The Ugly Truth

Every time we have a real shot at making changes that will benefit very large portions of the American public, some jag-off Democrat pops up and appoints himself kingpin - the guardian of the exchequer - the one true voice of reason - a hostage-taking son of a bitch.

Every.

Fucking.

Time.

Ten years ago, when ObamaCare was moving through the process, it was Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, and while there was some pretty strong push back, I don't remember anything like this:

Of course, we didn't have the kind of total immersion and over-saturation of social media that we have now.

Democracy is fighting for its life, slugging it out with full-blown Plutocracy, and the winner will likely be decided by people who live and die on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and YouTube.

That seems like it's nine kinds of fucked up, but that's what we've got, kids. We have to figure out how to make the best of it.

From A Different Angle

It's easy to see how a growing affinity between Millennial youngsters and (eg) Boomer Progressives could be seen as a real threat to a "conservative" scheme aimed at installing a plutocracy.

So what's a good little fascist to do?

Divide-n-Conquer.

So how do I drive a wedge between two very important factions in order to keep them from joining forces and kicking my autocratic ass to the political curb?

The Young Turks take a crack at Cancel Culture as a kind of False Flag ploy - another example of how we can be manipulated by people who turn everything upside down and inside out.

Jan6 Stuff

The most ardent supporters - the ones who'll go anywhere and do whatever they think they've been told to do no matter what, without thinking it through, and with no regard for anything, including themselves or anyone else - those are the guys who personify Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil".

Chris Hayes, MSNBC

Today's Daddy State Thing

...is just a variation on the old White Supremacy thing, which of course is almost always at the root of all the racist shit that's been going on in USAmerica Inc for 400 years.

"Power-mad outa-control black man kills innocent patriotic white girl."

Joy Reid and Mary Trump:

Here's a rundown on the film that started it all - including a mention of the first ever Cute Cat video.

Note - the ugly side of American populism has been there forever, and sometimes it manifests itself in cynical efforts to manipulate public opinion by way of products and services available on new media platforms.

The Big Turnarond

Theramin Trees - Weaponizing Self-Affirmation

Positive, therapeutic principles "...have been seized on by abusers, and twisted into weaponized parodies."

Smart Yeah, But - Yeesh

The classic bullshitter is often a figure of esteem and outright admiration. And while I've never consciously aspired to that lofty position, there have been times I've risen well beyond it and been both condemned and praised for my efforts.

I can tell you it feels good either way. Powerful and respected.

That is, until a friend sent me this, from Evolutionary Psychology which sounds pretty great at first - but then you get to the part about "bullshitter" being pretty much defined as a manipulative asshole who cares little for truth, insisting that influence is all that matters.

Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

Abstract

Navigating social systems efficiently is critical to our species. Humans appear endowed with a cognitive system that has formed to meet the unique challenges that emerge for highly social species. Bullshitting, communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without concern for truth, is ubiquitous within human societies. Across two studies (N = 1,017), we assess participants’ ability to produce satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit as an honest signal of their intelligence. We find that bullshit ability is associated with an individual’s intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be more intelligent. We interpret these results as adding evidence for intelligence being geared towards the navigation of social systems. The ability to produce satisfying bullshit may serve to assist individuals in negotiating their social world, both as an energetically efficient strategy for impressing others and as an honest signal of intelligence.

[The Bullshitter]…is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.Harry G. Frankfurt (2009)

Human intelligence has been a long-standing mystery to psychologists: In particular, why humans differ so greatly in their intelligence compared not only to distantly related animals, but our closest primate cousins. Large brains are energetically expensive (Cunnane et al., 1993; Raichle & Gusnard, 2002) and necessitate that human children require inordinate levels of post-partum investment from caretakers (Rosenberg & Trevathan, 2002). Nevertheless, human brains have continued to increase in size over our evolutionary history until only recently (Beals et al., 1984; Bednarik, 2014). It remains a puzzle to explain why humans continue to support the steep investment of resources that comes with maintaining a large and powerful brain, with leading theories suggesting that the cognitive, social and cultural advantages afforded by such large brains outweigh the costs (Seyfarth & Cheney, 2002). Classically, intelligence has often been considered mostly—or sometimes solely—for its value in manipulating and understanding the physical world (Humphrey, 1976), the environment for an organism being a series of cognitive puzzles which intelligence assists them in completing. More recent developments have expanded on this classical understanding through acknowledging that the complexities of an organism’s social life may place just as high of a demand on an organism’s intelligence as the complexities of its physical life (if not more; Byrne, 1996; Byrne & Whiten, 1990; Whiten, 2018). Far removed from the relatively sterile cognitive puzzles with which we now test and study intelligence, there is reason to believe that the origin of intelligence is best understood for its social uses (Gavrilets & Vose, 2006; Geher & Miller, 2007; McNally, Brown, & Jackson, 2012). It is this perspective that grounds the current work.

Several theories have been forwarded to explain the high level of intelligence observed in humans. Some of the most promising among these theories have examined intelligence for its value in assisting us in navigating the complex social systems that characterize our species. Intelligence in the social world is theorized to have been formed primarily in response to three pressures. The first is the need to accurately signal intelligence in order to demonstrate genetic quality and fitness to potential mates (McKeown, 2013; Miller, 2000; Miller & Todd, 1998). The second, a pressure to manipulate, deceive, or influence others through the application of such social intelligence (Byrne, 1996; Byrne & Whiten, 1990; Handel, 1982; Sharma et al., 2013; Whiten, 2018). Third, the pressure to accurately maintain and manipulate mental models of complex social networks and interactions, as well as being able to simulate the mental states of others (Bjorklund & Kipp, 2002; Roth & Dicke, 2005; Stone, 2006). A cartoonish description of the hypothetical person who exemplifies all of these traits in the extreme would be one who shows off their intelligence whenever possible, tells lies when it is advantageous to do so, and is capable of keeping track of all the lies they have told.

Possessing a high level of intelligence allows humans to meet the intense demands placed on them by complex social systems. Beyond the Machiavellian value of social savvy, evidence suggests that large brains and their corresponding cognitive advantages may have been selected for as a result of their sexual appeal (Crow, 1993; McKeown, 2013; Miller, 2000; Miller & Todd, 1998; Schillaci, 2006). In line with signaling accounts, charisma in the form of humor and leadership abilities has been argued to function as an honest signal of desirable qualities, including cognitive ability (Greengross & Miller, 2011; Grabo et al., 2017). In biology, an “honest signal” is one that conveys accurate information about an unobservable trait to another organism. For example, a brightly colored frog that is poisonous honestly signals its toxicity to predators; it looks dangerous, because it is. In contrast, a dishonest signal is an attempt to mislead another organism into believing that the signaler possesses a trait which it does not. For example, a harmless insect may possess the same coloration as a harmful wasp, falsely signaling that it is just as dangerous as a wasp in order to avoid predation; it looks dangerous, but it is not. In the context of sexual signaling in humans, a person of high intelligence who is able to communicate this to others is giving an honest signal that they possess this desirable trait. In this case, the “honesty” of a signal is independent of the truth content of the specific communication used to signal. For example, a smooth and intelligent liar may give the impression that they are intelligent even while saying nothing true.

The ability to produce satisfying bullshit, with its emphasis on impressing others without regard for truth or meaning (Frankfurt, 2009; Pennycook et al., 2015), may represent an energetically inexpensive strategy for both signaling one’s intelligence, and deceiving others to one’s advantage. Indeed, past work provides initial evidence for this claim, demonstrating that indiscriminately attaching meaningless pseudo-profound bullshit titles to artworks increases their perceived profundity (Turpin et al., 2019). On this basis, it has been hypothesized that bullshit can be used to gain a competitive advantage in any domain of human competition where the criteria for determining who succeeds and fails at least partially relies on impressing others. In this way, bullshit may serve as an honest signal of a person’s intelligence (and therefore their fitness), even though the specific content of the bullshit itself may be false.

A growing body of literature has investigated peoples’ receptivity to bullshit, specifically computer-generated pseudo-profound bullshit consisting of random arrangements of superficially impressive words in a way that maintains syntactic structure (e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”; Pennycook et al., 2015; Pennycook & Rand, 2019; Walker et al., 2019). Other work has begun to examine the frequency of bullshit production (Littrell et al, 2020; 2021), including investigation of the conditions under which people are most likely to produce bullshit (Petrocelli, 2018). Yet, minimal work has assessed how bullshit can be used to navigate social systems (McCarthy et al., 2020; Turpin et al., 2019). For example, a person who is capable of producing good bullshit may be perceived as especially charming, convincing, or competent as long as their deception is left undiscovered. Relatedly, styles of bullshitting that allow one to avoid awkward or uncomfortable social situations may go far in fostering social harmony (Littrell et al., 2020). This type of bullshitting (i.e., evasive bullshitting) could be employed to avoid lying, while replacing the direct response with a less relevant truth (Carson, 2016; Littrell et al., 2020). For example, a friend gifts you a sweater that you find hideous, but when asked how you like it, you respond with “thank you, this is very thoughtful of you!” Given the potential usefulness of bullshit as a method for navigating social systems, and with evidence that human intelligence may be set up largely for navigating the social world, an open question is whether bullshit ability as a behavioral feature reveals something about one’s relative intelligence. If our brains have evolved for the purpose of manipulating information about social relationships (e.g., using tactical deception; Dunbar, 1998), then it is plausible that intelligent people will produce bullshit that is of higher quality, as a means of efficiently navigating their social surroundings.

The current work investigates the role which bullshit ability plays in signaling intelligence. We assess both how the quality of bullshit reveals the true intelligence of bullshit producers as well as how bullshit quality is received as a signal of intelligence by observers. To examine these questions, we had a sample of participants attempt to explain fictional concepts in a way that appeared satisfying and accurate (i.e., with bullshit), while other samples judged the quality of these explanations and the intelligence of their creators. We hypothesized that bullshit would behave as an honest signal of one’s intelligence such that those able to create the most satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit would also score higher on tests of cognitive ability. Furthermore, we predicted that those judged as producing high quality bullshit would also be perceived as more intelligent. Therefore, we expected bullshit ability to relate positively with measures of cognitive ability as well as perceptions of intelligence.

It goes on to describe the tests - pretty interesting.

The Banality Of Evil

Seems benign and simple and humility-inducing, doesn't it?

But to be sure, for some who trade in this kinda thing, there's actually an implied threat.

"Quit yer bitchin' and be happy with the scraps from our table - we could always make it worse you - is that what you want?"

One of the things we're supposed to have learned from the history and the lived experience of our brown brothers and sisters is that we're not required to be satisfied with whatever shitty circumstances we're caught in just because somebody else's circumstances are even shittier.

"How do we justify paying $400 for an Epi-Pen when there are homeless suicidal veterans on our streets?"

That may sound reasonable until you take the time to dissect it, and realize the intent is to set us up to be each other's enemies. People with life-threatening allergies should not be in a fight with veterans over resources that are being subjected to arbitrary and artificial limits.

The "enemies" are the cynical manipulators of public sentiment, funded by plutocratic rent-seeking leeches, and their armies of coin-operated politicians.

We can't fight the good fight if we keep falling for this divide-n-conquer bullshit all the time.

Where We Are

Politicians in general, and Repubs in particular these days, are always trying to set up situations where they win no matter what, and the other side loses no matter what.

If Dems say, "OK, we won't go with an impeachment trial and just leave it to the courts", the Repubs will come back with "No no no - you can't go after a political opponent in criminal court - you liberals were all up in arms when we were saying Hillary should be brought up on charges and blah blah blah."

Brian Tyler Cohen:

And we can just kinda blow it off as "Oh well - it's politics - whaddaya gonna do?"

But the shit that assholes like Rand Paul are trying to pull is the classic No-Win Bind that gets autocrats off the hook. It's a trap that abusers try to to set for people all the time, and is, in itself an abuse of power.

Theramin Trees - The Double Bind

Always remember those little life lessons our favorite sportsball coaches tried to illustrate for us.

Say It With Me One Time

... There is no honor among thieves.

It has be obvious - like plain as the nose on their stoopid fuckin' faces, even to the most deliberately obtuse nincompoops - that Proud Boys and Q and Boogaloo and the Tea Party and the Patriot Party - all of these clowns are in it for power and profit and prestige - so just what the fuck do you fucking expect, you fucking fucked up motherfuckers?

Reuters:

Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group, has a past as an informer for federal and local law enforcement, repeatedly working undercover for investigators after he was arrested in 2012, according to a former prosecutor and a transcript of a 2014 federal court proceeding obtained by Reuters.

In the Miami hearing, a federal prosecutor, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and Tarrio’s own lawyer described his undercover work and said he had helped authorities prosecute more than a dozen people in various cases involving drugs, gambling and human smuggling.

Tarrio, in an interview with Reuters Tuesday, denied working undercover or cooperating in cases against others. “I don’t know any of this,” he said, when asked about the transcript. “I don’t recall any of this.”

Law-enforcement officials and the court transcript contradict Tarrio’s denial. In a statement to Reuters, the former federal prosecutor in Tarrio’s case, Vanessa Singh Johannes, confirmed that “he cooperated with local and federal law enforcement, to aid in the prosecution of those running other, separate criminal enterprises, ranging from running marijuana grow houses in Miami to operating pharmaceutical fraud schemes.”

Tarrio, 36, is a high-profile figure who organizes and leads the right-wing Proud Boys in their confrontations with those they believe to be Antifa, short for “anti-fascism,” an amorphous and often violent leftist movement. The Proud Boys were involved in the deadly insurrection at the Capitol January 6.

The records uncovered by Reuters are startling because they show that a leader of a far-right group now under intense scrutiny by law enforcement was previously an active collaborator with criminal investigators.

Washington police arrested Tarrio in early January when he arrived in the city two days before the Capitol Hill riot. He was charged with possessing two high-capacity rifle magazines, and burning a Black Lives Matter banner during a December demonstration by supporters of former President Donald Trump. The D.C. Superior Court ordered him to leave the city pending a court date in June.

Though Tarrio did not take part in the Capitol insurrection, at least five Proud Boys members have been charged in the riot. The FBI previously said Tarrio’s earlier arrest was an effort to preempt the events of January 6.

The transcript from 2014 shines a new light on Tarrio’s past connections to law enforcement. During the hearing, the prosecutor and Tarrio’s defense attorney asked a judge to reduce the prison sentence of Tarrio and two co-defendants. They had pleaded guilty in a fraud case related to the relabeling and sale of stolen diabetes test kits.

The prosecutor said Tarrio’s information had led to the prosecution of 13 people on federal charges in two separate cases, and had helped local authorities investigate a gambling ring.

Tarrio’s then-lawyer Jeffrey Feiler said in court that his client had worked undercover in numerous investigations, one involving the sale of anabolic steroids, another regarding “wholesale prescription narcotics” and a third targeting human smuggling. He said Tarrio helped police uncover three marijuana grow houses, and was a “prolific” cooperator.

In the smuggling case, Tarrio, “at his own risk, in an undercover role met and negotiated to pay $11,000 to members of that ring to bring in fictitious family members of his from another country,” the lawyer said in court.

In an interview, Feiler said he did not recall details about the case but added, “The information I provided to the court was based on information provided to me by law enforcement and the prosecutor.”

An FBI agent at the hearing called Tarrio a “key component” in local police investigations involving marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, or ecstasy. The Miami FBI office declined comment.

There is no evidence Tarrio has cooperated with authorities since then. In interviews with Reuters, however, he said that before rallies in various cities, he would let police departments know of the Proud Boys’ plans. It is unclear if this was actually the case. He said he stopped this coordination after December 12 because the D.C. police had cracked down on the group.

Tarrio on Tuesday acknowledged that his fraud sentence was reduced, from 30 months to 16 months, but insisted that leniency was provided only because he and his co-defendants helped investigators “clear up” questions about his own case. He said he never helped investigate others.

That comment contrasts with statements made in court by the prosecutor, his lawyer and the FBI. The judge in the case, Joan A. Lenard, said Tarrio “provided substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of other persons involved in criminal conduct.”

As Trump supporters challenged the Republican’s election loss in often violent demonstrations, Tarrio stood out for his swagger as he led crowds of mostly white Proud Boys in a series of confrontations and street brawls in Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere.

The Proud Boys, founded in 2016, began as a group protesting political correctness and perceived constraints on masculinity. It grew into a group with distinctive colors of yellow and black that embraced street fighting. In September their profile soared when Trump called on them to “Stand back and stand by.”

Tarrio, based in Miami, became the national chairman of the group in 2018.

In November and December, Tarrio led the Proud Boys through the streets of D.C. after Trump’s loss. Video shows him on December 11 with a bullhorn in front of a large crowd. “To the parasites both in Congress, and in that stolen White House,” he said. “You want a war, you got one!” The crowd roared. The next day Tarrio burned the BLM banner.

Former prosecutor Johannes said she was surprised that the defendant she prosecuted for fraud is now a key player in the violent movement that sought to halt the certification of President Joe Biden.

“I knew that he was a fraudster – but I had no reason to know that he was also a domestic terrorist,” she said.

One of the first things we have to learn (about life in general, but about political activism in particular) is that cynical manipulators are everywhere, and their number one tool is to play on our emotions by tweaking our prejudices.

Politically, we'll often hear something like "those rat bastard back-stabbers" in order to keep us from noticing they're the ones stabbing us in the back, or worse yet, manipulating us into stabbing ourselves in the back, always taking pains to be able to shift the blame when we start to get hip to the tricks.

Watch for the reactions. I get the feeling this second iteration of Proud Boys started out as little more than opportunism, but now that it's become kind of a thing, I also think: Tarrio may be going down, so somebody is likely to step into the vacuum and try to salvage that little bloc of support for Daddy State power.

Because while there are aspects of this weird Q and Proud Boys shit that's not much more than goofy adolescent fantasy, let's not ignore the fact that there's some really dark shit going on because of it too.

There was a Capitol Police officer beaten to death with a fire extinguisher on Jan6.

Today's Lesson

A million years ago when I was in school, we weren't taught any of this. There was a vague (in retrospect, maybe deliberately nonspecific) sense of "black people used to be treated pretty bad way back in the day, but that amazing Mr Lincoln fixed it and blah blah blah."

Nobody ever told us about Columbia or Rosewood or Tulsa, or any of the others. And there was a lot of 'em.

I'm a little pissed off about that - I can imagine people with brown skin have to be thoroughly fed up with that shit.

I think I'm in love with Carol Anderson though.

She makes the case that the standard trope about how "Hillary was just a really bad candidate" is and always was a bullshit cover for voter suppression (and other fuckery as well, but yeah).

And what could more "conservative" than to blame the victim?

"I dunno if he raped her, but look at how she was dressed...how much she drank...how she was dancing...where she was walking after dark...is she stupid?" etc etc etc

Anyway - we've got some big fuckin' problems up in this joint and while we don't solve those problems just by voting, we sure as fuck don't solve one goddamned thing without voting - not in a democracy we don't.

Meanwhile - maybe you'd like to look into some of this. And notice the recurring themes, as noted by Prof Anderson:

Civil War Period: 1861–1865[edit]

Main article: Mass racial violence in the United States § Civil War period 1861–1865

Reconstruction Period: 1865–1877[edit]

Main article: Mass racial violence in the United States § Post–Civil War and Reconstruction period: 1865–1877

Jim Crow Period: 1878–1914[edit]

See also: List of riots and civil unrest in Omaha, Nebraska

• 1885: Anti-Chinese riot in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory
• 1886: Seattle riot of 1886^[16]
• 1898: Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, white Democrats overthrew elected government and attacked blacks^[17]
• 1898: Lake City, South Carolina
• 1898: Greenwood County, South Carolina
• 1900: Robert Charles Riots
• 1900: New York City
• 1904: Springfield, Ohio Race Riot^[18]
• 1906: Springfield, Ohio Race Riot^[18]
• 1906: Atlanta Race Riot, whites against African Americans^[19]
• 1906: Brownsville, Texas
• 1907: Onancock, Virginia
• 1907: Pacific Coast Race Riots of 1907
• 1908: Springfield Race Riot of 1908^[20]
• 1909: Omaha, Nebraska anti-Greek riot
• 1910: Nationwide riots following the heavyweight championship fight between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries in Reno, Nevada on July 4
• 1910: Slocum, Texas

War and inter-war period: 1914–1945[edit]

• 1917: East St. Louis Riot^[21]
• 1917: 1917 Chester race riot
• 1917: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• 1917: Houston Riot
• Red Summer of 1919
  • 1919: Washington, D.C.
  • 1919: Chicago Race Riot of 1919^[22]
  • 1919: Omaha Race Riot of 1919
  • 1919: Charleston riot of 1919
  • 1919: Longview race riot
  • 1919: Knoxville Riot of 1919
  • 1919: Elaine Race Riot
• 1920: Ocoee Massacre
• 1921: Tulsa race massacre (Tulsa, Oklahoma)^[23]
• 1921: Springfield, Ohio Race Riot^[18]
• 1923: Rosewood massacre (Rosewood, Florida)^[24]
• 1927: Yakima Valley Anti-Filipino Riot^[25]
• 1928: Wenatchee Valley Anti-Filipino Riot^[25]
• 1929: Exeter Anti-Filipino Riot^[26]
• 1930: Watsonville Riots, Anti-Filipino riot which inspired race riots in San Francisco, Salinas and San Jose and attacks elsewhere.^[26]
• 1935: Harlem Riot of 1935
• 1943: Detroit Race Riot^[27]
• 1943: Beaumont Race Riot of 1943
• 1943: Harlem Riot of 1943
• 1943: Zoot Suit Riots
• 1944: Agana race riot

Postwar era: 1946–1954[edit]

• 1946: Columbia, Tennessee Riot
• 1949: Peekskill Riots
• 1951: Cicero Race Riot in Illinois

Civil Rights and Black Power Movement's Period: 1955–1977[edit]

• 1958: Battle of Hayes Pond (Maxton, North Carolina)
• 1962: Ole Miss riot, Oxford, Mississippi
• 1963: Birmingham Riot of 1963, Birmingham, Alabama
• 1963: Cambridge riot of 1963 (Cambridge, Maryland)
• 1963: Lexington Riot, Lexington, North Carolina^[28]
• 1964: Harlem Riot of 1964 (Harlem neighborhood, Manhattan, New York City)
• 1964: Rochester riot (Rochester, New York)
• 1964: Philadelphia 1964 race riot (North Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
• 1965: Watts Riots (Watts neighborhood, Los Angeles, California)
• 1966: Division Street Riots (Humboldt Park neighborhood, Chicago, Illinois)
• 1966: Hough Riots (Hough community, Cleveland, Ohio)
• 1966: North Omaha, Nebraska (North Omaha community, Omaha, Nebraska)
• Long Hot Summer of 1967
  • 1967: Roxbury riots (Boston, Massachusetts)^[29]
  • 1967: Tampa riots (Tampa, Florida)
  • 1967: Texas Southern University Riot (Houston, Texas)
  • 1967: 1967 Detroit riot (Detroit, Michigan)
  • 1967: Buffalo riot (Buffalo, New York)
  • 1967: Milwaukee Riot (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
  • 1967: Minneapolis North Side Riots (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
  • 1967: 1967 Newark riots (Newark, New Jersey)
  • 1967: Plainfield riots (Plainfield, New Jersey)
  • 1967: Cincinnati riots (Cincinnati, Ohio)
• Protests of 1968
  • 1968: Orangeburg massacre (Orangeburg, South Carolina)
• 1968: King assassination riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
  • 1968: Baltimore riot of 1968 (Baltimore, Maryland)
  • 1968: Chicago West Side riots (Chicago, Illinois)
  • 1968: Louisville riots of 1968 (Louisville, Kentucky)
  • 1968: 1968 Washington, D.C. riots (Washington, D.C.)
  • 1968: 1968 Wilmington riots (Wilmington, Delaware)
• 1968: Glenville shootout and riot (Cleveland, Ohio)
• 1969: 1969 York Race Riot (York, Pennsylvania)
• 1969: Stonewall Riot (New York, NY)
• 1970: May 11 Race Riot (Augusta, Georgia)
• 1970: Jackson State killings (Jackson, Mississippi)
• 1971: Camden riots (Camden, New Jersey)
• 1972–1977: Escambia High School riots (Pensacola, Florida)
• 1972: USS Kitty Hawk Riot (Coast of North Vietnam); October 12–13
• 1975: Chaffey High School Race Riot enhanced by local sniper (Ontario, California)

1978 to today[edit]

• 1978: Houston's Moody Park on the first anniversary of Joe Campos Torres death.
• 1979: Great Brook Valley Projects Riots Worcester, Massachusetts, Puerto Ricans rioted
• 1980: Miami riots (Miami, Florida): Reactions following the acquittal of four Miami-Dade Police officers in the death of Arthur McDuffie.
• 1980: Chattanooga Riot (Chattanooga, Tennessee)
• 1984: Lawrence, Massachusetts Race Riot: A small scale riot centered at the intersection of Haverhill and railroad streets between working class whites and Hispanics; several buildings were destroyed by Molotov cocktails; August 8, 1984.^[30]
• 1989: Overtown Riot (Miami, FL) After a black motorcyclist was shot by a Hispanic police officer in the predominantly black community of Overtown, residents rioted for two nights. The officer was later convicted of manslaughter.
• 1990: Wynwood riot (Miami, FL) Puerto Ricans rioted after a jury acquitted six officers accused of beating a Puerto Rican drug dealer to death
• 1991: Crown Heights riot (Crown Heights neighborhood, Brooklyn, New York City), black anti-Jewish mob killed 2, injured 190.
• 1992: Los Angeles riots (Los Angeles, California): In reaction to the acquittal of all four LAPD officers involved in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, in addition to the Korean involved in the murder of Latasha Harlins; riots broke out mainly involving black and Latino youths in the black neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles and Korean-American neighborhood of Koreatown before spreading to the rest of the city
• 1996: St. Petersburg riots (St. Petersburg, Florida): After Officer Jim Knight stopped 18 yr. old Tyron Lewis for speeding, he claimed to accidentally fire his weapon, fatally wounding the black teenager. Riots broke out, lasting 2 days.^{[citation needed]}
• 2001: Cincinnati riots (Cincinnati, Ohio): In a reaction to the fatal shooting of an unarmed young black male, Timothy Thomas by Cincinnati police officer Steven Roach, riots broke out over the span of a few days.
• 2003: Benton Harbor riots (Benton Harbor, Michigan)
• 2005: 2005 Toledo riot (Toledo, Ohio): A race riot that broke out after a planned Neo-Nazi protest march through a black neighborhood.
• 2006: Fontana High School riot (Fontana, California): Riot involving about 500 Latino and black students^[31]
• 2006: Prison Race Riots (California): A war between Latino and black prison gangs set off a series of riots across California^[32][33]
• 2008: Locke High School riot^[34] (Los Angeles, California)
• 2009: 2009 Oakland riots (Oakland, California): Peaceful protests turned into rioting after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, by a BART transit policeman.
• 2014–2015: The Ferguson unrest, a series of riots break out in Ferguson, Missouri over the shooting of Michael Brown.
  • August 2014: riots for two weeks after the initial shooting of Michael Brown.
  • Late November and early December 2014: riots for one week after the police officer who shot Michael Brown was not indicted.
  • August 2015: riots for two days during the anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown.
• 2015: The Death of Freddie Gray was an incident in which a suspect died in police custody and later protests turned into riots in Baltimore.
• 2016: The Shooting of Abdullahi Omar Mohamed sparked riots on the night of the shooting.
• 2020: The Death of George Floyd caused days of rioting in the Minneapolis-St Paul, MN metro area. This has further spread to the cities of NYC, LA, San Jose, San Francisco, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, Washington DC, Charlottesville, Charlotte, Baltimore, Portland, Dallas, Denver, St Louis, Oakland, Cincinnati, Bakersfield, Seattle, Boston, Memphis, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Columbus, Kansas City, Sacramento, Omaha, Louisville, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Fort Worth, Richmond, Philadelphia, Visalia, Nashville, Rochester, Orlando, Tampa, San Diego, San Antonio, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Miami, Norfolk, Reno, Madison, Charleston, Santa Monica, Houston, Paducah and many other major cities within the US.