Ahahahahaha.

Hey Wookie06, as our resident sovereign citizen, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about this patriot protecting his rights from a corrupt government.

Exactly. Now that premeditated cop killings are prevalent news, it doesn't surprise me in the least that the press would exploit the situation by prominently featuring stories that wouldn't normally attract as many readers.

I've seen this posted on social media a few times in the last few days. I'm wondering what you guys thought about it. I've been following this thread with interest the past week and like the insights I'm getting from this community.

https://youtu.be/T6YBiuP2WuE

To clarify my post, here is my stance. I'm bothered by senseless violence and intolerance. I wish we could all just get along.

The video raises awareness of the fact that the vast majority of shooting deaths against blacks are not at the hands of the police, which is admirable. Since they are reacting to #BlackLivesMatter, though, activists against excessive police force get the credit for forcing the issue on the public, which generally didn't give a rat's ass before this became headline news.

If the privileged audience of this video cared about black lives enough to participate in actual community activism, they would in fact already know that there are probably more protests against the killing of innocent blacks by other blacks, despite the fact that these efforts are not sexy news stories that will easily rile up people's emotions by blaming an oppressor, and so the national news media therefore does not cover it at the same level as #BlackLivesMatter material. I mentioned "Stop The Killing" in this thread as one example which was based in Louisiana, and though they are the organization which filmed the shooting of Alton Sterling by police, the organization precedes #BlackLivesMatter, and is not focused on police brutality, but on the much more widespread phenomenon of violence against blacks in general, with their stated goal being

However, the organization did give the video of Alton Sterling's death to the media, since they deemed it unjust. I think the actual details which have come out (as in many of these cases) have shown Alton Sterling to be a rather questionable character, having previously resisted arrest while armed. Although the police thought he was also armed and perhaps reaching for a weapon in his final, deadly encounter with the police, I might guess that the cops who killed him were less courageous or at least less well trained than the ones who dealt with him in the case in which he in fact was armed but clearly was not shot for this. My tentative conclusion from this difference is that the cops who ultimately took his life are probably part of a bigger problem of bad apples which need to be addressed through stricter training and better norms†.

Having said that, if the disparate group of activists using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag (and that really is what they are--this is a decentralized phenomenon enabled by the new online media brought about by changes in technology, rather than a unified, morally culpable organization††) want to exploit the nation's new attention on the issue of police brutality to improve the lives of black people who are not simply


resisting arrest (or leading the cops on a high speed chase on the freeway, etc.), but in fact simply living their lives and being killed indiscriminately on the streets by the criminals within their own community, then it would be an excellent pivot if we could change the national discussion to one how we can change the role of police departments from organizations which patrol black communities with a battle zone mentality, to ones in which their community members are seen as important parts of efforts to curb crime. If members of a community cannot trust police enough to help with investigations, crime will never be reduced, and the bad apples in the police department will continue to get away with unjust killings of people they see as threats (as well as the many tragic accidents between blacks and braver, smarter, more moral cops), and a vicious cycle of mistrust and altercation will continue.

Finally, while I now admit that any comprehensive solution to the problem of homicides against blacks is necessarily going to involve changes in the character and role of police officers, if you want to know of an organization with a much more sophisticated pedigree than #BlackLivesMatter-- one which really does aim to reduce the killings of innocent blacks--then I suggest you look into Cure Violence. The founder of this organization, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health Epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, M.D, originally worked to treat epidemic disease in Africa, and returned to the United States to get away from the problem of treating epidemic disease, which had left him emotionally drained. He began the work that led to Cure Violence as a way to put his skills to work on a problem which would be much less depressing, but eventually was drawn in when he really seemed to be onto something. By treating violence as an epidemic, and using techniques endorsed by the World Health Organization for managing epidemics, Cure Violence has managed to drastically cut crime in hot spots in places within Chicago, and has since been expanded to other cities, with great success. Check out his TED talk for more (which is also linked to the Cure Violence website).



† Bill Maher gave a great take on the issue, which, although does not address the wider problem of black shooting victims, and also includes a ridiculous statement that would seem to justify the shooting of police by extremists, nevertheless makes the excellent point that there is a certain type of person who deliberately seeks out the career choice of police officer, for all the wrong reasons, and who need to be rooted out by psychological tests, training, and better norms / culture.

†† If you do take a gander at the actual, formal Black Lives Matter organization, which I presume most protesters care little about, you will find that their website uses some very radical and frankly bizarre rhetoric and theory, in which blacks, transgender, and queer folk are characterized as oppressed people, but with very little pragmatic or diplomatic language about solving problems in a no-nonsense matter, although this could simply be the way that the organization best feels it can market itself. Nevertheless, if you look into one of Black Lives Matter's founders, Alicia Garza, you will see that she has been known to cite Assata Shakur, a convicted cop killer and FBI-most wanted terrorist and is currently at large. Given the fact that both of the two recent cop killers were motivated by radical black separatist ideology, I think the cause of Black Lives Matter can only be helped if its radical elements are reigned in and marginalized, in exchange for more cool heads which aim to improve relations with police rather than fan the flames.

http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/07/19/members-kkk-black-lives-matter-and-westboro-baptist-church-reportedly-throwing-urine-each

I'm bothered by senseless urine.

Oh come on, grow up.

It's interesting, Jones, that just after the shooting of Alton Sterling, you were convinced that the violence was attributable to a single, simple cause: the second amendment.

Yet now, when it comes to issues of racism, you seem to revel in the 'complexity' of the issue; you cite all these other black activist political organizations as evidence that the efforts of BLM are somehow misdirected.

Clearly you'll believe anything that let's you continue to deny that racism fuels the disproportionate violence suffered by black people in the US.

Why are you so resistant to the idea?

No!

Alot of this stuff is upsetting, so I try to make it funny.

I think literally everybody can agree that someone who chooses to kill another person is doing something horribly wrong. The thing is, white people want to end the analysis there. You can clearly take a look at the structure of society and the material conditions that are causally linked to this stuff.

The problem is, too many people are comfortable with society being this way, because actual change is uncomfortable. Also, neoliberals would rather not spend any money, especially on black people, no matter how short-sighted and racist the results are.

So the video is just doing what all white people do, they distract from the core issues because they are uncomfortable.

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

This video explains better than I can why I'm opposed to charity.

That's not fair.



I do not deny this, and was wrong if I ever did.



I resist focusing on it because calling something evil (in this case racist) is not usually a solution, and furthermore, if black lives really do matter, then we should not allow ourselves to become so intensely focused on the problem racism to the point where it blinds us from considering actionable solutions. I also believe that the Medium is the Message, and that by focusing on immoral acts by police officers, the very real problem is drawn to scrutiny (I agree with everything Bill Maher says I linked to in my post above), but at the same time it can be a distortion.



I believe the disconnect between my analysis and my critics in this thread lies in the difference between naming one particularly odious flavor of a problem, versus contemplating how to begin thinking about a solution to the more widespread and equally tragic problem, especially when it fails to gain the same amount of traction in the media NATIONAL media (but not the local media), and therefore in the minds of many privileged white people like you and me.

For the record, I still do believe that magically removing all guns in the country WOULD in fact constitute a solution (again, notice I am talking about solutions rather than focusing on a specific problem). I simply admitted that

And other white people want to end the discussion at "racism". Fortunately, as I admitted in my concession speech to Jon, the solution to both problems are intertwined, and involve the police no matter what.

The contention is when people use this to distract from the systemic issues, which is why you get hostility. Racism, in the sense of racist systems, is the primary cause of violence against blacks and most everything else is a distraction from this point.

"Systemic issues" of the type you point to are often so deeply ingrained into the institutional frameworks of society that to truly face up to every single one of them, you would practically have to be at constant war with all of society. The deeper the problem being diagnosed, the more intractable a solution becomes, to the point that an organization like Black Lives Matter has expanded itself to queer and transgender issues, without even mentioning things like building trust with the police department on its website.

While my initial tone (as well as my ignorance to the issue of building trust between police departments and communities they serve) helped paint me as a right winger, the truth is that in any discussion like this, the two easiest positions to describe are also the most extreme ones, and all too often disagreement is interpreted as allegiance to the opposing side. This is why radical centrism is the most difficult position to take, because it means that both sides are going to tear you to shreds. The Medium is the Message, and the internet has drastically accelerated this phenomenon, to the point where we have Donald Trump actually gaining popularity.

"So why are black people acting out so much?"

Those influenced by Marxist thinking are sometimes inclined to protest, radicalism, or revolution (or in the modern era, pretend that virtue signaling online is a form of activism) as a tool for solving problems. If this is your goal, then it makes sense to constantly harp on systemic issues and not bother to think about actionable solutions that are expedient within the current (flawed and possibly morally compromised) set of institutions.

I believe that raising awareness is consistent with what I consider to be a more practical approach, but I would resent being shamed by what at worst I can call 'SJWs' just because my approach looks amoral. My proposals are either:

1. descalating conflict by removing firearms from all parties (which will not work in the U.S., for reasons discused w.r.t. the 2nd Amendment), or
2. delicately and incrementally building trust between police and the communities they serve, so as to make it more likely for black community members to help in investigations, which would certainly be a necessary step if we are to vastly reduce the heinous amount of violent crime that goes on in many heavily black areas, which would result in police being less likely to suspect a black suspect might be armed or try to resist arrest, which will reduce the amount of tragedies (as well as the more immoral acts that get broadcast online and on TV)

It is worth pointing out that police shootings of unarmed black men did not correlate with the amount of violent crime, according to a recent study. This would seem to indicate that it would be morally and practically wrong to begin to deflect partial blame on police department norms which constitute "institutional racism". The police departments which come out badly (and one could argue that they all come out badly, but we could learn exactly what it is that is so bad by looking at the practice of the very worst ones) clearly need to be pressured.

Finally, in case it isn't already obvious, I should point out that the media will show you the very worst of police actions which get caught on tape, but it's important to understand that the majority of police officers probably do not act like this, since it is not an unbiased sample. Furthermore, when one examines the statistics of black crime in general, I am not sure we can even blame the better police officers out there for their conduct, although this is a much more contentious position and I admit that I lack the perspective to speak about it.

Again you are approaching this from a perspective of morals rather than practical, actionable solutions. Were the Rodney King rioters justified in destroying their own neighborhoods? Perhaps, but what good comes out of this?

Finally, the elephant in the room is the effects of rampant neoliberal economic policy, and the resulting effects of poverty, which I am more than happy that #BlackLivesMatter has brought to the fore (or could bring to the fore), but at the same time we cannot allow these issues to get tangled up to the point that we are essentially taking out all our anger about inequality in society and the resulting institutional racism on police officers and the court systems.

But if the result of #BlackLivesMatter is the decriminalization of drugs, the exposing of the prison-industrial complex, and greater attention to poverty, then I would be thrilled. I just think people would do well to tone down the radical language.

Based on the last video you had me watch, I am going to save my time before I spend 10 minutes listening to a man who I don't have a whole lot of respect for intellectually.

At any rate, I don't see what charity has to do with my post.

How can you claim to know anything about the audience of the video? You don't know that the audience doesn't consist of people who are black themselves, and who are directly affected by racist cops.

In fact, at about 3:00, the woman in the video uses language ("your community") that makes clear that she's addressing black people (and trying to hold their feet to the fire, I might add).



How do you know they don't?



The oxymoron of the term smacks of the same rhetoric of "campus feminism" and other strains of radical politics that you criticized and dismissed earlier.

You know what's so dumb about this whole thing? Everyone is pretending that a twitter hashtag is a coherent ideology that can be totally represented by any random post that happens to use it. You can't say black lives matter is a terrorist organization because someone used it in a tweet supporting the murder of police. It's not an organization. It's a hashtag.

My mistake, it looks like I was wrong to guess that the audience was mostly white and privileged.



Fine, we disagree about how to go about making change politically. Don't pretend to to have some kind of moral high ground because of this, though.

I totally agree. The fact that they are decentralized is in large part why it is morally tenable to attack them as a monolithic unit, but it also explains why the movement has difficulty in addressing its own flaws. It would help if the official leaders weren't so radical, but I don't expect radical leftists who are motivated by the powerlessness of their situation to be anything but this.

Not really. Our non-firearm murder rate alone is higher than nations with similar levels of development. And elimination of firearms will obviously not prevent all murders that currently take place with a firearm.

If you are lucky enough to be white, murder risk isn't great, but it's quite a bit closer to western European levels. If you are unlucky enough to be black, it's much closer to third world levels. Oh, and forget "assault weapons" or what ever you want to call them. They are statistically negligible contributors to overall gun crime.

Anyone who isn't a totally racist twit, will be forced to recognize that the biggest driver of the murder rate in the US is the desperate failure of social policy toward minorities, especially blacks. It's almost as if several hundred years of systematic slavery and legal oppression might have had some have some negative lasting cultural impacts that need to be seriously dealt with.
But nah, lets continue to under-fund inner city schools, and worry about guns that are rarely used to kill primarily white people. If we took any non-ambiguous position on social equality, we might get called racist by an angry black person who we couldn't be bother to educate, and that would spoil our fantasy that we are friends with all black people because we cheer against the bad guys in movies about de-segregation.

Of course you are right. It would be nice if solving those problems were within the realm of political possibility, wouldn't it?

No one is even an official leader. There isn't a voteing process. All you have to do is claim it. And the people who get paid attention are the people with the most extreme and insane ideas. It's basically made every movement from occupy wall street to the tea party worthless, since the dumbest voices define perception of the movement.

Twitter is worthless.

I definitely think radical centrism is a coherent ideology. I am radically opposed to tribal partisan politics, and I am willing to take a lot of heat from both sides, and in that sense it is radical. I think we learn the most when both sides compromise and negotiate a deal that benefits the maximum number of parties. You may call this weakness, but I don't think it is incoherent or designed to be dismissive. There are ridiculous people on both sides of any argument, and it's wrong to shame people who point them out, not because they want to marginalize the entire movement, but because they want to filter out the least tenable positions being promoted by fringe elements within the opposition. Frankly, with the Medium being the Message and the internet revolutionizing social media, this is more important than ever.

There is an official organization, although I don't think much people pay attention to them.

As for Twitter being worthless, you certainly have my sympathy in that opinion. Marshall Mcluhan is arguably the most genius Canadian mentioned in this thread.

You don't have to be a Marxist to want social change. In fact, the entire Bernie Sanders movement was basically social democratic and is pining for a dramatic shift in governance.


The data suggests to me that socioeconomic status and racism are much better predictors of violence than gun rights. Some states with liberal gun ownership are the least violent. They're also relatively privileged states.

As far as the police, there's more than a simple lack of trust wrong with them.


Obviously people who know what they're talking about use statistical methods to come to conclusions.

They are separate issues with similar causes.



Who argued that rioters are practical solvers?



It's the same answer, the same processes that lead to the proliferation of violence are the ones spending money to make Cure Violence work. Clearly it's better than nothing, but it doesn't solve the problem.

Hitler should have only killed 3 million Jews.

You can just as easily correlate these things with the destruction of the nuclear black family, schools let to waste, and some very bad cultural traits that have been allowed to emerge, all of which have are the ultimate result of centuries of institutional racism, going all the way back to slavery. You can protest about this and call it racism, but I'm not sure what that's going to solve. The disagreement between us at this point essentially comes down to far left vs. center or center-right.



I'm glad you agree?

Right, because the police are literally Hitler.

One of the reasons why Bernie Sanders failed to gain support of the more educated individuals in my social circles is his failure to garner the support of economists for his proposals. You can say that the Bernie supporters (of whom I had been one, until I changed to support Clinton) have created a movement advocating for idealistic change, but he also lost votes of people who were skeptical, because he was too idealistic in his proposals.

That so misses the point I don't even know where to begin.

"We simply can't do anything about racism, it's not politically actionable."

Well thanks for the opinions, I guess the discussion is over.

It is. (This is my last post in this thread.)

You are the very worst sort of person. And a coward.

But I do have the moral high ground!

Stop race baiting