The death of Bob Lee
We still don’t know who stabbed Bob Lee to death in San Francisco, and we may never know. This article points out the empty words of the DA of the city who said, “We do not tolerate these horrific acts of violence in San Francisco.”
And yet it does seem such acts are “tolerated” – after all, criminal prosecution has been easing, and crime increasing, with the “tolerance” of authorities. Brooke Jenkins, who uttered those words, replaced the recalled previous DA Chesa Boudin who helped destroy San Francisco. She is indeed more of a “law and order” DA compared to Boudin, who was nothing of the sort, but she’s done little to change things so far and I’m not at all certain she will or even can.
But I really want to write about two other things in that article. This is the first:
Lee had recently left SF to move back to Miami because he felt that San Francisco was “deteriorating.”
If that is true, it reminds me of this story about fate:
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
I still get a chill when I read that, as I did the first time I saw it many years ago.
Here’s the second thing that caught my eye:
Bob Lee had been stabbed repeatedly.
Passersby ignored his pleas for help and drove on.
Police called arrived too late.
Here’s my question: what would you have done if you were driving in San Francisco at 2:30 AM and saw a man bleeding from the chest, trying to flag down your car? I am pretty sure I would have been terrified to stop, and most likely would have “driven on.” First of all, I have no idea what useful aid I could have offered except to call 911, which I would have immediately done anyway – from the relative safety of my car. I would have described what I saw and where I saw it, as I’ve done a few times in my life when I’ve driven past something suspicious and/or alarming.
I would also have been frightened that, by stopping, I might expose myself to attack by the same person who stabbed Lee.
And lastly, I would have also wondered whether the whole thing might possibly be some sort of scam or hoax, to get someone to stop and then to rob or harm that person. Was this man really bleeding, or was it staged? This last suspicion would have been the weakest and least likely of all; nevertheless I think it would have at least occurred to me.
All of these things would have combined to make me a coward who drove by, but who also immediately called 911 in great urgency and agitation. Are we certain that none of the people in the cars that “drove on” did the same?
It seems he had a cell phone but did not try to call 911 until too late. What was he doing on the street at 2:30 AM? Many years ago when SF was a different city, (1972) My wife and I were entertaining a prominent surgeon from Holland. At one point we were walking from one night club to another at 2 AM. I told him that it was not safe to walking in that city at 2 AM. He reassured me that he was not worried. He had killed several Germans with his bare hands during the war. I told him I felt much safer.
Bob Lee is not the only recent victim of crime in SF– the very day after Lee was stabbed, a former SF fire commissioner named Don Carmignani was attacked by a vagrant wielding a metal crowbar just steps from the front door of his mother’s home. Carmignani is a big guy, built like the proverbial linebacker– which implies that no one is safe from psycho randos in SF. Carmignani is presently in the ICU with severe injuries to the back of his head. He was luckier than Lee in that neighbors of Carmignani’s mother “saw him getting attacked and were able to pull him into the house and call 911.”
https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/ex-san-fran-fire-commissioner-attacked-with-crowbar-day-after-bob-lee-killed/
For another take on out-of-control crime and mental illness in the city Herb Caen once called Baghdad-by-the-Bay, there’s a six-part documentary called Saving San Francisco. It was produced a year ago by NBC Bay Area and can be watched on YouTube. Each part is about 8 minutes long. The documentary traces the activities of one James Durgin, a substance-addicted homeless man who bounces back and forth between prison and being quickly released to stalk and terrorize San Franciscans yet again. London Breed is interviewed in the documentary along with people from Durgin’s past as well as his present.
Here is a link to Episode 1, “The Man in the Woods,” which introduces Durgin as a stalker who shows up stark naked outside the home of a woman living in the Presidio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD37UvucP6o&ab_channel=NBCBayArea
As Mike K. stated, why was Bob Lee walking around at 2:30 a.m., whether in San Francisco, which Lee had previously noted as deteriorated, or for that matter any city at 2:30 a.m.? I can’t be the only one wondering why?
The very well-informed and very rational M Shellenberger appeared on Chris Cuomo’s show last night (NewsNation) to discuss the sad situation in SF (“only getting worse”). This catastrophe is entirely the fault of delusional leftists and black nationalist race-hustlers, who prefer to discuss truly insane proposals for “reparations” (in a state which never had slavery) to any plan for actually fixing the city’s multitudinous problems.
Why did a murderer fell confident in killing another in SF? When does it become an issue at 12:00 Noon in SF? Or just another case of a previously unknown oppressed group (murderers) now being empowered to be free and express themselves?
When I heard of this stabbing my first thought was: “would I have stopped at 2:30 AM in San Francisco?” I think I would not have, and I cannot fault the person or persons who did not do so. San Francisco has just become too dangerous.
But that illustrates another reality: I would NOT have been out, walking or driving, at that time of night in that city. In fact I don’t think it likely I will EVER find myself in San Francisco again. That’s sad, but it is understandable. They have made their bed; let them sleep in it.
As for a new DA reforming the situation, I am not optimistic. This is a class issue and she has arrived in the class of people who do not have to worry about their safety in San Francisco. She’s got hers; don’t expect her to worry about others.
F,
But wasn’t this Lee also in that ‘class of people’? What about Paul Pelosi?
It probably won’t matter even after it happens to those in this ‘class of people’.
Really is remarkable and is the topic of so many conversations these days. What would it take for change to happen?
The fact that nothing changes even when someone like Pelosi is attacked in his home is evidence that the left doesn’t care about even their own in the end.
It’s why the calls for the right to arrest some Democrat politicians so they will realize it can happen to them too will never work.
Even if an arrest and prosecution worked they will just discard that person and carry on.
If only someone were around to write “The Lonesome Death of Bob Lee” in the same style as Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.”
Hattie Carroll, a black barmaid, is killed by a rich white man with a cane, who gets off with a six-month sentence.
Today, if a Narrative Victim turns out to have killed Bob Lee, a white multi-millionaire male, would we be surprised by a similar result?
Gerard Vanderleun had a fine hand for such rewrites. He’s missed.
___________________________
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears
–Bob Dylan, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Official Audio)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmbwU3J-2kk
Pretty common everywhere for people to be walking back to their car after the bars close at 2:a.m.
Also fairly common to get robbed at night in San Fran.
Also common for crazy sob’s to be anywhere at any time in S.F.
There’s enough resistance to the situation to get Chesa Boudin run out of office. Now you need to replace the feckless London Breed and the schmuck faction on the city council.
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Have a gander at the occupational background of Breed and the ‘supervisors’. Not one worked in protective services or in business or in any profession other than law. None working in law built an ordinary law practice. There is one with training in urban planning, but she’s never been a working planner, just an NGO apparatchik and patronage recipient. You see the same sort of flotsam and jetsam on the Minneapolis city council. It’s as if serious people cannot be bothered to seek public office any more and the public vote against them when they do. The right flank on the council is made up of a lapsed newspaper reporter and a lapsed press agent.
huxley:
I was thinking of that song when I wrote the post.
By the way, you may not be surprised to learn that Hattie Carroll’s death was not quite as described in the song. Here’s the actual story.
I’m with you, neo.
Neo, not a coward, but a very prudent person. First duty is to protect yourself. I think I would have done the same. Although when we go out at night (and visits to Big Box stores) I carry my “camera”.
Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man had a post a few weeks ago that dealt tangentially to this topic. Read it at: https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/03/keep-you-and-yours-safe-thats-your-only.html. I will confess that I am a concealed pistol carrier. Even so, my mindset has been changing from the idea that as a good citizen, I owe someone anything if I see something like that. I’m well aware that if I stopped to render assistance, and, God forbid, it was a trap or setup, and I had to protect my own life with my pistol, I would most likely go to prison for a long time. Especially in a place like San Fran.
I would probably had made a cell phone call to 911 and kept driving. I would also most probably have the thought for the rest of my life that I might have been able to save that guy. If only….
I believe that there are many deluded people who do not want to see the ever grimmer reality, and who still want to believe that we are back in, say, the 1950s–when kids could pretty safely play out side until dark, you didn’t necessarily have to lock the doors to your car or home, and that the vast majority of people are “good.”
While it still may be true that the vast majority of people are “good” in heart and deed, there is a small minority of feral people–which seems to be on the increase–who are not, and that is the group of people who you now have to be wary of, and to take precautions against.
So, for instance, where I now live–in a pretty safe area–there are increasing numbers of auto thefts, and in many of these cases the reports are that the cars which were stolen–often parked in people’s driveways–were just not locked.
1. I would caution people asking what Lee was doing out at 2:30 am that he’s perfectly within his rights to be out at 2:30 am, as all of us are. (I’m a night owl, and during the Wuhan Flu I got into the habit of going out running at 2:30 am to avoid the Branch Covidians and Maskholes, but I live in an exurb, not San Francisco.) The “You shouldn’t have worn the miniskirt” argument is analogous here.
2. I’m surprised I’ve seen no one in covering this story mention the Kitty Genovese effect. I would argue the anarcho-tyranny (as well as the arachno-tyranny) of Soros’ little Beria DAs in San Francisco and elsewhere is making potential good Samaritans question whether getting involved would open themselves up to prosecution
Jeff Cox: who’s talking about rights? That has nothing to do with this. A reasonably intelligent person, paying attention to the world around them would know why it’s not a good idea to be out at 2:30am in SF.
Jeff Cox:
Except there was no Kitty Genovese effect, certainly not as reported anyway. It was something the NY Times made up. Actually, people helped her, and people called the police as well. See this.
“What was she doing out at that hour?” Is considered a not-cool response to rape.
I assume they have security camera footage of the scene. Is it evident that the people passing by in their cars actually noticed him?
The “You shouldn’t have worn the miniskirt” argument is analogous here.
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Did anyone ever make that argument (outside the imagination of Marilyn French)?
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NB, one thing law enforcement had to do in 1966 was assess the credibility of accusers, and your nonverbal communications, your antecedent actions, and your reputation are part of the mise en scene.
“What was she doing out at that hour?” Is considered a not-cool response to rape.
So let’s suspend using good judgement to be part of the cool gang, I guess.
This good samaritan choice was once presented to me: while riding an off-road motorcycle in N. California I came upon an unconscious man laying partially in the trail alongside a rifle. I stopped, but about 30 yards away, and looked back. Every instinct shouted to me, “GET OUT” and I did. About half a mile later the trail ended at a dirt road, where a car was parked, door open, and bullets and boxes of bullets were strewned all over the dashboard and hood. On my way back to my truck I flagged down a Federal police car of some type and told him what I saw. He said he had a prisoner in the back and couldn’t deal with it. I told him to radio his boss and get redirected, which he did, and was. I was brave enough to lead him to the scene and offer to help him arrest another man he found at the scene. A few days later the officer called me up and told me I had stumbled on a pot grower shootout, and the man he arrested was the son of the dead man on the trail.
how does one defend one’s self in san francisco which is really a test of whether a society can exist in a ‘state of nature’ where ‘life is nasty brutish and short’ it can’t in the long run,
I’d have to turn off 3/4 of my brain to be in SF at any time let alone at 2:30am. I have no sympathy for willing fodder.
Richard Aubrey on April 9, 2023 at 7:02 am said:
“What was she doing out at that hour?” Is considered a not-cool response to rape.
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Lee publicly bemoaned the “deterioration” of the city he ended up getting killed in to the point he moved his family out of said city to escape the crime. Yet the first time he returns to this city he found too dangerous to live in, he walks around alone at 2:30 in the morning?
This is a different situation that the theoretical rape victim you speak of who is walking home from a bar by herself early in the morning in a city she has never experienced or complained of problems in.
This isn’t criticizing the short skirt of a woman who got raped, this is criticizing a guy who complained about a dog who had bitten many other people who had tried to pet it deciding to later pet that same dog himself.
John V. Way to miss the point. When someone points to the skirt, the late hour, the bad neighborhood, the point is to not to have to worry about the predators.
But predators can leave the neighborhood, operate shortly after dawn, and decide that a long skirt is even more exciting.
I once decided a particular intersection was dangerous–expressway runs out and highway hypnosis might not notice the red light. Decided to be extra cautious. Then, one fine day, I was watching and managed to get out of the way. Saved my life. But, had I not, it would still be the truck driver’s fault and the lack of warning signs in the preceding mile.
Insisting the entire thing is the fault of the ordinary driver not taking care that a guy driving a cement truck would be zoned out is not the way to think about such things.
But that’s the way it goes with “at the hour…??
Additionally, official disfavor toward active Good Samaritans can be tricky.
The question screaming from me, as I re-read Neo’s top-liner here, is this: WHAT DAMAGE IS THE LEFT DOING to our High Trust society? It is Cleary intended.
I have seen on websites, increasingly since last year, and the latest at Zerohedge, the mention of Anarcho-Tyranny.
For this precisely describes what we — Bob Lee — and Trump are enduring from the far Left.
The term goes back to 1992, and the concept has loomed large in paleo-conservative and paleo-libertarian thought and analysis. Such circles at the public level include two aging lions, Pat Buchanan and former Congressman Ron Paul.
But Samuel Francis originated the term anarcho-tyranny:
“anarcho-tyranny (plural anarcho-tyrannies)
1. (abstract) A term coined by Sam Francis referring to a system of government that fails to enforce or adjudicate protection to its citizens while simultaneously persecuting innocent conduct.
2. (abstract) An armed dictatorship without rule of law.” — Wikionary
Before the deep state came into usage, there was and remains the term administrative state. And before these terms, I think, James Burnham (and others?) coined the phrase “the managerial state.”
It’s from Wikipedia’s entry on the “managerial state” that I share some further examples illustrating anarcho-tyranny.
“[T]heorists of the managerial state additionally draw from theories of political religion and the secularization of Christian concepts, namely Puritanism,[6] which they contend demand an overweening concern with government intervention in favor of social justice, unaccountable regulation of citizens’ private lives, and both informally and formally enforced political correctness.
“Francis argues that anarcho-tyranny is built into the managerial system and cannot be solved simply by fighting corruption or voting out incumbents. In fact, he says that the system generates a false ‘conservatism’ that encourages people to act passively in the face of perpetual revolution. He concludes that only by devolving power back toward law-abiding citizens can sanity be restored.[14]
“In addition, Thomas Fleming describes anarcho-tyranny as ‘law without order: a constant busybodying about behavior that does not at all derive from a shared moral consensus.’[18] He suggests stoicism as a survival skill.
He wrote, ‘the only response to this regime is to follow the boxing referee’s advice: protect yourself at all times….. The only freedom we have is the moral freedom that even ancient slaves enjoyed. Read Epictetus.’ [18]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_state
Samuel Francis “says that the system generates a false ‘conservatism’ that encourages people to act passively in the face of perpetual revolution.”
That’s certainly the thinking of Trump and Trump allies like Congresswomen Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example. And many other people.
Francis “concludes that only by devolving power back toward law-abiding citizens can sanity be restored.” Precisely what would this mean? Everyone armed? And everyone enforcing vigilantism?
As we edge towards half of the states adopting CCA or Constitutional Concealed Carry laws, we may be moving towards Francis vision sooner than we can imagine.
There are a few other uses bearing on anarchy-tyranny. C. S. Lewis and the late Jerry Pournelle, Joseph Sobran, and Paul Gottfried adduce even more, for those interested.
Just found out at church this Easter Morning that one of AesopSpouse’s Eagle Scouts and his wife (they do grow up!) are moving to an exurb of San Francisco.
After giving them some Strongly Worded Cautions, I wished them well, and reminded him to keep his paranoia antenna in good working order.
A related issue to contemporary anarcho-tyranny is the origins of Woke-ism and the SWJ.
In a substance piece, Michael Rectenwald assay’s the problem Marx versus Mao in “The Maoist Rage of Woke Ideology.” (The author’s web site, but it also appears in this month’s Chronicle’s.) He takes on James Lindsey and Ryan Chapman.
CONCLUSION: since the 1970s, “ this Westernized Maoism, like Mao’s philosophy that it adopted and adapted, is entirely illiberal and anti-liberal. It is, in short, totalitarian. Yet, to undertake its subversion of Western liberal democracies, Westernized Maoism exploited the paradox of liberal tolerance and used liberal ideals against liberalism itself. It relied on the principles of free speech, individual rights, and tolerance of oppositional views to make its case, and then proceeded to silence and shout down its opponents after it gained ascendency. The solution to this infiltration is the unapologetic reassertion of Western ideas and ideals and the confrontation and elimination of the totalitarian “other” that has savaged them.”
https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/essays/maoist-rage-of-woke-ideology
Huh. Confrontation and elimination, then, after Enlightenment revival?
John V. Way to miss the point. When someone points to the skirt, the late hour, the bad neighborhood, the point is to not to have to worry about the predators.
Richard, I wish that none of us should have to worry about predators, but that is a rather naive wish. In this fallen world it is not possible to live, or wish, in such a way. Be innocent as doves, but wise as serpents, is not simply a meaningless phrase or poster slogan. It is sound advice. Bob Lee, unfortunately, ignored all the signs that pointed to the dangers of walking around the streets at 2:30 a.m. in the morning, signs that he previously pointed out himself.
dJohn V.
Wishes are pretty cheap. They go with the “short skirt!” thing and dismiss the need to fix the predators.
It is sound advice as far as it goes but…that’s as far as it goes.
As with the traffic accident that didn’t happen to me…that I did and others should pay attention to that intersection does not mean more signage is not required.
It’s been fixed since, but if somebody got rear ended and killed at that light, saying he should have known and….chaniging the subject doesn’t help.
And that’s the purpose of the short-skirt observation.
Anarcho-tyranny does sound about right as a description of the current situation.
we are reverting to the state of nature, where life is nasty brutish and short, the whole reason we created government, this bronze age dynamic where ‘the rule of the strong’ as thrasymachus, argued determines all,
BTW, we’re assuming Mr. Lee was actually walking around at 2:30am, right? Might he have been kidnapped at 8:00 pm, held for 5 hours while his kidnappers/killers decided what to do with him, then taken out to a bad neighborhood at 2:30 am and knifed to death? I know no details of the case, so perhaps we actually do know where he was up until 2:30. Just wondering.
Chesa Boudin was voted out as SF DA not by the dopey Pelosi type of San Franciscans but by the Asians in the City by the Bay. White Progressives are like the Bourbon Kings of France whom as the Duke of Wellington said “Learn nothing and forget nothing”.