A fish doesn’t know it’s wet and a bedlamite is confused about how it all got so crazy.

In the last couple of months in Park Slope—the baby bjorn-wearing capital of bourgeois-bohemian New York—a thief absconded with $200,000 worth of jewelry in a smash and grab, three boys stole a bunch of iPhones off of subway riders, a ticked off customer attacked the owner of a bike store, $6,000 was stolen from an auto shop, and a beloved pet was catnapped from a bodega on Seventh Avenue.

But it was the death of a golden retriever mix named Moose that activated the residents of the South Brooklyn enclave.

And while I sympathize with Moose’s owner and the other victims of crime in Park Slope, I couldn’t help but experience a little schadenfreude at the hand wringing of a handful of residents who want to Do Something™ but run right smack into their own ideology that created the space for the increasing bedlam of their neighborhood.

A few weeks later, on August 20, Kristian Nammack issued a call to action on Nextdoor, a social media site for local organizing: “Do we want to organize a community safety patrol, and take our park back? Think what the Guardian Angels did to take back the subways in the 70s/early 80s. We may also get to wear cool berets. I’m being serious.”

Nammack, 59, had been part of the 2008(sic) Occupy Wall Street protests, and his financial consultancy firm focuses on themes of “climate, renewable energy, gender lens, racial equity, economic advancement.”

Oh.my. Where to start? The OWS movement (started 2011) was little more than Burning Man for Marxist ideologues and grifters. That includes President IWonPenPhone who was caught flat-footed between his lofty social justice rhetoric and his personal self-interest (Barry’s net worth is upwards of $70 million). The One’s worshippers could not care less about such trivial concerns …

Barack Obama is Occupy Wall Street. Barrack Obama is plugged into that world. That’s what he believes.

Monica Crowley

OWS was a dumpster fire of upper middle-class miscreants, grifters and petty criminals all engaged in an orgy of street theater that included extortion, vandalism, rape and assault.

But it was, ironically profitable.

Akin to Obama, Nammack appears to have succeeded at [crony?] capitalism while mouthing all the right platitudes. However, it appears that Nammack is a True Believer and it paralyzes him when it comes to being confronted by the reality his ideology has wrought.

A group of four who looked to be in their early twenties—three women and one man—rolled up about 15 minutes into the meeting. “Are y’all the Park Slope Panthers?” The one who asked was dragging a speaker on wheels and playing electronic music, presumably to drown out the meeting. “We are super not into you guys having your meeting or doing anything in the park.”

The young activist—who was white, wore glasses, grew up in Park Slope, and had a medical-grade face mask on, like his three comrades—was also super not into the cops, or anything resembling the cops. (snip)

“Using the Panthers as your group’s name is kind of abhorrent to me,” said one of the girls. She was white, wearing cut-off jean shorts, loafers with socks, and a Baggu purse. “It feels antithetical to what the Black Panthers would stand for.” The next girl to speak said her name was Sky. She, too, was white, and had also grown up in the neighborhood: “It’s easy to be wrong about who you’re going after, particularly when those are some of the few black people still living in the neighborhood, and they’ve been pushed out on the streets by all white, ultra-wealthy people.”

You see where this is going? You can’t write a comedy routine using this without someone accusing you of making it up.

But here we are, in the midst of the boutique Bolshevism, with a guy who is Left of Lenin at a loss for words.

Pass the popcorn.

“Crime is an abstract term that means nothing in a lot of ways,” said Sky. “The construct of crime has been so socially constructed to target black and poor people.”

“Right, yeah, I agree with you!” countered one of the older folks, who seemed confused.

Nammack lost any sort of control of the nascent neighborhood watch group because even the hint of wanting standards was anathema to the Lefter-than-thou who crashed the meeting. This is really Leftism in a nutshell, they decry hierarchy while imposing their own authoritarian one. The one in which all acts and behaviors are judged on externals. Individuals of marginalized communities cannot, by definition, be held personally accountable for anything they do. Hence, when gangs of roving thieves steal with impunity and businesses give up and shut down — it’s the fault of the business owners, not the criminals. When the mentally ill and addicts are allowed to live on the streets and harass, assault, rape others, it is society’s fault for not giving them “free” everything.

So, when Nammack is confronted with the consequences of his own belief system, he runs away.

Because lily-white Sky above was right when she said “crime is a construct” … All rules of civilization are a “construct”.

The question really comes down to, what rules based on whose values? Western Enlightenment principles of individual sovereignty based on values expressed by Leviticus 19:15? Or by the inevitable bedlam that is the result of illiberal Leftism?

Deep blue Park Slope is getting exactly what it has voted for.

I hope Nammack, Sky, and the rest of the Maolings get it gooder and harder.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

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