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06-08-2020, 05:47 AM
So, I am sure most of you have read my thoughts relating to how I feel about what has been happening in America. Most will probably be shocked and even accuse me of racism, to which I don't really care because I'm not being racist about it, just offering my own insights into how I feel.
With that aside, I'd like to offer my opinion on what the real problem is.
The truth is - America is just a basket case and always has been. It started out being founded on white supremacy as did all of the European colonies. However it never reached South African levels of white supremacy, which would shock even an American black living under segregation. Wrong side of the bus? Try living with your ancestral home crushed by a bulldozer and forced to live in a cramped shack with no basic sanitation, just so a white guy could have a better beach. You get the picture.
What the whites did in America to the blacks is wrong. The lynchings were evil. The outright racism was wrong and I agree, it was bad and did oppress black people.
However, times have moved on now. Whilst I am sure there are racist police still out there, the fact remains the racism is now being focused on the white community and white people there are grovelling like slaves for forgiveness. What the blacks once were, cowed and frightened people, has now become the white man.
Unfortunately many blacks there have formed a ghetto mindset and are heavily involved in violent crime through choice, despite there being opportunities to better themselves aplenty. Only white people claim this is because of injustices when in reality, they are not helping themselves.
When it comes down to it, I blame both white and black Americans for not coming together to build a better society. I blame whites for the past oppression and the present babying. I blame blacks for taking advantage of this and not trying better. Both are equally to blame in this and how much more grovelling will it take to make people realise - this ain't working?
Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter. The day when the two groups can stop bitching and being stupid with each other and build a better society will be a miracle.
What I saw in America reminded me how pathetic a nation it really is. You guys have really got to sort it out and build a better, brighter future. Not engaging in religious rituals in the street begging for forgiveness.
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(06-08-2020, 05:47 AM)Isoko Wrote: What I saw in America reminded me how pathetic a nation it really is. You guys have really got to sort it out and build a better, brighter future. Not engaging in religious rituals in the street begging for forgiveness.
We're working on it. The police contain a few who are still into racism and violence. Many are letting them know this is unacceptable. Cultures are stubborn. We'll see what comes from it.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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(06-08-2020, 05:47 AM)Isoko Wrote: So, I am sure most of you have read my thoughts relating to how I feel about what has been happening in America. Most will probably be shocked and even accuse me of racism, to which I don't really care because I'm not being racist about it, just offering my own insights into how I feel.
With that aside, I'd like to offer my opinion on what the real problem is.
The truth is - America is just a basket case and always has been. It started out being founded on white supremacy as did all of the European colonies. However it never reached South African levels of white supremacy, which would shock even an American black living under segregation. Wrong side of the bus? Try living with your ancestral home crushed by a bulldozer and forced to live in a cramped shack with no basic sanitation, just so a white guy could have a better beach. You get the picture.
Race-based slavery existed about a century before the American Revolution and entwined itself into the very fabric of society. But outside of the South, Americans were proud of what the Talented Tenth did as an illustration of what competence, learning, dedication, and hard work could do.
I know of some very rich people in Dallas; they held onto farms around the time when Dallas was experiencing rapid population growth in the 1970's and 1980's. They sold out their farms for a pretty penny.
Quote:What the whites did in America to the blacks is wrong. The lynchings were evil. The outright racism was wrong and I agree, it was bad and did oppress black people.
No fooling. Tell me something that I didn't already know!
Quote:However, times have moved on now. Whilst I am sure there are racist police still out there, the fact remains the racism is now being focused on the white community and white people there are grovelling like slaves for forgiveness. What the blacks once were, cowed and frightened people, has now become the white man.
So far as I know, none of my ancestors in America -- certainly not the Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia -- owned slaves.
Quote:Unfortunately many blacks there have formed a ghetto mindset and are heavily involved in violent crime through choice, despite there being opportunities to better themselves aplenty. Only white people claim this is because of injustices when in reality, they are not helping themselves.
Consider that there might be other causes. As late as the 1970's, environmental lead concentrated heavily in the ghettos of American cities. That is where commuter traffic got heaviest and slowest, and lead in vehicle emissions was most concentrated. Lead is a noxious, cumulative poison that leads to both learning disabilities and impairment of impulse control. Both contribute to crime -- especially violent crime. You will notice that crime rates have gone sharply down since their peaks around 1980. Note that Howe and Strauss recognized that for their Thirteenth Generation (a/k/a "X"), pathology such as crime, drug use, alcoholism, and poor academic performance have fallen with younger cohorts of Generation X. Note that the number of pathologies increased among Boomers.
Let me tell you a few things about black people in Michigan. Many are trying to go to rural areas in Michigan, where the schools are much better (get out of southeastern Michigan and you are either in Nebraska or Maine)... Lots of black parents know this. One day in which I was driving back from Greater Detroit I took a side trip to see some of the northwestern suburbs of Greater Detroit so that I could familiarize myself with the area in case I had to apply for a job in that area. I expected light commute traffic out of Detroit on Interstate 96 in the morning, but I saw quite the opposite. People in Detroit seem to have been driving from Detroit to suburbs that seem to have more jobs in retail and fast food. The commute goes both ways, and it is heavy. (Sure, there were some night-shift workers, but I can draw some conclusions). No, those people were not commuting to Lansing.
An observation that I have made: if you want to know where the economic activity is strongest, then look for the traffic jams. Lansing, Toledo, and South Bend have light traffic, but highways systems made for a time when the factories were busy. The good times are over there.
Quote:When it comes down to it, I blame both white and black Americans for not coming together to build a better society. I blame whites for the past oppression and the present babying. I blame blacks for taking advantage of this and not trying better. Both are equally to blame in this and how much more grovelling will it take to make people realise - this ain't working?
Have you been to eastern Kentucky or the great state of West Virginia lately? Not that central Appalachia was ever a great place for economic opportunity... at one time the most obvious career advice for kids in those parts was to take 19 to Pittsburgh, 21 to Cleveland, 23 or 25 to Greater Detroit or Flint (they merge in Toledo, which used to be a great industrial city); 33 to Columbus, Fort Wayne, or South Bend; 27 or 127 to Cincninnati, Fort Wayne, or Lansing... 52 to Cincinnati, Indianapolis, or (with 41) Chicago... most of those cities are now urban wrecks! See also Dayton, Akron, and Buffalo.
LBJ's Great Society was tailor-maid for a prosperous industrial country in which people with minimal education but strong muscles and a solid work ethic was adequate for earning middle-income means. The problem is that that industrial reality, one that Booker T. Washington touted as more reliable than elite education for blacks, vanished about the same time. Today people need college degrees to do work that used to not need a degree -- and the work is as mindless and menial as ever. Go figure.
Quote:Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter. The day when the two groups can stop bitching and being stupid with each other and build a better society will be a miracle.
Black parents have been telling their kids to be deferential to police to avoid trouble. Need I tell you that we have an opiate epidemic... and it seems to not be hurting black people as it is poor white people? Black Boomers remember when heroin ravaged their communities and impress upon their grandchildren that heroin is an evil to avoid no matter what.
Remember, though: poverty is still debilitating, no matter what one's ethnicity. Criminality is stupid But let us remember: white cops are more likely to hold "ghetto" culture in contempt to the point of associating it with danger. Overstated danger, to be sure. Maybe black cops would be more trigger-happy with white meth fiends.
Quote:What I saw in America reminded me how pathetic a nation it really is. You guys have really got to sort it out and build a better, brighter future. Not engaging in religious rituals in the street begging for forgiveness.
This country is pathetic for having Donald Trump as President. It also gave the world Dr. Martin Luther King, a model for anti-Apartheid struggles in Zimbabwe and South Africa and even anti-Communist struggles in central and Balkan Europe. Let's not forget there is much race-mixing going on, some of it black people marrying and having children by white people. I figure that that will solve lots of political discord in the future.
Ask yourself this: would you rather that your precious white daughter marry a good black bourgeois man with a a solid income and good attitudes or some white meth fiend? I rest my case. Now we do need to reform police forces so that cops know that they are not around to punish people. .
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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Hey- great list of Twitter links. Thanks for putting it together.
Steve Barrera
[A]lthough one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. - Hagakure
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06-08-2020, 12:34 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-08-2020, 12:55 PM by Eric the Green.)
John Oliver tells it like it is, and covers the issue rather completely.
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I thought the best part was the girl at the end.
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(06-08-2020, 09:42 AM)Camz Wrote: I had a cringy phase back in 6th grade where I agreed that all lives mattered and BLM wasn't as big of a deal as people made it out to be.
I'm so glad I've grown since then.
Where "grown" means you've conformed to what you're told, yes.
If the burning house analogy were to hold, an appropriate phrase would be, "black lives matter too". The left, however, rejects that, making it clear they want to movement to stand for black lives being the only ones that matter.
BLM is a political weapon, not a mechanism to help blacks. People who really care about black lives worry more about the tens of thousands of blacks that are murdered in the inner cities due to inadequate policing more than the few that are directly killed by police.
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(06-08-2020, 05:47 AM)Isoko Wrote: Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter. The day when the two groups can stop bitching and being stupid with each other and build a better society will be a miracle.
What I saw in America reminded me how pathetic a nation it really is. You guys have really got to sort it out and build a better, brighter future. Not engaging in religious rituals in the street begging for forgiveness.
Some of us are sorting it out. Under President Trump, black unemployment went down to the point where it was less than white unemployment was for most of the Obama administration.
What you're seeing is the left lashing out against the solutions, trying to preserve the division so they can hold onto their black votes.
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(06-08-2020, 08:14 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: What you're seeing is the left lashing out against the solutions, trying to preserve the division so they can hold onto their black votes.
Sure. That is why the Democrats just proposed a federal bill to ban chokeholds, to allow real suits against problematic police actions, to deny federal funds to any group that fights reforms. They are willing to propose real reforms and ride the wave of the popular will. They may even have enough support to get it through the Republican controlled Senate.
Conservatives? Do you listen to the people, or do you escalate the violence? So far they have been on the escalate side.
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(06-08-2020, 08:14 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: (06-08-2020, 05:47 AM)Isoko Wrote: Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter. The day when the two groups can stop bitching and being stupid with each other and build a better society will be a miracle.
What I saw in America reminded me how pathetic a nation it really is. You guys have really got to sort it out and build a better, brighter future. Not engaging in religious rituals in the street begging for forgiveness.
Some of us are sorting it out. Under President Trump, black unemployment went down to the point where it was less than white unemployment was for most of the Obama administration.
What you're seeing is the left lashing out against the solutions, trying to preserve the division so they can hold onto their black votes.
All gains were due to the Obama stimulus and other Obama policies. Trump did nothing for the black community or anyone else. Removing regulations from coal plants only creates pollution; it does not create jobs. The Trump economy benefited from Obama--- until it didn't. That was when Trump failed to handle the covid crisis sending the economy into a tailspin, and guess who are the first to lose jobs in a recession?
The Left is proposing solutions, hoping thereby to hold onto black votes, while the right lashes out at rioters, hoping to rev up Trump's base, or just cower in fear before it.
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(06-08-2020, 08:11 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: (06-08-2020, 09:42 AM)Camz Wrote: I had a cringy phase back in 6th grade where I agreed that all lives mattered and BLM wasn't as big of a deal as people made it out to be.
I'm so glad I've grown since then.
Where "grown" means you've conformed to what you're told, yes.
If the burning house analogy were to hold, an appropriate phrase would be, "black lives matter too". The left, however, rejects that, making it clear they want to movement to stand for black lives being the only ones that matter.
BLM is a political weapon, not a mechanism to help blacks. People who really care about black lives worry more about the tens of thousands of blacks that are murdered in the inner cities due to inadequate policing more than the few that are directly killed by police.
It is easy to think that the answer to cities that are riddled with crime is more police. Even I might have thought so. But New Orleans and Detroit, I have heard today, are reducing crime by bringing back the programs slashed by Reaganomics.
Under Bill Clinton, 100,000 more police were hired. That was a big deal for him. I don't know if that was why, but crime was reduced as the millennial generation came of age. That infusion of police and prisons, so that we have by far more people in prison than any country, is adequate enough. What is inadequate is asking the police to do all the work that used to be done by social services before Reaganomics cut them all to satisfy the neo-liberal, free-market, social-darwinist, trickle-down economics ideology that says government is the problem and that taxes are theft from what people earn it in order to create dependency and welfare cheats. That ideology was also veiled racism, as well as tempting libertarian pablum. Guys like you fell for it, and that's why we have the problems we have today.
"Black Lives Matter" is the slogan because the police and other authorities do not believe that black lives matter, so people need to say so. "Black Lives Matter too" would be fine, but the 3 words is a more compelling slogan in this case.
Murders and other crimes in inner cities is a problem. The problem now is not that there isn't enough policing. Maybe it never was. There are too many guns. There is too much poverty, and not enough education or social services. There is way too much racial profiling and fear of blacks by police, and too much reliance on prisons and punishment to solve family and medical problems. There is the drug war, which only makes drug addition a profitable underground business.
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(06-08-2020, 10:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It is easy to think that the answer to cities that are riddled with crime is more police.
The opposite of "inadequate policing" is "adequate policing", not "more police". It might or might not involve more police in some areas. It would involve community policing - police who develop social ties to the communities they police. We need to move away from police that view civilians primarily as potental criminals, and toward police that view civilians as people they protect from crime. That's true irrespective of the race of the community.
Quote:"Black Lives Matter too" would be fine, but the 3 words is a more compelling slogan in this case.
I challenge you to carry a sign saying "Black Lives Matter Too" to one of these protests. You personally might actually be idealistic enough to want to improve things, but the people that organize to ensure this issue comes up only in election years don't.
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06-09-2020, 08:10 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-09-2020, 08:19 AM by Anthony '58.)
Ever since Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem, I have had a four-point "Crittenden Compromise" to deal with the problem of excessive force by police in communities of color.
Here it is - and my apologies if I had already posted it here before:
1. Eliminate the shoot-to-kill policy that prevails in most police departments across the country, even when there is no evidence that the suspect is armed, and regardless of how minor the crime. Fear of lawsuits if an officer "kneecaps" such a suspect is what drives this policy. A shattered knee can generally be repaired, while a dead man can never be brought back to life.
2. Legalize marijuana, as polls show more than 60% of Americans now favor doing, for all purposes in every state. This will reduce contacts between police and people of color by at least half.
3. Also legalize concealed carry, which will do three things: First, it will abolish stop-and-frisk en passant because what the police would be looking for in essentially all stop-and-frisk situations would no longer be illegal to possess; second, it will give people of color an equal right to bear arms under the Second Amendment (95% of those serving time under the restrictive, confiscatory gun laws on the books in the various states are African-American or Latino); and third, this proposal is guaranteed to be very popular among gun-rights advocates, which is sure to give it broad bipartisan support.
4. Implement same-race policing; that is, only black officers patrol black neighborhoods, and only Hispanic officers patrol Hispanic neighborhoods (the latter also eliminating potential language barriers). And to anyone who thinks this is "radical," Boston did it in 1850, after Irish residents of such neighborhoods as Charlestown and South Boston complained of the brutal treatment they were receiving from WASP cops. Thus began the tradition of the Irish civil servant, which quickly spread both to other cities and to other uniformed services, most notably fire departments. This will also, by necessity, lead to the hiring of many more black and Hispanic officers - so, like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, it's a win-win.
"These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation" - Justice David Brewer, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892
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(06-09-2020, 08:10 AM)Anthony Wrote: Ever since Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem, I have had a four-point "Crittenden Compromise" to deal with the problem of excessive force by police in communities of color.
I would add a few of the things proposed by the Milwaukee city council and the US House. Ban choke holds. Require officers to stop abuse by their fellows, report abuse or being prosecuted as accomplices. Cut federal funding to organizations that resist reform,
But it is a start.
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06-09-2020, 10:08 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-09-2020, 11:22 AM by Bob Butler 54.)
(06-08-2020, 08:11 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: BLM is a political weapon, not a mechanism to help blacks.
It is a political weapon if you don’t value lives, if you haven’t been under centuries of oppression. It is a place where many conservatives have left themselves vulnerable to the will of the people. Really doing something now that the mood of the country is finally shifting does put the Republicans in a more vulnerable position. But, hey, the racists had their innings. Time for an advance.
The Republicans have been the party of the racists for decades. They have quietly picked up the votes and taken advantage of the slave compromises. If you read your history, you have to expect this will come back to burn you badly from time to time.
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Truth be told -- fire-fighters rarely arrive fast enough to save a house on fire.. They can protect the neighbors' houses, which becomes a concern.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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06-09-2020, 12:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-09-2020, 12:16 PM by Eric the Green.)
(06-09-2020, 02:00 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: (06-08-2020, 10:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It is easy to think that the answer to cities that are riddled with crime is more police.
The opposite of "inadequate policing" is "adequate policing", not "more police". It might or might not involve more police in some areas. It would involve community policing - police who develop social ties to the communities they police. We need to move away from police that view civilians primarily as potential criminals, and toward police that view civilians as people they protect from crime. That's true irrespective of the race of the community.
Quote:"Black Lives Matter too" would be fine, but the 3 words is a more compelling slogan in this case.
I challenge you to carry a sign saying "Black Lives Matter Too" to one of these protests. You personally might actually be idealistic enough to want to improve things, but the people that organize to ensure this issue comes up only in election years don't.
This issue does indeed need to come up all the time, but no I don't think I will carry that sign. But I agree with your first point. To really create a police force that views the people as people to protect, the police need to be retrained, and firing them all and then starting over might be a good idea at least in some places. It won't happen though, unless social programs and investment in communities is brought back, and that might mean shifting some funding priorities, and getting rid of Reaganomics philosophy as the dominant governing ideology so that social funding can be returned. And it means equalizing funding for education and youth programs, so that young people in poor communities can be taught the virtue of learning skills for success instead of by-default the skills for crime.
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(06-09-2020, 08:10 AM)Anthony 58 Wrote: Ever since Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem, I have had a four-point "Crittenden Compromise" to deal with the problem of excessive force by police in communities of color.
Here it is - and my apologies if I had already posted it here before:
Hello Anthony. Sorry you blocked me. I value your point of view, even though I sometimes disagree.
Quote:1. Eliminate the shoot-to-kill policy that prevails in most police departments across the country, even when there is no evidence that the suspect is armed, and regardless of how minor the crime. Fear of lawsuits if an officer "kneecaps" such a suspect is what drives this policy. A shattered knee can generally be repaired, while a dead man can never be brought back to life.
agreed
Quote:2. Legalize marijuana, as polls show more than 60% of Americans now favor doing, for all purposes in every state. This will reduce contacts between police and people of color by at least half.
agreed
Quote:3. Also legalize concealed carry, which will do three things: First, it will abolish stop-and-frisk en passant because what the police would be looking for in essentially all stop-and-frisk situations would no longer be illegal to possess; second, it will give people of color an equal right to bear arms under the Second Amendment (95% of those serving time under the restrictive, confiscatory gun laws on the books in the various states are African-American or Latino); and third, this proposal is guaranteed to be very popular among gun-rights advocates, which is sure to give it broad bipartisan support.
disagree, and the support for guns is decreasing, and possession of guns is decreasing. The oversupply of guns causes fear and increases police shootings. The sooner America gets rid of its guns, the better. A long-term ideal I admit.
Quote:4. Implement same-race policing; that is, only black officers patrol black neighborhoods, and only Hispanic officers patrol Hispanic neighborhoods (the latter also eliminating potential language barriers). And to anyone who thinks this is "radical," Boston did it in 1850, after Irish residents of such neighborhoods as Charlestown and South Boston complained of the brutal treatment they were receiving from WASP cops. Thus began the tradition of the Irish civil servant, which quickly spread both to other cities and to other uniformed services, most notably fire departments. This will also, by necessity, lead to the hiring of many more black and Hispanic officers - so, like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, it's a win-win.
Race does not need to be the only factor in deploying police, but it's a factor. The main thing is that police live in or near the community they serve and connect with the neighborhood.
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(06-09-2020, 10:08 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: (06-08-2020, 08:11 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: BLM is a political weapon, not a mechanism to help blacks.
It is a political weapon if you don’t value lives, if you haven’t been under centuries of oppression.
Yes, exactly. That describes Democrats perfectly.
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