I feel as if there are two aspects to the experience of having your worldview exploded. The first is how it effects you personally. Obviously, once you realize that the media you used to trust/agree with is no longer telling you the truth/stating things you will never believe, you aren't going to look at that media source -- or any other -- the same way.
The second aspect is how a personal change impacts your social circle -- and this is the part where we need to figure out a different way to relate, because the world is not going to get any less confusing or eventful. We are going to have to learn to build and maintain friendships across moral divisions. After years of feeling absolutely broken/enraged/incredulous over the capture of any and all institutions by the cult of cross-sex fantasists, I realized that the only way forward for me was to separate my advocacy from my friendships.
This means that, while I will not disguise my views, I will also not use them as a litmus test on someone's character. Many of us have experienced loss of friendships or social/professional cancellation on this issue, so we know what it is like to be judged in that way. But it does not mean that we have to make that same error of judgment. Good, well-meaning people disagree about important stuff all the time. It is still possible for people who understand the difference between moral action and political opinion to build caring, reciprocal relationships. The problem, in short, is not that we cannot be friends with people who think that men can be women; the problem is that many people think friendship needs to be based on moral purity bullshit rather than reciprocal care and responsibility. Any two people who are capable of rising above the petty level of politics to the real actions and obligations of genuine relationship can interact successfully.
Which is all to say that I don't even make an effort to spread the word about eye-opening media like The Fall of Minneapolis. Because if people are curious what I think, they can ask me; if they are curious what else is out there, they can go look around for themselves. Most people will never question their priors -- I never would have questioned mine had it not been that I was prompted to by a mini-cancellation of my own when I rose to defend a friend. I had no idea what I was stepping in to, so I cannot even take any credit for even the desire to question anything.
It has actually surprised me how not hard it is for most people to be able to respect difference and still be civil -- and even friendly -- with one another. Obviously we are always going to feel comfort when people agree with us, but I think the last few years have proven that the comfort of group-think is not only shallow, but incredibly fragile...
Yes, litmus tests are part of why we are in this mess.
I’m at the stage in which I listen silently to longtime friends express views they assume I agree with. I don’t want to argue with them. I’m less afraid they will cut me off if they knew my actual views than I feel that even beginning to express a different point of view is such a huge task. It’s like trying to convert someone to a different religion.
I’m aware that remaining silent is “problematic”--“silence is violence” as they insist. But I’m not interested in vetting friends for correct viewpoints. I know where they get their information so I don’t blame them for spouting the usual. I was them only a couple of years ago.
A pre-watch/listen comment: the violence that took place that summer was partially an expression of the rage that people felt as a result of Covid policy which they couldn’t express because of a simultaneous support of said policies. The cognitive dissonance was given an appropriate outlet by the carefully crafted narrative.
I respectfully disagree with that assessment. It was anger about who was getting money and who felt left out of the story, and bored suburban kids who wanted to be part of the revolution.
I urge you to look at exactly whose businesses were burned - Lake Street (Minneapolis) and University Avenue (St Paul) minority owned restaurant to and stores. Who shows up in court cases about the looting and arson in these neighborhoods. It’s very revealing. Who was able to rebuild and how the neighborhoods changed as a result.
Thank you! Love your work and feel honored to be asked for more comment here. I’m no expert, just love the neighborhoods that were hurt so badly during this time period. It was painful to watch who got hurt - from a local perspective. Fire truck sirens night and day and helicopters and National Guard to block the bridges across the Mississippi River. The national story about a brave insurrection. The ground truth being examples like a grandma posting on the neighborhood group not to hurt her grandson who likes to wear a black hoodie and rides his bike to work at a grocery store across the river.
There was a local twitter account that live posted the police radio communication when St Paul University Ave got burned and looted. Everyone has a favorite place for Pho or Thai food that was barricaded for months. Friendly pleading messages and flowers painted onto the plywood.
Months or years later some resurfaced in new smaller locations, the nationally famous Gandhi Mahal is still Curry in a Hurry. Some interesting results pop up if you google that story.
Who knows what happened to all the money people donated to the neighborhood funds to try to help these businesses. I got yelled at by a long time acquaintance for saying I donated instead to a local (more well organized) food bank I had volunteered for.
There has been a some turn over in the Minneapolis and St. Paul city councils, curious to see what happens.
It’s hard to be nuanced in text. Agree that people were beyond frustrated by the lockdown policies. Seems like out played out more by people losing touch with each other and any sense of shared day to day reality. The threat was more exaggerated and also worse than we feared. People stayed up all night with a garden hose (and probably loaded weapons) at the ready to defend a neighborhood against right wing extremists during the hardest days. Meanwhile other friends slipped away behind a fog of alcohol and despair and loneliness.
Post watch/listen: I found the podcast to be interesting but it seemed a little bit like a stretch to me, like the journalist had found an interesting thread of a tie-in which made for a seductive headline “Miami murder mystery from the 80’s connected to most divisive culture war moment of today” but it didn’t go far beyond that. After watching to documentary, that tie-in seemed even less relevant. I previously watched Miriam Hinein’s documentary about George Floyd which goes through the entire event minute by minute, so I was ready for some incongruities, but the fuller picture around the evidence and that which was kept out of the trial was astonishing.
I was listening to the Glen Laury show about the documentary and what these two Black men had to say about it so intrigued me that I stopped that podcast and watched The Fall of Minneapolis immediately. It completely revised my understanding both of Chauvin’s actions on that day and the fact that the fifth precinct was sacrificed to the rioters to save the integrity of the police so they were not seen in riot gear fighting the protesters. In the end that was more important than Chauvin being a scapegoat. It showed me how powerful the mob had become empowered as it was by social media. Then what Glen Laury and John Mcwhorter had to say about police officers targeting Black men being a fabricated narrative was another piece of it. It really made me question everything and made me wonder if all this catering to mob narratives was going to undermine all of our government and social institutions that run things. So our new normal would be akin to the corruption of a banana republic. Corrupted not from the inside but by mob rule fueled by cable TV news and the polarization of a populace trained not to look at any contradicting narratives. It was at that point that I began to wonder if I was going to turn into a Republican.
That same trend is happening to me, too. Started at least ten years ago (OG TERF, like you are, I think), but only these past couple years - between the general DEI insanity on race and the quadrupling down on the trans insanity - have I been thinking... wow, I might end up not just going "independent" (there already, but it's kinda meaningless in our two-party system) or "sitting this one out" but actually switching parties. It's all so discombobulating. And frustrating. Sigh.
Slight correction, it’s the 3rd Precinct. Here’s an update. Turns out people in this neighborhood still need police services, the response times were too slow from the temporary location. Looking to MPR which has a definite viewpoint, but a longer more complete story than other sources from a quick search.
I haven’t consumed either yet but I notice you qualify the film as “biased” but not Ronson’s podcast.
I gave up on Ronson after listening to his episode on trans stuff--which in my view was biased against the critics of gender ideology.
Yes, the film was made by someone with “lived experience” in the world of policing.
Since identitarianism validates having the right identity to cover trans stories (trans people of course), shouldn’t the film have more credibility rather than less because of the identity of the filmmaker?
Just kidding, but, really, it seems like an indication of how polarized we are....
Thanks! I was about to ask you if you would do that--both have a point of view, which is fine, but part of what we need to learn is to listen to those POVs that have been marginalized (to use the lingo ironically 😉)
Yes, Robson has a liberal bias, too! That’s why I’m suggesting people consume them together. These are different styles of media making. But they illuminate one another.
Police are a vocation, not just an identity. Obviously, certain camera angles were left out to push a cleaner narrative. Matthew Shepard's death is often attributed to his sexual orientation. According to the police, it was actually related to a failed methamphetamine transaction. I don't know of an incident that wasn't distorted and caused societal outrage. I remember Rodney King being angry at the rioters for burning stores over his police encounter.
One of the genuine issues is that the media doesn't correct itself. Most of the time, if they get story wrong, they just pretend they didn't cover it. If it were required, such as bringing back the fairness doctrine, I think people would be less fanatical if they knew how many media reports were initially wrong.
This is not one I am going to take on, but that doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the general premise. I do. What I have learned from the past year, however, is that it is also necessary to protect one’s mental and physical health, and to conserve energy for instances where I think I can make a difference (eg, I am very big on writing my electeds and now candidates for office on specific issues where I think they have a responsibility to act). For me, this year, that means severely limiting the dose of time spent on deep dives into things about which I can do nothing and over which I have no control. That said, I have taken in that what specifically happened in the Floyd case may not have been all it seemed. About how important that is in understanding the larger issue of policing of people of color, I am much less sure.
Lisa I did watch/listen to most of what you shared although the first article was paywalled so I can’t say whether that would change my overall take
That said I agree with Susan here
“I have taken in that what specifically happened in the Floyd case may not have been all it seemed. About how important that is in understanding the larger issue of policing of people of color, I am much less sure.”
Regarding the overall bias in MSM I agree to a point however I had already known from coverage I consumed at that time before listening to this content about the police training in that particular restraint technique as well as improper police training based in false concept of delirium caused by acute intoxication of drugs like cocaine as well as the toxicology reports and underlying health issues etc so I’m not sure I agree that it’s true that none of this info was in fact available, even if the trial disallowed it or the media oversimplified it
None of that or this new coverage changes my perception that there was in fact depraved indifference to human suffering in the response to this situation and reflects a pervasive police culture that it seems to me to rely too heavily on excessive aggression and physical force as a way of trying to gain control with people such as this individual who was so clearly mentally compromised from the beginning of the arrest process, and I still feel physically ill when witnessing again how police approached this entire situation and this is from the point of view I have as an experienced mental health professional which I know is itself perhaps going to be perceived as it’s own form of bias, but--
I do believe police unnecessarily escalate instead of de-escalating when mental health is in play I believe his anxiety was real in response to his arrest and his fear was palpable in the extended police cam video and I still believe that police reform (not defunding) is necessary and appropriate response to such a tragic unfolding of events even if the issue of inadequate training should have been a mitigating factor in the trial of the officers involved
Also I do still think that the question of whether people of color are in fact treated differently even when they’re not doing anything but going about their business and are not drug addicted or have a rap sheet a mile long is legitimate and worthy of coverage so I’d hate to see people regress into the kind of skepticism that would cause an over correction to doubting whether these issues exist at all or are completely made up of whole cloth to fit a narrative
The truth as they say lies usually somewhere in between and nothing is gained by concluding (as I think the right has mistakenly done) that there’s nothing at all to see here regarding racism and policing just as I feel that gender issues are very real to many people and should not be summarily dismissed even though I agree that over prescribing and misguided training of mental health professionals and medical professionals based in ideology not science has created a medical scandal of nightmare proportions and which has caused serious and avoidable harm to many
What I’ve appreciated about Lisa’s writing is her thoughtfulness and bipartisanship and that’s a rare thing these days so I hope that can continue to prevail even as we continue to examine issues other than gender that of course deserve more careful coverage than we’ve seen
The Washington Post keeps a database of police shootings which is very good. The database is not often foregrounded even by its own reporters. And it's easy to see why given the legendary centrality in left-wing orthodoxy of police shootings resulting in death of unarmed black man.
The number of unarmed shot and killed by police in all the United States in 2022 was 12. But many progressives believe it's in the hundreds+.
I have tried to show it to progressive friends and it's resulted in anger and even refusal to actually look at the database. These individuals belong to the class of highly educated, affluent individuals making up much of the urban left. They simply don't like to see the holy amongst their holiest trounced. So, not infrequently, anger and remonstrations follow.
Thanks for the heads up on the Floyd episode of Things Fall Apart "the Most Mysterious Deaths." I had not heard about the role played by yet another hubristic quack and his pet theory which was never sufficiently discredited by the medical establishment. So I guess "Excited delirium" belongs right up there with "Suppressed memories," mental illness cured by ice pick, and "hysteria" requiring removal of the ovaries (see https://www.donovancleckley.com/p/medical-violence-as-life-saving-medicine), etc., etc.. Just another example of how hard it is to prevent a sloppy and arrogant clinician from earning a living playing "Doctor God" for eager audiences expecting simple solutions to complex problems. Unfortunately there are so SO many examples of how junk science peddlers fool those who really should know better. (Check out Radley Balko's WaPo article about the work of Chris Fabricant of The Innocence Project https://archive.ph/KLiDZ for yet more on junk science in our courts.)
I have enjoyed Ronson's work for many years. I have long appreciated how he at times wears his own failings on his sleeve, often mentioning his guilty pleasure in learning of juicy scandals. But he's not been exactly self-reflective about being a fair weather friend to gender critical Graham Linehan, for example. And I've yet to see any evidence of Ronson getting curious about the pseudoscience propping up transgender dogma either. Perhaps the guilt of a man who rubbernecks whenever he's within range of human carnage, and then turns it into entertainment for clever people has gotten to him feeling a need for penance by way of being a good transgender ally?
While watching the additional officer-cam footage included in The Fall of Minneapolis documentary, I was reminded of how I initially heard Floyd more like a baby than a man. His cries for his Mom I remember piercing me to the heart, as I thought "I'm hearing this man regress into childhood just before he dies." But as the documentary allowed me to see his behavior and facial expressions while he was standing and the police were trying to reason with him, I was struck by how like a small boy who knows he's in trouble he was from the beginning. The uncle interviewed in Ronson's piece called Floyd his "Big Baby." All that makes me suspect that here was a man who never matured to fit his fully-grown body, to whom it would be safe to allow access to adult privileges and responsibilities, or access to (considering his armed robbery conviction) anyone standing between him and cash to feed his drug habit.
Yes, I can understand the outrage over the killing of this man, who evokes some sympathy in me even now. I've felt it too. But I think those who focus too hard on the "another black man laid low by the cops" story are frustratingly blind about all the other individuals worthy of some sympathy here, like the badly-trained cops who were needlessly-frightened with B.S. about druggies possessing superhuman strength, and then made into scapegoats for a system of law enforcement so long mismanaged by negligent and often corrupt political elites. People talk about the Fog of War. Well really, really stupid policies regarding drugs and crime have doomed too many cities' police to operate within a Fog of War for decades now. And it's been deadly to way more people than individuals who look like Floyd.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, yes. However, in times when there are fewer functioning clocks in the world, we lowly citizens who would like to know the time of day, find that it is now necessary to check all the broken ones, sort through all their fragments of both false and accurate information, and somehow assemble a serviceable approximation of reality for ourselves. Traditionally, modern democratic societies rely on their news reporters to help with that, but . . . well, thanks for striking out on your own to do that job, as you work hard to assemble an accurate reflection of the phenomenon of Trans, Lisa. For my part, I'll try not to get too entrenched in my own righteous indignation over the normal and inescapable human condition of being biased one way or the other. Braver Angels can help with that part, BTW, folks: https://braverangels.org/a-braver-way-episode-10/
Thanks for listening to the episode! I thought it was really helpful, but of course it's full of assumptions because he himself was so poorly educated—because the other sides brought out in the doc were absent from the mainstream narrative. But, yeah, he simply does not get it about the trans stuff. It's a real shame. Although I thought the origin story of the word TERF and of Alice Walker's daughter was fascinating. But he stops at the point that he needs to dive in.
True. There are police officers who have had panic attacks just from encountering fentanyl, because they believe that they can overdose and die just from touching it or from encountering a tiny amount while rendering aid to someone who ODed.
This leads people to believe that the responders suffering from panic attacks are actually overdosing, which isn't true. Better education surrounding durgs and sensible drug laws would help prevent this nonsense, but considering how profitable the drug war is, and how badly the need is to replace the marijuana users who now have access to legal weed, that won't happen anytime soon.
I experienced this with my dad with gender ideology, and considering he was the person who taught me how to be a practicing skeptic it was so disillusioning. I think what I've really taken from this is that it is hard to be truly informed on an issue. I know the time that went into becoming informed on all aspects of the gender issue and now thinking of doing that with race as well is exhausting. Thanks for giving me a direction to start looking in.
"The most important thing the documentary offers us is the chance to look at the information that the press weeded out."
Sorry, but this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the horrible behavior of the court, prosecutors and police witnesses who got the outcome they wanted a priori which was to nail Chauvin as the scapegoat.
I watched the doc a few months ago, and want to watch it again. I'm uncomfortable that Alpha News, a far-right news entity, produced this, but I have also learned that the right and even the far right (sometimes) tell the truth the left won't (and vice versa....consult the left for the truth, and actual news, about Donald Trump's legal hassles). Heads up, folks, there's a good book called Hate Crime Hoax: How The Left Is Selling A Fake Race War written by a black political scientist. https://www.amazon.com/Hate-Crime-Hoax-Lefts-Campaign/dp/1621577783
The book is several years old so it doesn't cover, for example, Jussie Smollett, but it does cover a lot of the big stories you'll remember and thought you had the straight scoop on.
You can always tell the true truth-seekers from the rank ideologues: Their worlds don't explode when they learn how wrong they were about something because they know that possibility is always there. It's why I always preferred Carl Sagan, when he was alive, to Richard Dawkins and Stephen J. Gould - both extremely bright men, but too certain in their rightness to consider they might actually be wrong about a few things. Sagan was willing to say about, for example, God--"I don't think he exists, but maybe I'm wrong."
I felt bad for awhile after watching the doc on how badly I misjudged Derek Chauvin, even as I think he might have made a fatal mistake with Floyd. But I no longer think he murdered him, that Floyd was mostly responsible because of his poor habits-induced health and the drugs he was on. But I also know I was absolutely fed a certain narrative by the media and it wasn't my fault for thinking what I did. What it's taught me is to question *all* the 'race', 'trans', 'misogynist', etc. attacks on others. They're never what you think they are.
Absolutely! Even during the immediate coverage of this tragedy, I thought that maybe we could all talk about the epidemic of despair and drug use and feeling lost and forgotten. A lot of people make their way from Chicago to Minneapolis to get away from old habits and groups that enabled drug & alcohol abuse. I’ve heard talks by guys who’s gone through a couple different job and life coaching non profit programs who said that Minneapolis was a welcoming city to get a fresh start in life.
What a tragedy that the focus swung to race and privilege instead of connection and meaning.
If your doubts about the liberal consensus are now extending past the gender issue, I wonder what you would make of Mencius Moldbug's "Letter to Open-Minded Progressives" (https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives/) or "Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations" (https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/), which present a more holistic alternative theory of how American information-disseminating institutions function, rather than just bringing issue-by-issue challenges. Briefly, the thesis is that the progressive movement has ended up filling the de facto sociological niche of a state religion, despite the appearance of our post-Englightment Society being unlike historical civilizations by not having a state religion. (Maybe that sounds nuts, but it seemed even more nuts when it was written in 2008–9, and surprisingly prescient when considering how things have played out in 2024.)
Thank you for offering up this conversation, something I want to have about this. I watched the documentary, paused it several times to fact check, because I trust NOTHING anymore. And I still have concerns that it is biased, mostly due to how badly we’ve been burned already on other fronts, and am still in fact checking mode, but largely found the doc believable. If you REALLY want to blow your minds, watch this loooonnngg documentary on Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew. It explains the psychological foundation/manipulation of our consumerist culture. Nothing we don’t know now but wow, what a propaganda machine it all was if all true. Terrifying. And what comes after this must eventually fail. Is that what we’re seeing now? I don’t think humans are deep down irrational beings but I’d be angry too if a promised life failed to materialize. https://youtu.be/KNxn2FT-duw?si=Z9wI3ZNJji4KJ-rD
The podcast didn't have much impact on my thinking. There was nothing surprising. I don't think "excited delirium" is a real cause of death, but I had never heard this defense.
The documentary, on the other hand, opened my eyes because it contained new information. WHile it may be biased, I am wondering what all of those officers had to gain by saing they were trained in the knee on back restraint method, or by questioning Chauvin's guilt. They were not implicated in George Floyd's death. They weren't getting accolades or money from anything they said. This gives them a lot of credibility, as did their general demeanor and the fact that they were police officers, which I still think is an honorable profession - although there are, of course, some bad apples and a "blue code of silence" that must be broken. I don't think those officers were operating under that code, as the convictions already happened.
Certainly, hearing Floyd say "I can't breath" long before he was put on the ground made me think and question whether he was later suffocated. That he didn't want to get into the car, and instead asked to be put on the ground made me think as well (as before, I thought Chauvin put Floyd in that position, angrily, maybe hoping to hurt him). Knowing he had fentanyl in his system and very high blood pressure and lots of heart blockages had an impact, as I had only heard he was perfectly healthy and there could be no other cause of death. That the police training policy was left out of the trial made a difference in my thinking, as did the fact that they called EMS right away, but they took too long to get there (also left out of the trial). It seems that the coroner may never have really found that Floyd died of suffocation at all, and also that the knee may not have been cutting off his breathing when viewed from the POV of the body camera. Also, the lack of any soft tissue injury or bruising on his neck makes me wonder if he was suffocated.
I can't say for sure what happened, but all of this information, new to me, makes me wonder if these police officers weren't sacrificed as part of a means to controlling chaos, which also included a quick $27 million settlement - before the criminal trial. Was his death tragic? Of course. Was it murder? I'm not so sure about that, nor am I sure there was a fair trial.
This left me wondering if questioning the facts of that case has something in common with gender ideology; namely, that both issues do not allow for questions, for doubt. Also, in both cases, the public has not been given all the facts from which to make an informed decision as to what is true.
About to listen to the podcast right now, since I already watched the documentary some time ago, right when it came out (stumbled upon it by accident). It was quite shocking, though I agree with Lisa that it is biased. It really doesn't address some of the information that is also publicly available and even briefly glimpsed in the documentary. I can't find it right now, but there is a post somewhere by the doctor that was hired by Floyd's family (Baden?), and who sounds absolutely credible, explaining that a person who routinely takes drugs can habituate to them and tolerate a much higher amount of drugs in one's system, something the documentary didn't mention. This was in the doctor's findings at the time of the second autopsy, along with other explanations for why he considers the police restraint to have contributed to Floyd's death.
That said, it's clear that the trial was not a fair one, if only because the jury really couldn't have handed a verdict of "not guilty". I've also read Jesse Singal's pieces on Kyle Rittenhouse and on Jacob Blake, so by the time I got to this documentary, I was expecting something of the sort.
I couldn't believe my eyes, and when I told my husband of this, he had the same response. After the initial shock, I was livid. I still am, because this lie is still affecting our country (Canada) in a most profound way, including my own place of employment. I speak out and correct people whenever I have the chance, including sending emails to publications and unions (some of which now include this "children's mass graves" in their "equality statement", read before each union meeting). The damage done to everyone, including Indigenous people in Canada, is horrible. Lies must not be tolerated, even if nuanced stories take a while longer to tell or aren't going to generate clicks and outrage.
I feel as if there are two aspects to the experience of having your worldview exploded. The first is how it effects you personally. Obviously, once you realize that the media you used to trust/agree with is no longer telling you the truth/stating things you will never believe, you aren't going to look at that media source -- or any other -- the same way.
The second aspect is how a personal change impacts your social circle -- and this is the part where we need to figure out a different way to relate, because the world is not going to get any less confusing or eventful. We are going to have to learn to build and maintain friendships across moral divisions. After years of feeling absolutely broken/enraged/incredulous over the capture of any and all institutions by the cult of cross-sex fantasists, I realized that the only way forward for me was to separate my advocacy from my friendships.
This means that, while I will not disguise my views, I will also not use them as a litmus test on someone's character. Many of us have experienced loss of friendships or social/professional cancellation on this issue, so we know what it is like to be judged in that way. But it does not mean that we have to make that same error of judgment. Good, well-meaning people disagree about important stuff all the time. It is still possible for people who understand the difference between moral action and political opinion to build caring, reciprocal relationships. The problem, in short, is not that we cannot be friends with people who think that men can be women; the problem is that many people think friendship needs to be based on moral purity bullshit rather than reciprocal care and responsibility. Any two people who are capable of rising above the petty level of politics to the real actions and obligations of genuine relationship can interact successfully.
Which is all to say that I don't even make an effort to spread the word about eye-opening media like The Fall of Minneapolis. Because if people are curious what I think, they can ask me; if they are curious what else is out there, they can go look around for themselves. Most people will never question their priors -- I never would have questioned mine had it not been that I was prompted to by a mini-cancellation of my own when I rose to defend a friend. I had no idea what I was stepping in to, so I cannot even take any credit for even the desire to question anything.
It has actually surprised me how not hard it is for most people to be able to respect difference and still be civil -- and even friendly -- with one another. Obviously we are always going to feel comfort when people agree with us, but I think the last few years have proven that the comfort of group-think is not only shallow, but incredibly fragile...
Yes, litmus tests are part of why we are in this mess.
I’m at the stage in which I listen silently to longtime friends express views they assume I agree with. I don’t want to argue with them. I’m less afraid they will cut me off if they knew my actual views than I feel that even beginning to express a different point of view is such a huge task. It’s like trying to convert someone to a different religion.
I’m aware that remaining silent is “problematic”--“silence is violence” as they insist. But I’m not interested in vetting friends for correct viewpoints. I know where they get their information so I don’t blame them for spouting the usual. I was them only a couple of years ago.
This is very thoughtful. Much appreciated.
That’s a great perspective, thank you.
A pre-watch/listen comment: the violence that took place that summer was partially an expression of the rage that people felt as a result of Covid policy which they couldn’t express because of a simultaneous support of said policies. The cognitive dissonance was given an appropriate outlet by the carefully crafted narrative.
I respectfully disagree with that assessment. It was anger about who was getting money and who felt left out of the story, and bored suburban kids who wanted to be part of the revolution.
I urge you to look at exactly whose businesses were burned - Lake Street (Minneapolis) and University Avenue (St Paul) minority owned restaurant to and stores. Who shows up in court cases about the looting and arson in these neighborhoods. It’s very revealing. Who was able to rebuild and how the neighborhoods changed as a result.
It’s been building for decades.
Can you say more? I don’t know the area at all. Thank you!
Thank you! Love your work and feel honored to be asked for more comment here. I’m no expert, just love the neighborhoods that were hurt so badly during this time period. It was painful to watch who got hurt - from a local perspective. Fire truck sirens night and day and helicopters and National Guard to block the bridges across the Mississippi River. The national story about a brave insurrection. The ground truth being examples like a grandma posting on the neighborhood group not to hurt her grandson who likes to wear a black hoodie and rides his bike to work at a grocery store across the river.
There was a local twitter account that live posted the police radio communication when St Paul University Ave got burned and looted. Everyone has a favorite place for Pho or Thai food that was barricaded for months. Friendly pleading messages and flowers painted onto the plywood.
A friend (who didn’t used to be so extreme) on the other sides of the country assumed insurance would pay out for any damage, so burn it all down! In fact no, it took months and months of calls and paperwork to get any results for a small shop owner if one tracked down the individual stories. (A quick search found a story from 2020 that captures a lot of the story) https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/06/23/hmong-america-businesses-already-struggling-due-to-pandemic-now-picking-up-pieces-after-looting/
Months or years later some resurfaced in new smaller locations, the nationally famous Gandhi Mahal is still Curry in a Hurry. Some interesting results pop up if you google that story.
Who knows what happened to all the money people donated to the neighborhood funds to try to help these businesses. I got yelled at by a long time acquaintance for saying I donated instead to a local (more well organized) food bank I had volunteered for.
There has been a some turn over in the Minneapolis and St. Paul city councils, curious to see what happens.
I tried to find links (not behind a paywall) for more details. The wiki entry seems pretty comprehensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arson_damage_during_the_George_Floyd_protests_in_Minneapolis%E2%80%93Saint_Paul
I stopped the video partway to fact check about the 700 buildings being damaged and found a map which seemed to agree with the police officer who said most of the significant damage was near the precinct but I was surprised to see the damage ran through the city, so sad. https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/i/cbslocal/wp-content/uploads/sites/15909630/2020/06/Minneapolis-Unrest-Damage-Map.jpg
Your point is totally valid. I meant “partially” because that is one level on which to see the events, definitely not the entirety.
It’s hard to be nuanced in text. Agree that people were beyond frustrated by the lockdown policies. Seems like out played out more by people losing touch with each other and any sense of shared day to day reality. The threat was more exaggerated and also worse than we feared. People stayed up all night with a garden hose (and probably loaded weapons) at the ready to defend a neighborhood against right wing extremists during the hardest days. Meanwhile other friends slipped away behind a fog of alcohol and despair and loneliness.
Post watch/listen: I found the podcast to be interesting but it seemed a little bit like a stretch to me, like the journalist had found an interesting thread of a tie-in which made for a seductive headline “Miami murder mystery from the 80’s connected to most divisive culture war moment of today” but it didn’t go far beyond that. After watching to documentary, that tie-in seemed even less relevant. I previously watched Miriam Hinein’s documentary about George Floyd which goes through the entire event minute by minute, so I was ready for some incongruities, but the fuller picture around the evidence and that which was kept out of the trial was astonishing.
I was listening to the Glen Laury show about the documentary and what these two Black men had to say about it so intrigued me that I stopped that podcast and watched The Fall of Minneapolis immediately. It completely revised my understanding both of Chauvin’s actions on that day and the fact that the fifth precinct was sacrificed to the rioters to save the integrity of the police so they were not seen in riot gear fighting the protesters. In the end that was more important than Chauvin being a scapegoat. It showed me how powerful the mob had become empowered as it was by social media. Then what Glen Laury and John Mcwhorter had to say about police officers targeting Black men being a fabricated narrative was another piece of it. It really made me question everything and made me wonder if all this catering to mob narratives was going to undermine all of our government and social institutions that run things. So our new normal would be akin to the corruption of a banana republic. Corrupted not from the inside but by mob rule fueled by cable TV news and the polarization of a populace trained not to look at any contradicting narratives. It was at that point that I began to wonder if I was going to turn into a Republican.
That same trend is happening to me, too. Started at least ten years ago (OG TERF, like you are, I think), but only these past couple years - between the general DEI insanity on race and the quadrupling down on the trans insanity - have I been thinking... wow, I might end up not just going "independent" (there already, but it's kinda meaningless in our two-party system) or "sitting this one out" but actually switching parties. It's all so discombobulating. And frustrating. Sigh.
I love their podcast! I have learned so much. Fun to find someone else enjoying it too over here on this stack.
Slight correction, it’s the 3rd Precinct. Here’s an update. Turns out people in this neighborhood still need police services, the response times were too slow from the temporary location. Looking to MPR which has a definite viewpoint, but a longer more complete story than other sources from a quick search.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/11/02/mpls-city-council-moves-forward-on-purchase-of-new-3rd-precinct-site
😂
I haven’t consumed either yet but I notice you qualify the film as “biased” but not Ronson’s podcast.
I gave up on Ronson after listening to his episode on trans stuff--which in my view was biased against the critics of gender ideology.
Yes, the film was made by someone with “lived experience” in the world of policing.
Since identitarianism validates having the right identity to cover trans stories (trans people of course), shouldn’t the film have more credibility rather than less because of the identity of the filmmaker?
Just kidding, but, really, it seems like an indication of how polarized we are....
I added biased to Ronson too!
Thanks! I was about to ask you if you would do that--both have a point of view, which is fine, but part of what we need to learn is to listen to those POVs that have been marginalized (to use the lingo ironically 😉)
You’re totally right. I should have been clearer that both have a strong POV, which I why they should be taken together! My fault
Yes, Robson has a liberal bias, too! That’s why I’m suggesting people consume them together. These are different styles of media making. But they illuminate one another.
Police are a vocation, not just an identity. Obviously, certain camera angles were left out to push a cleaner narrative. Matthew Shepard's death is often attributed to his sexual orientation. According to the police, it was actually related to a failed methamphetamine transaction. I don't know of an incident that wasn't distorted and caused societal outrage. I remember Rodney King being angry at the rioters for burning stores over his police encounter.
Yet almost no one in my world knows this about Shepard. Why can't the media help create an educated public?!
One of the genuine issues is that the media doesn't correct itself. Most of the time, if they get story wrong, they just pretend they didn't cover it. If it were required, such as bringing back the fairness doctrine, I think people would be less fanatical if they knew how many media reports were initially wrong.
Right? They’ve already written the opera, musical? Too late to change the myth of the martyr.
This is not one I am going to take on, but that doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the general premise. I do. What I have learned from the past year, however, is that it is also necessary to protect one’s mental and physical health, and to conserve energy for instances where I think I can make a difference (eg, I am very big on writing my electeds and now candidates for office on specific issues where I think they have a responsibility to act). For me, this year, that means severely limiting the dose of time spent on deep dives into things about which I can do nothing and over which I have no control. That said, I have taken in that what specifically happened in the Floyd case may not have been all it seemed. About how important that is in understanding the larger issue of policing of people of color, I am much less sure.
Lisa I did watch/listen to most of what you shared although the first article was paywalled so I can’t say whether that would change my overall take
That said I agree with Susan here
“I have taken in that what specifically happened in the Floyd case may not have been all it seemed. About how important that is in understanding the larger issue of policing of people of color, I am much less sure.”
Regarding the overall bias in MSM I agree to a point however I had already known from coverage I consumed at that time before listening to this content about the police training in that particular restraint technique as well as improper police training based in false concept of delirium caused by acute intoxication of drugs like cocaine as well as the toxicology reports and underlying health issues etc so I’m not sure I agree that it’s true that none of this info was in fact available, even if the trial disallowed it or the media oversimplified it
None of that or this new coverage changes my perception that there was in fact depraved indifference to human suffering in the response to this situation and reflects a pervasive police culture that it seems to me to rely too heavily on excessive aggression and physical force as a way of trying to gain control with people such as this individual who was so clearly mentally compromised from the beginning of the arrest process, and I still feel physically ill when witnessing again how police approached this entire situation and this is from the point of view I have as an experienced mental health professional which I know is itself perhaps going to be perceived as it’s own form of bias, but--
I do believe police unnecessarily escalate instead of de-escalating when mental health is in play I believe his anxiety was real in response to his arrest and his fear was palpable in the extended police cam video and I still believe that police reform (not defunding) is necessary and appropriate response to such a tragic unfolding of events even if the issue of inadequate training should have been a mitigating factor in the trial of the officers involved
Also I do still think that the question of whether people of color are in fact treated differently even when they’re not doing anything but going about their business and are not drug addicted or have a rap sheet a mile long is legitimate and worthy of coverage so I’d hate to see people regress into the kind of skepticism that would cause an over correction to doubting whether these issues exist at all or are completely made up of whole cloth to fit a narrative
The truth as they say lies usually somewhere in between and nothing is gained by concluding (as I think the right has mistakenly done) that there’s nothing at all to see here regarding racism and policing just as I feel that gender issues are very real to many people and should not be summarily dismissed even though I agree that over prescribing and misguided training of mental health professionals and medical professionals based in ideology not science has created a medical scandal of nightmare proportions and which has caused serious and avoidable harm to many
What I’ve appreciated about Lisa’s writing is her thoughtfulness and bipartisanship and that’s a rare thing these days so I hope that can continue to prevail even as we continue to examine issues other than gender that of course deserve more careful coverage than we’ve seen
Could you link to the Ronson episode mentioned? Thanks!
Yes, please link! I can’t find it.
The Washington Post keeps a database of police shootings which is very good. The database is not often foregrounded even by its own reporters. And it's easy to see why given the legendary centrality in left-wing orthodoxy of police shootings resulting in death of unarmed black man.
The number of unarmed shot and killed by police in all the United States in 2022 was 12. But many progressives believe it's in the hundreds+.
I have tried to show it to progressive friends and it's resulted in anger and even refusal to actually look at the database. These individuals belong to the class of highly educated, affluent individuals making up much of the urban left. They simply don't like to see the holy amongst their holiest trounced. So, not infrequently, anger and remonstrations follow.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
I heard that the WP took down that page due to (external? internal?) pressures. glad to see it's still up AND being updated
Thanks for the heads up on the Floyd episode of Things Fall Apart "the Most Mysterious Deaths." I had not heard about the role played by yet another hubristic quack and his pet theory which was never sufficiently discredited by the medical establishment. So I guess "Excited delirium" belongs right up there with "Suppressed memories," mental illness cured by ice pick, and "hysteria" requiring removal of the ovaries (see https://www.donovancleckley.com/p/medical-violence-as-life-saving-medicine), etc., etc.. Just another example of how hard it is to prevent a sloppy and arrogant clinician from earning a living playing "Doctor God" for eager audiences expecting simple solutions to complex problems. Unfortunately there are so SO many examples of how junk science peddlers fool those who really should know better. (Check out Radley Balko's WaPo article about the work of Chris Fabricant of The Innocence Project https://archive.ph/KLiDZ for yet more on junk science in our courts.)
I have enjoyed Ronson's work for many years. I have long appreciated how he at times wears his own failings on his sleeve, often mentioning his guilty pleasure in learning of juicy scandals. But he's not been exactly self-reflective about being a fair weather friend to gender critical Graham Linehan, for example. And I've yet to see any evidence of Ronson getting curious about the pseudoscience propping up transgender dogma either. Perhaps the guilt of a man who rubbernecks whenever he's within range of human carnage, and then turns it into entertainment for clever people has gotten to him feeling a need for penance by way of being a good transgender ally?
While watching the additional officer-cam footage included in The Fall of Minneapolis documentary, I was reminded of how I initially heard Floyd more like a baby than a man. His cries for his Mom I remember piercing me to the heart, as I thought "I'm hearing this man regress into childhood just before he dies." But as the documentary allowed me to see his behavior and facial expressions while he was standing and the police were trying to reason with him, I was struck by how like a small boy who knows he's in trouble he was from the beginning. The uncle interviewed in Ronson's piece called Floyd his "Big Baby." All that makes me suspect that here was a man who never matured to fit his fully-grown body, to whom it would be safe to allow access to adult privileges and responsibilities, or access to (considering his armed robbery conviction) anyone standing between him and cash to feed his drug habit.
Yes, I can understand the outrage over the killing of this man, who evokes some sympathy in me even now. I've felt it too. But I think those who focus too hard on the "another black man laid low by the cops" story are frustratingly blind about all the other individuals worthy of some sympathy here, like the badly-trained cops who were needlessly-frightened with B.S. about druggies possessing superhuman strength, and then made into scapegoats for a system of law enforcement so long mismanaged by negligent and often corrupt political elites. People talk about the Fog of War. Well really, really stupid policies regarding drugs and crime have doomed too many cities' police to operate within a Fog of War for decades now. And it's been deadly to way more people than individuals who look like Floyd.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, yes. However, in times when there are fewer functioning clocks in the world, we lowly citizens who would like to know the time of day, find that it is now necessary to check all the broken ones, sort through all their fragments of both false and accurate information, and somehow assemble a serviceable approximation of reality for ourselves. Traditionally, modern democratic societies rely on their news reporters to help with that, but . . . well, thanks for striking out on your own to do that job, as you work hard to assemble an accurate reflection of the phenomenon of Trans, Lisa. For my part, I'll try not to get too entrenched in my own righteous indignation over the normal and inescapable human condition of being biased one way or the other. Braver Angels can help with that part, BTW, folks: https://braverangels.org/a-braver-way-episode-10/
Thanks for listening to the episode! I thought it was really helpful, but of course it's full of assumptions because he himself was so poorly educated—because the other sides brought out in the doc were absent from the mainstream narrative. But, yeah, he simply does not get it about the trans stuff. It's a real shame. Although I thought the origin story of the word TERF and of Alice Walker's daughter was fascinating. But he stops at the point that he needs to dive in.
True. There are police officers who have had panic attacks just from encountering fentanyl, because they believe that they can overdose and die just from touching it or from encountering a tiny amount while rendering aid to someone who ODed.
This leads people to believe that the responders suffering from panic attacks are actually overdosing, which isn't true. Better education surrounding durgs and sensible drug laws would help prevent this nonsense, but considering how profitable the drug war is, and how badly the need is to replace the marijuana users who now have access to legal weed, that won't happen anytime soon.
I experienced this with my dad with gender ideology, and considering he was the person who taught me how to be a practicing skeptic it was so disillusioning. I think what I've really taken from this is that it is hard to be truly informed on an issue. I know the time that went into becoming informed on all aspects of the gender issue and now thinking of doing that with race as well is exhausting. Thanks for giving me a direction to start looking in.
"The most important thing the documentary offers us is the chance to look at the information that the press weeded out."
Sorry, but this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the horrible behavior of the court, prosecutors and police witnesses who got the outcome they wanted a priori which was to nail Chauvin as the scapegoat.
I watched the doc a few months ago, and want to watch it again. I'm uncomfortable that Alpha News, a far-right news entity, produced this, but I have also learned that the right and even the far right (sometimes) tell the truth the left won't (and vice versa....consult the left for the truth, and actual news, about Donald Trump's legal hassles). Heads up, folks, there's a good book called Hate Crime Hoax: How The Left Is Selling A Fake Race War written by a black political scientist. https://www.amazon.com/Hate-Crime-Hoax-Lefts-Campaign/dp/1621577783
The book is several years old so it doesn't cover, for example, Jussie Smollett, but it does cover a lot of the big stories you'll remember and thought you had the straight scoop on.
You can always tell the true truth-seekers from the rank ideologues: Their worlds don't explode when they learn how wrong they were about something because they know that possibility is always there. It's why I always preferred Carl Sagan, when he was alive, to Richard Dawkins and Stephen J. Gould - both extremely bright men, but too certain in their rightness to consider they might actually be wrong about a few things. Sagan was willing to say about, for example, God--"I don't think he exists, but maybe I'm wrong."
I felt bad for awhile after watching the doc on how badly I misjudged Derek Chauvin, even as I think he might have made a fatal mistake with Floyd. But I no longer think he murdered him, that Floyd was mostly responsible because of his poor habits-induced health and the drugs he was on. But I also know I was absolutely fed a certain narrative by the media and it wasn't my fault for thinking what I did. What it's taught me is to question *all* the 'race', 'trans', 'misogynist', etc. attacks on others. They're never what you think they are.
Absolutely! Even during the immediate coverage of this tragedy, I thought that maybe we could all talk about the epidemic of despair and drug use and feeling lost and forgotten. A lot of people make their way from Chicago to Minneapolis to get away from old habits and groups that enabled drug & alcohol abuse. I’ve heard talks by guys who’s gone through a couple different job and life coaching non profit programs who said that Minneapolis was a welcoming city to get a fresh start in life.
What a tragedy that the focus swung to race and privilege instead of connection and meaning.
If your doubts about the liberal consensus are now extending past the gender issue, I wonder what you would make of Mencius Moldbug's "Letter to Open-Minded Progressives" (https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives/) or "Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations" (https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/), which present a more holistic alternative theory of how American information-disseminating institutions function, rather than just bringing issue-by-issue challenges. Briefly, the thesis is that the progressive movement has ended up filling the de facto sociological niche of a state religion, despite the appearance of our post-Englightment Society being unlike historical civilizations by not having a state religion. (Maybe that sounds nuts, but it seemed even more nuts when it was written in 2008–9, and surprisingly prescient when considering how things have played out in 2024.)
The truth is often complex.
Thank you for offering up this conversation, something I want to have about this. I watched the documentary, paused it several times to fact check, because I trust NOTHING anymore. And I still have concerns that it is biased, mostly due to how badly we’ve been burned already on other fronts, and am still in fact checking mode, but largely found the doc believable. If you REALLY want to blow your minds, watch this loooonnngg documentary on Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew. It explains the psychological foundation/manipulation of our consumerist culture. Nothing we don’t know now but wow, what a propaganda machine it all was if all true. Terrifying. And what comes after this must eventually fail. Is that what we’re seeing now? I don’t think humans are deep down irrational beings but I’d be angry too if a promised life failed to materialize. https://youtu.be/KNxn2FT-duw?si=Z9wI3ZNJji4KJ-rD
The podcast didn't have much impact on my thinking. There was nothing surprising. I don't think "excited delirium" is a real cause of death, but I had never heard this defense.
The documentary, on the other hand, opened my eyes because it contained new information. WHile it may be biased, I am wondering what all of those officers had to gain by saing they were trained in the knee on back restraint method, or by questioning Chauvin's guilt. They were not implicated in George Floyd's death. They weren't getting accolades or money from anything they said. This gives them a lot of credibility, as did their general demeanor and the fact that they were police officers, which I still think is an honorable profession - although there are, of course, some bad apples and a "blue code of silence" that must be broken. I don't think those officers were operating under that code, as the convictions already happened.
Certainly, hearing Floyd say "I can't breath" long before he was put on the ground made me think and question whether he was later suffocated. That he didn't want to get into the car, and instead asked to be put on the ground made me think as well (as before, I thought Chauvin put Floyd in that position, angrily, maybe hoping to hurt him). Knowing he had fentanyl in his system and very high blood pressure and lots of heart blockages had an impact, as I had only heard he was perfectly healthy and there could be no other cause of death. That the police training policy was left out of the trial made a difference in my thinking, as did the fact that they called EMS right away, but they took too long to get there (also left out of the trial). It seems that the coroner may never have really found that Floyd died of suffocation at all, and also that the knee may not have been cutting off his breathing when viewed from the POV of the body camera. Also, the lack of any soft tissue injury or bruising on his neck makes me wonder if he was suffocated.
I can't say for sure what happened, but all of this information, new to me, makes me wonder if these police officers weren't sacrificed as part of a means to controlling chaos, which also included a quick $27 million settlement - before the criminal trial. Was his death tragic? Of course. Was it murder? I'm not so sure about that, nor am I sure there was a fair trial.
This left me wondering if questioning the facts of that case has something in common with gender ideology; namely, that both issues do not allow for questions, for doubt. Also, in both cases, the public has not been given all the facts from which to make an informed decision as to what is true.
About to listen to the podcast right now, since I already watched the documentary some time ago, right when it came out (stumbled upon it by accident). It was quite shocking, though I agree with Lisa that it is biased. It really doesn't address some of the information that is also publicly available and even briefly glimpsed in the documentary. I can't find it right now, but there is a post somewhere by the doctor that was hired by Floyd's family (Baden?), and who sounds absolutely credible, explaining that a person who routinely takes drugs can habituate to them and tolerate a much higher amount of drugs in one's system, something the documentary didn't mention. This was in the doctor's findings at the time of the second autopsy, along with other explanations for why he considers the police restraint to have contributed to Floyd's death.
That said, it's clear that the trial was not a fair one, if only because the jury really couldn't have handed a verdict of "not guilty". I've also read Jesse Singal's pieces on Kyle Rittenhouse and on Jacob Blake, so by the time I got to this documentary, I was expecting something of the sort.
But my own trust in the media collapsed in early 2022 when I read this article: https://www.dorchesterreview.ca/blogs/news/in-kamloops-not-one-body-has-been-found
I couldn't believe my eyes, and when I told my husband of this, he had the same response. After the initial shock, I was livid. I still am, because this lie is still affecting our country (Canada) in a most profound way, including my own place of employment. I speak out and correct people whenever I have the chance, including sending emails to publications and unions (some of which now include this "children's mass graves" in their "equality statement", read before each union meeting). The damage done to everyone, including Indigenous people in Canada, is horrible. Lies must not be tolerated, even if nuanced stories take a while longer to tell or aren't going to generate clicks and outrage.