Are you sure that they don't want more power than any ethnic or socially constructed minority group deserves? There's a very simple recipe for garnering so-called "white privilege" in America. One need only "act white", and there's no skin tone requirement. Give respect and you'll receive it. Act like a jerk, resist arrest and insult other people, and you'll receive reciprocal treatment in that as well. :)
“And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by “nothingness” as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be “empty” here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms striving toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self- creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself— do you want a name for this world? A solution for all of its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?— This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!”
...nor are those seeking to overturn it. They are both "immoral" by definition... seeking to use others as "means unto an end" rather than allowing them to become "ends unto themselves."
OMG, lawbreaking criminals are being oppressed by not being allowed to pass counterfeit money, stab neighbors, rob stores, and riot in the streets. Time to punish the Police oppressors!
"For anything undertaken in response to the will of the collectivity (in this instance the Party), no matter how distasteful, no matter how unattractive from the standpoint of individual morality, there could be no guilt, no questioning, no remorse." - George Kennan
Happy to comply with the in-house style, although I would prefer we choose different words entirely. Farmer's use of the magic asterisk is, by happy coincidence, a clear example of true virtue signalling. He makes a show of not swearing, but for all practical purposes he continues to swear. Contrasts strongly with what I'm doing, IMO.
Yes, I am virtue signalling my values, to my audience. As Isaiah Berlin said, "Some of the great goods cannot live together. We are forced to choose. This is the tragic nature of choice."
So to call my virtues those of "d*ckheads" is to insult the virtues of most classical liberals, such as myself.
I stand by calling your virtue signalling a defense of criminals. It is done for one purpose only. To usurp the power oppressed minority individuals deserve, and give it to the government elites who "virtue signal" in their name (like you). The black and hispanic individuals gain nothing thereby, but lip service to their grievances, and leaders who would pander to them.
...and so the white liberal elites attack him as "<a href='https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/tim_scott_declares_america_not_a_racist_country_and_leftists_step_up_to_the_plate_to_show_their_own_racism_hurling_racist_epithets.html">Uncle Tom</a>" Scott.
"The horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It’s that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great." - "Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, [Harper's Magazine, November 11, 2011]”
Again you fixate on the x-signalling aspect of racism, the appliance of epithets is of less interest than discriminatory treatment by police and judicial system. Combined with your determined straw-manning (I'd rather not engage, I'll point out just once that criminals should be apprehended), you seem compelled to make a lot of noise around this issue, but simultaneously anxious to the point of neurosis to avoid confronting its substance.
...and you fixate on so-called "discrimination" and "systemic racism" in the judicial system, which is rare to non-existent. Arresting people is a dangerous and violent occupation. People will get hurt, sometimes, tragically. So focusing on a few tragedies doesn't make your point or prove anything. Most criminals that resist arrest deserve the subsequent escalated violence they receive.
It is my contention that all of this "concern" about the judicial system is but an excuse for imposing federal controls and political commissars on local PDs.
...just like the political commissars installed in every private business' HR department with greater than 50 employees in the country. Once the commissars are in place, federal control and DNC corruption of that control follows.
I studied the Russian military. Every unit had a political commissar in place who could relieve/replace the existing command structure with those more "loyal" to the Soviet people. They had "guard" and "penal" units that they would deploy with the ideologically suspect in the from, and loyal "guards" to the rear. This is the "new America" we are becoming.
Lol, discrimination is rare like the air. I'm not foussing on the sensational headline cases, not at all. Like I've said a few times, beatings and murders are the tip of the iceberg: it's the smaller issues that people face every day. This could be measured. *You* could measure it if you want: go for a drive at 3 in the morning and count how many times you get stopped; ask a black friend in a comparable vehicle to do the same, and compare notes.
But however real the concern is, doesn't mean that it isn't being exploited by manoeuvering politicins looking to consolidate power as you describe. I'm with you in resisting centralisation of power, you don't have to become some cartoon character who dismisses all civil rights complaints at first contact to make that point.
Oh my, people have been "inconvenienced"! JUSTICE for the inconvenienced!
You'll have to do better than that, Jez.
There are already crime statistics. I'm familiar with them. I don't need to take 3am drives. Show us the statistical evidence of racism, and not simply disproportionate rates of stops or arrests, amongst the ranks of the police and you'll have me.
Reasonable people are demanding better oversight on police action. They're not going to stop, and there is no legitimate reason to deny their requests. If they are denied, unrest is inevitable and justified. So, no. *You'll* have to do better.
BLM represents no one "reasonable". They'll have to collect their pound of flesh from burning down their own communities. I'm done feeling sorry for the stupid.
Don't feel sorry for the oppressed, demand that the machinery of society serve them equally. You don't like them burning things, I get that. But what alternative is there. I don't blame you for enjoying the comfortable delusion that discrimination is rare to non-existent, but what if the only way to rouse you from that very pleasant dream is to bring you discomfort? What should the campaign do? If peaceful demonstration worked, people should do that. But what if it doesn't?
...but because of an historical coincidence of their "race", you feel compelled to listen to them. Where's the compassion for white victims of police excessive force? Can you name one white victim?
Revolutionary (or “radical”) Marxists have often come clean about their “demanding the impossible” from what they call “capitalist democracies”. They do so because they know full well that such democracies can’t grant their impossibilist demands — by definition. Again, Marxists know that they’re literally demanding the impossible. And that’s the whole point!
So why do Marxists like Slavoj Žižek demand the impossible? They do so primarily to destabilise the state and also to “radicalise” and “mobilise” people. (At least that’s the hope.) When Marxists demand that the state change water into wine (or provide free second cars and foreign holidays for all), they know that it won’t come up with the goods. Therefore “the people” (or “workers”) — Marxists hope — will get angry at this and then storm the barricades.
Similarly, Marxists promise an infinitely-funded welfare state (or NHS) that will be perfect in every respect. Then they demand exactly the same from the actually-existing state. However, because Marxists are knowingly demanding the impossible, they hope that the people (at least in theory) will rebel and then bring forth a revolution. And that’s precisely why Marxists like Slavoj Žižek hate counter-revolutionaries (such as the non-Marxist members of the Labour Party and “post-modernists”). Such wimps don’t demand the impossible and therefore they’ll never bring about Žižek’s Total Revolution.
“Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent among them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary.”
When armies were slaughtered by other armies in the course of history, we might be appalled by the carnage and turn pacifist; but our horror acquires a new dimension when we read about children, or for that matter grown-up men and women, whom the Nazis loaded into trains bound for gas chambers, telling them that they were going to emigrate to some happier place. Why does this deception, which may in fact have diminished the anguish of the victims, arouse a really unutterable kind of horror in us? The spectacle, I mean, of the victims marching off in happy ignorance of their doom amid the smiling faces of their tormentors? Surely because we cannot bear the thought of human beings denied their last rights--of knowing the truth, of acting with at least the freedom of the condemned, of being able to face their destruction with fear or courage, according to their temperaments, but at least as human beings, armed with the power of choice. It is the denial to human beings of the possibility of choice, the getting them into one's power, the twisting them this way and that in accordance with one's whim, the destruction of their personality by creating unequal moral terms between the gaoler and the victim, whereby the gaoler knows what he is doing, and why, and plays upon the victim, i.e. treats him as a mere object and not as a subject whose motives, views, intentions have any intrinsic weight whatever--by destroying the very possibility of his having views, notions of a relevant kind--that is what cannot be borne at all.
What else horrifies us about unscrupulousness if not this? Why is the thought of someone twisting someone else round his little finger, even in innocent contexts, so beastly (for instance in Dostoevsky's Dyadyushkin son [Uncle's Dream, a novella published in 1859], which the Moscow Arts Theatre used to act so well and so cruelly)? After all, the victim may prefer to have no responsibility; the slave be happier in his slavery. Certainly we do not detest this kind of destruction of liberty merely because it denies liberty of action; there is a far greater horror in depriving men of the very capacity for freedom--that is the real sin against the Holy Ghost. Everything else is bearable so long as the possibility of goodness--of a state of affairs in which men freely choose, disinterestedly seek ends for their own sake--is still open, however much suffering they may have gone through. Their souls are destroyed only when this is no longer possible. It is when the desire for choice is broken that what men do thereby loses all moral value, and actions lose all significance (in terms of good and evil) in their own eyes; that is what is meant by destroying people's self-respect, by turning them, in your words, into rags. This is the ultimate horror because in such a situation there are no worthwhile motives left: nothing is worth doing or avoiding, the reasons for existing are gone. We admire Don Quixote, if we do, because he has a pure-hearted desire to do what is good, and he is pathetic because he is mad and his attempts are ludicrous.
(Webster's): Definition of reasonable 1a: being in accordance with reason a reasonable theory b: not extreme or excessive reasonable requests c: MODERATE, FAIR a reasonable chance a reasonable price d: INEXPENSIVE
I intend it in the 1b&1c senses.
They're not asking for anything you or I would not demand for ourselves. I know exactly which strawman you're lining up to dryhump in response: save yourself the bother.
"Where's the compassion for white victims of police excessive force?" Compassion is not as interesting to me as practical measures, and proper oversight availability of recourse would help them too. I can see the racial element is triggering you: ignore it if that helps. Just think of it as police reform. No delusion of mine is encouraging any destruction: the protests are bourne of the delusion that the police should serve their community. If people who remind folks of what they should expect from law enforcement and to demand reform when their local police fall short are "agitators" then I'm an agitator.
Always: I think police reform is the correct path, and increasingly violent demonstration is the inevitable consequence of decades of foot-dragging on this matter. I don't think it's the correct path any more than you think that retaliatory gunfire opening would be correct. Inevitable, arguably justifiable even, but also unfortunate and easily worth the effort to avoid.
Jez, Some of those protesting the way that the police do their job (i.e., arresting criminals) have a great deal of sympathy and empathy for the "victims" of the police. But what about sympathy and empathy for law enforcement officers? We seem to expect a great deal from them. Too much? Maybe. "Walk a mile in my shoes" should apply, IMO.
BTW, the term police reform needs to be adequately defined and the protocols clearly established. The term seems to mean very different things to different people. It should not mean defunding the police, IMO.
BLM is neither fair nor moderate. They have embraced the paranoiac critical methods of surrealism to AGITATE and make impossible demands so as to bring about REVOLUTION, not reform.
The paranoiac-critical method is a surrealist technique developed by Salvador Dalà in the early 1930s. He employed it in the production of paintings and other artworks, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images. The technique consists of the artist invoking a paranoid state (fear that the self is being manipulated, targeted or controlled by others). The result is a deconstruction of the psychological concept of identity, such that subjectivity becomes the primary aspect of the artwork.
It functions to strip these white liberal indoctrinees of their "critical distance" from the objectives of the movement. They become not "Hawkeye Pierce's" of a MASH unit, but rather, "Frank Burns'" as they can NEVER become "black" or have their lives "matter".
Not being black, the white BLM indoctrinees are reduced to a "child-like state0of-innocence as to what it means to be black. Held in this surreal state, they piece together disparate pieces of information into a whole picture of a systemically racist America and corrupt and racist police force. Their brainwashing is thereby complete.
It is what Isaiah Berlin calls in his 1951 letter to Kennan, "being reduced to rags".
Let me try and say what I think it is; you say (and I am not quoting) that every man possesses a point of weakness, an Achilles' heel, and by exploiting this a man may be made a hero or a martyr or a rag. Again, if I understand you correctly, you think that Western civilisation has rested upon the principle that, whatever else was permitted or forbidden, the one heinous act which would destroy the world was to do precisely this--the deliberate act of tampering with human beings so as to make them behave in a way which, if they knew what they were doing, or what its consequences were likely to be, would make them recoil with horror and disgust. The whole of the Kantian morality (and I don't know about Catholics, but Protestants, Jews, Muslims and high-minded atheists believe it) lies in this; the mysterious phrase about men being "ends in themselves," to which much lip-service has been paid, with not much attempt to explain it, seems to lie in this: that every human being is assumed to possess the capacity to choose what to do, and what to be, however narrow the limits within which his choice may lie, however hemmed in by circumstances beyond his control; that all human love and respect rests upon the attribution of conscious motives in this sense; that all the categories, the concepts, in terms of which we think about and act towards one another--goodness, badness, integrity and lack of it, the attribution of dignity or honour to others which we must not insult or exploit, the entire cluster of ideas such as honesty, purity of motive, courage, sense of truth, sensibility, compassion, justice; and, on the other side, brutality, falseness, wickedness, ruthlessness, lack of scruple, corruption, lack of feelings, emptiness--all these notions in terms of which we think of others and ourselves, in terms of which conduct is assessed, purposes adopted--all this becomes meaningless unless we think of human beings as capable of pursuing ends for their own sakes by deliberate acts of choice--which alone makes nobility noble and sacrifices sacrifices.
The whole of that morality, which is most prominent in the nineteenth century, in particular in the romantic period, but implicit in both Christian and Jewish writings, and far less present in the pagan world, rests on the view that it is a marvellous thing in itself when a man pits himself against the world, and sacrifices himself to an ideal without reckoning the consequences, even when we consider his ideal false and its consequences disastrous. We admire purity of motive as such, and think it a wonderful thing--or at any rate deeply impressive, perhaps to be fought but never despised--when somebody throws away material advantage, reputation etc. for the sake of bearing witness to something which he believes to be true, however mistaken and fanatical we may think him to be. I do not say that we worship passionate self-abandonment or automatically prefer a desperate fanaticism to moderation and enlightened self-interest. Of course not; yet nevertheless we do think such conduct deeply moving, even when misdirected. We admire it always more than calculation; we at least understand the kind of aesthetic splendour which all defiance has for some people--Carlyle, Nietzsche, Leontiev [Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev, nineteenth-century Russian philosopher and critic] and Fascists generally. We think that only those human beings are a credit to their kind who do not let themselves be pushed too far by the forces of nature or history, either passively or by glorying in their own impotence; and we idealise only those who have purposes for which they accept responsibility, on which they stake something, and at times everything; living consciously and bravely for whatever they think good, i.e. worth living and, in the last resort, dying for.
What's your point, that kerner is ancient history so I should stop going on about it? On the contrary, all the more insulting that their recommendations have been ignored for all this time. It's not like reports with detailed recommendations don't exist. We can write variations in that report until we get cramp in our writing hands. When is mainstream America going to do something about it? Can you understand how it might look like the issue needs to be forced? Give the protestors an alternative.
That was over 50 years ago. Are you saying that nothing improved or changed since then? Grow up.
I'll give the protestors a choice. Shut up or I'll repeal all those "historical" affirmative action programs and get the federal government OUT of the racial discrimination business..
That way whites and all the other racial minorities won't have been given good reasons to resent the special privileges of the black community. Problems solved.
Yes, that is precisely my complaint. Every so often there are riots, sometimes a report is commissioned and the report typically repeats many of the recommendations the previous one rehearsed, and those recommendations are comprehensively ignored. You're just a sucker for the "everything's all right" narrative. You grow up.
And you're a sucker for the "government is a solution" narrative. It's not. It's what has helped create this ENTIRELY FAKE problem. Do you really think that the government can get anyone to treat someone else "fairly" and that you can legislate "moderation/ temperance?
"Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that one writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to develop regulatory policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so widespread and demanding that it generates enough political force to bring about establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest in the commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of the offended as the agency goes into operation, developing a period of political quiescence among the great majority of those who hold a general but unorganized interest in the commons. Once this political quiescence has developed, the highly organized and specifically interested groups who wish to make incursions into the commons bring sufficient pressure to bear through other political processes to convert the agency to the protection and furthering of their interests. In the last phase even staffing of the regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the agency administrators from the ranks of the regulated."
Who runs these discriminatory PD's? Democrats. Who runs them in "consent decree" cities like Baltimore? Black Democrats. Anybody noticing a pattern here?
I've no trouble believing that a lot of blame can be laid at the feet of the Democrative party (you don't need to look further than Bill Clinton to see that) but GTFO of here with this "fake problem" bs. Nope. That's the position you would adopt if you wanted to watch it all burn.
You're the one with all the megaphones, gasoline and matches egging it on. I'm not moving. It's a non-problem excuse for a power grab. Case closed. You want to burn it down? Have at it. No mercy for the stupid.
Multiple commissions from various decades agree there are significant issues to address. Your only answer to those reports is that time has passed. The closest I've got to egging anything on is to lament that I don't have a good alternative to suggest. I would much prefer that those reports' recommendations had been incorporated into policy.
Suggest an alternative, or demonstrate that your "do nothing" strategy which, even if we ignore the intrinsic injustice (oh, you already were), we know entails outbreaks of violence every so often, is not a great deal worse.
Nothing imaginary about police brutality, it's just easy for comfortable people to ignore. That's why you get riots, because we only pay attention to problems that affect us personally. Or we could develop some human empathy and save everyone the bother.
Of course police need to use force, complaints are of excess. I don't believe for an instant that you're dumb enough to have made that substitution by accident. And maybe it needn't be racially motivated, so what? If all the bad cops were completely blind to colour, gender etc., so what? They'd still pick on the people who are least able to get recourse, and that's a class (and therefore, particularly in America, a race) issue. It's the same with any job. Surly waiters and impolite bank clerks tend to smarten up their act when they perceive the customer as important or well placed to make a credible complaint, and conversely when they encounter a powerless and/or voiceless customer, that's who they'll most freely take it out on. The argument over whether or not it's racist is a pointless distraction, so I guess you win this round, FJ. Congrats. In the next one, please can we address the *******ing problem, you magic asterisk son-of-a-expletive deleted.
Well perhaps if you weren't trying to substitute the abstract universal category "black lives" for the concrete universal category "all lives" and thereby supporting a completely FALSE "racial narrative" you'd have a little less push-back and more success in selling your actual thesis that the police are using excessive force against the "poor" or the "proletariat" or even the "lumpen proletariat." Dragging race into it is completely getting in the way of your argument.
And to MAKE your argument, you should be arguing that current statistics OVERALL are getting WORSE from 5,10,20 or even 50 years ago. You've done NONE of that.
So grow the 'F up and make a REASONED argument, cuz' I'm sick of all your hand waving and emoting over race and black people.
Race is still relevant, the voicelessness and the blackness are arguably linked, but happy to talk about it in terms of class if that helps you to remain calm.
...because it highlights the real issue, the correlation between use of force policies, numbers of incidents, and injuries to police officers.
More restrictive use of force policies tend to reduce the number of incidents, the numbers of killings, but at the cost of greater injuries to police officers.
btw - The number of reason why police or criminals escalate to force are many and myriad. Race is but one of a billion factors. So attribution of the use of force to one miniscule factor, race, is CRAZY.
...and I think that Robocop and Judge Dredd proved that "officer bias" wasn't always the determining factor leading to an escalation in violence or use of force.
It is not merely about acquiring power. It is about taking power away from those who have it. Neither goal is sufficient in itself. Both must be achieved.
Much as Shylock in Merchant of Venice, they demand their "pound of flesh". Instead of being defended by a Portia though, our judges are granting them their flesh, a few grams at a time in what with a Chauvin precedent has and will become, a never ending river...
I know, and it is literally everywhere because these people really believe that racism, sexism, blah blah blah are endemic in this country.
My mom who is also a conservative as I am, used to watch Law and Order, and I pointed out that the show was a progressive nightmare. I haven’t see every episode, but in the ones I saw, all the perps are white, often “white supremacists” or religious zealots, and when there is the odd perp that is black it’s because he needs food to feed his family or is being strong-armed by the evil white guy or some such crap. She hadn’t even noticed, but from then on, she would notice it and eventually stopped watching it unless there was nothing else on that interested her.
Actor Morgan Freeman verbalized the clear path to the end of racism or its perception. “We can fix this problem quite easily. You stop looking at me as a black man, and I’ll stop looking at you as a white man. I don’t want a Black History Month; black history is American history; there’s no white history month. If you want an end to racism, stop talking about it.”
There doesn’t seem to be much interest in taking Mr. Freeman’s advice. The reason for this is that there is too much money being made keeping that monster well-fed. So, who benefits from racial discord? People whose only sense of self-worth is the color of their skin, for one ... and those who have become filthy rich keeping it alive.
Racism is the least of our problems. Next will be the talk of the town that our Religion is to harsh for Society. Everyone I have talked to from a Commie/Socialist country came here to escape the "Secret Police"; accounts of busting in your door in the middle of the Nite. No one knows what the charges are to this day, of their loved ones. And they see the same baby steps to "Secret Police" right NOW by the DemocRats purposing "A NATIONAL POLICE FORCE". "Fascism" starts with dividing the people with Race and Religion, and smaller idioms - then move into complete "Communizm/Solcialism"!
So, who should apologize- our Children or the Children of the Rising Sun? Or the Children of the DemonicRats? For destroying our country from within. The Dems are attacking the Black Folk"s again, goin to Ban Menthol Cigarettes. Some told me that, and, I said: yea, and you all just keep on voting for those EVIL DemocRats! I say that to them all the time and you should see the look I get. Rudy G. was investigating the Biden's (Hunter and the Big Guy) in Ukraine. Now the Biden's DOJ are investigating the Investigator. A early morning RAID on Rudy G.; and the Agents were presented with Hunter's Hard Drive - and the Agents did not want it and left it behind. The people I mentioned above heard this and are freaking out. They are saying the "Secret Police" are already HERE!
If you like, and agree with the Democrats policies, like drug dealing , child sex trafficking, coyote human labor slavery, baby killing, tax fraud, election fraud, etc...Then that party is for you.
Those who practice subjugation today do so in the name of the oppressed, the minority, the socially shunned. "Your local election officials require overseers, for they discriminate."
"Your local PD requires federal oversight because they are biased and discriminate."
"Your company's employment office require oversight because they discriminate and protect sexual harrassers."
They propose that the federal government "oversee" ALL.
But who will oversee them? I say that only in G_d should we trust.
1 Timothy 3:1-7
It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
Nothing in the Constitution protects insurrectionists. Waterboard whoever needs to be waterboarded on Trump's donor list to find everyone that attacked the Capitol, give them a trial for treason, and park their bodies next to Osama Bin Laden.
Unfortunately, we have a President too spineless and liberal to do that.
I have mixed feelings about the unknown cop that took out Ashli Babbitt. On the one hand he deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congreesional Medal of Honor. On the other hand, he deserves a reprimand for not running out of ammo while targets were still present.
Mood Indigo contributes to the subversion of the traditional opposition between the real and the imaginary underlying the mythic graffiti “Be realistic, demand the impossible” that flourished on the walls of Paris that Spring.
From "Jewish orbital lasers started California wildfires" to "the election was stolen from Trump," there's sadly been no effort on the right to not be utterly and *knowingly* full of shit.
Well, the Clintons didn't hand pick Trump in 2016 nor the media give him $3 billion in uncontested airtime for the purposes of buttressing the Republican Party as a serious force in American politics in perpetuity.
You ordered birdshit pizza. You got birdshit pizza.
Proof's in the cheese. The Republican Party will go all out talking about fiscal conservatism, small government, following the Constitution, keeping America strong and all the other sizzles without steak as long as you reduce their power to below the ability to suggest changes to the color of the carpet. Let them back on power and it's all "Raise the national debt? Hold my beer."
Kamala Harris has been in charge of America’s border crisis for over a month and still has not visited the border where children being tossed over the wall and stuffed into overcrowded cages. Her excuse? “We’re dealing with Covid issues”, but the virus hasn’t kept VP Harris from traveling the country to campaign for Joey B’s stimulus package
Sleepy Joe Biden, aka the Groper claimed he was a moderate, but anyone paying attention knew he was just a puppet  for the new powerful wing of the Democratic Party, the DSA, “Democratic Socialist of America”. Knowing that their first choice, Bernie Sanders, would have no chance in a general election they chose who they considered the most likable and easily influenced candidate, Joe Biden. And they paired him with a black woman for good measure. And from his first day in office joe Biden has capitulated to all of their demands. And they’re not even close to being done yet. The DSA, has become so powerful that even people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer yield to their agenda
The left, just like the right has its share of extremists and screw ups too. They're the Cyndy Sheehan, Code Pink, all Republicans are racist and hate black people types.
I think the difference is that the left, as evidenced by the Al Franken's forced resignation, the calls on Cuomo to resign and even to some degree, Joe Manchin bucking leadership and gumming up Dem plans, is that we see little like behavior from the right.
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I wouldn't ask that of either of them, but I think it's a red herring.
ReplyDelete...as are all expectations for "cosmic"...e-r-r-r-r-r "social" justice.
DeleteIt' ALL about POWER, baby.
Yep. Minorities want a proportionate share of the power, and that is a live issue unlike historical injustice.
DeleteAre you sure that they don't want more power than any ethnic or socially constructed minority group deserves? There's a very simple recipe for garnering so-called "white privilege" in America. One need only "act white", and there's no skin tone requirement. Give respect and you'll receive it. Act like a jerk, resist arrest and insult other people, and you'll receive reciprocal treatment in that as well. :)
DeleteI beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken!
DeleteThat Nietzsche was wrong? Never!
Delete“And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by “nothingness” as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be “empty” here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms striving toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self- creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself— do you want a name for this world? A solution for all of its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?— This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!”
Skin-colour confers no virtuous "less-power-seeking" social virtue upon anyone.
DeleteSaul Alinsky, "Rules for radicals"
DeleteRule 1: "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
Agree, those seeking to maintain the historic power imbalance are not virtuous.
Delete...nor are those seeking to overturn it. They are both "immoral" by definition... seeking to use others as "means unto an end" rather than allowing them to become "ends unto themselves."
DeleteWho is being oppressed?
DeleteWhy aren't you in court with this?
Delete...instead of the streets?
DeleteOMG, lawbreaking criminals are being oppressed by not being allowed to pass counterfeit money, stab neighbors, rob stores, and riot in the streets. Time to punish the Police oppressors!
DeleteIt's time to give every criminal the right to resist arrest and be guaranteed that they will not be stopped or come to any resulting physical harm....
Delete"Oppressors" my *ss.
"For anything undertaken in response to the will of the collectivity (in this instance the Party), no matter how distasteful, no matter how unattractive from the standpoint of individual morality, there could be no guilt, no questioning, no remorse." - George Kennan
DeleteGet a room, we don't want to watch you keep mindless humping that straw man.
DeleteBetter get used to it since all you offer in response are virtue signalling platitudes.
DeleteVirtue signalling is preferable to dickhead signalling.
DeleteJez,
DeleteAhem. Please try to be more civil in your choice of words.
Thank you.
Unless those being virtue signalled to are criminals.
Delete"Take my wallet, PLEASE!"
Delete@always Sorry. Should have used the magic asterisk, that's the mark of truly civilized discourse.
DeleteThis blog site prefers the magic asterisk.
DeleteHappy to comply with the in-house style, although I would prefer we choose different words entirely.
DeleteFarmer's use of the magic asterisk is, by happy coincidence, a clear example of true virtue signalling. He makes a show of not swearing, but for all practical purposes he continues to swear.
Contrasts strongly with what I'm doing, IMO.
Yes, I am virtue signalling my values, to my audience. As Isaiah Berlin said, "Some of the great goods cannot live together. We are forced to choose. This is the tragic nature of choice."
DeleteSo to call my virtues those of "d*ckheads" is to insult the virtues of most classical liberals, such as myself.
I stand by calling your virtue signalling a defense of criminals. It is done for one purpose only. To usurp the power oppressed minority individuals deserve, and give it to the government elites who "virtue signal" in their name (like you). The black and hispanic individuals gain nothing thereby, but lip service to their grievances, and leaders who would pander to them.
Q.E.D.
DeleteAs Creepy Joe said last night, the Era of Big Government is back!
DeleteIn response, Tim Scott gave an appropriate rebuttal.
Delete...and so the white liberal elites attack him as "<a href='https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/tim_scott_declares_america_not_a_racist_country_and_leftists_step_up_to_the_plate_to_show_their_own_racism_hurling_racist_epithets.html">Uncle Tom</a>" Scott.
Delete...and so the white liberal elites attack him as "Uncle Tom" Scott.
DeleteWho's interest do you suppose they think they're serving?
Delete"The horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It’s that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great."
Delete- "Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, [Harper's Magazine, November 11, 2011]”
Again you fixate on the x-signalling aspect of racism, the appliance of epithets is of less interest than discriminatory treatment by police and judicial system.
DeleteCombined with your determined straw-manning (I'd rather not engage, I'll point out just once that criminals should be apprehended), you seem compelled to make a lot of noise around this issue, but simultaneously anxious to the point of neurosis to avoid confronting its substance.
...and you fixate on so-called "discrimination" and "systemic racism" in the judicial system, which is rare to non-existent. Arresting people is a dangerous and violent occupation. People will get hurt, sometimes, tragically. So focusing on a few tragedies doesn't make your point or prove anything. Most criminals that resist arrest deserve the subsequent escalated violence they receive.
DeleteIt is my contention that all of this "concern" about the judicial system is but an excuse for imposing federal controls and political commissars on local PDs.
DeleteIn other words... a "power grab".
Delete...just like the political commissars installed in every private business' HR department with greater than 50 employees in the country. Once the commissars are in place, federal control and DNC corruption of that control follows.
Delete...to "protect the women" from "sexual harrassment" or protect new employee's from racial, religious, or homophobic ?"discrimination."
DeletePower grabs.
I studied the Russian military. Every unit had a political commissar in place who could relieve/replace the existing command structure with those more "loyal" to the Soviet people. They had "guard" and "penal" units that they would deploy with the ideologically suspect in the from, and loyal "guards" to the rear. This is the "new America" we are becoming.
DeleteThe purposes for which they are installed are laudible. They are, however, but the nose of the camel of totalitarian control to follow.
DeleteDon't believe me? The new WoT.
DeleteThe politicization of the DoJ started under Obama is now nearly complete.
DeleteLol, discrimination is rare like the air. I'm not foussing on the sensational headline cases, not at all. Like I've said a few times, beatings and murders are the tip of the iceberg: it's the smaller issues that people face every day. This could be measured. *You* could measure it if you want: go for a drive at 3 in the morning and count how many times you get stopped; ask a black friend in a comparable vehicle to do the same, and compare notes.
DeleteBut however real the concern is, doesn't mean that it isn't being exploited by manoeuvering politicins looking to consolidate power as you describe. I'm with you in resisting centralisation of power, you don't have to become some cartoon character who dismisses all civil rights complaints at first contact to make that point.
Oh my, people have been "inconvenienced"! JUSTICE for the inconvenienced!
DeleteYou'll have to do better than that, Jez.
There are already crime statistics. I'm familiar with them. I don't need to take 3am drives. Show us the statistical evidence of racism, and not simply disproportionate rates of stops or arrests, amongst the ranks of the police and you'll have me.
Til then!
DeleteReasonable people are demanding better oversight on police action. They're not going to stop, and there is no legitimate reason to deny their requests. If they are denied, unrest is inevitable and justified. So, no. *You'll* have to do better.
DeleteBLM represents no one "reasonable". They'll have to collect their pound of flesh from burning down their own communities. I'm done feeling sorry for the stupid.
DeleteDon't feel sorry for the oppressed, demand that the machinery of society serve them equally. You don't like them burning things, I get that. But what alternative is there. I don't blame you for enjoying the comfortable delusion that discrimination is rare to non-existent, but what if the only way to rouse you from that very pleasant dream is to bring you discomfort? What should the campaign do?
DeleteIf peaceful demonstration worked, people should do that. But what if it doesn't?
Jez,
DeleteYou don't like them burning things, I get that. But what alternative is there.
Wow! You think that destruction is the correct path?
Be careful what you wish for. Aggrieved property owners may decide that their only alternative is to open fire.
Just sayin'.
Sorry, Jez, but it's your "go along yo get along" delusion that 's encouraging them to burn it all down in the first place.
DeleteGeorge Floyd wasn't a law abiding citizen.
DeleteAlmost every 'black martyr' to date has been a violent thug.
Delete...and all their "special pleading: in a sane world would fall upon rightly deaf ears.
Delete...but because of an historical coincidence of their "race", you feel compelled to listen to them. Where's the compassion for white victims of police excessive force? Can you name one white victim?
DeleteSurely one vengeful black police officer has given a white oppressor a wood shampoo? One bad black cop?
Delete...but such a story wouldn't quite fit "the narrative", would it?
DeleteJustice has been transformed into "special justice" for the special few. It's not "systemic reform" you seek, but systemic "transform."
Delete...withd a "political correctness officer" in every local PD.
DeletePure Zizek...
DeleteIn this case, the true utopia is precisely that such a "realistic" approach will never work: The only "realistic" solution is the "big" one, to solve the problem at its roots. Here, then, the old motto from 1968 applies: Soyons réalistes, demandons l'impossible! Only a radical gesture that has to appear "impossible" within the existing coordinates will realistically do the job.
Unfortunately BLM isn't arguing for a "Single State Solution". And the "Two State Solution" sailed off to Liberia at the end of the US Civil War.
DeleteRevolutionary (or “radical”) Marxists have often come clean about their “demanding the impossible” from what they call “capitalist democracies”. They do so because they know full well that such democracies can’t grant their impossibilist demands — by definition. Again, Marxists know that they’re literally demanding the impossible. And that’s the whole point!
DeleteSo why do Marxists like Slavoj Žižek demand the impossible? They do so primarily to destabilise the state and also to “radicalise” and “mobilise” people. (At least that’s the hope.) When Marxists demand that the state change water into wine (or provide free second cars and foreign holidays for all), they know that it won’t come up with the goods. Therefore “the people” (or “workers”) — Marxists hope — will get angry at this and then storm the barricades.
Similarly, Marxists promise an infinitely-funded welfare state (or NHS) that will be perfect in every respect. Then they demand exactly the same from the actually-existing state. However, because Marxists are knowingly demanding the impossible, they hope that the people (at least in theory) will rebel and then bring forth a revolution. And that’s precisely why Marxists like Slavoj Žižek hate counter-revolutionaries (such as the non-Marxist members of the Labour Party and “post-modernists”). Such wimps don’t demand the impossible and therefore they’ll never bring about Žižek’s Total Revolution.
Žižek also believes in the (to use his own words and capitals) “Big State”. He’s categorically against “the need to curtail Big State expenditure and administration”. He believes in the Big State in precisely the same way Stalin believed in it. There are no apologies from Žižek here. In fact he’s explicit about his Big State dreams. He says that True Marxists (such as himself) will never defend themselves “by saying we are no longer the old Socialists”. Again, as a True Marxist, he will both demand and promise the impossible. Only such cases of modal political logic will guarantee the truly revolutionary situation Žižek yearns for.
Žižek traces this demand for the impossible back to what he calls the “1968 motto”: Soyons Réalistes, Demandons L’Impossible (“Let’s be realists, demand the impossible.”). That is, the workers must demand the impossible just as the French revolutionaries demanded the impossible. In fact, later, so did the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Mao’s Red Guards and so on. This demanding the impossible comes along with the absolute and total overhaul of society — that extreme possibility which turns Žižek on so much. Like many philosophers before him, Žižek is obsessed by the extreme and by the violent — except, of course, when that extremism and violence is carried out by Nazis/fascists or indeed by what he calls “Rightists”.
Source
So Jez, to call their demand "reasonable" is to defy the meaning of the words "to reason".
DeleteBarrack Obama's ghost writer.
Delete“Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent among them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary.”
Delete― Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"
In other words, agitators get good people to do bad things in the mistaken thought that they are doing something great.
DeleteWhen armies were slaughtered by other armies in the course of history, we might be appalled by the carnage and turn pacifist; but our horror acquires a new dimension when we read about children, or for that matter grown-up men and women, whom the Nazis loaded into trains bound for gas chambers, telling them that they were going to emigrate to some happier place. Why does this deception, which may in fact have diminished the anguish of the victims, arouse a really unutterable kind of horror in us? The spectacle, I mean, of the victims marching off in happy ignorance of their doom amid the smiling faces of their tormentors? Surely because we cannot bear the thought of human beings denied their last rights--of knowing the truth, of acting with at least the freedom of the condemned, of being able to face their destruction with fear or courage, according to their temperaments, but at least as human beings, armed with the power of choice. It is the denial to human beings of the possibility of choice, the getting them into one's power, the twisting them this way and that in accordance with one's whim, the destruction of their personality by creating unequal moral terms between the gaoler and the victim, whereby the gaoler knows what he is doing, and why, and plays upon the victim, i.e. treats him as a mere object and not as a subject whose motives, views, intentions have any intrinsic weight whatever--by destroying the very possibility of his having views, notions of a relevant kind--that is what cannot be borne at all.
DeleteWhat else horrifies us about unscrupulousness if not this? Why is the thought of someone twisting someone else round his little finger, even in innocent contexts, so beastly (for instance in Dostoevsky's Dyadyushkin son [Uncle's Dream, a novella published in 1859], which the Moscow Arts Theatre used to act so well and so cruelly)? After all, the victim may prefer to have no responsibility; the slave be happier in his slavery. Certainly we do not detest this kind of destruction of liberty merely because it denies liberty of action; there is a far greater horror in depriving men of the very capacity for freedom--that is the real sin against the Holy Ghost. Everything else is bearable so long as the possibility of goodness--of a state of affairs in which men freely choose, disinterestedly seek ends for their own sake--is still open, however much suffering they may have gone through. Their souls are destroyed only when this is no longer possible. It is when the desire for choice is broken that what men do thereby loses all moral value, and actions lose all significance (in terms of good and evil) in their own eyes; that is what is meant by destroying people's self-respect, by turning them, in your words, into rags. This is the ultimate horror because in such a situation there are no worthwhile motives left: nothing is worth doing or avoiding, the reasons for existing are gone. We admire Don Quixote, if we do, because he has a pure-hearted desire to do what is good, and he is pathetic because he is mad and his attempts are ludicrous.
Isaiah Berlin, "Letter to George Kennan" (1951)
Agitators like BLM should be horsewhipped... *spits*
Delete(Webster's): Definition of reasonable
Delete1a: being in accordance with reason
a reasonable theory
b: not extreme or excessive
reasonable requests
c: MODERATE, FAIR
a reasonable chance
a reasonable price
d: INEXPENSIVE
I intend it in the 1b&1c senses.
They're not asking for anything you or I would not demand for ourselves. I know exactly which strawman you're lining up to dryhump in response: save yourself the bother.
"Where's the compassion for white victims of police excessive force?" Compassion is not as interesting to me as practical measures, and proper oversight availability of recourse would help them too. I can see the racial element is triggering you: ignore it if that helps. Just think of it as police reform.
No delusion of mine is encouraging any destruction: the protests are bourne of the delusion that the police should serve their community. If people who remind folks of what they should expect from law enforcement and to demand reform when their local police fall short are "agitators" then I'm an agitator.
Always: I think police reform is the correct path, and increasingly violent demonstration is the inevitable consequence of decades of foot-dragging on this matter. I don't think it's the correct path any more than you think that retaliatory gunfire opening would be correct. Inevitable, arguably justifiable even, but also unfortunate and easily worth the effort to avoid.
DeleteJez,
DeleteSome of those protesting the way that the police do their job (i.e., arresting criminals) have a great deal of sympathy and empathy for the "victims" of the police. But what about sympathy and empathy for law enforcement officers? We seem to expect a great deal from them. Too much? Maybe. "Walk a mile in my shoes" should apply, IMO.
BTW, the term police reform needs to be adequately defined and the protocols clearly established. The term seems to mean very different things to different people. It should not mean defunding the police, IMO.
BLM is neither fair nor moderate. They have embraced the paranoiac critical methods of surrealism to AGITATE and make impossible demands so as to bring about REVOLUTION, not reform.
DeleteThe paranoiac-critical method is a surrealist technique developed by Salvador Dalà in the early 1930s. He employed it in the production of paintings and other artworks, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images. The technique consists of the artist invoking a paranoid state (fear that the self is being manipulated, targeted or controlled by others). The result is a deconstruction of the psychological concept of identity, such that subjectivity becomes the primary aspect of the artwork.
DeleteBad link above.
DeleteIt functions to strip these white liberal indoctrinees of their "critical distance" from the objectives of the movement. They become not "Hawkeye Pierce's" of a MASH unit, but rather, "Frank Burns'" as they can NEVER become "black" or have their lives "matter".
DeleteNot being black, the white BLM indoctrinees are reduced to a "child-like state0of-innocence as to what it means to be black. Held in this surreal state, they piece together disparate pieces of information into a whole picture of a systemically racist America and corrupt and racist police force. Their brainwashing is thereby complete.
DeleteIt is what Isaiah Berlin calls in his 1951 letter to Kennan, "being reduced to rags".
DeleteLet me try and say what I think it is; you say (and I am not quoting) that every man possesses a point of weakness, an Achilles' heel, and by exploiting this a man may be made a hero or a martyr or a rag. Again, if I understand you correctly, you think that Western civilisation has rested upon the principle that, whatever else was permitted or forbidden, the one heinous act which would destroy the world was to do precisely this--the deliberate act of tampering with human beings so as to make them behave in a way which, if they knew what they were doing, or what its consequences were likely to be, would make them recoil with horror and disgust. The whole of the Kantian morality (and I don't know about Catholics, but Protestants, Jews, Muslims and high-minded atheists believe it) lies in this; the mysterious phrase about men being "ends in themselves," to which much lip-service has been paid, with not much attempt to explain it, seems to lie in this: that every human being is assumed to possess the capacity to choose what to do, and what to be, however narrow the limits within which his choice may lie, however hemmed in by circumstances beyond his control; that all human love and respect rests upon the attribution of conscious motives in this sense; that all the categories, the concepts, in terms of which we think about and act towards one another--goodness, badness, integrity and lack of it, the attribution of dignity or honour to others which we must not insult or exploit, the entire cluster of ideas such as honesty, purity of motive, courage, sense of truth, sensibility, compassion, justice; and, on the other side, brutality, falseness, wickedness, ruthlessness, lack of scruple, corruption, lack of feelings, emptiness--all these notions in terms of which we think of others and ourselves, in terms of which conduct is assessed, purposes adopted--all this becomes meaningless unless we think of human beings as capable of pursuing ends for their own sakes by deliberate acts of choice--which alone makes nobility noble and sacrifices sacrifices.
The whole of that morality, which is most prominent in the nineteenth century, in particular in the romantic period, but implicit in both Christian and Jewish writings, and far less present in the pagan world, rests on the view that it is a marvellous thing in itself when a man pits himself against the world, and sacrifices himself to an ideal without reckoning the consequences, even when we consider his ideal false and its consequences disastrous. We admire purity of motive as such, and think it a wonderful thing--or at any rate deeply impressive, perhaps to be fought but never despised--when somebody throws away material advantage, reputation etc. for the sake of bearing witness to something which he believes to be true, however mistaken and fanatical we may think him to be. I do not say that we worship passionate self-abandonment or automatically prefer a desperate fanaticism to moderation and enlightened self-interest. Of course not; yet nevertheless we do think such conduct deeply moving, even when misdirected. We admire it always more than calculation; we at least understand the kind of aesthetic splendour which all defiance has for some people--Carlyle, Nietzsche, Leontiev [Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev, nineteenth-century Russian philosopher and critic] and Fascists generally. We think that only those human beings are a credit to their kind who do not let themselves be pushed too far by the forces of nature or history, either passively or by glorying in their own impotence; and we idealise only those who have purposes for which they accept responsibility, on which they stake something, and at times everything; living consciously and bravely for whatever they think good, i.e. worth living and, in the last resort, dying for.
...like the Oscars!
DeleteI haven't considered all of your points deeply, but none of them grab me immediately as good reasons to resist police reform.
DeleteYou've heard an argument for police reform? All I have heard is a bunch of screaming chants to disband the police.
DeleteWho's going to reform it, and how? Seems to me that an ACTUAL argument would have asked and answered those questions.
There is no argument for police reform. There are only impossible demands that can't possibly be met.
Delete"Just don't DO SOMETHING, DO MORE!"
Delete...IT IS AGITATION BY DESIGN.
DeleteThe actual arguments were made by Ron Klain and the unity task force on criminal justice reform.
DeleteThe agitators at BLM will be informed by them of the gains they have won through "righteous protest."
...but that TV Side-show called BLM is nothing but agitation by professional agitators.
DeleteIt's "theatre" for RUBES like "you".
Delete...to sell POWER's solution for acquiring GREATER POWER.
DeleteIt has NOTHING at all to do with justice.
DeleteHere's an argument you might already have read.
DeleteDid you ever read this one?
Delete...as long as we're legislating for people still living in the past and not 2021.
What's your point, that kerner is ancient history so I should stop going on about it? On the contrary, all the more insulting that their recommendations have been ignored for all this time.
DeleteIt's not like reports with detailed recommendations don't exist. We can write variations in that report until we get cramp in our writing hands. When is mainstream America going to do something about it? Can you understand how it might look like the issue needs to be forced? Give the protestors an alternative.
That was over 50 years ago. Are you saying that nothing improved or changed since then? Grow up.
DeleteI'll give the protestors a choice. Shut up or I'll repeal all those "historical" affirmative action programs and get the federal government OUT of the racial discrimination business..
That way whites and all the other racial minorities won't have been given good reasons to resent the special privileges of the black community. Problems solved.
DeleteYes, that is precisely my complaint. Every so often there are riots, sometimes a report is commissioned and the report typically repeats many of the recommendations the previous one rehearsed, and those recommendations are comprehensively ignored.
DeleteYou're just a sucker for the "everything's all right" narrative. You grow up.
And you're a sucker for the "government is a solution" narrative. It's not. It's what has helped create this ENTIRELY FAKE problem. Do you really think that the government can get anyone to treat someone else "fairly" and that you can legislate "moderation/ temperance?
Delete"Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that one writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to develop regulatory policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so widespread and demanding that it generates enough political force to bring about establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest in the commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of the offended as the agency goes into operation, developing a period of political quiescence among the great majority of those who hold a general but unorganized interest in the commons. Once this political quiescence has developed, the highly organized and specifically interested groups who wish to make incursions into the commons bring sufficient pressure to bear through other political processes to convert the agency to the protection and furthering of their interests. In the last phase even staffing of the regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the agency administrators from the ranks of the regulated."
Who runs these discriminatory PD's? Democrats. Who runs them in "consent decree" cities like Baltimore? Black Democrats. Anybody noticing a pattern here?
Ever hear of the Wise Men of Gotham?
DeleteDemocrats are in the process of "federalizing" their incompetence after bankrupting their local jurisdictions.
DeleteSocialism only works until you run out of other people's money.
Deletehttps://www.city-journal.org/civil-rights-orgs-make-false-claims-about-police
Deletehttps://www.city-journal.org/baltimore-police-corruption-bureaucratic-bloat
DeleteI've no trouble believing that a lot of blame can be laid at the feet of the Democrative party (you don't need to look further than Bill Clinton to see that) but GTFO of here with this "fake problem" bs. Nope. That's the position you would adopt if you wanted to watch it all burn.
DeleteYou're the one with all the megaphones, gasoline and matches egging it on. I'm not moving. It's a non-problem excuse for a power grab. Case closed. You want to burn it down? Have at it. No mercy for the stupid.
DeleteMultiple commissions from various decades agree there are significant issues to address. Your only answer to those reports is that time has passed.
DeleteThe closest I've got to egging anything on is to lament that I don't have a good alternative to suggest. I would much prefer that those reports' recommendations had been incorporated into policy.
You're sad that LBJ's "Great Society" federal power grab failed to get implemented, so now you want to remedy that travesty. Check.
Delete:)
Delete:p
DeleteSuggest an alternative, or demonstrate that your "do nothing" strategy which, even if we ignore the intrinsic injustice (oh, you already were), we know entails outbreaks of violence every so often, is not a great deal worse.
DeleteAs Bartleby the Scribner said, "I would prefer not to". I'm not the one demanding answers to imaginary problems.
DeleteNothing imaginary about police brutality, it's just easy for comfortable people to ignore. That's why you get riots, because we only pay attention to problems that affect us personally. Or we could develop some human empathy and save everyone the bother.
DeleteActive policing necessitates the use of force and violence. It can't be done without them. What's "imaginary" is pretending that this isn't true.
Delete...or that it has ANYTHING at all to do with performing an "injustice" and that the brutality is an ANY way one-sided or racially motivated.
DeleteOf course police need to use force, complaints are of excess. I don't believe for an instant that you're dumb enough to have made that substitution by accident. And maybe it needn't be racially motivated, so what? If all the bad cops were completely blind to colour, gender etc., so what? They'd still pick on the people who are least able to get recourse, and that's a class (and therefore, particularly in America, a race) issue.
DeleteIt's the same with any job. Surly waiters and impolite bank clerks tend to smarten up their act when they perceive the customer as important or well placed to make a credible complaint, and conversely when they encounter a powerless and/or voiceless customer, that's who they'll most freely take it out on.
The argument over whether or not it's racist is a pointless distraction, so I guess you win this round, FJ. Congrats. In the next one, please can we address the *******ing problem, you magic asterisk son-of-a-expletive deleted.
Well perhaps if you weren't trying to substitute the abstract universal category "black lives" for the concrete universal category "all lives" and thereby supporting a completely FALSE "racial narrative" you'd have a little less push-back and more success in selling your actual thesis that the police are using excessive force against the "poor" or the "proletariat" or even the "lumpen proletariat." Dragging race into it is completely getting in the way of your argument.
DeleteAnd to MAKE your argument, you should be arguing that current statistics OVERALL are getting WORSE from 5,10,20 or even 50 years ago. You've done NONE of that.
So grow the 'F up and make a REASONED argument, cuz' I'm sick of all your hand waving and emoting over race and black people.
Race is still relevant, the voicelessness and the blackness are arguably linked, but happy to talk about it in terms of class if that helps you to remain calm.
DeleteShow me some "its' getting worse statistics" and I'd be happy to talk about them.
Delete...or <a href='https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/report-seattle-police-use-low-levels-of-force-but-racial-disparity-remains/">this one</a>.
Delete... or this one.
Deleteor more comprehensive, this.
Delete...because it highlights the real issue, the correlation between use of force policies, numbers of incidents, and injuries to police officers.
DeleteMore restrictive use of force policies tend to reduce the number of incidents, the numbers of killings, but at the cost of greater injuries to police officers.
It was intolerable 50 years ago. Walk me through why there's no onus on you to demonstrate improvement, and lots of it?
DeleteBecause I'm not the one arguing for any change.
Deletebtw - The number of reason why police or criminals escalate to force are many and myriad. Race is but one of a billion factors. So attribution of the use of force to one miniscule factor, race, is CRAZY.
Delete...and I think that Robocop and Judge Dredd proved that "officer bias" wasn't always the determining factor leading to an escalation in violence or use of force.
DeleteGood one.. Gotta keep it simple for the libtards.
ReplyDeleteIt is not merely about acquiring power. It is about taking power away from those who have it. Neither goal is sufficient in itself. Both must be achieved.
ReplyDeleteMuch as Shylock in Merchant of Venice, they demand their "pound of flesh". Instead of being defended by a Portia though, our judges are granting them their flesh, a few grams at a time in what with a Chauvin precedent has and will become, a never ending river...
DeleteAnyone want to bet if you asked anyone under 30 what you were alluding to they would not have a clue what you are referencing.
ReplyDeleteI know, and it is literally everywhere because these people really believe that racism, sexism, blah blah blah are endemic in this country.
ReplyDeleteMy mom who is also a conservative as I am, used to watch Law and Order, and I pointed out that the show was a progressive nightmare. I haven’t see every episode, but in the ones I saw, all the perps are white, often “white supremacists” or religious zealots, and when there is the odd perp that is black it’s because he needs food to feed his family or is being strong-armed by the evil white guy or some such crap. She hadn’t even noticed, but from then on, she would notice it and eventually stopped watching it unless there was nothing else on that interested her.
Actor Morgan Freeman verbalized the clear path to the end of racism or its perception. “We can fix this problem quite easily. You stop looking at me as a black man, and I’ll stop looking at you as a white man. I don’t want a Black History Month; black history is American history; there’s no white history month. If you want an end to racism, stop talking about it.”
ReplyDeleteThere doesn’t seem to be much interest in taking Mr. Freeman’s advice. The reason for this is that there is too much money being made keeping that monster well-fed. So, who benefits from racial discord? People whose only sense of self-worth is the color of their skin, for one ... and those who have become filthy rich keeping it alive.
Racism is the least of our problems.
ReplyDeleteNext will be the talk of the town that our Religion is to harsh for Society.
Everyone I have talked to from a Commie/Socialist country
came here to escape the "Secret Police"; accounts of busting
in your door in the middle of the Nite. No one knows what the charges are to this day, of their loved ones.
And they see the same baby steps to "Secret Police" right NOW by the DemocRats purposing
"A NATIONAL POLICE FORCE".
"Fascism" starts with dividing the people with Race and Religion, and smaller idioms - then move into complete
"Communizm/Solcialism"!
So, who should apologize- our Children or the Children of the Rising Sun? Or the Children of the DemonicRats?
ReplyDeleteFor destroying our country from within.
The Dems are attacking the Black Folk"s again, goin to Ban Menthol Cigarettes. Some told me that, and, I said: yea, and you all just keep on voting for those EVIL DemocRats!
I say that to them all the time and you should see the look I get.
Rudy G. was investigating the Biden's
(Hunter and the Big Guy) in Ukraine.
Now the Biden's DOJ are investigating the Investigator.
A early morning RAID on Rudy G.; and the Agents were presented with Hunter's Hard Drive - and the Agents did not want it and left it behind.
The people I mentioned above heard this and are freaking out. They are saying the "Secret Police" are already HERE!
If you like, and agree with the Democrats policies, like drug dealing , child sex trafficking, coyote human labor slavery, baby killing, tax fraud, election fraud, etc...Then that party is for you.
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ReplyDelete...conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
DeleteThose who practice subjugation today do so in the name of the oppressed, the minority, the socially shunned. "Your local election officials require overseers, for they discriminate."
Delete"Your local PD requires federal oversight because they are biased and discriminate."
"Your company's employment office require oversight because they discriminate and protect sexual harrassers."
They propose that the federal government "oversee" ALL.
But who will oversee them? I say that only in G_d should we trust.
1 Timothy 3:1-7
It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
I'm confused -FJ... are you proposing that Biblical standards for leadership within the church should be the standard for public positions?
DeleteOr only that we should not bother trusting anyone with whom we have contact, because unlike God, they are inherently unrtustworthy?
So open your eyes and let us properly prepare the watch! There are no federally run utopias.
DeleteBring back war bonds and ration cards?
DeleteThe war against white supremacy must be fought! Those who pillaged the capitol must be brought to Justice, to hell with their Constitutional Rights.
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DeleteNothing in the Constitution protects insurrectionists. Waterboard whoever needs to be waterboarded on Trump's donor list to find everyone that attacked the Capitol, give them a trial for treason, and park their bodies next to Osama Bin Laden.
DeleteUnfortunately, we have a President too spineless and liberal to do that.
*Waterboard them with kerosene
DeleteWhy would Biden ever attempt to root out insurrectionists/ He'd lose 3/4 of his own political support.
DeleteIt's only those huge KKK Klaverns that must be exposed and leaders lynched.
DeleteShow me the Ashli Babbitt of Antifa. I'll wait.
DeleteI have mixed feelings about the unknown cop that took out Ashli Babbitt. On the one hand he deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congreesional Medal of Honor. On the other hand, he deserves a reprimand for not running out of ammo while targets were still present.
DeleteRaz Simone succeeded where Ashli Babbitt failed.
DeleteDon't forget to kiss his rings.
Delete..or he'll likely get all charged up!
Delete...and bust a cap in your *ss!
DeleteOh, wait, Ashly Babbitt was UNARMED. Never mind.
DeleteAshley Babbitt was actively participating in an attack upon the government. Timothy McVeigh would have been shot if caught in the act also.
DeleteCapturing and holding a few city blocks in Seattle isn't an attack on government? Who knew?
DeleteWhy'd nobody shoot Raz? Oh, that's right, his life "matters"!
Raz wasn't in a crowd chanting "hang Mike Pence?"
DeleteBurn what down? At all times the CHOP was in communication and collaboration with the Seattle Police and Fire Departments.
DeleteNext?
EVERYTHING!
DeleteAgitators don't make rational arguments.
Bernie & Joe's Unity Task Force will sort it out.
DeleteJow to Bernie, "Send in more agitators... we've only have a small window for robbing the taxpayers of the trillions we need".
Delete"Stampede the voters into giving us EVERYTHING!"
Delete:)
DeleteMood Indigo contributes to the subversion of the traditional opposition between the real and the imaginary underlying the mythic graffiti “Be realistic, demand the impossible” that flourished on the walls of Paris that Spring.
DeleteFrom "Jewish orbital lasers started California wildfires" to "the election was stolen from Trump," there's sadly been no effort on the right to not be utterly and *knowingly* full of shit.
DeleteIt's hard to take a clown seriously.
...or a crashing hard-drive.
Delete...named "Mike Pence".
DeleteWell, the Clintons didn't hand pick Trump in 2016 nor the media give him $3 billion in uncontested airtime for the purposes of buttressing the Republican Party as a serious force in American politics in perpetuity.
DeleteYou ordered birdshit pizza. You got birdshit pizza.
Sounds pretty tasty for a birsh*t party.
DeleteProof's in the cheese. The Republican Party will go all out talking about fiscal conservatism, small government, following the Constitution, keeping America strong and all the other sizzles without steak as long as you reduce their power to below the ability to suggest changes to the color of the carpet. Let them back on power and it's all "Raise the national debt? Hold my beer."
DeleteAmen.
DeleteKamala Harris has been in charge of America’s border crisis for over a month and still has not visited the border where children being tossed over the wall and stuffed into overcrowded cages. Her excuse? “We’re dealing with Covid issues”, but the virus hasn’t kept VP Harris from traveling the country to campaign for Joey B’s stimulus package
ReplyDeleteSleepy Joe Biden, aka the Groper claimed he was a moderate, but anyone paying attention knew he was just a puppet  for the new powerful wing of the Democratic Party, the DSA, “Democratic Socialist of America”. Knowing that their first choice, Bernie Sanders, would have no chance in a general election they chose who they considered the most likable and easily influenced candidate, Joe Biden. And they paired him with a black woman for good measure. And from his first day in office joe Biden has capitulated to all of their demands. And they’re not even close to being done yet. The DSA, has become so powerful that even people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer yield to their agenda
ReplyDeleteA more polite argument for funding the weaponization of time travel devices is needed. It's gonna get a lot uglier yesterday.
ReplyDeleteActually Debonair, they were blocked.
ReplyDeleteThe left, just like the right has its share of extremists and screw ups too. They're the Cyndy Sheehan, Code Pink, all Republicans are racist and hate black people types.
I think the difference is that the left, as evidenced by the Al Franken's forced resignation, the calls on Cuomo to resign and even to some degree, Joe Manchin bucking leadership and gumming up Dem plans, is that we see little like behavior from the right.
Maybe once we see that, unity can step forward.