Not a riot
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My $0.02 about all of it—which everyone is free to criticize of course: the protests are primarily about BLM, which I think isn't even close to factual. Systemic racism is a problem coming from the odd dumbshit, not "the police," "the system," "white people" or whatever.
Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers" is about the best diagnosis of the problem I've come across. You've got some communities where the police are either in an impossible position, or where the town council is more impressed by drug and gun roundups than they are lower crime stats. So there's a lot of strung-out, overworked, underfunded police forces employing Kansas City-style "look beyond the ticket" enforcement. Which is a great way to destroy relations with the local community. Meanwhile, when that same community actually needs the police, they're nowhere to be found, because again, they're overworked and underfunded.
Oh and those poor communities are almost always minority communities, because poor white communities have an equally shitty but different dynamic. (But I think that's a whole other thing.)
Black guy gets 8 tickets for sitting in his car, but when his cousin is shot, no police in sight. And the nicer, whiter communities seldom have these stories. On the surface, how in the hell can you not call that systemic racism? It isn't, but I can certainly understand the conclusion. And then sure, yeah, you have cops who say "well you know, all the guys who ever shot at me were black, so..." They might not be wrong but again, wrong conclusion to draw. I think it's poverty and income inequality. There's no sociological phenomenon that has a higher correlation than income inequality and violent crime. None. It's a thing. And not only has no one ever solved it, the Pareto distribution continues to skew more extreme.
I may be wrong about all of it. But I refuse to believe poor, inner city communities are not having a bad time of it, whatever the reason. So yeah, they've got some shit to protest about. And a ton of them are trying to be lawful about it.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Not a riot:
@Loki said in Not a riot:
No doubt that the vast majority of protesters are sincere and peaceful. The problem is that they are being used as human shields and pawns and the peaceful protesters seem to be okay with that. You can’t easily skirt that accountability.
Now you're just making stuff up.
These "rioters" fought to protect a Miami CVS from looters:
These "rioters" did the same in NYC:
I'm sure you've seen this one, right? The "rioters" who protected the separated police officer?
Or how about this one? Do these "rioters" look like they're throwing caustic chemicals on cops to you?
More "rioters" protecting stores:
Can we all admit this is a complicated situation and that the crowd is (1) changing hour by hour and (2) not at all on the same page, or are we still stuck on demonizing protesters and glorifying all police?
I understand they mean well but you can’t explain away the lost lives and destruction. It’s just not possible.
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They'd say exactly the same thing about George Floyd. And I'm not explaining it away and neither are they. It's a tough situation to say the least.
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@Larry said in Not a riot:
If They're out there protesting, they are douche bags whether they're violent or not. This wasn't anything that merited a protest march to start with.
If mainstream peace loving society is going to be held hostage to a zero tolerance policy for individual bad cops acting badly, or else the rioting will commence, the situation seems untenable.
Gosh I just had a martial law curfew imposed on me for the first time in my life. Nary a peep about anything that caused that profoundly fvcked up situation other than the one bad cop doing a bad thing in Minnesota. And now I can't leave my house after 8pm under penalty of arrest. I guess it's the butterfly effect.
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On the local news here in Portland:
W00t!! The people of Happy Valley are marching in protest, perhaps a thousand taking part in a march. Now we're talking!!Thing is, Happy Valley is 70% white, around 18% Asian, and wealthy. I know the area very well, and have dealt with their leadership e.g., mayor, city council, etc. over many years.
I can't stand Happy Valley. It's just as pretentious and fake as its name. They took a beautiful area, and in 10 years bulldozed and scoured all the forests and put in wall to wall homes for wealthy whites/asians that work for high tech.
What are they protesting in Happy Valley? If I pull back, like backing away on Google Earth, eventually I come to a common denominator, regardless of their chants of anti-racism (but listen to their perspectives behind the scenes when we encouraged low-cost housing, bringing people of color into their demographic, NIMBY!!!).
It's mostly all about Trump. Unstated, but that's what it boils down to. Everything is a facade to that fundamental: Trump. Hate. Hate Trump.
But in Happy Valley, everyone is happy all the time, and we're so concerned about yada yada yada did you hear about the fee increases at Persimmon Country Club, and did you know we named our new high school after a sitting black supreme court judge -- we are SO progressive but please don't forget the NIMBY, our real estate prices, don't cha know. I've heard so much crap from that community. -
@Aqua-Letifer said in Not a riot:
They'd say exactly the same thing about George Floyd. And I'm not explaining it away and neither are they. It's a tough situation to say the least.
You don't even know if the color of his skin had anything to do with it. I read today that Floyd and the cop knew each other and both of them moonlighted at a nearby club. Maybe that had something to do with it. Every day, a million white policemen go to work and at the end of their shift have not killed a black man. But it seems like every day a black man kills a cop somewhere. Should we declare all black men dangerous thugs? No. Should we kiss their asses because they're black and pretend like all of them are intelligent, productive citizens capable of functioning in civil society? He'll no. But that's what you're doing.
I think killing the man is a shame. I don't know why he did it, or if race played a part in it. But black lives matter is a bunch of fucking fools, and they can kiss my red ass just like their white cou her past the KKK. speaking of the KKK, do you think there were any polite, well meaning klansmen someone could point to to use as an example of why they should be respected? I'll betcha there were. They were still racists, just like black lives matter members are.
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@Mik said in Not a riot:
I really do not think Trump handles the operational details of his Secret Service folks. I'm also not sure there was any way they could have handled it that would not have resulted in some form of the interpretation we see today. The audience is too willing to believe.
Easy! Don't clear the crowd, don't walk across to the church, don't do the photo-op at the church. Just do his speech from within the WH.
See how easy that is?
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@Aqua-Letifer in reference to your longer recent reply, thanks...good analysis.
I joke a little that protestors are lemmings seeking catharsis. I think, to your point, some of these communities with a very deep and embedded fractured relationship with police are so blinded by frustration that it’s tough to see an event as “police with excessive force” instead “white man with power hurting black man”.
Similarly, I have so many friends who are vocal right now about this and donating money to black charities, and posting black photos on Instagram in support, that I think they’re blinded by their white guilt and wanting “to do something”. Whereas I’m white, I’m against racial injustice (isn’t everyone?) so I have no need to suddenly “declare!” it.
At the end of the day I’m stubbornly pragmatic about the purpose of a protest. Was Floyd killed because he was black? Probably not. So, not a racist event. Are white peoples killed by police all the time? Yes. Why no outcry? Should justice be served here? Yes, and it has been. So what exactly is the protest about...change? What will change? Nothing.
As @Horace points out. There will always be a black person killed by police. There will always be riots. There will always be bad cops, as well as bad protestors. The sooner we can somehow, as a society, stop looking at things in race terms, the sooner we can minimize this annual outcry.
There will always be these events. There will always be mass shootings. There will always be terrorism. Maybe the common denominator lately is incessant cable news hyping it up and a infinity-scroll of social media posts about it.
No way to wrap up my point here. The perfect ending doesn’t exi-
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I just watched a news clip of a black lives matter member confronting a white girl here's what the guy said to her:
"I work for black lives matter, and if my boss sees me talking to you without you kneeling before me you might not be safe. So would you just get on your knees in front of me please?"
The girl gets on her knees.
The guy continues.. " Ok.. now - apologize to me for your white priveledge. You must apologize."
The girl apologizes.
FUCK THAT.
I no longer see any reason to cut these "protesters" and slack. Any black lives matter member that tells me I have to kneel in front of him will die and he will die quickly.
Sorry Aqua, but your "protesters" are a bunch of thugs, and it's time to start killing the bastards.
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Similarly, I have so many friends who are vocal right now about this and donating money to black charities, and posting black photos on Instagram in support, that I think they’re blinded by their white guilt and wanting “to do something”. Whereas I’m white, I’m against racial injustice (isn’t everyone?) so I have no need to suddenly “declare!” it.
Yeah. And there are plenty from the black community of course who are all too eager to tell us how wrong we're doing it, whatever "it" is.
I've adopted a "live like it's 1989" kind of model. Not only were the music and movies far better, but I also ask myself, if social media didn't exist (and therefore I had no persona to defend), what would I do? Donate to black charities and then, unprompted, call up everyone I knew to tell them I did to imply I'm a good guy? That's so narcissistic it's silly. So I try not to let social media be any reason for what I decide to do, and treat the platform as a water cooler conversation with one or two co-workers.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Not a riot:
I've adopted a "live like it's 1989" kind of model. Not only were the music and movies far better, but I also ask myself, if social media didn't exist (and therefore I had no persona to defend), what would I do? Donate to black charities and then, unprompted, call up everyone I knew to tell them I did to imply I'm a good guy?
Haha holy shit I will not forget this (in a good way). What a perfect way to describe it.
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
We take it in turns, to act as a sort of outrage officer for the day...
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This post is deleted!
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Not a riot:
My $0.02 about all of it—which everyone is free to criticize of course: the protests are primarily about BLM, which I think isn't even close to factual. Systemic racism is a problem coming from the odd dumbshit, not "the police," "the system," "white people" or whatever.
Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers" is about the best diagnosis of the problem I've come across. You've got some communities where the police are either in an impossible position, or where the town council is more impressed by drug and gun roundups than they are lower crime stats. So there's a lot of strung-out, overworked, underfunded police forces employing Kansas City-style "look beyond the ticket" enforcement. Which is a great way to destroy relations with the local community. Meanwhile, when that same community actually needs the police, they're nowhere to be found, because again, they're overworked and underfunded.
Oh and those poor communities are almost always minority communities, because poor white communities have an equally shitty but different dynamic. (But I think that's a whole other thing.)
Black guy gets 8 tickets for sitting in his car, but when his cousin is shot, no police in sight. And the nicer, whiter communities seldom have these stories. On the surface, how in the hell can you not call that systemic racism? It isn't, but I can certainly understand the conclusion. And then sure, yeah, you have cops who say "well you know, all the guys who ever shot at me were black, so..." They might not be wrong but again, wrong conclusion to draw. I think it's poverty and income inequality. There's no sociological phenomenon that has a higher correlation than income inequality and violent crime. None. It's a thing. And not only has no one ever solved it, the Pareto distribution continues to skew more extreme.
I may be wrong about all of it. But I refuse to believe poor, inner city communities are not having a bad time of it, whatever the reason. So yeah, they've got some shit to protest about. And a ton of them are trying to be lawful about it.
I nominate this Post of the Day. I concur. Thanks AL.
