De Facto Civil War Between Police and the Public?

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-07-2016, 08:23 AM)Anthony Wrote:

Quote:I'm also seeing long memories of quite dead spirals of violence being raised.  Yes, there was the beginning of a spiral of violence during the awakening years around 1968.  The left lost MLK, and the two Kennedys.  On the flip side there were a lot of demonstrations and riots.  The Blue Awakening was quite dead by the Fall of Saigon, Watergate and Tapestry.  The awakening spirals are but a memory.

Except that the awakening spirals have woven their way into America's tapestry - a fact that Colin Kaepernick has graphically reminded us of.

Over on the 'cuck' thread, I described the recent frequent use of the word in certain circles as reflecting a belief that white males have a special place in the world, and that white males who aren't firm in maintaining this place are being weak and effeminate.  The meme proposes that political correctness has gone too far in weakening the superior place of white males.  This is of course the race problem, long woven into the American tapestry, a major theme that underlies a lot of tension and conflict.  It periodically surfaces into all out violence.  The US Civil War is the obvious example.  The civil rights movement of the awakening is another.  Today's Black Lives Matter movement is a third.  Obviously, the three are not equal in the amount of violence involved.

The race problem isn't apt to go away.  Trump is one or a long line of politicians who have exploited the fears and desires of those who think themselves better than other folk.  Blacks are hardly the only group to have been oppressed.  They're just the most familiar and blatant.  While the problem is persistent and seemingly eternal, progress has been made.  'Cuck' is not an insult directed at a minority, but at folk who are perceived of as not being racist enough.  It isn't considered polite anymore to insult minorities, so they are insulting those who in their opinion should be pushing harder against minorities.  There is an extra degree of indirection involved. 

Is this progress?  Kinda sorta, in my opinion.  It isn't the destruction of the formal institution of slavery, which followed the Civil War.  It isn't the restoration of the federal government's ability to protect the Rights of the People, which Thurgood Marshall fought for in the mid 20th Century.  It isn't the dissolution of blatant in your face segregation that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s.  As the more major and blatant aspects of the race problem are subdued, the ones that are left are less drastic.

But an unequal justice system is drastic enough.  The problems being pushed by Black Lives Matter are real.

Opposition to racism is quite arguably cyclical.  Race problems in the United States flare and ease.  The major flares I mentioned above occurred in crises and awakenings, as one might expect.

But I for one don't see a continuity of violence between the 1960s and today.  There was a long time where the violence was submerged in the criminal.  There was poverty, crime, drugs and lopsided law enforcement which were worse in urban black environments than elsewhere.  It was tolerated, though, or ignored.  (Well, the War on Drugs was fought the full length of an overlong unravelling.  Not the same.)  Racism isn't apt to be tolerated and ignored forever in a country with strong ideals of equality.  Spirals of rhetoric and violence will rise from time to time, and periods with crisis and awakening moods would be prime.

Anyway, when I'm wearing my 'objectively measure the intensity of the spiral of violence' hat, the Civil War, the awakening civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter movement are three quite separate and distinct periods of conflict.  

When I'm looking at the problem of race in general, yes, everything is part of a long difficult history.

Of which Colin Kapernick is apt to be a small footnote, especially when compared to John Brown or MLK.