The 4th quarter 2016 We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now WHTM pledge drive continues! If you like the blog, please donate what you can! THANKS!
Apparently, the reason so many black people are getting murdered by police officers is that black people believe police officers are murdering black people.
At least that’s what Twitter activist, “Gorilla mindset” guru and all-around Internet embarrassment Mike Cernovich seems to suggest in a recent blog post.
A couple of months ago, you may recall, Cernovich suggested that he and his Twitter followers had “manifested” Hillary Clinton’s illness with their minds. Call it the power of negative thinking: by imagining Hillary having coughing fits, they literally gave her pneumonia.
Now Cerno is offering a similar explanation for the police shootings of black men that have roiled the nation over the last several years. As Cerno sees it, black men are “summoning the demon” and bringing murder on themselves by believing the media accounts of black men getting killed by police officers.
You may object that the media only writes about black men getting killed by police officers because, you know, black men are getting killed by police officers. But Cerno apparently lives in a world beyond mere facts.
“I look at issues from a branding and marketing perspective,” Cernovich explains.
Brand value is subjective. Statistics about race and crime matter far less than the subjective feelings people have towards one another.
So forget the actual facts of police officers killing black people. In Cerno’s reality, the key problem is that
[t]he brand of police (and whites) has suffered a lot of damage due to fake news media propaganda.
As a result, he argues, “millions of blacks believe police are out to kill them,” which makes
every interaction [between blacks and police] more toxic for both parties.
In mindset we call this Summoning the Demon. Your subjective beliefs create the very monster your fear.
Hey Rocky, watch me pull a racist police officer with an itchy trigger finger out of my hat!
“Consider this,” Cerno continues,
A black man is pulled over. He believes (rightly or wrongly, as your opinion doesn’t matter for this example) that the police officer poses a threat to his life. The black man is going to be tense. Sensing the driver’s tension, the police officer is going to view the black man as a threat. They will feed off of one another’s energy until something bad happens.
Nothin’ up my sleeve! PRESTO!
The belief manifested the reality.
Really, dude?
Again, I do not live in the world of “absolute truth.” It doesn’t matter if racism in policing is real or not if millions of people believe it’s real.
What about gravity? If millions of people convinced themselves that gravity was fake, would they and all their belongings just float away into the sky?
My personal belief is that police are not actively discriminating against blacks. If millions of other people feel differently, then we have a branding problem.
Mike, maybe gravity is just a “branding problem.” Why not test this proposition by convincing yourself that gravity is an illusion, then walking off the nearest skyscraper?
I’ll just be waiting here for you to report back to me on the results of this experiment.
Somehow I doubt Cerno will try this little trick. Because in his mind some facts — like gravity — actually matter, while other facts — like black people getting shot by cops — are just a “branding problem.”
Cerno’s solution to this little “branding problem?” He thinks the incoming President Trump should “hire Kanye West as sort of a ‘brand ambassador'” who could, I guess, convince black people that police are the friendliest, least racist people on planet earth. Through the magical power of his rapping, I guess.
That’s his actual “solution.”
I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
It doesn’t matter if you’re white and don’t care about anyone but yourself.
Good one, Iknklast!
Wow!
Just wow!
I got nothing for that one.
You guys got anything for this?
Maybe JuiceBro believes he’s a psychic wizard? I mean I thought Harry Potter was inspirational too, but I had a different takeaway from it.
“’I look at issues from a branding and marketing perspective,’ Cernovich explains.”
“‘I have never stopped to wonder if maybe that’s the not most appropriate frame for this topic,’ Cernovich failed to mention.”
All I hear is grade A victim blaming. “If you weren’t acting so scared of me, I wouldn’t be forced to shoot you!”
This man is an emotional abuser (minimum) teaching others how to abuse.
It’s disgusting.
And here we see the nasty underbelly of The Secret-type magical thinking writ large: if you can make things happen with the power of your intention, then if bad things happen to you it’s because you didn’t manifest hard enough. Or you manifested the wrong thing. Either way, your fault. That, plus extreme racism, equals this mess.
He sounds like that The Secret asshat who blamed the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami for causing natural disasters due to not being positive thinkers.
Ninja’d by Viscaria
A pity it doesn’t work that way. Otherwise, Mikey & Co would all suddenly find their gonads shrivelling to the size of peas, drying up, and falling off, and bouncing all over the floor with a hilarious little sad tinkle. Because that’s how *I* like to visualize them.
Really, that ‘Law of Attraction’ shit can just GDIAF. >:(
Judging by his writing lately, I’m thinking that maybe – just maybe – JuiceBro needs to lay off the Juice for a while.
Well, this may be completely subjective on my part, but…THAT IS COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
Yes, and never more so than when the police believe all the fake news and propaganda claiming that blacks are ravening monsters who are all out to rob, rape and kill whites. Which, in turn, leads white cops to become actual ravening monsters, all out to rob, rape and kill blacks.
Yet, strangely, they can’t seem to apply this mindset-thing to themselves, and realize that they are creating monsters out of thin air, too…
Well, Mikey, credit where due: You got ONE thing right, and only ONE. You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the ‘nads, and I can well believe that you don’t care if racism in policing is real, or that millions of people who can read and interpret stats therefore “believe” it is. But what’s with the scare quotes around absolute truth? Are you afraid of it? Very macho, much gorilla mindset, so wow.
Yeah, well, that’s just YOUR opinion, dude. And it, like your anus, is full of something. I’ll leave you to guess what that is.
And no, you do not just have a “branding” problem. You have a RACISM problem. As in, racism is real. Cops suffer from it. YOU suffer from it. And you’re an idiot to think and claim any differently.
Oh, if only, if only Ice-T hadn’t written that song about teflon bullets! [/s]
Here’s a thought: Maybe it’s not the black people who go around constantly scared that they’re going to be gunned down in a split second. Maybe it’s the cops.
Funnily enough (no it’s not funny at all) there’s a guy who gets paid to go around and “train” cops by explaining that their lives are constantly, no-holds-barred, definitely on the line, and it could happen in a split second, so they’d better watch out.
He gets paid to come and be an expert witness on the risks of policing every time there’s a court case because a cop that he put on edge made a snap decision, and testifies in defense of that decision.
Of course, cops interact with open-carry advocates all the time and nobody gets shot to death, as long as those who are carrying are white.
It’s kind of like there’s a double standard, or something.
The guy’s name is Dr. William J. Lewinski, and he’s a behavioral psychologist.
If you don’t respond to a pattern of events, they accuse you of not learning because you’re stupid. If you do respond to a pattern of events, they accuse you of being paranoid.
Good times.
For a self-described lawyer who’s deeply concerned with the First Amendment, Michael seems oddly willing to blame black citizens for being tense/frightened of cops. Don’t they have like, a right to freely express their feelings, man? What a joke.
There might be a kernel of truth there… I do believe that collective belief can create superficial truths where none inherently exist. On the other hand, it can also create literal falsehoods as well (I.e. people’s collective belief in something can cause them to act in ways which make that belief absolutely not true). That’s a topic that I don’t have time to get into detail with right now, though.
But I’ll just say that in this case, if most black people spontaneously started to believe that cops were all nicey-nice and totally on their side and continued to believe it no matter what happened, then this would most likely make things *much* worse for them for a few years, and then it would go back to more-or-less normal, and then we’d see some minor improvements in a generation. Even then, real change would have to come from the police side. This is because the police have nearly all the power and the influence here, so their collective belief has much more effect on the situation than the collective belief of black people.
…Also, black people aren’t a bunch of delusional idiots, so it’s never going to happen like that anyway.
…I see that people have mentioned “The Secret” here while I was writing. Let’s just say that my ideas on “collective belief” are *very* different from that that abomination, which probably isn’t obvious from what I wrote above.
Please could you all do me a favour and believe that I’m super rich? I promise to do amazing things with the money ^_^
Considers summoning an actual demon to devour Cernovich. Decides no demon deserves a meal so decidedly nasty. Bitter and greasy, plus empty souls mean empty calories.
Seriously though, what is with all the fools who view every part of life as an extension of capitalism? Capitalism isn’t natural law, it’s the enshrinement of humanity’s worst qualities in the form of an economic system.
It’s true we’re made with powerful brains
And man can withstand hurricanes
But if you’re walkin’ down the lane
There ain’t gonna be a lion with a mangy mane.
And that’s all good, I’d say it’s right
That big cats don’t stalk the ‘burbs at night
Nor do they in the broad daylight
And I highly doubt ya’ll’d win that fight.
But with the fear of wildlife gone
There’s always the sort that says “c’mon!”
They feel the need to right a wrong
And that’s when they see people that they think don’t belong.
So a new predator is introduced
A menace to those unaware
A critical threat to those who want to trancend what they’ve been given
Eventually, somebody’s got to care
Now, I’d say that takes more than just thought
Bouncin’ around in this world a lot
The answer isn’t what you sought…
So for the love of God, just stop there.
@NicolaLuna:
Seems to have worked for Trump. He’s had to file for bankruptcy how many times now? And yet people still go “He’s rich! He’s got money!”
@falconer
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/trump-the-bad-bad-businessman.html?0p19G=c
I don’t know how anyone thinks he would fix the economy when he can’t manage his own businesses
Well, if we managed to convince enough of the right people that NicolaLuna is actually very wealthy, then one of two things will happen. Either she/he/they will become superficially wealthy á la Trump through the actions of those who believe it, or else it will backfire horribly. I have no idea how many people is “enough”, though. And if we assume that NicolaLuna doesn’t actually have the potential to seem convincingly wealthy, unlike Trump who really was wealthy at one point via inherited millions, then that would require one hell of a deception to pull off, though. It’s not like established reality means nothing.
The flat earthers actually have some answers for this.
@Falconer:
And where did it all come from? Where else: US taxpayers subsidizing every last one of his bad decisions, up to and including the installation of the Secret Service in Drumpf Tower. And of course, he’s charging them for the rent…