrote about the book back in 2015 "The Real Problem 'Ghettoside.'" See this is how Leovy reports it.

1. Blacks in the inner city are mad as hell because murderers never get caught.
2. Blacks in the inner city are mad as hell because the police are always harassing young men on the street.

There is a very good reason why murderers don't get caught. It's because of "snitches get stiches." The gangs intimidate witnesses so they won't testify at trial, although "everybody knows who done it." BUt everyone is still mad that the perps don't get perped.

The police react to this situation in a sensible way. Since they "know who done it," they harass the guys "who done it" for minor street crimes. And everyone is mad about that.

What to do? Well there is something. I read once from a policeman that the dirty little secret of successful policing is informers. If you have informers you can bust up the gangs. And the murdering is all about gangs defending their turf and conducting border warfare. Also, of course, since a lot of economic activity in the inner city operates outside the law, the folks in the inner city can't call on the police for help when illegal activity is involved.

And that includes simple off-the-books employees.

Yeah, that's a problem. The gangs exist because of the marginal economy in the inner city that operates on the edge of legality, because uneducated people and unacculturated people often can't get well-paying jobs above the minimum wage, or union jobs because they don't have the connections.

Gotta be careful not to get too far into the reeds.

But maybe I'll tell him the story of Lady Marjorie's fencing contractor. See, Marjorie had some fencework done and was not happy with the work so she stopped the check she had just written to the contractor. A short while later, a check-cashing facility called! The contractor was getting cash on the check with which to pay his off-the-books Mexican workers. So I wrote about this at American Thinker and pretty soon got an email from an auto mechanic in Florida. He said that it was almost impossible to get and on-the-books job, and that was a problem because he needed a credit record to get a home mortgage, and for that you need an on-the-books job.

Oh well, it's an imperfect world, and it's tough trying to bend the arc of history towards justice.

Then, I think I'll ask him about Allyism, about the three layer social analysis of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors."

Where does he fit in there? As an Ally? Or as a "white oppressor?" And what about tech billionaires and CEOs? Are they white oppressors or are they allies because they donate to BLM and censor "far right" insurrectionists?

Then, maybe, I should ask him about Defunding the Police now that we know from January 6 that the real problem in  America is "far right" insurrectionists, which are so big a problem that the usual practice of freeing people accused of crimes without bail has been suspended. And we need 30,000 National Guardsmen in Washington DC, while we didn't need them in Seattle and Portland last summer.

Don't you think, I'll ask him, that the post January 6 events are something of a "tell" from the ruling class? Are they not saying that BLM and AntiFa are nothing to worry about, because they are the street thug of the ruling class. whereas Trump insurrectionists are an existential threat that needs immediate action and overwhelming force.

Maybe I'll even have time to offer my reductive Three Peoples theory that experiences America not as a moral drama but as just three kinds of people trying to live their lives: Creative people that want to make a difference; Responsible commoner that want to follow the rules, go to work, and obey the law; and Subordinate clients that want their lives protected by political power

I wonder how it will actually go down.