Larry Krasner: Are Progressive Prosecutors Responsible for the Urban Crime Spike?

Q&A with Philadelphia's district attorney, who is facing an impeachment threat because of rising crime.

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Larry Krasner: Are Progressive Prosecutors Responsible for the Urban Crime Spike?

 

Larry Krasner wants to fix America's criminal justice system, which imprisons more people per capita than any other country on the planet. Since 2018, he's served as the district attorney of Philadelphia—one of America's most highly incarcerated and crime-ridden cities.

Krasner spent three decades as a criminal and civil rights defense attorney before deciding to run for office.

"Our movement did the uncomfortable thing: We took back power," he wrote in a memoir about his successful 2017 run to become Philadelphia's district attorney. "We outsiders went inside and took over the institution we had fought against all our lives."

In his first week as D.A., Krasner fired 31 staffers and replaced them with a new team that he described as "ideologically attached to the mission."

"It's a pretty basic mission for people who are in favor of freedom," Krasner tells Reason. "One of those missions is to be less incarcerated than Vladimir Putin's Russia. I don't think that should be very controversial."

Krasner won reelection easily last year, but today he's under intense pressure. Philadelphia posted a record 562 murders in 2021, and it's on pace for a similar outcome in 2022. The Republican-led state Legislature has begun impeachment proceedings against him.

Reason's Zach Weissmueller sat down with Krasner in his office to talk about his reforms, his city's spike in violent crime, the heat that progressive prosecutors are feeling in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, and what that means for the future of American criminal justice reform.

Additional links to data referenced in this podcast:

Decriminalisation of Drugs What can we learn from Portugal? by Pierre Andersson

The Red State Murder Problem, by Kylie Murdock and Jim Kessler of Third Way

"Murders Are Rising. Blaming a Party Doesn't Add Up." by Jeff Asher

Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting System

Philadelphia Police Department's crime maps and statistics

Fort Worth's Updated 2020 4th Quarter Crime Report

"Murder rate in Jacksonville dropped 23% in 2021 compared to 2020, according to sheriff," by Heather Crawford

"Homicides and overall violent crime are up in Philadelphia," by Isaac Avilucea

FBI historic crime statistics by city and region

Comments

[Ronbback]

I'll be back when there are comments

[rev-arthur-l-kuckland]

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[rev-arthur-l-kuckland]

Yes

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[rev-arthur-l-kuckland]

They should all be charged with abetting crimes. if a prosecutor says they're not going to prosecute crimes and then criminals start committing more crimes the prosecutors are directly aiding the criminals and should be punished for it

[Sarah Palin's Buttplug 2]

The Republican-led state Legislature has begun impeachment proceedings against him.

Git ur dun, boys.

[Truthfulness]

If that means you get arrested for CP, than may the Republicans win.

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

It's one thing to argue on behalf of non-violent drug offenders, a totally righteous and moral position.

But just imagine being so totally fucked up in the head that you don't think violent criminals and destructive thieving felons deserve to be punished at all either. That if a giant pack of wild, out of control, barely human creatures descends upon a store, destroys it in a rampage, and makes off with thousands or ten of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise that it's no big deal because..... I don't even know why.

Maybe because "Hey duuuuude, it's like just a giant rich corporation bro and besides its not MY business so who really gives a shit maaaaan!", I suppose.

[Briggs Cunningham]

People like Kasner are one of two things or maybe a little of both. Either they are just Marxist pieces of shit who want to destroy the country and are lying pretending that letting all of the criminals out of jail is a good thing to accomplish that, or they are so stupid they think that putting people in jail is what causes crime and therefore if you stop putting people in jail you will no longer have any crime.

My guess is Kasner is more the former and Reason and the other cast of useful idiots who shill for him and those like him the latter.

[Social Justice is neither]

I don't have a problem with diversion and treatment programs for drug charges or structured living for homeless related crimes since they are rehabilatory in nature for crimes that don't directly harm others. The problem is they see lots of crimes that directly harm others as fine and have even excused attempted murder just because the guy was incompetent.

[Briggs Cunningham]

There are multiple cities in this country that face the same social problems that Philadelphia faces. Many of those cities do not have Soros backed prosecutors looking to reform the system like Kasner. None of those cities are seeing the spike in crime that Philadelphia is seeing. That is about as close to a double-blind experiment as you are going to get in the field of criminology. It is pretty strong evidence that Kasner and his "reforms" are the problem.

Beyond that, common sense and any actual experience with people and the criminal justice system will tell you how evil and insane people like Kasner are.

In his first week as D.A., Krasner fired 31 staffers and replaced them with a new team that he described as "ideologically attached to the mission."

Firing the experienced prosecutors and replacing them with inexperienced ones who have no interest in sending people to jail might have increased the crime rate. Who could have seen that coming. Maybe there are people out there who are criminals who belong in prison. To reason and lunatic like Kasner that just can't be true and everyone who gets arrested is innocent or just a pot user minding their own business or something.

"It's a pretty basic mission for people who are in favor of freedom," Krasner tells Reason. "One of those missions is to be less incarcerated than Vladimir Putin's Russia. I don't think that should be very controversial."

That is not controversial if you are a fucking moron who doesn't understand cause and effect and think that people going to jail is what causes them to commit crimes and not the reverse. To people who are not lunatics, having a large prison population means you have a problem with criminality. If you want to reduce the prison population figure out how to get the population to commit fewer crimes that put them there. That of course is easier said than done. What you don't do is stop putting criminals in jail and think that that is magically not going to increase the crime rate.

Fuck Kasner, all of those like him, and double fuck reason for giving him a tongue bath soft ball interview. How about reason give an interview to one of the families of the literally hundreds of people in Philadelphia who have been murdered thanks to Kasner.

[Roberta]

You mean controlled, not double blind (or any kind of blind), but the point is well taken.

I'm afraid this is an example of libertarians accepting a seriously bad bargain. Like, to get less oppression of victimless criminals, we have to accept more lenient treatment of all criminals. Some libertarians, because of what we focus on, may myopically have exaggerated the proportion of totally victimless criminals we think make up the jail population, so we thought it might be a good bargain. And it muddies (as well as sullies) the face we present to others, who may conclude we're just for lawlessness and irresponsibility.

[Briggs Cunningham]

Libertarians let leftist hijack the cause of judicial reform. Some reform was needed. But libertarians let the lunatic left hijack the movement for reform and ended up once again nothing but useful idiots for the left.

[perlmonger]

The best way to reduce both the crime and incarceration rate is to remove laws that shouldn't be laws. I.e.: Get rid of the drug laws. Get rid of laws regarding prostitution for adults. Things which are only "crimes" because there's a law on the books, not because an actual harm was done.

"Not prosecuting murderers, rapists, and looters" is not the right way to reduce the incarceration rate...

[Dillinger]

can tools carry responsibility?

[BestUsedCarSales]

Depends on the tool. Backpacks and backhoes can carry a lot of things.

[Nemo Aequalis]

Larry Krasner: Are Progressive Prosecutors Responsible for the Urban Crime Spike?

Without listening to the podcast, I'm gonna assume the answer is, "Of course not!".

Just a hunch.

[Briggs Cunningham]

Reason has already told us a few days ago that there is no way to even know what the crime rate is. So, only a racist deplorable would ever think refusing to prosecute all but the most violent criminals would cause crime to go up.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Reason has been fawning over Krasner from the moment he started campaigning for DA. They're all in for him, evidence be damned.

[Jerryskids]

So what is responsible for the crime wave? Illegal aliens, white supremacists, Wendy's 2-for-1 hamburger deal, repeal of Roe v Wade? It's a mystery.

[JesseAz]

Mean Tweets and Trump.

[OpenBordersLiberal-tarian]

In college I learned that all political problems — even those in Democrat-controlled spaces — are ultimately the fault of Republicans.

BLM demonstration resulted in arson and looting? That was undercover Proud Boys trying to discredit the movement.

High murder rate in Democrat-run city? Blame a neighboring red state and its insufficient gun safety laws.

In short, nothing should convince us Koch / Reason libertarians to reconsider our soft-on-crime #FreeTheCriminals and #EmptyThePrisons agenda.

#CheapLaborAboveAll

[Don't look at me!]

Another gem. I don’t know how you do it.

[Briggs Cunningham]

It is only funny because it is true. He didn't make any of that up. These fuckers actually believe all of that and more. The jokes really do write themselves.

[perlmonger]

Or at the very least he has a comedy writing team with a couple hundred thousand people in it...

[Quo Usque Tandem]

I’ve long suspected as much and once asked him if he offshores any of his work, but OBL adamantly denies that he has such a team.

[Nardz]

https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/4-teens-killed-in-buffalo-crash-while-attempting-tiktok-kia-challenge/

[Fats of Fury]

Fox Butterfield, call your office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/us/despite-drop-in-crime-an-increase-in-inmates.html

[Briggs Cunningham]

No one belongs in prison. Everyone there is either innocent or just a peaceful pot user caught up in the drug war.

This is what the reason staff actually believes.*

*With the usual caveat of "Except those fucking deplorables that tried to enter the Capitol on January 6th. Those people deserve to be in prison for life no trial needed".

[Bill Dalasio]

No one belongs in prison. Everyone there is either innocent or just a peaceful pot user caught up in the drug war.

A couple of years back, I recall reading something from a progressive advocate of criminal justice reform. At the time, I didn't believe him. These days, I buy his assessment, if not his evaluation of that assessment. He said that, ultimately, there simply weren't all that many innocent or truly sympathetic people in the system to make all that meaningful a difference for criminal justice reform. If you wanted to do much beyond nibbling around the edges, you were going to have to come to terms with the idea that you were going to have to start to releasing some genuinely bad guys. And the truth is, I'm okay nibbling around the edges. Getting people out of prison isn't, for me, an end in itself. Getting people out of prison who aren't genuinely bad guys is. There's nothing inherently unlibertarian about wanting predators in prison.

[Briggs Cunningham]

Anyone who has had any contact with the criminal justice system knows that the number of actually innocent people in jail is miniscule. As far as the people who belong there, every criminal defense attorney I know, and I know a good number of them, says that defendants can be divided into three groups,

1. About thirty percent are people who have committed a crime but realize they have made a mistake and will go through the system and never come back after they are out.

2. Another forty percent are people who for lack of a better word are just stupid. They are not able to grasp cause and effect or abide by rules and are always running afoul of the criminal justice system and have a hard time getting out of it once they are in it. These are the people who never complete their probation and such. In the past, these people I think lived on the edges of society and mostly just harmed themselves. In the modern bureaucratic state, however, they just can't hack it and are always running afoul of something. These people are often petty criminals and do stupid shit like write bad checks and stuff but they are not violent or dangerous.

3. The remaining 30% are hardcore career criminals who are violent, dangerous, and totally undeterred by the prospect of going to jail or really anything short of death. These are the people they build prisons for. They are just going to continue to victimize people until they are either dead or locked up for life. These are the sorts of people who scare even their own attorneys.

When you understand this, you see how hard it is to reduce the prison population. You absolutely do not want to let the third type out of jail. Until they have committed a couple of crimes, however, it is hard to tell who the first type is and who is the third. So, you can't just have a "everyone gets a free crime" attitude without allowing the third type to do a lot of real harm. Also, going to jail is often what wakes the first type up and ensures they never come back.

As far as the second type, there is no fixing them. Not prosecuting them sounds humane but they end up ruining the quality of life for the people around them. You can't fix them without figuring out a way to fix stupidity. And last I looked, no one had come up with a way to do that.

[BestUsedCarSales]

It doesn't help that the reforms that very well could be done, for instance the lack of funding in public defense offices, are very procedural reforms. They are not sexy. The results are marginal, and it's hard to pick out a single person to hold up as a success case. Even Reason increasingly just makes wild swings about criminal defense stuff because it's hard and it's boring to focus on procedural reforms.

[Briggs Cunningham]

It is also a really hard area full of very difficult tradeoffs. If you want to make it harder to convict people and less likely for innocent people to go to jail, you are necessarily going to let more guilty people go. Rather than be honest about that and have an intelligent debate over where the line should be drawn, reason just lies and pretends you can reform the system and let all of these "innocent" people out of jail without any tradeoffs.

[Bill Dalasio]

I'm still not 100% sure I agree. I think you can create narrow, specific reforms. They just won't get a lot of people out of jail. But, I'm willing to live with that. And, sadly, I don't think Reason necessarily is.

[Briggs Cunningham]

You can make reforms. I am not saying you can't. But they will come at a cost.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Is the Soviet System really responsible for the famines?

[Briggs Cunningham]

That like the explosion in murders in Philadelphia since Kasner's arrival is just "bad luck". Funny how leftists seem to always have bad luck. They can never catch a break it seems.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

There Krasner was, just minding his own business when... ALL OF A SUDDEN!

[Unicorn Abattoir]

No, no, no. Krasner has pointed to the culprits - the NRA, republicans, and racism. It's not his fault.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Did a lot of Jews just happen to die while Hitler was in power?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The most amazing thing. Like a mysterious spike in myocarditis that occurs at the same time a global pharmaceutical intervention occurred, it's all just a series of coinkidinks!

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

True Soros-funded progressive criminal justice reform hasn't really been tried.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Progressive criminal reform efforts would have succeeded but they were encircled by capitalists.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Land reform or food security? It's a false choice, they reinforce each other.

[Briggs Cunningham]

Putting people in prison is what causes crime. If you stop putting people in prison, you won't have any more crime.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

By the way that is literally the philosophy behind the "abolish" movement from Angela Davis et al. Literally. They believe that inherent unfairness of capitalism and our existing justice system create the conditions for people to commit crimes. If you remove prisons, police, and of course, capitalism, that crime will go away because society will become fair and equitable.

[Briggs Cunningham]

I know. I wasn't being ironic. That is what they actually believe. They are insane.

[Michael Ejercito]

I wonder if they sympathize with the incel movement.

[Don't look at me!]

It’s all about the most important thing, skin color.

[crtum]

That’s odd because Krasner claimed that Soros did not give him much in the way of money this last run.

I wish the interviewer had pushed back at least a little. He let him go on and on about stupid shit.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Victor Tahir, 22, was convicted of stabbing and killing her son. McComb-Bueler said Tahir never should have had that opportunity.

“As a matter of fact, he had committed a crime 364 days prior to the murder of my son,” she said.

That prior crime was a brutal beating at a downtown Seattle Starbucks at Second Avenue and Pike Street, on Sept. 29, 2013.

The video is hard to watch.

Prosecutors say the man holding the yellow cone is Tahir. He used it to repeatedly hit the victim before switching to an orange metal chair. He smashed that again and again over the victim lying on the floor, knocking him unconscious.

Police said at the time, Tahir was well known to them.

“The defendant has a long history of arrests for weapons, drug obstruction and assault offenses. He is homeless, unemployed, and spends most of his time on the street in downtown Seattle,” court documents said.

But for some reason, prosecutors did not charge Tahir with assault in that case – at least, not at first.

The police superform says, "This case was sent to the King County Prosecutor's Office after the victim was identified for a filing decision, but was apparently not logged in for review."

The records department for the King County Prosecutor’s Office said over the phone that according to its databases, it never received the case.

McComb-Buehler says that answer is not enough.

“They knew it was him (Tahir), and they hadn't charged him. I feel there was negligence most definitely,” she said.

So Tahir stayed free and the case was seemingly forgotten, until almost exactly one year later.

Photos from police evidence show Coulton McComb-Buehler and a friend getting out of their car for some reason around 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 30, 2014. They got into an argument with a group of people, and that led to a fight.

Photos taken by a nearby taxi driver show McComb-Buehler going down and someone leaning over him. He was stabbed in the arms, ribs and chest. One of the stab wounds punctured his heart.

Documents say, “The small knife, which was in Tahir’s possession at the time McComb was stabbed, had McComb’s blood on it and has been forensically identified as having caused one of the two stab wounds in McComb’s chest.”

Only after police arrested Tahir for stabbing and killing 23-year-old McComb-Buehler, did prosecutors finally charge him for the Starbucks assault.

These are not mistakes. It is known that crimes committed by certain classes of people are "deprioritized". The above story is literally one of thousands that have occurred over the last ~5 years. Repeat, violent offenders that are never charged or sent to diversion programs, who go on to commit other violent crimes, only to end up finally killing or raping someone, and then, and only then are the reluctantly charged by 'reform' prosecutors.

[Briggs Cunningham]

But most of the victims of those criminals are black. So Kasner doesn't care. I guarantee you if they were white or important, he would care. But Kasner and reason will tell you that it is everyone else in the world who is racist not them.

When I grew up there were still Shrike level open racists around. Not many but a few. And one of the things all of them said was how they resented paying taxes for police in black areas of town. In their view, there was no point in policing black areas because blacks were just violent and useless and as long as they just murdered each other it wasn't worth the cost of trying to prevent.

I thought that sort of thinking was gone. I was wrong. It has come back. It just calls itself "progressive police reform". The name has changed but the effects and the underlying assumptions are the same.

[Michael Ejercito]

So they disagree with the argument that Black lives matter.

[Briggs Cunningham]

They only matter if they die at the hands of a white person such that their death can be used to further leftist politics. Otherwise, they are just another statistic that shows how evil the Republicans are for not supporting gun control.

[ElvisIsReal]

Shockingly accurate.

[perlmonger]

Yeah, that was my thought. That's a rather eloquent and pithy summation of the situation.

[Social Justice is neither]

How is it racist to give people exactly what they demand through the activists they support and the politicians they elect?

The thought that Blacks are inherently violent and uncivilizable is racist, true enough, but that isn't the logic used to get to there by anyone today. It's much more "be careful what you wish for because you may just get it" or stupid utopian marxist agitation with no real thought to consequences.

[Briggs Cunningham]

Defund the police and do nothing about crime is generally stuff stupid white people like. It was never popular in the black community. White progs thought it would be because they all live in white than white neighborhoods and don't know any actual black people and thus think every black person is an athlete, a criminal, a welfare mother, or an entertainer.

[mad.casual]

“The small knife, which was in Tahir’s possession at the time McComb was stabbed, had McComb’s blood on it and has been forensically identified as having caused one of the two stab wounds in McComb’s chest.”

*cue Reason "Stab Wound Analysis Is Junk Science" article*

[Mickey Rat]

If the rate of violent and property crimes justify the rate of incarceration, then looking to reduce the rate of incarnation for its own sake is an offense against the law abiding people in the city as it lowers the quality of life for the majority. Krasner is valuing a particular result at the expense of what goals of his job should be.

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[mad.casual]

One of those missions is to be less incarcerated than Vladimir Putin's Russia. I don't think that should be very controversial.

*Raises hand*

Uh, are you saying striving to emulate nation with an ~50% higher murder rate and attempted assassinations of political dissidents shouldn't be controversial?

[Overt]

In Agile methodology, they have a bunch of principles. Things like:

"We value working software over comprehensive documentation." and " we value customer interaction over contract negotiation."

I am not here to argue agile, but to point out what these value statements mean. They recognize that documentation is important. They recognize that contracts are valuable. But they are deliberately stating that when priorities conflict, they will choose the working software or the customer interaction. And if you are not living up to these values, you are not doing Agile.

There are a similar set of preference values that must be discussed if Libertarians are going to join forces with Criminal Justice Reform.

I am all for Justice Reform, but as a libertarian,
I value property rights more than social justice
I value equality of treatment under the law over equality of outcome.

These Soros-backed DAs will never be able to serve libertarian interests, because they are NOT protecting property rights. They are in fact arbitrarily applying the law. They will prosecute a man for defending himself from a violent felon, while letting that felon walk free. They'll punish property owners for brandishing a weapon, while letting the trespassers walk free. No matter how much a DA claims to be "reforming criminal justice", if they do not protect property rights, or consistent rule of law, they are not doing any reform in a libertarian sense.

[Briggs Cunningham]

If you don't support law and order, you don't support property rights. Property rights are meaningless if criminals can steal or destroy it with impunity.

[Overt]

"If you don’t support law and order, you don’t support property rights. Property rights are meaningless if criminals can steal or destroy it with impunity."

No this is not correct. What has caused significant problems in these communities is not solely a refusal to protect property rights. Instead it is a refusal to protect property rights AND clear signals that they will punish people trying to protect their own property rights.

During the "Summer of Peace", city governments made it clear that they wouldn't intervene in these "Peaceful Demonstrations" no matter how many buildings were reduced to "peace's". And the obvious, logical outcome of that was that people began trying to protect property for themselves. In Austin, TX, St Louis, MO, Kinosha, WS, and elsewhere, armed citizens were forced into situations of violence while trying to defend themselves when the government had abdicated this responsibility.

It was only once it was clear that citizens were doing the Government's job that suddenly DAs decided they needed to prosecute that behavior. And that is where we are today- with rioters and vandals confident that they can riot and vandalize with impunity because the government will swiftly and harshly punish any attempt to resist.

[Minadin]

Remember, this was the DA who claimed that blaming Democrat-run cities' own policies for turning themselves into crime-ridden hellscapes was 'racist'.

Meanwhile, he had a huge mob looting incident that happened at a store in his city, which I don't believe anyone has been brought to justice over, and you get stories like this all over coastal California these days:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/walgreens-closing-5-san-francisco-stores-shoplifting-fears-rcna3015

[Eeyore]

Build your own city if you don't like it.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Krasner's a typical progressive racist.

If bodies were falling on Rittenhouse Square or Bala Plaza, he'd do something about it. But they happen in places like Olney, where he won't go without a phalanx of cops around him, and he's perfectly fine with it.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Short answer: Yes. As in Kim Foxx, Cook County State's Attorney plays catch and release with offenders. Now, the same idiots want to take it statewide with the so-called "SAFE-T ACT".

https://nypost.com/2022/10/25/illinois-candidate-rails-against-dangerous-bail-reform-policy/

Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau railed against the SAFE-T Act to Fox News Tuesday. The controversial measure downgrades some crimes, eliminates cash bail, and treats violent suspects under house arrest with more leniency.

The 764-page law was passed in Springfield in the predawn hours earlier this winter with no debate or formal hearings, former justice officials wrote in the Chicago Tribune. It was slated to go into effect on New Year’s Day.

100 of the 102 State's Attorneys (102 counties in Illinois) have come out against the law, and at least half have filed suit against it.

[Briggs Cunningham]

That act is either going to turn Illinois into one big version of Detroit or will finally wake its voters up to just how insane the Democrats have become. It is just unbelievable that they are doing this.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

At this point, I'm not sure what will wake up voters inside the Tri-State Tollway. Far too many in Chicago would vote for Adolf Hitler if he had a "D" after his name, and vote against Winston Churchill if he had an "R" after his.

[perlmonger]

The latter is certainly true, never having heard of him, they'd only know he was an old white male Republican. That's not getting elected in Chicago...

[rev-arthur-l-kuckland]

Orland Park is a far south side suburb of Chicago. It used to be a decent part of tows, but the Chicago trash keeps pushing outward due to their policies. Growing up, the only mall that would let unaccompanied minors in after 7pm was Ford city mall (the ghetto, even had a car bomb there) then it started to expand to other neighborhood malls. Orland, which used to be the Ritzy mall is now a complete mess too

[rev-arthur-l-kuckland]

Hey nick I really hop you got him do buy you dinner before you let him fuck you

[Briggs Cunningham]

Reason Libertarians are very cheap dates, especially for leftists. So, I doubt Kasner even gave Nick a reach around or cab fare to get home.

[BestUsedCarSales]

This is me going wildly off into the weeds on a topic I've been thinking about. Here goes.
Modern progressive thinking is extremely materialistic, this is opposed to spiritual or something. Basically, material conditions are the main, or only concern, for an individual and what it means to have a good life. An extension of this we see in our culture increasingly is not really caring about the dead. Some non-trivial amount of the culture increasingly buys into a purely materialistic view of life, and once someone is dead they are beyond the realm of concern. This leads to certain things, like the increasing push for euthanasia. I would argue some non-trivial amount of abortion argumentation is based around an unstated assumption that once the baby is killed it's not a concern any more.
In this case justice becomes purely a thing for the living. The dead can receive no justice. This has an effect in criminology we're seeing in bleeding edge progressivism, which is the victim is almost immediately forgotten in the proceedings of most crimes. The focus is entirely on the material well-being of the perpetrator, of saving them from the suffering of their actions. And I think that leads to certain bad effects, like we see here.

This is not a well thought out statement, and I'm still working through my thinking on this. I think I have the edge of an idea here though.

[Briggs Cunningham]

Marxism is crude materialism. Marxists don't believe in things like universal principles and all that. They believe in the material world and all that matters to them is what happens in it. So, if the results are not equal, the system isn't fair.

[sarcasmic]

Marxism, along with the rest of its leftist cousins, is the politics of envy. Poor people see rich people and it makes them feel bad about themselves. That is just unacceptable.
So rather than see the economic pie grow for everyone, they smash the pie and hand out the scraps. Better to be equally poor than unequally rich.

[BestUsedCarSales]

Marxism definitely is, I don't know if it's crude materialism as much as a very historical materialism. Consistent with the Hegelian origins of it. But I don't want to have that conversation specifically.
I think a lot of the current progressive materialism does come from Marxist theory, but its origins are not a super concern to me.

It's more an idea that there are downstream effects of how a society thinks. And in an extremely materialistic culture, which at least large pockets of the US is now, concern for the dead seems to drop to nothing. And further, justice for victims falls lower and lower. If someone has their house robbed at gun point, then if their stuff is returned they are made whole. There is not consideration for the injustice done to them as that is a non-material concern.
In the extreme case of murder, the person is already dead, therefore nothing can be done and all the focus should be made on improving the living person we still have: the murderer.

I think there is at least something to this argument, in that I do believe in treating prisoners with humanity, but I think we can't forget the victims either.

But this is very rambly. I haven't consolidated this thinking enough yet.

[BestUsedCarSales]

And there's a major thing I haven't really dealt with here. Wokism is extremely spirtual. It is all about cleansing one's inner thinking and how that will manifest in justice in the world. Or possibly even that the justice in the world is purely one of the mind, like an Idealism almost. But I don't know.
I think there's something here, and it may be certain strains of thought on the left fighting with each other, it might be my theory is bunkum.

[sarcasmic]

History books will call Wokism a religion.

[Briggs Cunningham]

They will if they tell the truth. That is for sure.

[Amazing Larry]

Wokism I think is the opposite of personal/spiritual. Most religions tell us we are evil and that we need to work on ourselves to be saved. Wokism tells you everyone else is evil and you need to join in telling everyone so. Yes you do have to 'confess' initially, but it doesn't involve actually changing anything about yourself.

[rev-arthur-l-kuckland]

Wait so I can dress up as a gorilla and throw bananas at black people and not be a racist?

[BestUsedCarSales]

That is related to gnosticism in a lot of ways. The impurity of the flesh, the relevance of ideas and how those are what keep evil away. But, it’s not specific. The main point is it is incredibly Idealistic in the sense that it tends to treat everything as manifestation of ideas, thus the focus on thoughtcrimes.

And that idealism is diametrically opposed to materialism.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

I'd have to agree that Wokism (aka Social Justice) is a cult at a minimum, definitely religious in how it acts. There seems to be an idea that the world is evil and must be cleansed, but those who join do not have to change much other than chant the rhyme and say the incantations. There do seem to be "sacraments" of some sort. Witness the strange bowing toward blacks in 2020 after the George Floyd incident and riots. There's stream of anti-whiteness that emanates from their "high priests" in papers like the NYT or the WaPo, or on MSNBC. There's also a strong sense of us versus them, the other. Anyone who doesn't toe their line instantly becomes The Other. And The Other is to be shunned and cleansed from the Earth. And we, those of us here commenting, are The Other to them.

[perlmonger]

Climatism feeds off the same religious circuit. Perhaps they're coreligions.

[Leizl]

Hmmm one might almost conclude that not being held responsible for the crimes one commits emboldens people with criminal proclivities to go forth and commit more crime. But that is just crazy thinking. The obvious answer to a burgeoning prison system is to just ignore criminals. Neat and simple.

[sarcasmic]

Did anything else happen around, say, 2019 to totally disrupt everyone's lives?

Nope. The last three years have been perfectly normal except for the conduct of liberal prosecutors. That's the only variable here that can possibly be considered when talking about rising crime rates. That's it. Nothing else happened.

[Beezard]

So these DAs aren’t part of the post 2020 equation of (certain)people finding out they can do whatever the fuck they want without consequences?

It’s all strictly COVID/Floyd rage?

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Open Societies Foundation (G Soros money) contributed $1.7 million to Krasner’s campaign. While he was also supportive by local unions (whose members obediently vote the way they are told) and local progressives, just follow the money. They got what Soros paid for.

[sarcasmic]

That's not at all what I said, but thank you for playing.

[Think It Through]

You're asking Krasner?

I don't remember the Reason interview with Darrell Brooks about the Waukesha parade massacre.

[squarooticus]

Krasner reveals exactly who he is in the final minutes of the interview. He makes some good points earlier in the podcast, but ultimately falls back on the position that anyone opposing him is against democracy. And also some non-sequiturs about Trump. These people are insufferable: that alone isn't grounds for impeachment, but I wouldn't complain too much if it were.

[RENATA the rational]

The City Journal is considered the nation's premiere periodical on urban problems and they have been against the Philadelphia policies for ages.
From year ago : "Philadelphia breaks a homicide record thanks to the leadership of its progressive mayor and district attorney."

April 2020
EYE ON THE NEWS
Philadelphia’s Only Surging Industry
Even under Covid-19 lockdown, crime flourishes in the City of Brotherly Love.