The looting is going to get lumped into all the other soft-on-crime troubles like no prosecution for minor shoplifting, understaffed police forces, no-bail releases, homeless shantytowns springing up in downtowns, smash-and-grab car break ins, etc. All that kind of stuff makes people fearful for their safety. They want it stopped, they want it stopped now, and they don’t care how it’s stopped. The simplest way to make them stop is have more police and tackle those crimes more seriously. It would mean a lot more people locked up and places feeling more like police states, but people may not care. Since the Republicans are the ones who generally support a strong police presence and impact, they are likely going to benefit from voters who are looking for quick solutions to these problems.
And the money for those extra arrests, extra detentions, and extra criminal prosecutions come from? I’m sure the GOP voters will vote for increased taxes to cover those increased costs.
We can’t expect voters to think through the issues they are voting on. The Fox News viewer who is scared of the homeless on the sidewalk in front of their house is going to vote for the person that says they are going to get rid of the homeless as quickly as possible. How that happens, they don’t care. Their vote counts just the same as the person who has a PhD in Sociology and has been working with the homeless for decades.
Don’t underestimate Comrade Kim, TFG might vote for him too! After all, he fell in love with him in 2018.
I don’t understand why people in, say, rural Pennsylvania would switch to voting Republican because people in, say, San Francisco are doing a smash and grab. SF is going to go for the Dems for sure.
I guess this is just more Fox talking points leaking out into the real world?
A big talking point among the GOP goes like this:
“We have to vote exactly the opposite of the way they do in San Francisco. Others we’ll become just like them!”
I live in the Bay Area so I know how we’ve been used as a scapegoat for everything wrong in the world by the right wing for many decades.
The protests didn’t turn into looting nor theft. Right-wing terrorist groups and opportunistic criminals looted and stole while the protesters continued to protest peacefully and lawfully.
One reason why folks want to defund the police is because the police themselves are the perpetrators of a lot of this crime.
If there’s really a statistically significant increase in people looting retail stores, that ought to be a legitimate concern for anyone.
If you’re a reasonable person who’s disturbed by violent theft, and I feel that I could benefit from you believing that store closures are happening because of violent theft, then it’s a good idea for me to force-feed you this narrative. It will work specifically because you’re a reasonable person who is acting on information that I control.
If I’m an executive of Tar-Mart, and I’m watching the profit margins of my brick-and-mortar stores fall via a combination of online shopping and rising wages for poor people, then I need to close some physical stores. But I need to do it without suggesting online retailers are eating my lunch, because that suggests a flaw in my business model. I can’t suggest it’s because of rising wages, because my working-class customers won’t appreciate me blaming them. These truths will wreck my stock (and a lot of my wealth is tied up in this). However I know investors will accept without verification if we do some targeted store closures because of looting (at least for the next quarter or two. We’ll figure that out as we go).
Fox News will run that story for free, in fact they beg for this sort of thing, so I leak the story “I have to close a few Tar-Marts because ooga booga the urbans are looting the Brita filters and USB adapters”. And that’s why we have a “looting epidemic.” That’s how we prop up the stock until we figure out how we’re going to deal with rising wages and an irreversable shift away from brick-and-mortar stores. It’s obviously looting, nothing wrong with how we do business.
The amount of denial in this thread is staggering. Reading all the “looting? what looting?” comments reminds me of the “global warming? what global warming?” comments from the morons on the Right.
(Yes, perhaps looting is not as pervasive as some people think, but it is going on, and some recent cases brought it to the public’s attention, so pretending like it’s not happening is bewildering to me)
I don’t deny that looting occurs, but I’m skeptical there’s an epidemic. So far I’ve seen no such evidence.
Of course. You started seeing it on television more often in the past year or two. That must mean it’s been happening more often in the past year or two.
Or is this just something that’s always been happening at some baseline amount, and someone decided it was advantageous to report on it more often? Certainly there’s a motive and weapon here.
Yeah, a casual search for “looting” pulls in all sorts of stories about organized mass retail robberies from a pretty broad range of sources. I don’t have enough data to know if this represents a statistical trend or simply a number of high profile incidents being endlessly reported on. But I do know from my social media connections that the average Middle America moron sees these stories and thinks the world is coming to an end.
Plus it’s not like a senile 80 year old man is a shoe-in for reelection.
So here’s my fantasy: The police catch one of the looters and he’s a good-looking white guy. (Bonus if he’s a Proud Boy or Oathkeeper.)
The perp explains in a press conference that the store looting was a protest against rising prices. “Those fat cat store owners are getting rich off working families! We’re just trying to even the playing field a bit.”
I’m not so sure in this scenario that the conservative or swing voter would still see the looting as a reason to vote Republican. I flashback to a scene from the movie Fun With Dick and Jane (the original version with Jane Fonda and George Segal; I never saw the remake). Dick and Jane hold up a Ma Bell location. The customers waiting in line cheer.
I hope you simply forgot to add the /s. Otherwise … seriously?
I’ve seen vids of provacateurs smashing store windows during BLM protests, in apparent attempts to egg on looters and tie them in with peaceful protesters. Such acts would clearly seem to be opposed to the protesters. But I don’t recall them being tied to the police. Could you post some examples?
True.
In my personal observation, many are actually frightened of visiting Philadelphia and/or afraid if their children go. However, this was true before the several looting sprees that occurred in recent years (and also true before the homicide rate increase).
The way the news is being covered this week (and I think the coverage reflects reality), there is a police crackdown on Philadelphia looters. By contrast, one got the impression that police didn’t want to confront looters a few years ago. The strong response this week should dampen the idea that looters are in control. This is reinforced by the fact that a tough-on-crime candidate won the Philadelphia Democratic mayoral primary. So, at least in Pennsylvania, I don’t think looting will help the GOP. It’s more something that cements in place voters who were already impossible for the Democrats to reach.
Good news. In some ways, the Republicans seem to be working hard to solidify a smaller and smaller bloc of REALLY hard core supporters. Which I predict (along with infighting and purity tests) is going to bite them in the ass.
For instance, in the Minneapolis riots in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, there were a bunch of cars that got their tires slashed. Guess who did it?
Cleveland had riots, too. They started with the police using chemical weapons against the crowd.
Yes Republicans we’re in control during Trump but I tend to think the vast majority of folk with views different than Republicans we’re doing the protesting we’re folks more aligned with the Democrats, I have no problems with protesting till it becomes violent then I like to see the bad actors get corrective discipline by doing time in jail regardless of the political voting choices. Just like the folks on Jan. 6th and hopefully the people who incited them into bad behavior will join them .
The protestors were mostly left-wing, but the rioters were mostly right-wing or apolitical. The protestors were not the rioters.