#i've seen people get criminally prosecuted for saying less violent things than this

[humphul]

kinda bizarre how so many antizionists LOVE, like genuinely revel and relish in, writing graphically violent murder fics about people who disagree with them. now the mask's off they're just fucking throwing themselves at it. like they're using the Saw franchise as inspiration for their political takes

these were all comments on one (1) post i saw just now. y'all okay?

and i keep getting asks like this in my inbox:

my guy, i think you enjoyed writing that a little too much.

i'm not sure if you realize that these are not normal things to say to people, even if you're upset or angry. this is nazi rhetoric. have you ever been outside? have you ever spoken to another human face-to-face?

i've never said something like this to another human being. i can't imagine doing that. in fact, i've never even heard radically pro-israel pro-IDF anti-palestine zionists talk like this.

it's really fucking scary how quickly the radical leftist discourse devolved into a gloves-off torture fantasy. have you guys been bottling this up your whole lives waiting for permission to open the lid?

you're really not beating the political horseshoe allegations, you know

#and the actual death threats are illegal btw. just so you know #i've seen people get criminally prosecuted for saying less violent things than this #pop

[shinobicyrus]

But like I've seen boosters that will literally set up shop outside the store they just got the stuff from and scalp it at a lower price cuz the cops won't come if they steal an amount under a price? How is that okay? Or are you talking about something else? I'm genuinely curious cuz all i see right now is the fact that living in Cali is making me tired cuz i don't know what's real or not anymore

(I guess this is in reference to my frustrated rant earlier?)

So just to get it out of the way, stealing did not get legalized in California. Prop 47, which is where this all started, simply adjusted the categorization for small, nonviolent crimes like petty theft and certain petty drug offenses. All it did is increase the dollar amount by which theft can be prosecuted as a felony from $400 to $950 to adjust for inflation and cost of living.

If you steal something and it's less that $950? That's still a crime, it's just not a felony anymore. That’s a difference between a fine and less than a year of jail time, to 3-5 years, depending on the severity.

The reason they did this, by the way, was not because of some progressive “woke” ideology, but because California’s prisons were so overcrowded the State Supreme Court ruled that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

They made petty theft and certain non-violent drug offenses misdemeanors because there were too many people in jail already.

One thing that also doesn't get mentioned a lot either? Prop 47, the very thing everyone is blaming for all the ‘rampant shoplifting,’ happened in 2014.

Kind of makes you wonder why we’re hearing about all this now, eight years after the fact.

It could be that those shoplifting numbers are being inflated, or at the very least misunderstood. Individual spikes in scattered areas doesn't necessarily mean there’s a lawless crime wave sweeping the entire state.

Or perhaps this may be, I dunno, a strategic political backlash against recent movements that want to reform policing and the criminal justice system in general and thus opposing groups are trying to create the perception of rampant crime to scare moderates and convince the public that harsh penalties are necessary and the police protect us from chaos etc, etc, ad nauseum. 

That statement you said before “i don't know what's real or not anymore” really spoke to me friend, because the more I look into this, the more I can’t but think that the confusion is the point.

People want to confuse the issue. It’s a lot easier to show some footage of a few dramatic instances of crime and convince people there’s a crisis. Look what happens when I Google ‘is shoplifting legal in california’ which was suggested by the search bar:

Oh geez, first result is describing how shoplifting is de facto legal in California! A bold claim! Let’s learn more!

...how is this the first result? Who even are these people? Let’s Google ‘Hoover Institution’ and see what we learn:

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace is a  conservative American public policy institution and research institution  that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and  limited government.

So the first result isn’t a reputable news source trying to inform, but a conservative think tank. This is a well-funded, century-old political apparatus. They are not trying to report facts to you, they are trying to sell you their picture of the world. 

I’m not saying corporate owned news and newspapers are bastions of unblemished truth, but it really says something that a conservative think tank with a self-declared preference for business owners has managed to firmly plant itself in the top results of Google searches on this subject, which is what most people will click on first.

Trust me, I get it. Researching this stuff is hard and time consuming. Following sources, finding out if they’re reputable, knowing how to word your query; this is a skill that most people aren’t taught how to do - which makes a lot of people vulnerable to quick, easy answers. 

For instance, another important detail no one seems to mention is that there is a huge difference between shoplifting - which is generally a crime of impulse that is rarely caught and results in only a small amount of goods taken - and Boosting, which are those smash and grab jobs which are usually perpetrated by multiple individuals and depends on speed and shock rather than stealth. Those tend to be organized criminal enterprises, and regardless of the value of the goods from a single incident, organized crime is a completely different beast than shoplifting. The fact these two very different things are being used interchangeably blurs the issue and creates even more confusion.

Now, let’s say for a moment that I’m one of the many Wrong and Incorrect Assholes on the internet and there really is some rampant shoplifting/boosting going on. Some real lawlessness. Some real Future Detroit in RoboCop shenanigans.

Everyone’s so concerned about poor CVS losing their inventory, but in all my research in crime statistics, while both police unions and business owners call for a return to stiffer sentencing, I have seen no one wonder aloud why people would be stealing besides “they’re criminals.”

If there are spikes in petty theft, would that be so surprising, considering that we’re still living in a pandemic that caused a major jump in unemployment that, as of December 2021, is still affecting 1.2 million people in California alone?

That even the people with jobs are also being affected by the inflation the pandemic created and is being exacerbated by corporate greed?

That homelessness in California affects over a hundred and sixty thousand people (more than three times the entire population of my hometown!) and has only been getting worse?

Sorry, but even if shoplifting was becoming rampant (a big ‘if’ as mentioned in a previous source), I don’t really feel that much for say, CVS, that saw $7.9 billion in profits in 2021 but is still slated to close 900 stores for reasons that have nothing to do with having a pitiful amount of their inventory stolen.

As to your rather bold booster, who has not only openly stolen goods (still a crime) and is sticking around with said stolen goods to sell them (also a crime) out in the open and the cops still aren’t showing up when called?

Buddy I hate to say it but it sounds like the cops don't give a shit and have always had an abysmal track record at solving these kinds of crimes anyway.

That's not a ‘bad law’ problem. That's a cop problem.

#It's also a Capitalism problem but I've wasted enough ink already #metaphorical ink #Sorry Long Post #Shoplifting #Crime #Policing #Criminal Justice #Anon #Propoganda #Asks #Sorry Anon I don't know if I actually answered your question #but I hope this helped? #A little? #I don't pretend to be an expert on crime statistics or economics #the important thing is to question Who is telling you a narrative #and Why they might be telling it to you #and whose interest it serves