A “Parade” Of 6 Planets Will Line Up In The Sky As The 6th Month Of 2024 Begins

No Mercy

In its September 9th, 1987 edition, The Atlanta Journal Constitution carried a bizarre story that became known as The House That Dripped Blood. Atlanta Police had been called just after midnight by a woman claiming that what looked like blood, was coming out of the floor of her home at 1114 Fountain Drive. In the late 1980s, elderly couple William and Minnie Winston lived in a small private house in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Everything in their life was calm and normal, except that William had diseased kidneys and was connected to a dialysis machine every day, which he really did not like and why he was often out of sorts. Late in the evening of September 8, 1987, 77-year-old Minnie Winston took a bath, dried herself with a towel, and as she was getting ready to leave the bathroom, she noticed a red spot on the floor. It looked like blood, but Minnie was sure there were no wounds on her body where it could leak. And when she looked around the entire bathroom, she found another red spot, this time on the wall. Red liquid slowly flowed from it down to the floor. Minnie jumped out of the bathroom and saw bloody streaks on the floor in the hallway, smeared on the tiles. She immediately thought that something had happened to her husband and that the blood might have leaked during dialysis. However, when she woke up William, 79, there were no sources of bleeding on his body. Minnie and William Winston There was no blood on or near the dialysis machine. The frightened couple walked around all six rooms of the house and found bloody stains on the floor in almost every room. Their house was old, brick and very strong. They have lived in it for 22 years and until now nothing unusual has happened in the house. They had no pets; they had never seen rats, mice or other possible pests. They didn’t know what to do and finally decided to just go to bed. The next morning, the blood on the floor and walls had not gone away and there even seemed to be more of it. So the Winstons decided to call the police. Police searched the house and indeed found “copious amounts of blood” in the bathroom, kitchen, living room, bedroom, hallways and even the basement. They found no evidence that a person had been attacked, but they declared the Winston house a crime scene and surrounded it with yellow tape. The couple was allowed to stay inside the house. Blood samples were collected and sent to the laboratory for analysis. First of all, in order to determine whether it is human blood at all. Soon the answer came that yes, human. Moreover, it was type zero, and both Winstons had type A blood. According to detective Steve Cartwright, who led the case, he had worked in the police force for more than 10 years up to that point, but had never encountered such an oddity. The police examined the house again, but in the end they still found nothing more. A few days later, this story hit the press and a crowd of onlookers and journalists flocked to the house. And also psychics who offered their services, believing that something supernatural was involved. From the Sept. 11, 1987 edition of the Lawrence Journal-World. Credit: theghostinmymachine.com Then a group of five enthusiastic skeptics was formed who decided to get to the bottom of this phenomenon at all costs. They were Joe Nickell, Larry Johnson, Rick Moen and Rebecca Long, who were later joined by Lt. G. Walker, who was on the original team of investigators on the case. At some point, they managed to get a police report from the inspection of the house, which contained color photos of bloody stains (alas, these photos are not available on the Internet), but no further breakthroughs happened. Lieutenant Walker believed that there was no poltergeist intervention (as psychics believed), and assumed that something criminal had happened in the house. He also did not rule out that the spouses could have been persuaded to commit a hoax by promising them money or something else. Walker then discovered that the Winstons’ daughter worked at the hospital as a nurse and had access to blood donations. According to his theory, the daughter could deliberately stage a “bloody show” in order to make her parents look like crazy and so that they would be recognized as incompetent. Then the daughter would get their house for herself. Walker considered this version very plausible, as he found out that there had been long-standing serious conflicts between the Winstons and their daughter. However, he was removed from the case long ago, and the official investigation quickly reached a dead end and the case was simply closed. A police spokesman later admitted that they still did not understand where the blood came from. The post Mystery of Atlanta Blood House: Human Blood on Floors and Walls appeared first on Anomalien.com.

It’s hard to believe, but our “news” media think Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s wife hanging a flag upside-down outside their home for a few days is a much more serious matter than an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. That story was quickly squashed. Start with taxpayer-funded National Public Radio, which never managed to produce a single feature story on the foiled Kavanaugh assassination, but has provided multiple stories in the Alito Flag Frenzy. They use fake-neutral headlines like “Flag displays at Justice Alito’s homes concern judicial watchdogs.” Make that “Democrat law professors.” NPR Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, who tried to strangle the Clarence Thomas nomination in the crib, couldn’t muster any concern for Kavanaugh’s safety, but found the time for Alito-flag coverage. The idea that this slavish pal of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was going to furrow her brow about the bias of judges was a laughable matter. Everyone with political eyes can see that the media are toeing the Democrat line that a Supreme Court with a conservative majority must be discredited. Forget all of their bleatings that Trump was undermining confidence in government. “Objective” reporters always undermine confidence in government when conservatives have a toehold.  The latest decision they hated was an Alito opinion in a 6-3 ruling that the South Carolina legislature could move a sizable number of black voters out of the competitive 1st Congressional District into the black-majority 6th District. The majority ruled that this was a political gerrymander, which is legal, and not a racial gerrymander, which is illegal. But they ruled against the NAACP, so there was hell to pay. On “All In with Chris Hayes” on May 23, the host lamented the decision and brought in MSNBC’s regular extremist Elie Mystal to concoct a theory on Alito’s majority opinion. “The throughline between the Alito flag story, the Clarence Thomas coup story, and their wives, and what we saw today from the Supreme Court in this gerrymandering decision,” he said, “is that they don’t want black people’s votes to count equally.” As for Thomas, forget that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a white husband, you’re only a sellout if you’re conservative. “I mean, he ain’t married to Ginni Thomas for nothing all right...like that’s what the man thinks.” He claimed Thomas does not think the 14th Amendment “can be used to protect the voting rights of black people.” On the Left, black voting rights translate into the ability to elect Democrats. That’s not the right to vote at all. It’s the right to be represented by a Democrat. If you don’t agree with that principle, you’re in favor of “diluting” black votes.  In Mystal’s conspiracy brain, “when people like Alito and Thomas support the insurrection, what are they saying? They’re saying that Trump won -- lost the election but won the white vote...won the white vote by a lot.” He claimed they think white votes are “the only votes that matter.” This character assassination of Alito and Thomas as racist insurrectionists is considered weighty legal analysis on MSNBC. On the Left, anything that disturbs their domination of government is an “insurrection,” which is why they endlessly associate every conservative with the January 6 riot as much as they can. They are the ones who can’t stand dissent and an actual democracy where conservatives disturb their dreams of complete dominance. 

“We should thank God for beer,” said G.K. Chesterton, a bon vivant always ready to practice what he preached over a pint or two. For Chesterton, there was something profoundly ungrateful and unnatural about abusing this divine gift: "Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world."The 1977 Burt Reynolds' classic “Smokey and the Bandit” is a kind of paean to beer and its irrational consumption. Big Enos Burdette could surely afford to ply his party guests with a truckload of any number of domestic or imported brews. Instead, he insists on hiring Reynolds and Jerry Reed to smuggle in 400 cases of the one brand he can't legally get east of the Mississippi: Coors Banquet. 'In the Yabba ... pounding pints of the local lager is the townsfolk's main diversion. Well, that and the various activities one gets up to after a beer or ten, including drunken fistfights, drunken kangaroo hunts, and drunken fistfights with kangaroos.'The idea for the movie was born when a friend shipped stuntman Hal Needham a case of Coors while he was shooting "Gator" in Georgia. Technically, the beer was contraband; because it was unpasteurized, it was difficult to ship long distance, and the Colorado-based Coors didn't have a license to distribute it east of the Mississippi. This didn't deter high-profile fans like President Gerald Ford and Paul Newman from getting their hands on it. Needham thought it would make a good story and wrote up a script. He showed it to his friend Reynolds, who hated the dialogue but loved the primal conflict it explored: Man vs. Thirst. And those are the only stakes you need for one of the great American car chase movies. As Big Enos says, sometimes you just want to “celebrate in style.” Alamo Drafthouse"It could be worse," shrugs Clarence "Doc" Tydon (Donald Pleasance), the sole medical practitioner in the tiny Australian outback mining town of Bundanyabba. "The beer supply could run out."He's talking to the protagonist of the 1971 cult film "Wake in Fright," a young schoolteacher named John Grant (Gary Bond), who after only a short time in the Yabba has discovered that pounding pints of the local lager is the townsfolk's main diversion. Well, that and the various activities one gets up to after a beer or ten, including drunken fistfights, drunken kangaroo hunts, and drunken fistfights with kangaroos.Grant's just in town to catch a flight to Sydney, but when a bad bet leaves him broke and stranded, he starts to mingle with the natives, despite his contempt for their backwards ways. Thus begins the kind of weekend that makes many a man swear off the booze for good. "Wake in Fright" depicts its characters trying to blow off steam in a place offering no escape from the searing heat. The sweat-soaked, dust-caked atmosphere it creates is so effective you may find yourself craving a cold one, while simultaneously wondering if maybe a nice glass of water wouldn't be a better choice.

Three months before the 2020 election, I hosted a "Glenn TV" special in which I posed the question, “Are we in a color revolution?” There were political operatives holding secret war games on what to do if Donald Trump won the election. It included everything from mass civil unrest to secession. Both the mainstream media and social media — network pundits and influencers alike — were moving in tandem to ensure that Trump would lose. I’d never seen anything like it — at least not domestically. This is something you would expect to see out of a banana republic, not the United States. Should we be using US tax dollars to fund private NGOs that are waging color revolutions? Is that what America stands for? Civil disobedience is rocking college campuses, and it appears to have backing from network media, social media, labor unions, and nonprofit organizations. It’s almost as if these activists and political operatives have a four-year hibernation cycle and they wake up just in time for a presidential election. We’re only in May. How bad will all this get the closer we get to November? How bad will it get if Donald Trump maintains a solid lead in the polls? Blaze Media recently published a story about a new group called the Escalate Network. Its mission is to “bring the Intifada home,” and the organization wants to improve upon what began with the anti-Israel encampments on college and university campuses around the country this spring. You can go to Escalate’s website and download material such as “The Do-It-Yourself Occupation Guide,” literature on how to set up “blockades,” “Anarchist Tactics at Standing Rock,” and “How to Build the End of the World: In Defense of the Chaotic Protestor.” Imagine if this group’s motivation was pro-life or if it were run by former January 6ers. The FBI would be raiding their homes right now. There would be wall-to-wall media coverage. I think Blaze Media was the only outlet to even touch this story. Odd, isn’t it? I’m seeing the same color revolution signs this year that I saw in 2020, and I believe we were on the edge of slipping into what happened in places like Eastern Europe and the Middle East. But as Time magazine reported, at the last minute, “The word went out: stand down.” But what happens this time in 2024, and who are the architects? Color revolution officially became an accepted U.S. foreign policy strategy after the Cold War. The CIA was manipulating elections and street movements all over the world. But the entire strategy changed in the late 1980s and early ’90s. The Washington Post published this shocking article in 1991 headlined, “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups.” The story by David Ignatius describes how a new era in regime change had been born. NGOs, labor unions, and media outlets could topple governments in ways the CIA could only dream of. Color revolution had now been “privatized.” The story mentions that the CIA no longer had to spend the time developing “media assets” because now it has CNN. The cable network’s “omnipresent, real-time coverage of the news helps America’s interests more than all the besotted Third World ‘media assets’ of old could ever have imagined. And the bar bills are less.” Ignatius also highlights the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S.-based NGO he called “the sugar daddy of overt operations.” A lot of people have questioned some of the shady operations that the NED has conducted in foreign countries over the years, but if there is any question, look no further than the NED’s founder himself, who said, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." The National Endowment for Democracy is funded by Congress. Should we be using U.S. tax dollars to fund private NGOs that are waging color revolutions? Is that what America stands for? The article goes on to list some of the other people and organizations that are involved, including labor unions like the AFL-CIO and even George Soros. Color me shocked about that one! The Washington Post showed more than 30 years ago how our government interferes in elections and topples nations. The CIA, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development are often involved. Ultimately, these decisions reside with the man in the Oval Office. The operation is then privatized to create separation from the government. This is where NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy come in. The NED is composed of four entities: the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, and the Center for International Private Enterprise. The first two supposedly advocate either left- or right-wing agendas, giving the entire NGO a “bipartisan” designation, and the last two cover labor unions and private corporations. Next, multibillion-dollar financiers and organizations partner in the entire operation. This is where people like George Soros, the Open Society Foundations, and the Tides Foundation come in.Lastly, there are the people who spread the message, demonstrate in the street, and report the news to the masses. This became the blueprint for privatizing regime change. It’s how public opinion is manipulated, mass media is harnessed, and youth movements are weaponized. This is how color revolutions are born. The lessons learned from the Cold War were unleashed in the early and mid-2000s. Where did our little cast of color revolution characters turn their sights on next? Is it possible they began operating here at home? These revolutions seem to be on a four-year cycle, and the last one was in 2020. We must be vigilant for 2024.Want more from Glenn Beck? Get Glenn's FREE email newsletter with his latest insights, top stories, show prep, and more delivered to your inbox.

After decades of California-style hippie messaging on “environmentalism,” “climate change,” “zero carbon” policy — the name keeps changing, the game remains the same — it might come as a bit of a shock to learn that full-spectrum clean energy is a reality far from West Coast shores. But the truth is that Texas, long cast as the “fossil fuel”-burning villain in the hippie fantasy, is now far outstripping the Golden State at what was supposed to be its own Earth-loving game. But environmentalist fears that become more outdated every day continue to keep California from moving forward with the new and better plants that would really change minds. As the Financial Times reports, “after trailing for years, Texas has become America’s clean energy giant.” A quarter-century ago, California’s annual clean-source power generation sat at roughly twice that of its big-state rival. But like some Californians themselves, the output was erratic and unstable. A wiggly line began to form as time marched on. A decade ago, progress slumped, and even some later spikes on the graph failed to beat the Lone Star State’s steady, measured increases in clean-source power. The lines crossed around 2015 and again around 2020 — and after that, the neck-and-neck race was over. Today Texas is ahead in absolute terms by about the same sum as California was near the turn of the millennium. What changed? The answer, we might say, is dirty tech. Think of it as the tech that makes your hands dirty when you work on it — something the vast majority of West Coast techies experience rarely if at all. Rather than clattering across a keyboard or gliding across a touchpad, dirty tech involves stuff that makes a mess. Think big works, heavy machinery, excavations, installations, grease, and elbow grease — and yes, danger: Mishandle the tools, the raw materials, or your floor teams, and you’re finished. Dirty tech, in other words, carries risks — real ones that demand discipline, focus, and responsibility in real life, not just inside the realms of an interface. Of course, there’s usually some connection between the two somewhere, and, ideally, a fairly intimate one. Technologists of all kinds are well served harnessing their softest and most sterile of work to serve something concrete and tangible — not just in the brick-and-mortar sense, but in the flesh-and-blood one. Nevertheless, the distinction tells a powerful tale in the case of clean energy. Texas has pulled away from the emissions-obsessed Cali crowd because, today, “greening” our output doesn’t just mean harnessing the sun and the wind. It also means drawing power from water, biomass, and nuclear energy. And on that expanded score, California hasn’t been the beacon of futurism it’s cracked up to be. In fact, its approach to solar hasn’t made headlines because the state failed to take into proper account the overwhelming importance of capturing and retaining solar energy. Much as the state notoriously fails to hold onto vast quantities of the rainwater that occasionally pour onto its mountain ranges and into its lakes, when it comes to solar, all that California sun makes a limited impact in the absence of robust battery storage capabilities. (Speaking of water, Sacramento has also stagnated on desalination.) Meanwhile, the statehouse tug of war over nuclear continues. One of the few operational plants was recently granted a stay of political execution, extending its life span until the end of this decade. But environmentalist fears that become more outdated every day continue to keep California from moving forward with the new and better plants that would really change minds. Finally, few on the West Coast want to admit that natural gas can play a key supporting role — as it has in Texas — that bolsters and stabilizes alternative energy sources like wind or sun. Absent a steady backup, it’s harder to use all the energy produced by those gusts and rays and harder to persuade people that clean energy is reliable enough to trust. Dirty tech, clean energy. It’s a simple formula with results as big as Texas. But until something changes in California’s notionally progressive mindset, its ideological “greens” remain far behind the curve.

"You know they’re not going to let you go,” an old friend told President Donald Trump in an intimate Oval Office meeting during the summer of 2020. “They’re going to come after you, after your kids; they’re going to come for your money; and they’re going to try to put you in jail.” The president, he told me later that day, look frightened, even startled, as if he hadn't considered there could be anything worse than defeat at the ballot box. "Unfair” is a child’s protest. “Hypocrisy” is the adult version — a fine word for the powerless to hurl against the powerful (to no avail). Underestimating just how far his opponents across all strata of society would go to hurt him was a frequent tic of Trump’s first term. The 45th president of the United States was slow to realize position and power are not the same thing. And now, four years later, he’s been convicted of a bogus crime by a man who won office by promising to lock him up. It can feel cathartic to point out that Trump has been found guilty of disguising hush money as "legal expenses,” while Hillary Clinton did the same to hide payments to a British spy to compile the far more insidious Russia dossier. You can yell “Hypocrisy!” on a friendly network and the host might nod along. It can feel witty to explain how clearly the judge violated Trump’s Sixth Amendment right "to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.” Judge Juan Merchan actually told the jurors they didn’t need to agree on what “unlawful” act Trump might have committed to upgrade a misdemeanor outside the statute of limitations to a felony charge. You can write “Unfair!” on X, and your friends might retweet you. It can feel like a relief to know the Supreme Court will likely intervene and might even do so quickly. Merchan’s obvious work to assist the prosecution, undercut the defense, and gag the Republican candidate for president makes a strong case for appeal. The prosecution’s “novel legal theory” is fair game, too. Merchan might even face review and censure. Phew! But in the words of Clinton herself, “What difference does it make?” “Unfair” is a child’s protest; my 8-year-old sometimes yells it to no avail. “Hypocrisy” is the adult version — a fine word for the powerless to hurl against the powerful, also to no avail. Democrats were never going to let Trump go and were leaving as little as possible to chance, launching cases up and down the country. They weren’t even hot on Bragg’s “novel legal reasoning” until it appeared likely to deliver while the other cases faltered. “Whatever they can get him for,” the noisy NeverTrump lawyer George Conway said last week, “is fine with me.” It's about power and the will to use it. Merchan did not lack the will, even if it means short-term suffering for it. “Merchan,” Federalist CEO Sean Davis wrote, “is going to get his bogus conviction, retire, get an absurd amount of left-wing money laundered to him in the form of a book advance, and become a CNN/MSNBC contributor.” Trump’s legal team will quickly appeal to the New York Appellate Division to try to keep their client out of prison, though he isn't likely to see justice before Election Day. In the meantime, Joe Biden’s social media team is planning to change his political opponent’s title to “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.” Given the reaction so far, it could backfire, but they’re still going to give it their best. For them, this is all about the election — and an election they are deeply worried about. Or more plainly: It’s about the power — power they intend to hold tightly. BlazeTV’s Mark Levin to Trump’s attorneys: Next stop? The Supreme Court! The Federalist: Judge Merchan’s jury instructions prove Trump’s trial is about power, not the law Blaze News: Biden bets big on Trump conviction Blaze News: What happens if Trump gets convicted? Blaze News: Stefanik files misconduct complaint against Judge Merchan, says his selection for Trump NY case was 'not random at all. Bedford: There’s a reason DC Democrats are always winning, even when they lose Sign up for the Christopher Bedford newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter. IN OTHER NEWS Biden goes full race war in desperate appeal for black votes The White House knows it’s in trouble. Poll after poll shows black and Hispanic voters are leaning toward Trump, the Republican just held a Bronx rally so successful that even CNN and MSNBC had to take notice, and every week a new article drops on the growing panic among professional Democrats. It’s rare the president appears anywhere alongside his earnest VP these days, but in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris was once again useful, or at least the campaign hoped as much. “What would’ve happened if black Americans had stormed the Capitol?” Biden asked the crowd. “I don’t think [Trump would] be talking about pardons. “This,” he continued, is the same guy who wanted to tear-gas you as you peacefully protested George Floyd’s murder. It’s the same guy who still calls the “Central Park Five” guilty, even though they were exonerated. He’s that landlord who denies housing applications because of the color of your skin. He’s that guy who won’t say “Black Lives Matter” and invokes neo-Nazi Third Reich terms. We all remember, Trump is the same guy who unleashed the birtherism lie against Barack [Obama]. This is far from Biden’s first foray into the politics of race hate. Way back when milquetoast mascots Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were the Republican standard-bearers, the then-vice president whisper-growled to a black audience, “They want to put y’all back in chains.” Fauci set to testify on Capitol Hill Monday The squirmy doctor is back in the hot seat, as Blaze Media launches a new docuseries on all the COVID lies. Dr. Anthony Fauci is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill Monday, as more evidence trickles out daily that he and his team sought to hide, disguise, and delete records of their COVID response to protect themselves and their friends from public and congressional oversight. The doctor went from seemingly omnipresent to quiet and withdrawn as the panic subsided. Monday will be the first chance for lawmakers to question him since closed-door testimony on the origins of COVID-19 in January. It will be his first public testimony since retiring as the highest-paid person in the federal government, with the highest government pension in American history. For months, BlazeTV host Matt Kibbe and his team at Free the People investigated the lies and cover-ups of 2020, building an incredible multi-part docuseries. “The Coverup,” episode one, is live now. Watch it here. Blaze Media Original: The Coverup exposes Fauci and his whole cabal Blaze News Original: Former New Jersey gym owner arrested for staying open during COVID lockdowns wins big in court The fire rises: City Journal: Can we get back to tougher policing? This isn’t the first time we’ve experimented with liberalizing policing and sentencing in America. In the 1950s, activists concerned about the United States’ prison population went a similar route to what we're seeing today. The result of their tinkering was the destruction of our cities. By the end of the 1980s, a good summer blockbuster meant some vigilante finally beating up the criminals and punching the reporters for good measure. We fought our way out of it and ended with a far larger prison population than had originally concerned the activist class. And then, like Alzheimer's patients, we did it again. It won’t be so easy to fix this time, however, because now the police know Americans don’t like them. The Manhattan Institute's Rafael Mangual reports: More than 40 years have passed since the publication of one of the most important public-policy essays ever written. Its title, “Broken Windows,” captured the essence of a simple but deeply insightful idea: public order matters. “[I]f a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken,” wrote the late authors, political scientist James Q. Wilson and longtime Manhattan Institute senior fellow George L. Kelling, in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic. Visible signs of chaos were like warnings: you’re not safe here. If left unaddressed, the chaos made those areas more vulnerable to further disorder, including serious crime. “‘[U]ntended’ behavior,” the authors maintained, “leads to the breakdown of community controls” and causes residents to “think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and . . . modify their behavior accordingly.” The areas where disorder festers become more “vulnerable to criminal invasion” than “places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls.” The theory — expanded on by Kelling and his wife, Catherine Coles, in their 1996 book, Fixing Broken Windows — sparked a revolution in American policing. At the direction of innovative officials like NYPD commissioner and later LAPD chief William “Bill” Bratton, and with crucial support from political leaders like New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, police departments across the country would, in the 1990s and 2000s, adopt tactics and strategies that reflected these vital insights. Proactive policing not only drove street crime down but also yielded unexpected benefits — like the illegal firearms discovered during pat-downs of turnstile jumpers in the subways and the outstanding arrest warrants discovered on the street through the enforcement of open-container violations. The historic, generation-long crime decline that resulted as Broken Windows policing took hold widely solidified legendary status for Kelling and Wilson. Yet this law-enforcement revolution sparked acrimonious pushback from antipolice academics and activists — aided, in no small part, by how often the concept of Broken Windows policing was misinterpreted and distorted, much to the frustration of its originators. These distortions became more influential as crime continued its downward trajectory nationwide during the first decade of the twenty-first century, as large urban police departments focused on developing counterterrorism capabilities in a post-9/11 world and as a new generation of urban residents came of age with little or no awareness of recent history. Progressive critics argued for rolling back proactive policing measures and for lessening criminal-justice penalties; and a series of viral police use-of-force incidents, beginning in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, built momentum for these efforts, while intensifying hostility toward law enforcement. The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 served as the movement’s apex, triggering the deadliest urban riots in the United States since the 1960s amid widespread condemnation of police. Perhaps not coincidentally, 2020 marked the largest one-year homicide spike in at least 100 years. Four years later, with crime — particularly gun violence — still well above pre-2020 levels in many U.S. cities, calls for American police to return to their mid-1990s crime-fighting approach have gotten louder. Unfortunately, this appeal, while entirely justified, cannot be practically pursued in the current environment. Two massive obstacles block the return of Broken Windows-style policing: the police workforce crisis; and the demonization of cops, and of policing itself, as racist. The kind of policing that led to one of the safest generations on record for American cities cannot be revived until these obstacles are surmounted.

Beginning in the Renaissance, locals affixed verses protesting various societal ills to six sculptures scattered across the Italian city