A country unwilling to defend itself

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today is Friday June 12, 2020 and on this Report I will be talking about the madness, the insanity, in which America, and perhaps all of what was once Western Civilization, finds itself. For the Castle Family this is the third week back in the office from quarantine and so far, so good. The family daughter remains marooned on her small island many thousands of miles from us, but at least safe. Perhaps in July she will be free from confinement.

A nineteenth-century treatment of crowd madness

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of mass insanity and how we, as a nation, seem to be in the grips of it. To refresh my memory about how it all works I decided to consult one of my favorite books and authors. That is Charles Mackey’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

Writing in 1841 but still very relevant today, Mr. Mackey explores the concept of mass or crowd insanity and how it is quite different from individual madness. The backdrop for the book was the tulip mania that gripped Europe in Mr. Mackey’s day. People trading in the future price of tulip bulbs drove the price to an unimaginable high in that day. It made no sense except when looked at from the standpoint of crowd or mob action.

The crowd goes mad but each individual must recover on his own

“When a man enters a crowd, he exits civilization.” That is obviously just as true today as it was in 1841. As evidence, I argue that a man in a riot or even in a mass protest is a man in a crowd. His reason departs and he is driven by the hormones, the emotions of the crowd rather than his own. Men go mad in herds while they must recover their senses one by one. Friedrich Nietzsche in the same era as Mackey said that madness is a rarity in individuals but the rule in crowds.

The general case: individual v. crowd

In a crowd a man is not a man but simply a face. Hence the expression just a face in the crowd. He is a cog in a lunatic machine. He cannot think rationally so the crowd thinks for him. Crowds need something to unite them so they will always have their devils. The devil could be policemen, whites, blacks, Muslims, Christians, progressives, conservatives etc. Whatever it is, each crowd will have its devil. It will always be a devil which inspires the crowd.

The George Floyd death

I can cite no better example of crowd madness than what has happened since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police a few days ago. Mr. Floyd’s death appeared to me to be a virtual assassination. Three police officers hold a man down while another puts a knee on his neck for eight minutes while a body cam films him doing it. It appeared to be an act of cold-blooded murder, which in a death penalty state should have sent the officer to death row.

Was this a racial incident?

The question then is, was Mr. Floyd’s murder an indictment of America as a sick, racist society as some allege? I argue that it does not. Furthermore, other than Mr. Floyd’s race there is not much to indicate a racial motive. I understand the argument that if he had not been black the officer would not have put his knee on his neck, but the argument may or may not be valid. Can we rationally discuss whether it’s a valid argument or not? Probably not, but I will make a few points now.

A submission technique from Israel

The submission technique that ultimately killed Mr. Floyd is one the Israeli military teaches to US police forces. Consult YouTube and you can find videos of Israeli instructors teaching the technique. They use it to subdue Palestinians in Gaza and other places where they deploy every day. One officer is to hold the subject’s legs while the other kneels on his neck to get control of him. Does that mean Mr. Floyd’s murder was not racially motivated? No, it doesn’t, and I admit that I have no way of knowing. But evidence suggests that the technique is and has been in widespread use against people of all races.

Changes in police training

The training of police in tactics, and their attitude about who they are, as well as their uniforms and weapons, have undergone a radical shift in recent years. The original shift happened when our society abandoned common law in favor of only statutory law. Under the common law, police officers were commonly referred to as peace officers. Even in the old west, the sheriff was a peace officer. His job was to keep the peace by resolving differences in a peaceful manner.

From peace officer to law-enforcement officer

In our present day, officers don’t even remember what a peace officer was because they would not recognize that term. Instead they are law enforcement officers because their job is to enforce the law even if the law is stupid and doesn’t make sense. For example, Mr. Floyd’s offense was trying to pass a counterfeit 20-dollar bill in a local store. There was no indication that he made the bill or that he even knew it was counterfeit. There is so much bad cash now that anyone can end up with some purely by accident. That is not a crime of intent, certainly not one worthy of death.

How two types of officers handle the same situation

So, a peace officer:

1. Talks to Mr. Floyd,
2. Asks him where he got the bad cash,
3. Tells him to make good on his purchase if he had not done so and then
4. Sends him on his way without incident.

A law-enforcement officer pulls him out of the car and kills him with an Israeli submission tactic.

Does crowd mentality affect the police? Recruiting from the military…

One other issue with police recruitment and training involves where the police recruit their officers. I am not certain of these numbers anymore. But a couple of years ago when there was an officer involved shooting in Dallas, I looked at them. I found them very revealing. More than 50% of the police officers in Dallas were not only military veterans but veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m sure you will believe me when I say that the rules of engagement for soldiers in combat are far different from the way police officers should think. Their military objective is killing the enemy and they confront death of friends and fellow soldiers each day.

…and furnishing military weapons

Sometimes its hard to get things out of your head once they are in there. Couple the military mindset with what has come to be called militarization of the police and you might just create a volatile situation. Weapons designed for use by military combat units started coming back to US police forces under the second Bush administration. This continued to some extent under Obama although he apparently tried to stop it when he saw what was happening.

At least three motion-picture and television projects from 1967-83 depicted militarization of the police, with dire results. – Ed.

So, you have military weapons, uniforms, and tactics. So no wonder the officers think of themselves as soldiers going to war each day when they go out. They must face the worst, most heartless, relentless criminals each day and that wears on people sooner or later.

A truly dangerous crowd mentality: defunding the police?

What I am saying is that a call to review and change police training and tactics makes more sense than abolish or defund the police. Calling for abolition of the police in a city such as Minneapolis is evidence that spineless lunatics run our cities. Let me use the example of Minneapolis to illustrate my point. The city commission voted by a veto proof majority to abolish their police force.

Lisa Bender, President of the City Council when asked on CNN what would happen if your house were broken into, said,

Maybe it’s about time for privileged people to get a taste of what the marginalized feel like.

What could happen when a lawless crowd runs out of control in a major city

She went on to say that she looks forward to a police-free future. Well I know she deserves to get what she looks forward to good and hard. Perhaps Ms. Bender will get a taste of what a lawless, violent city is like without people willing to risk their lives to protect it. I almost hope she does, but I can’t wish that on the people of Minneapolis. We’ve already seen it anyway in Baltimore and especially in Chicago.

Just before Mr. Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, on the night of May 31^st, in Chicago 17 black people were killed by other black people. In the month of May 67 black people were killed by other black people. Baltimore has comparable numbers scaled to its population. The police are under restraint in those cities, so they are violently out of control.

Begging businesses to stay after the crowd destroyed them

Yes, law enforcement is under attack. An injustice in Minneapolis means there is injustice everywhere. Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot perhaps takes the cake among city mayors. Completely paralyzed by the riots, she was unable to do anything but watch her city burn. Business owners called her begging for protection of their businesses. Her response was to say “people are just F**ing lawless right now.”

Target stores as well as Walmart stores were looted and burned. Then the mayor expected them to just rebuild and continue. When they said no, we are leaving, and we won’t be back she was reduced to begging them. She could not however dispatch police or National Guard units to quell the riots.

Crowd violence – and a pusillanimous response

I do agree that the riots, not the non-violent protests, indicate a fundamental problem in our society. The rioters and looters supposedly were feeling so much pain and despair from violence suffered by Mr. Floyd, that they had to use violence against the innocent as a remedy. They had no regard for the innocent and certainly none for the free society they are bent on destroying.

The response from those in authority to the riots was a groveling, crawling, begging apology for the looters to forgive them. Democrat members of Congress actually wore Kentes, which are African scarves from Ghana as they knelt before the looters. This act was so disgusting even the looters could see through it. Congress and especially those who run our Democrat cities line up to demonstrate their support of the woke values of the looters. The fact is the looters are more often than not, just in it for the free stuff. They have no woke values except criminality.

The crowd against Western civilization

Western Civilization is collapsing around us and that much is obvious. What was the purpose of setting fire to St. John’s church? To kill or displace God perhaps. Nothing civilized was spared, not churches, synagogues, the World War ll memorial, and the Lincoln memorial. They all had to suffer damage and defacement to pay homage to Mr. Floyd. The aggrieved ones had to express their discontent by adding fuel to the fires of insanity sweeping the country.

Let the crowd destroy history

In response, the system was shown to be helpless before our new woke culture. There is nothing worth protecting here folks just keep moving and don’t look. Abolish the police is a woke phrase so insane they have to adopt some other name for it such as defund. Groveling, knee bending. [HBOMax] does its grand part to support and pay homage to Mr. Floyd by canceling Gone with the Wind, the first movie in which a black woman won an academy award. So, we don’t want to stop by abolishing the police, we seek to abolish history as well. That means no future for us either folks, none whatsoever.

Is Western civilization collapsing?

Finally, folks, Western Civilization is collapsing. Emotion always seems to shut down facts which no longer matter. Police kill and brutalize far more whites than blacks each year. Therefore Mr. Floyd’s death is an incident which should concern and galvanize all of us to make us support change in training and tactics. Instead, identity politics has trained every element of society from an early age to hate and distrust the others. I feel as if I woke up in an alien universe and realized that I have failed in my lifelong battle to transmit the blessings of liberty to my posterity. Suddenly, neither liberty nor civilization are assured for our posterity.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.

Editor’s Update: the Seattle Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

This YouTube video describes mass police resignations, and dire doings in the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) in Seattle, Washington:

On June 11, popular entertainer Raz Simone made himself the Warlord of CHAZ. He started collecting taxes from Zone businesses. In this memorable episode, his militia broke a man’s eyeglasses and confiscated his cellphone over “unauthorized” graffiti:

But when Mark Dice unearthed a ten-year-old tweet from Simone insulting homosexuals, his constituents deposed him. Since then, no one in Seattle seems willing to admit that he ever held sway in the Zone.

A local apologist for the Zone, making light of the affair, posted this to Quora.com, with several pictures.

This does not comport entirely with this demand:

Does the crowd consider the Zone autonomous any longer?

Yet those within the Zone aren’t boasting as much as they did at first about their “autonomy.” Furthermore, a self-styled patriotic group walked across the border, carrying American flags. A melee broke out with Zone occupants, but that does not negate the group’s having walked in unchallenged. This would indicate that the Raz Simone regime has definitely come to an end. Now, anarchy reigns—with the city providing sanitary and other logistical support.

A correspondent describes the situation on the ground:

At least one resident does not like what he must now endure:

See also this report.

Authorities in dispute on the nature of this crowd

The Mayor of Seattle approves of the display, calling it a “block party.” But the head of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild strongly disagrees. Neither does the chief of police, who accused the mayor of undercutting her authority and ordering the evacuation of the East Precinct.

Protesters in Asheville, N.C., Nashville, Tenn., Portland, Ore., and Chicago have tried to set up similar zones. Police there have not permitted it—thus far.

About the image

“jackyatesgeorgefloyd#14” by 2C2KPhotography is licensed under CC BY 2.0