The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(08-30-2020, 04:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-29-2020, 07:58 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-29-2020, 03:17 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: We'll always have some bad apples. You should know that by now. You should also know that blaming all for the action of one is wrong as well.

There are likely more good cops than bad.  In order to have law and order you need good cops.

With the KKK and Neo Nazi you get Antifa.  I like the violence about as much as I like the bad cops.  But how do you make them all go away?

With the Black Lives Matter movement come the Boogaloo Bois.  I am for the first, but against the last.  But you will always have some bad apples?  Do you shrug and accept that?  Or do you demonstrate that the combination of democracy and capitalism can still work.

If you are going to invite in the militia, you will get insane teenagers who commit murder with long arms.  Oh, well.  We'll always have bad apples?  What are a few murders here and there?

The elites don't employ violence.  Instead they buy politicians.  The effect is vaguely the same.  One group gets resources and status over another.  Us and them.

I have noted how humans evolved during the hunter gatherer period.  Violence and oppression of other groups was cost effective.  As a result we have an instinct to divide people into us and them and kill, oppress, and take resources from them.  All of the above can stand as examples.  Every one of them.  Bad cops, the KKK, the Neo Nazi, Antifa, the Boogallo Bois, the Trump loyalists, the elites, all of them.  You divide people and oppress those who are not like you with violence.

I have noted that since the Information Age, somewhere between the invention of machine guns to the creation of nukes, violence became a non cost effective way of solving problems.  Many have come to the conclusion that violence is a last resort, that you exhaust all other means before you fall back on it.  Insurgent proxy wars and nukes will do that.  Machine guns will do that.  Heck, even a sharp knife will do that.

But some people still let their hunter gatherer genes take over.  If you are obsessed enough with violence, you might say good.  There always will be bad apples.  There will always be us and them.  Live with it.  We are a violent species.  Live with it.  If you won't, eat lead.  I am better than you at violence.  Me us, you them.  Eat lead and die.

Fourth Turnings are a time when a few of the greatest problems facing the culture are eliminated.  Kings.  Colonial imperialism.  Slaves.  Dictators.  Now racist violent policing as well as much of systematic prejudice has risen to the top.  COVID has risen to the top.  All of the groups that are enthralled by violence to achieve status, wealth or power have risen near the top.  Global warming has risen at least to the level of campaign promises, but it is a bit early to celebrate that one.

Thus, I am not impressed by an obsessed with violence advocate of the old values.  In a new birth of freedom, violence may become necessary.  With or without violence, it has always been the side favoring equality, democracy, human rights and I may as well include justice that comes up on top.  It will be less necessary to revert to violence in an age where non violence and legislation are the more common way to transform the culture.

I know you are obsessed with violence.  A lot of conservatives that are attracted to S&H are.  The idea that lots of violence comes every four score and seven years attracts people who are close to their hunter gatherer passions.  Like Game of Thrones suggested, it is time to break the wheel.  It is time for this to stop.  It is time for a crisis in some ways more profound than the more violent prior crises.

Not that we are there yet.  There are other unresolved issues, a need for more transformational turnings.  Limiting population may be in the on deck circle.

But this one will be sufficient.

I'm not obsessed with violence but I can see more of it coming and so can most of the country which is why people are arming up. I've heard there's two million more gun owners than there was before all  the violence started. If you want to stick with wishful thinking and continue blaming racism for what we've seen so far it's alright with me but it's most likely not going to help you at the polls in November.

Classic X'er, I have seen copious talk of nebulous violence from you. Americans are becoming less tolerant of racist, religious, homophobic, and domestic violence. Even executions are becoming rarer. (OK, one contributing factor to that is that police have bulletproof vests and get an edge in a shoot-out. Crooks used to pull a gun on a cop while fleeing a lawful arrest and shot the cop in the heart or lungs, killing the cop... but doing so now causes the bullet to bound off the bullet-proof vest and the cop gets a shot at the offender's heart or chest and then empties his revolver upon the dying offender. If the crook tries to shoot the cop in the face, then the cop shoots the perp in the chest before the crook can aim for the unprotected face or head Technically that is police brutality, but if it is a choice between someone who pulls a gun on a cop dying in an electric chair or being killed in the field, I prefer that the cop survive).

You make it sound as if gun owners are all anti-liberal people set on defending themselves from some left-wing nightmare. You are wrong. Most gun owners are sport hunters, and those are generally well-behaved people. They own expensive, high-powered, highly-accurate rifles. Well-behaved, all right -- unless you are "Bambi" or some game bird. Many of the guns are in possession of gun collectors who are more interested in antique firearms for their beauty than for their fire-power. Sure, an AK-47, and Uzi, or an AR-15 may be beautiful for its firepower, but nothing else, and if a collector has any of those he needs only one. They have their historical roles. Those collectors may have plenty of muskets grossly obsolete as military weapons or criminal arms. It would be easy to fashion gun-control legislation that leaves their deer rifle or their antique collection alone. 

If you are scared of Black Lives Matters -- then at least recognize its narrow purpose of making police forces more responsible in treating African-American suspects right. The right way to deal with an African-American suspect is the same as dealing with a white suspect: overpower the alleged offender, put the offender in lawful custody, and let the legal system do its work. Should the offender have breathing problems, then the suspect goes to the hospital for treatment. Black Lives Matters does not have a purpose of allowing black people to get away with crime for having been deprived in youth or having had ancestors 'oppressed' in slavery or Jim Crow practice. There are good people in the most dreadful ghettos, and black crooks usually victimize such people if they get the chance. Black Lives Matters clearly does not ask for black people to get any 'race card' that gets them out of jail free. I am for law and order (which explains my disdain for drugs, homophobia, and sex crimes), but not for inexcusable manifestations of police brutality. Yes, self-defense, however inexcusable, is as brutal as inexcusable crime that it is intended to thwart. 

If you want to know what the real brutality in the human soul is, then just look to the neo-Nazi and neo-Klan (the distinction between the Klan and neo-Nazis is at most style). We all know what Nazis did, and anyone affecting Nazi symbols and ideology connects himself to confiscations of assets, torture chambers, shooting pits, concentration camps, and fake showers that dispense Zyklon-B. Because Klan groups share the same hatreds as Nazis and have a known proclivity for murderous violence, I can easily imagine Kluxists doing much the same thing. Those who shout "Jews will not replace us!" -- as far as that goes, I wish that Jews really would replace them. (Jews have the decency to recognize Harvey Weinstein, Bernie Madoff, and Jeffrey Epstein as rogues worthy of hatred much as I as a German-American see John Dillinger as a rogue deserving of hatred).