I saw this posted on Sailer’s blog.

Police in San Francisco scoured the city Saturday, searching for killers who gunned down four men in what likely was a gang-related attack in Hayes Valley late Friday.

Police Chief Greg Suhr said Saturday that police gang task force and homicide units are combining efforts so they can act quickly to counter any possible gang retaliation.

“We need to figure out why this happened. If we can discover that, then we will know if there is another shoe that is going to fall,” Suhr said. “We need to be out in front of that.”

Authorities do not believe the public is in danger in the thriving neighborhood known for its boutiques and popular restaurants.

“Right now it looks like an all-out assault on these guys,” said Lt. Toney Chaplin of the San Francisco Police Department homicide detail. “It’s hard to pin down” what might have motivated the attack, he said.

The first step in “pinning it down” would be noticing the race of the victims. I’m not an expert on police work, but I’m told cops often find that helpful. If you read the rest of the article, you’ll note they never describe the victims as anything other than 20-something adults. They could be rabbinical students for all anyone is willing to admit.

Of course, the lack of a description has become a form of esoteric communication. If the subjects were Italians, the story would have mentioned it and the cops would have been talking about how it looked like a mafia hit. If the victims were rabbinical students, then the news story would be accompanied by a piece on antisemitism and the Tea Party. The only news stories these days without reference to race or ethnicity are stories about black crime.

The comments, of course, are where the fun resides in the new sites. This comment is better than the writer realizes.

Liberals, in general, have a studied obliviousness to the world just next door. At Yale, the students and faculty are universally liberal, yet the bad part of New Haven may as well be Venus. When the hoodlums get around the cops and rob someone on campus, the incident is thrown down the memory hole. If you want to see a real life example the Time Machine, walk around the Yale campus for a while.

This comment is telling:

This is something I’ve observed about the Left for my whole life. They are a lot that kid, who picks a fight and then runs to the teacher complaining that the other kid is starting a fight. The Left has been beating the rest of us over the head about race since forever. The last decade they have been ruining lives over the issue of race. Now we see some push back from normal people and they complain about the intolerance.

It is just another example of why we’re dealing with a virulent religious sect.

The Paris attacks are like a bad storm that has revealed a lot long buried items. The people who buried them are not happy they have come to the surface. Everyone else is shocked by their existence and can’t be distracted from their sudden appearance. This is what strikes me about this story.

Jews are fleeing terror-hit Paris because of growing anti-Semitism in France, one of Britain’s most influential Jewish journalists said today.

Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, spoke out after an Islamic terrorist took six people hostage and held them captive in a Kosher supermarket in the French capital.

This afternoon police ordered all shops in a famous Jewish neighborhood in central Paris to close.

The mayor’s office in Paris announced the closure of shops along the Rosiers street in Paris’ Marais neighborhood, in the heart of the tourist district and less than a mile away from the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were killed on Wednesday.

Hours before the Jewish Sabbath, the street is usually crowded with French Jews and tourists alike.

Mr Pollard said today’s terror attack in Paris, linked to the massacre at the office of Charlie Hebdo, will force more French Jews to flee the country.

Many are moving to Britain or to Israel, according to a report published in the newspaper last year.

He said the fact that a terrorist had chosen to target a Jewish store was no ‘fluke’.

In a series of tweets he said: ‘Every single French Jew I know has either left or is actively working out how to leave’.

‘So, it’s a fluke that the latest target is a kosher grocer, is it?

‘What’s going on in France – outrages that have been getting worse for years – put our antisemitism problems in perspective’.

The hostage situation in the Porte de Vincennes part of the city is ongoing today.

But amid fears the terror attack may be linked to anti-Semitism police have also demanded that shops on Rue des Rosiers, in the Jewish quarter of Paris, to close early ‘as a precaution’ in case of further violence.

18 months ago France had around 500,000 Jewish residents – the largest population in the EU – but this may now be below 400,000, Mr Pollard’s newspaper said.

There were rumors during the 2012 election that the Bushies did not go all in for Romney and maybe worked to undermine his campaign. The argument being that they wanted to make sure the field was clear in 2016 for Jeb to run. On its face it never made a lot of sense because Jeb looked like a guy uninterested in running for the top spot. Instead he looked like a guy ready to cash in. Unlike his brother, Jeb never got a chance to cash in on the family name. He made some decent money in the 80’s, but not plutocrat money.

Here we are two years on and that theory is sounding more plausible. Maybe Jeb was plotting this move all along. Romney in the White House would have scuttled that plan. The earliest Jeb could make a run would have been 2020 and that would be pushing it. Odds are he was looking at 2024 when he was in his late 60’s and a political has-been. Running in 2016 looked a slot better for Jeb so undermining Romney would have made a lot of sense, assuming they are that Machiavellian.

Romney is sort of confirming those suspicions now that he is plotting to get in the race.

Mitt Romney forcefully declared his interest in a third presidential run to a room full of powerful Republican donors on Friday, disrupting the fluid 2016 GOP field as would-be rival Jeb Bush was moving swiftly to consolidate establishment support.

Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, has been mulling another campaign for several months, but his comments Friday mark a clear step forward in his thinking and come amid mounting tensions between the Romney and Bush camps.

“I want to be president,” Romney told about 30 donors in New York. He said that his wife, Ann — who last fall said she was emphatically against a run — had changed her mind and was now “very encouraging,” although their five sons remain split, according to multiple attendees.

Advisers said Romney discussed the race with his family over the holidays, where they spent time skiing in Park City, Utah, but he insisted that he has not made up his mind whether to run. Advisers said he recognizes that he would not be able to waltz into the nomination and that the intra-party competition is shaping up to be stiffer in next year’s primaries than it was in 2012.

Bush’s sudden focus on the race in recent weeks has put pressure on Romney to decide soon. Romney has been in regular conversations with major donors, some of whom are pushing him to run again, but confidants have also warned him that his window of opportunity could shut if he does not declare his intentions within 30 to 60 days.

I suspect a lot of the Wets are still pissed about the Bushies pulling their punches in 2012. Goosing Romney to run again would severely complicate the Jeb coronation. His game plan relies on the Dries splintering amongst a number of candidates, letting him hoover up the big money and establishment support so he can outlast whoever emerges from the scramble amongst the Dries. Romney will have plenty of money and plenty of organizational support.

I think if you are one of those fringe weirdos hoping for a white knight to cobble together the disparate components of the Right and carry the nomination in 2016, this is good news. Jeb Bush is probably the worst possible choice for president. Even Elizabeth Warren would be better and she’s as dumb as a plank and has a head for of nonsense. Bush give those crackpot ideas the imprimatur of the Republican Party, and thus will get the support of many who claim to be on the Right. Anything that halts his march to the throne is a good thing.

I’m fond of comparing the Cult of Modern Liberalism with Islam as I think there are a lot of points of comparison. That and it drives progressives bonkers. If I have to live in an ideocracy, I may as well have some fun with it. But, both religions do have a lot in common. One good example of a commonality is the willingness and ability to hold grudges. Once either religion puts you on the list, they never forget about you.

The Fridays news dump brings word that the Feds plan to charge General Petraeus will be indicted for pillow talk.

The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired Gen. David H. Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of the C.I.A., officials said, leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison.

The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other highly classified information. F.B.I. agents discovered classified documents on her computer after Mr. Petraeus resigned from the C.I.A. in 2012 when the affair became public.

Petraeus was put on the proscribed list back in the Bush years when he managed to change the course of the Iraq mess, thus stealing a victory from the other fundamentalists going crazy at the time, the Democratic Party. The fanatic website MoveOn.org ran full page ads in the New Cult Times issuing a fatwa denouncing Patraeus as a heretic traitor. The Islamists Democrats continued to call him General BetrayUs through the remainder of the Bush years.

The Left never forgets about these things. They finally got their man when he foolishly decided to accept the CIA post from the Obama administration. That was probably a setup. In order to get the job he had to submit to a full FBI background check. You would think this happens with generals while they serve, but that’s not the case. The FBI is supposed to do regular background checks on people holding security clearances, but they don’t. Nominating Patraeus to the CIA post was like the mob boss setting up a meet with his arch enemy in order to whack him.

As Steve Sailer pointed out at the time, the affair that got Patreaus jammed up was surely turned up long before it was revealed. It is one of those useful things in the sort of war-band politics played in DC these days. Whether or not they dropped the dime on him to cover up their shenanigans in Libya is debatable, but they put the screws to him for a reason.

The decision to send the guy to prison leads me to believe it is revenge, not some Libya conspiracy. The press did all the hard work covering up the gun running the administration was doing in the Maghreb. There was no need to blackmail Patraeus. I could be wrong, but that’s my sense. The White House put the hit on the general to pay a debt to the fanatics. This is just the finishing blow.

It is yet another example of how the the normals simply don’t get what they are dealing with in regards to American liberalism. They keep thinking these people can be reasoned with like normal people. Instead, what we call the Left is more like the Scientology. Their primary motivation is defense of the cause. That trumps everything. All enemies within striking distance must be struck, no matter the cost.

Some time back, I recall that Juan Cole was popular with the cool kids of the chattering skull circuit. I don’t recall why or even the exact dates. I just recall that the more fashionable writers at the time felt it necessary to discuss Juan Cole. I want to say it was in the Bush years, but I could be mistaken. It does not matter anyway.

The other thing I recall about him is that I did not get why everyone was slobbering over him. That happens a lot with me. Even with those with whom I am sympathetic. The cool kids will be in love with some new chattering skull and I just don’t get it. In some cases, the new skull strikes me as derivative and stupid. All I remember about Juan Cole is that I did not find him interesting.

Anyway, this is floating around after the Paris attacks. People keep posting it, but no one says why or draws any conclusions from it. Maybe he is coming back in style again.

The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two policemen, by terrorists in Paris was in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public.

The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). Many Muslim immigrants in the post-war period to France came as laborers and were not literate people, and their grandchildren are rather distant from Middle Eastern fundamentalism, pursuing urban cosmopolitan culture such as rap and rai. In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.

Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.

Steve Sailer has been having fun with the backlash trope. Anytime non-Occidentals behave poorly, the Cult rushes forth with warnings and concerns about the backlash. The fact that no one alive has ever seen a backlash, only the front lashes, is what Sailer is mocking.

I’m fond of saying that fanatics see only that which confirms their fanaticism. Disconfirmation is either ignored or jammed into the mythology in some way. The fear of the backlash is how the Cult shifts the focus from the bad behavior onto their preferred enemies. “Let’s not talk about the shooting. Let’s talk about those beastly provincials who will surely use this to cause trouble.”

Cole’s is taking this to a whole new level by fashioning an imaginary conspiracy by Muslims to incite the normal people of France to do what, well, you know, what they secretly dream of doing. C’mon, don’t play dumb. If you’re a white guy you know you secretly dream of getting the trains running on time again to the camps. You know!

It is a bizarre inversion of reality from these guys. Good behavior by the core population is proof of a secret longing to murder the fringe population. On the other hand, the fringe population actually murdering the core population is proof of nothing at all. It is just an isolated incident.

I must say, I am impressed by the mental gymnastics here. It would be easy to dismiss it as mendacity on stilts, but we’re dealing with true believers. Unlike the Muslims shooting up the city, Western fanatics are convinced they are Turing machines, processing the data of reality with flawless logic. It’s why the Muslims fear them so much. They know a dangerous fanatic when they see one.

Razib Khan has a post up responding to something Ezra Klein posted regarding the Paris incident. First here’s the Ezra Klein piece. This is the bit that got Razib exorcised:

These murders can’t be explained by a close read of an editorial product, and they needn’t be condemned on free speech grounds. They can only be explained by the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn’t need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.

This is a tragedy. It is a crime. It is not a statement, or a controversy.

Razib first wonders if Klein had some sort of aneurism whilst writing that bit. Maybe he is unfamiliar with Klein’s work, I don’t know, but that piece was probably one of the better ones from the Vox project. I have no idea what sort of traffic the site gets, but no one ever mentions it, unless it is to mock Ezra Klein. Even the mockery has faded, for the most part.

Anyway, Razib goes on to make an excellent point:

This co-mingling of religious and communal identity is not an aberration, but the human norm over most of history. In much of the world it still is the norm. Dishonoring the gods of barbarians and unbelievers has long been a matter of course. Churches were built over temples and mosques over churches for a reason. To show the power of one communal identity and the eclipse of another. Gods and people were interchangeable in the psyche. When the Assyrians sacked Babylon they dragged away the statue of the god Marduk in chains. But individuals dishonoring the gods of their own people was always a matter of serious concern, violating public order, and potentially undermining social harmony (often, innovation in religious practice prefigured rebellion). It doesn’t take much to imagine that there might be functional reason for societies to establish taboos of what is inviolate and sacred, and sanction those who trespass.

It is incorrectly assumed that religions must have an invisible man in the sky component. Dividing theology from ideology by the presence or absence of the super natural is convenient, but leads to the false assumption that ideologies are devoid of magical thinking. That’s not the case.

The most obvious example is PETA, the cult that claims to be the guardians of non-human mammal rights. The adherents of that cult imagine all sorts of things about animals that are laughably untrue. They also proselytize about the killing of animals, while running abattoirs all over the country.

Ezra Klein is a conventional liberal and of middling intelligence. He is not a blockhead, but he has a narrow mindedness that suggests a lack of curiosity about the world. He’s also overstocked with religiosity. It’s why his posts often sound like the journal entries of a rabbinical student or the private musings of a novice monk. He is forever wrestling with his faith.

Luckily for him, the prevailing religion of modern America is cultural Marxism so he has found a comfortable place to cast himself as a post-modern Tertullian. He has organized his life around proselytizing over the Internet. As a novice he worked his way up to a major media organ, but that was not enough. He went off to build his own Mosque called Vox where he can pray and train others to believe like him. It’s not a coincidence that cultural Marxism has many of the same structures as Islam.

Of course, Ezra really does not believe the things he preaches in the sense that he knows them to be true. I know two plus two is four for all known values of two. There’s no need for me to argue it or prove it. The reason for proselytizing is to convince yourself by convincing others. Misery loves company and so do the believers. Vox in explanatory journalism in the same sense that Shia is explanatory Islam.

One fascinating thing about the Paris attack is watching how the Left reacts to it. At some level, it seems they get that they are at war with a complimentary religion. As Razib points out, every religion has its taboos. Much of what modern liberalism preaches is taboo in Islam. What is sacred in Islam is considered barbaric by liberals.

The trouble is the Left can’t bring itself to condemn Islam. That’s simply against the core of their faith. Islam does not suffer from such a defect. They get that they are a religion at war with another religion. Hilariously, even when Islam makes that point, liberals are forced to call them liars and inauthentic Muslims.

Added to the crazy stew is the fact that western liberals have a technological edge and are killing Muslims wholesale. Muslims have to settle for retail killing, like the Paris attack. The simple solution is to expel all Muslims for Western lands, but again, they bump into their own dogma prohibiting such things. The result is a surge in Muslim immigrants, hell bent on killing the decadent West.

This will not end well.

Buried in the news of Muslim lunatics shooting up a French newspaper office, the Black Guerrilla Family sent an armed man into a police station to test their security.

A member of the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) gang, armed with a loaded .22 caliber handgun, walked into a Baltimore police station on Tuesday in order to test its security, police said.

Baltimore police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said the 29-year-old man walked into the Northeastern District station “fully armed and loaded with drugs on him,” The Baltimore Sun reported.

“An organized gang in the city of Baltimore sent an armed suspect into our building to see our security, to test our security. That is alarming to us, to me. I am going to send a message that we are not going to cower, we’re not going to back down,” Mr. Batts said.

Police said the man was enlisted by BGF to test police security for allegedly betraying the gang in the past.

“He did not go in there on his free will. This person had very little option, according to his statement, which lends credibility to what a dire situation this was,” Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said.

The police commissioner is ordering security changes throughout the department. Security has also been enhanced in neighboring Baltimore County, a local NBC affiliate reported.

“The Baltimore County Police Department has received information about an incident at the Baltimore City Police Northeast District Station this morning,” Cpl. John Wachter said in a statement.

“In response to this, we have made necessary adjustments to our operations to ensure the safety of officers, professional staff and visitors at our facilities.”

The denouement of the New left in the late sixties and early seventies was the decay of the Civil Rights movement into anarchy and violence. The anarchy was easy. Riots all over America in the inner cities wrecked black neighborhoods, drove away the tax base and condemned millions of blacks to a life of squalor. The violence was more sophisticated. The Black Panthers worked hard to look like something other than a race-based street gang. The Black Guerrilla Family started out as a prison reform movement, but quickly became a hyper-violent prison gang.

How the Civil Rights Movement went from peaceful demands for legal rights to anarchic violence has been thrown down the memory hole. David Horowitz, the guy right there during the rise and fall of the Black Panthers and Black Guerrilla Family, has written about it. His book, Destructive Generation, is a must reading for anyone trying to understand the Left in America. Otherwise, the whole sorry episode has been erased from the narrative.

As Horowitz documents in his books, the Black Panther Party was largely a creation of the New Left. Not satisfied with steady progress in race relations, the Left radicalized the movement, peeling off violent and psychotic young males to form the new vanguard, which happened to look a lot like a street gang. The whole point was to scare the bleep out of the squares. The rape, torture and murder of Betty van Patter, a progressive white woman committed to the cause, finally discredited the operation for good.

The BGF followed a similar arc. Liberal fanatics with law degrees went to war with the criminal justice system in the late 60’s. Under the guise of prison reform and racial justice, activists like Fay Stender helped former Black Panther members in and out of prison. The result was the Black Guerrilla Family, a violent prison gang. The BGF repaid their liberal enablers by having Stender shot in front of her son. She lived, but was paralyzed and eventually committed suicide.

In the 70’s, the radicals did not have access to sophisticated technology and strategies. They just made crude pipe bombs and left them in public places. Today they can take advantage of the communications revolution to learn all sorts of new tricks. The good news is the supply of young males looking for adventure is at an all-time low. Still, the period of violence, which marks the end of a progressive awakening, is upon us.

The other day, I was talking to someone about college sports. I made a comment that a particular school was just a knucklehead academy. I love college football, but I’m well aware of what’s going on with these kids. Most of them have no business being on a college campus. They are placed in fake classes to stay eligible and they are given tutors to do their work. Some of the kids are real students and some of the schools have real standards, but that’s not the rule. The school in question is well known for cutting corners in order to field a good team every year.

The person, with whom I had the exchange, was offended by my use of the term “knucklehead academy.” The reason is they know some graduates of that college. I know an Episcopal minister, but I would never take offense if some criticized that church. I could see it if his kids was a player at that school. Then he could interpret my comment as an insult of his son, which is an insult to him. Here we had transitive offense taking via acquaintance.

Maybe sensing my confusion, his explanation was not just that he knew a graduate, but that he felt the school did a great job “creating a community and did wonders for minorities.” Having rolled that around in my head for a while, I’m thinking that “community” has passed from meaningless cant to abracadabra word status. Of course, if the “community” is good for the minorities then we’re getting close to the promised land.

The weird thing about the “community” fetish is that there are lots of very bad examples of communities. The Nazis built a community. Pol Pot built a strong community. I could probably spend all day listing “communities” with outlandishly high body counts. A cult, after all, is a community. I suppose the hive minded don’t think much about that stuff. They just know their hive is good so hives must be good, as long as they are good to the right minorities, I guess.

The transitive offense taking is the kicker. I can see this being the new way to stifle debate. If you hold an opinion contrary to the Cult’s truths then they can just conjure an imaginary friend or relative to take offense. Since that friend or relative is not around to be outraged, they can be outraged in absentia. It’s another version of “some people say”, the favorite way fro liberal journalist to call non-liberals bad names. “Some people say you are divisive. Please talk about this.”

By itself it is just a weird tick, but these people are in charge. The result is a deranged meta-language in public discourse. It’s not quite esoteric, just tortured. This post at NRO is a good example. In order to make sensible comments about Pegida, Stuttaford has to perform a strange ritual proving he is not a heretic. That means apologizing in advance for offending anyone by mentioning the subject matter. Stuttaford is a well grounded guy, but he likes his job and career so he does what’s necessary.

I’m fond of saying we live in a different sort of Iran. Their religious lunatics whip heretics and stone homosexuals. Our lunatics hound heretics out of their jobs and cast insults at “homophobes.” The one thing the mullahs had on our lunatics is they could claim Allah was unhappy with someone and that was license to do as they liked. It seems our lunatics are conjuring their Allah through this transitive micro-aggression stuff. The imaginary victim of your micro-aggression they just conjured is instantly deified, which means they are doing the lord’s work by attacking you.

I went over to the Spectator to see what they had to say about the Muslims shooting up Paris. The last I checked it was a respectably conservative opinion site. It used to be that “respectable” meant non-fringe, but these days it means not threatening to the status quo. Sure enough, this is their first instinct.

The Muslim Council of France, and of Britain, have denounced today’s attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. As they know, one of the aims of the jihadis is to try to speak for Islam – but they have been joined in their condemnation by hundreds of Muslims on Twitter. Here are some of them.

It then goes on to list a dozen or so tweets from Muslims saying they are unhappy with the attack in Paris. As is always the case these days, the truth lies in the comment sections of respectable sites. The one at the very top nails it. When Muslims get their feelings hurt, they manage to have mass rallies and mass killings. After something like this, they can only muster some mild rebukes on twitter.

The fact that the first instinct of the Spectator is to insulate Muslims against the great mythical backlash that never comes is telling. A normal person can be forgiven for wondering whose side they are on here. It’s tempting to think that maybe it is just a subtle way to get readers to post comments, a form of click bait. The readers get to say what the writers and publishers are afraid to post.

That’s a fantasy. Even if true it just shows that the people allegedly leading the charge against the Left are simply to afraid to fight. What’s the point of supporting these folks if when it comes time to choose a side, they will join the opposition?

The problem we have in the Anglo-sphere is that the Anglos have no tribune. There’s no one willing to represent the stale, pale males who created civilization. There’s no one willing to defend civilization. If Charles Martel were alive today, the Frogs would have packed him off to sensitivity training or worse.

As an old codger, I have a growing relationship with the nation’s health care “system.” I put quotes in there because systems have an internal logic. It may be screwy and pointless logic, but there’s a reason things are the way they are in a system. There’s no logic to health care in this country. American health care is more like the exercise yard at the penitentiary. The weak are victimized by the strong for no reason other than they can. It’s what I imagine Hell to be, pointless, irrational torment.

I could probably fill up a library with commentary on the health rackets, but I’ll save that for another day. Last night I stopped at the pharmacy (that’s the chemist for my UK readers) to get my heart meds refilled. I stood waiting for someone to acknowledge me for ten minutes until a black fellow waved me over. His name was Michael Yababadodaba. OK, I made up the last name, but it was something like that. My guess is he originated in Ghana as they love English first names and tribal last names.

Michael moved so slow it was hard to know if he was actually moving. His English was passable, but I suspected he had an IQ in the 90’s. Everything about the job seemed to confuse him. After fiddling with the computer for ten minutes, he informed me that they were out of the medication. He did not know when it would be available. Further, he said he tried to call me earlier about it. That seemed to be important to him as he repeated it several times, like an incantation. I suspect that by “tried to call me” he meant that he tried and failed to use the telephone.

Another ten minutes of him fiddling around with the computer and he finally grunted out that another pharmacy had the medicine. It’s very weird to have to use hand signals to communicate with someone responsible for correctly dispensing your medication. Anyway, he handed me a piece of paper with a telephone number on it. Michael may not have the sense God gave a goldfish, but he has very nice penmanship. He has that going for him.

Pharmacist used to be a job for middle-class white kids from the state college. The job did not require much in the way of IQ, but you needed to be conscientious. Filling the wrong meds or letting someone take something that would have an adverse reaction with their other meds are the sorts of mistakes a pharmacy likes to avoid. The pharmacist is supposed to be a pest for little details, as the last check point in the quality control system. They are the sorts of people who enjoy reading the fine print on small bottles.

That worked fine until the usual suspects decided they needed to loot the pharmacies so they have started to import third world types on visas to fill those jobs. Instead of dealing with a pleasant white girl from the neighborhood, I now deal with illiterate Africans not entirely sure how they got here. I can’t imagine anyone in America is standing around saying that we have a shortage of Africans , but here we are, importing them from the mother country.

I called the number from my cell on the way out and learn that it is for a pharmacy in the ghetto. I fear no man, but being an old white guy in the ghetto at night is inviting trouble I don’t need. After reaching a human, I learned they do have the meds and my script will be filled and ready in the morning. The woman on the other end sounded white, pleasant and competent. I mentioned in passing that Michael did not fill me with confidence and she laughed and assured me my drugs would be there waiting. You can always trust the drug dealer to be straight with you.

Mid-morning, I had a break in the schedule so I headed over to the ghetto to make a drug buy. I always feel like I should have the soundtrack of Shaft playing in my eight track when I head into the ghetto. In the hood, it always feels like 1972. One thing about living in or near the ghetto is you quickly learn that black people are not good drivers. They are unpredictable drivers. For no reason other than they want to, a driver will make a right hand turn from the left lane or turn onto a busy street causing a pile up. That means you have to pay extra attention to avoid getting wrecked.

Sure enough, a clapped out sedan comes speeding toward me out of a parking lot on the left. Traffic coming the other way skidded to a stop in the snow and I had to do a series of maneuvers to avoid getting hit. The two yos in the “hoopty” were completely oblivious to the fact they almost caused a multi-car pile up. They just had somewhere to go and that’s all that mattered.

Anyone who has been to the third world knows that driving in those places is a life altering adventure. Drive anywhere for any length of time in these countries and you have a near death experience. A hallmark of the third world is comically dangerous roads. My sense is it is due to the lack of self-restraint and time preference. In the ghetto, time in not linear. As we invite the third world to settle in our lands, the ability to navigate ghetto drivers will be an essential skill.

I parked and headed into to get my meds. As I walked in the help all stopped what they are doing and looked at me like I just parked my space ship. They don’t see too many white guys in there. They assumed I was either cop or a higher up in the store’s management. Once they figured out I was just a customer, they went back to doing nothing. The woman at the counter was polite, but “customer service” in the ghetto is an abuse of the language. The woman was named, I’m not kidding, “Chakita” and she must have spent her pay check getting an elaborate hair weave. From behind the bullet proof glass she handed over my drugs and I handed over my money. What a way to live.

This is our future.