I question the wisdom of fighting hate by silencing hate speech. This silencing includes banning, deplatforming, PC culture, cancel culture and all that stuff. — DingoJones

I also question whether those tactics have a significant effect on ideology, as practiced, as thought, as written and read. And even if it were effective, I still don't approve of these practices.

Is silencing hate speech the best tactic against hate? — DingoJones

A communist, socialist, or anarchist could easily run afoul of hate-speech suppression during a rant about the ruling class, about rich people, about people with lots of real power. As it happens, the banners, deplatformers, PCers, cancel cultists--that whole crowd--come from the quasi-leftist side of town. That's my home address, too, but I still disapprove.

In an open society--which is what we supposedly have--it is permissible for Neo-Nazis to march around. Lots of people don't like it, but the ACLU was right to defend Neo Nazis when they wanted to hold a rally in Jewish Skokie, Illinois. (This was back in 1978; apologies for referencing ancient history.). White Supremacists, a group recently concocted in the minds of quasi-leftists and racial activists, should have as much right to air their views as Neo-Nazis, BLM activists, defenders of illegal immigrants, and so on.

What I really, really dislike about banning, deplatforming, PC culture, cancel culture, and so on is that it is too crude to be useful. Portraits of "white supremacists" have been drawn with nothing more subtle than paint rollers, where sharp pencils are in order. Who, and what, exactly, is a white supremacist? Or a transphobic? Will the real fascists please state your party platform? Abolishing whole police departments (composed, in Minneapolis, of 900 officers) because a small minority of them are brutal thugs, is another example of crude thinking.

REAL CHANGE, if that is what we really want (and I'm not convinced we do) won't involve reorganizing the symbolic and linguistic deck chairs on an ill-fated Titanic. It will involve fundamental changes in the industrial and financial core of society. The monumental pile of wealth belonging to Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and a few thousand other very rich people, will have to be redistributed; production for profit (first and foremost) will have to be shifted to production for people's needs [hey, I can use a paint roller too!]. All this involves massive change which will be resisted most vigorously.

Today on National Public Radio The World program, the name of the Washington Redskins was deemed unsayable. It wasn't unsayable just a week ago on NPR. I'm fine with changing the name of the Washington team, or other teams whose names belong to groups of people. But some principled people are against censorship of any kind, for any reason. I'm more in agreement with opposition to censorship than support for it.

The trouble with censors is that they tend to have fairly broad definitions of speech they don't like, which provides them with considerable latitude in decided what to censor. You want to ban very specific words, like 'fuck' for instance? Fine. Make a list of words that you want censored and we can talk about it. But "hate speech" can be whatever you don't like. That just leads to another kind of tyranny.

I don't have a Black Lives Matter lawn sign, bumper sticker, or pin and won't be getting one. I'm white; maybe I have a touch of white supremacy, or something... I don't know. At any rate,

Racial histories, giving racial groups undue significance or irrational objectives and emotions, identity politics, so silly. — Judaka

Yes, I agree with that; on the other hand, a not-overly-sympathetic white guy can see that black people have consistently been discriminated against--maybe not all individually--but as a group, certainly.

Working people--black, white, and brown--have been the recipients of exploitation and discrimination across the board. That's the nature of capitalism: exploit, accumulate, conquer, rule. When you are broke, you are broke -- and it means very similar things whether one is black or white. Black people have been aggregated in certain places more than white people (by segregation), so they are more visible in their suffering.

I've always thought that most of O K L A H O M A was a petroleum soaked shit hole. It's a good thing Oscar Hammerstein II never ventured out there. Had he, the play would have been about oil patch roughnecks, whorehouses, oil wells, and grease all over everything. Probably would have gotten bad reviews in the New York press and never made it on to Broadway from Off Off Broadway.

There is, by the way, a nice Frank Lloyd Wright building in Bartlesville, OK--the Price Tower, which started out as an office building and is now a hotel.

There was a huge pogrom / race riot / arson and bloody massacre in Tulsa, OK on May 31/June 1, 1921. Read about it here.

About 300 blacks were killed, the large and prosperous black Greenwood community was burnt to the ground, and many were injured. There was even some straffing from the air--a little WWI tech brought to bear on the situation.

In the aftermath of the white attack on Greenville, there was some national news coverage, which quickly faded, and then there was silence. Nobody--white or black--wanted to talk about what happened, out of fear and shame. There were several unmarked mass graves that have not been found, and a few that have.

An investigatory commission was set up recently to finally investigate the event.



There were very large race riots in several cities around the time (2 or 3 years either side) -- Chicago, East St. Louis, Detroit, and so on.

Just wanted to go on record, here.

I heartily loathe the military industrial, corporate business culture of not just the US, but of much of the world. It's various devious, detrimental unto diabolical designs are loathsome in their entirety. I've spent quite a bit of time since the mid 1960s thinking about the MIC.

How important do you think those numbers were in the Civil War compared to how important they are to modern warfare. — Athena

An interesting side, here: During and after the civil war, there was considerable difficulty identifying how many, from what company, from what state, and names of dead soldiers. There was no system of identification. Beginning to solve the problem of identifying soldiers (dead or alive) was a major impetus to the growth of the Federal Government. If benefits were to be paid, accurate information was needed

I think the problem is a failure to understand the Military-Industrial Complex. — Athena

Sure, because the MIC is co-extensive with the mid-20th century culture on to the present. That's an immense amount of complexity to get one's head around. Just for example, people who are dithering about the militarization of police departments are not always aware that the drive to load up your local police with tanks is coming from the Pentagon, not from your local police station.

Why are we singing the national anthem before pro-football or pro-baseball games. Because somebody in the pentagon thought that would be a good idea.

The US was basically a nation of innocent children living for a love of God. While the Prussians who took control of Germany were living for the love of military might. — Athena

Come now, Athena! The US has never been innocent. No other country has either. Let me divide this up: There are the leaders (from the Mayflower on down), there are the gung ho followers, (the core group--not too large) then there are the masses.

The English Colonies, and then the US, has pursued some highly guilt-producing practices: mass genocide conducted against the Aboriginal peoples, enslavement, wanton disregard of civil rights, ruthless exploitation, waste, fraud, abuse, and so on. The leaders and core group set the policies and the masses are roped into supporting and/or carrying out the policies.

When we talk about nations--Germany, Burma, Liechtenstein, the United States, whichever... we might want to avoid using language appropriate to morally responsible agents. Nations don't have friends; they don't have morals. They have interests, and they tend to pursue their best interests.

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, Warren Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, on down to Donald Trump are, for better and for much worse, moral agents who are responsible. I'm a responsible moral agent; you're a responsible moral agent. The pentagon, as such, is not. General Motors is not. The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (some moral agent) IS. So is the CEO, CFO, CETC. of General Motors.

I also write too much verbiage, so I'll stop here, and start again.

The MIC and the NDEA is one of your abiding concerns, and it isn't altogether misplaced. However... The NDEA did have some democratizing effects by enabling people to attend college who otherwise would not have been able to afford tuition, housing, and books. My siblings were beneficiaries of NDEA grants, as were many of my fellow students. Me too. All that was back in the late 1950s and mid sixties.

Don't overlook the insidious effects of VA education benefits that sent many, many former soldiers from WWII (and later) to college.

I quite agree that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) was. is, and probably will remain alive and well. I would like to quarrel with your chronology and widen your target aperture.

In focusing on the post WWII MIC, you are overlooking some other malignant influences: Don't forget about rampant capitalism: exploitative, often ruthless, anti-union, and focused on necessary (from their perspective) class warfare (which is what their anti-unionism is about, among other things). The manipulation of the public got a big boost in the work of Edward Bernays (1891-1955) the 'father of public relations'. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.

The "bigger half" of the MIC is big business, the globe-circling ouroboros, infinite tail-swallowing snake. When a handful of capitalists (literally, less than 11) hold more wealth than 1/2 of the global population, you are dealing with something pretty powerful. Not to mention there are another couple thousand inordinately wealthy individuals out there, protecting their interests.

But getting back to the NDEA: Wasn't one of the benefits of the NDEA and VA education benefits a tidal wave of students (and income) that lifted all university departmental boats? Were not the humanities and/or liberal arts departments in much better shape after WWII on into the 1970s, then they later became (put on shorter rations at best)?

Another concern you have is

With the focus on technology came specialization and the Behaviorist Method of education which is also used for training dogs. — Athena

Sure, simple conditioning works better for training dogs than having long discussions with them. I've had long discussions with my very smart dog, and I can report that it didn't improve her behavior one wit (she was, of course, a very good dog).

It happens to be the case, like it or not, that human beings, dogs, monkeys, rats, and crows share many neurological characteristics. That's why we also learn in ways not much differently than other animals. Psychology's first big (and successful) project was to understand how we learn. So it is that the methods of the rat lab became the 'image of psychology'.

In saying that, please note, I am not equating a human mind with a dog's mind. The scope of human mental activities is far vaster than a dog's, and our brains are far more complex, and utilize additional methods of learning, knowledge acquisition, imagination, and so on and so forth.

Hey, Athena: I think we share a lot of discomfort, dissatisfaction, and disagreement with the world as it has been made. My disagreement here is that there are just more villains than the Military Industrial Complex.

As well they should! After all, it is well known that English majors reading Milton leads to nothing but trouble.

People singing about liberation and bringing peace to the people but then they just do the most heinous shit. — Lif3r

At the heart of the human condition is a contradiction: we have had, do have, and will have both good and bad impulses at work at the same time. That is just the way we are. You don't like it; I don't like it; nobody likes it; BUT that is how we are.

Most of the time, most people try to keep the bad impulses under control. Unfortunately, the environment we live in often makes that difficult. Still, even the best environment for humans will not bring about perfection -- just less douchebaggery. Or would that be douchesacerie, in French?

BLM is legitimately described as a working class group, pretty much, in terms of their demographics and many of their aspirations. Their espousal of "trans rights" is hard to square with anything. "Trans rights" has, for some reason beyond me, become a major cultural enterprise. Bizarro world.

There is a culture war going on now in the United States, because a culture war has been going on here since the getgo, 1620, or there about.

How could that be?

The American colonies were set up for the benefit of the ruling class of England, and required the suppression of both aboriginal culture (yea, their very existence) and the cultures of those brought here to labor--to do the hard work for others making the money. White indentured workers and black slaves both got bad deals, though the blacks got a considerably worse deal.

The on-going exploitation of white labor, black slaves, and later black and white labor (never mind the genocide of the aboriginals) has been de-emphasized in favor of the story of triumphant bourgeoisie progress up to and including the present moment.

Resistance to the oppression of workers crops up regularly; so far, the working class has been unable to gain the upper-hand over the ruling class. Black Lives Matter is one more chapter in the efforts of working people (this time primarily blacks) to get out from under the heavy hand of the bourgeois capitalists.

This will not be the last chapter, rest assured.

Mutations happen — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Viruses mutate regularly -- true. Generally these mutations are very minor and do not prevent a given test from recognizing the virus. Why? Because the surface proteins on the virus would have to mutate quite a bit before a typical test would fail to recognize it.

HIV mutates all the time, but the HIV tests still detect it.

Is your son at particular risk of contracting Covid19? Has he been symptomatic? Is he taking the recommended mask-wearing and physical distancing advice?

Just out of curiosity: once "they" come up with a Vaccine with maybe a 25% protection, but not really sure of the long term side affects other than defying death, are you going to be at the front of the line?

And, AND those who do not get in line for a year? Are they going to be labeled "anti vaxer"? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

They'll be labeled antivaxxers IF they practice non-vaccination for reliably preventable and serious infectious diseases, like measles, polio, influenza, and so on.

Whether to take a Covid19 vaccine involves a very standard risk calculation: is the expected risk of the vaccine greater than the risk of serious infection (and illness) by Covid19? People make these risk calculations all the time: Is the risk of an auto accident driving 300 miles worth the pleasure of seeing a ball game? Is the risk of sexually transmitted infections worth the satisfactions of unprotected sex? Is the enhanced flavor of unpasteurized goat cheese worth the risk of a very unpleasant gastrointestinal infection?

I had influenza in 1968--a particularly bad strain; it made me very sick. I've had pneumonia, and that was pretty bad. So, I consider the risk of a vaccine less than the risk of a combo Covid19 / pneumonia infection, plus the additional adverse consequences of the infection.

A younger person in robust health MIGHT conclude that the disease isn't worth the risk of a vaccine. Of course, the person in robust health and youth might end up being an exquisite corpse.

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

The key idea about which I have changed my mind is the existence of God, and associated religious ideas, such as the divinity of Christ. This occurred over a period of time and was more or less complete by 1990. Since then I have developed a materialist approach to understanding reality (to the extent that I do).

Another major change was the embrace of gayness, going beyond reluctant self-acceptance. This process was completed in the early 1970s.

I moved from a fairy conservative view of life to a much more liberal - on to a more radical stance.

Now that I'm in my 70s, the importance of these changes has receded. I belong to a Lutheran congregation, but this is for purposes of social contact, not faith. I'm the oddly atheist member. I'm still gay, of course, but being gay isn't especially important anymore--being 74 and out of the loop.

Karl Marx is more important now than in the past, though my commie support group is largely (and literally) dead.

All this was over by the time I found the first Philosophy Forum (now defunct), so I can't claim that The last or current TPF changed my thinking a great deal. One of the things that bothers me about some posters is that they do not see to grant sufficient importance to the body and to the emotions. Some posters seem a bit like the caricatured huge brain supported by a very diminutive body.

How about you? What changing thinking have you experienced?

Over-Population is part of the environmental crisis which the power elite ignore to everyone's peril.

If the population must be decreased (say, owing to massive food shortages) then nature will reduce the population. If continued production of greenhouse gases makes it difficult for species to live, then nature will remove the species -- including us, possibly.

I prefer that we take the initiatives necessary to secure our survival, but if we don't, life won't go on for us.

I'm not at all confident that we will succeed on our own behalf. A surprise viral pandemic eclipsed global warming, and then racial outrage eclipsed the pandemic, for... we shall see for how long. We have to keep our eyes on the ball if we expect to succeed at survival.

I believe that black people do intentionally dress in a way to intentionally appear intimidating more often than white people. — Pinprick

Vestis virum reddit. Clothes make the man.

Men, women, blacks, whites--all of us, dress to express self, culture, aspiration, politics, class, and so on. There is nothing new about this, though the actual clothes change from time to time. Many people aim for an intimidating edge in their clothing. Upper class women in Manhattan have been observed deploying aggressive maneuvers with accessories for the purpose of intimidation. The business suit, the power tie, the black leather jacket, beards, long hair, short hair, no hair, tattoos, piercings, et al.

There are likely distinct features of black public presentation. Why wouldn't there be? Black culture has features distinct from white culture or any other culture. The way a black man might choose to project the image of power will depend on his particular milieu. To some, the "thug look" is intimidating; to others it makes for an easy dismissal of the subject.

To draw a comparison: Gay white men have deployed distinct features of public presentation. 50 years ago, working class clothing and mustaches were de rigueur among gay men. Some gay men preferred a heavy motorcycle gang vibe. At other times, other places, gay men chose radically different types of clothing.

Clothing is a form of communication to which some attention should be paid. Be prepared for relativism. An outfit that I might consider the height of stupidity, you might consider very subtle.

Given human error and greed removed, ANY system of government would probably work pretty well. The problem is, though, human error, greed, sloth, and various other tendencies are always present, screwing up all attempts at a better mass society.

Is there a way to make people better, so that better societies can exist? Maybe, but progress toward "better humans" is slow and incremental with retrograde developments along the way.

in mass societies such as exist now, it's a balancing act to avoid too much control and not enough control.

Because reproduction is free for a male, and costly and dangerous (and in the worst case, fatal) for a female? From the point of view of spreading their genes, a male has no reason not to reproduce with every female they possibly can. — zookeeper

I don't have a time machine, but I suspect sexual activity hasn't always been the free-for-all it currently seems to be.

For one, humans have lived in social groups for a long time. We were hunter-gatherers in a sparsely populated world for... hundreds of thousands of years--much of our homo sapiens history. It is not a huge stretch to suppose that there were social limitations on what both men and women might do. We evolved in social groups, not as lone operators. There weren't hundred, thousands, of potential partners in the hunter-gatherer bands. They just weren't that large.

Survival was precarious. Survival was not a sure thing. In hunter-gatherer groups, reproduction was perhaps not free for any of the adults, "not free" in the sense that too many children would be hard for the adults (male and female) to feed.

The whole animal kingdom isn't loaded with males running around mating promiscuously. In some species, yes; in other species, no. One of the limitations on male promiscuity is female mating-willingness. Because in many species, females are choosy about mating the male would be very lucky to achieve promiscuity. Another factor is population density: there just aren't enough animals of a particular species in one area to allow for male promiscuity. (Probably more true for larger fauna than smaller,)

When and where we have achieved high population density (cities, complex urban societies) my guess is that male-promiscuity opportunities are higher than in the distant past. Maybe we are projecting present conditions into the Stone Age.

As @Nils Loc noted, "insanity" isn't a psychiatric diagnosis. It's a very outdated term.

Whether people are diagnosed with major mental illnesses or have more or less normal mental status, some people are 'trapped inside their own heads'. They have not noted the degree to which their behavior is problematic to themselves or others.

Just for fun, here's a random thought I came up with — Wandering-Philosopher

What makes you think your thought was random? Was there a random voltage fluctuation in your brain that caused that thought to occur? A cosmic ray striking a raw nerve?

Since life is often hard work, and by its nature inherently meaningless — Wandering-Philosopher

Life is a lot of work, for sure, but what makes you think it is [a] inherently meaningless? How did you arrive at that conclusion -- both the meaninglessness, and the inherentness?

why fear death? Because ceasing to be cannot be any scarier than the trials and tribulations of living. — Wandering-Philosopher

A stronger statement might be "Being dead wouldn't be any worse than not being born."

(Accepting all viewpoints and counterarguments) — Wandering-Philosopher

There's the difference between death and dying. Woody Allen said that he wasn't afraid of dying; he just didn't want to be there when it happened.

Obviously, one reason people fear death is that they have absorbed too much of the over-heated literal heaven/hell business of Christianity.

The kind of unconscious activity I was referencing goes on all the time and is often high level. Most people have had the experience of "sleeping on a problem" which yesterday seemed insoluble; upon waking up the solution was apparent. Just one example.

The most powerful (by dint of brute power) and the richest members of the elite are multinational, China, Europe, and North America contain most of the multi-billionaires.

Do you really think there is some kind of consistent coordination amongst the super rich and politically powerful? — Marchesk

Yes, to some extent. The elites have common financial interests (and competing ones, as well), and common issues with respect to governance, taxation, and so on. Do they get together to discuss how to manage the world's populations so that they stay on top? Probably not, but as a low level prole I can only guess.

The institutions that have managed the collection of prejudices which have valued and devalued one person from another are the core and center of society. In this country, the elites of business, government, education, religion, education, entertainment and so on are key. They maintain prejudices not merely because they are hateful bastards. Prejudices keep us proles from uniting against them elites.

The prejudices the elites maintain are revisable, editable, reformable, without dislodging the control of the elites, or their ultimate purposes of control. So, here we are today, June 15, 2020; the Supreme Court has affirmed that anti-discriminatory employment laws cover GLBT people. Does that mean that gay and lesbian people are now part of the elite? No, indeed! Other credentials are required: lots of money, the right pedigree, the right race, the right presentation, etc. I'm a 74 year old gay man. I've seen my status in society improve steadily since, say, Stonewall in 1969. But I don't have much money or a great pedigree, though I am white. I don't have the right friends in high places and my political ideas are way way out in subversive left field. No elite dinner parties for me!

Suppose tomorrow all the police departments were defunded, Trump, the Senate, the House, and all 50 states committed themselves to eliminating racism in 5 years (please don't try holding your breath) would you then be equal to the elite? No you would not. You would still need the large amount of money, the right pedigree, the right presentation, the right contacts, education, and so on. You'd still be some kind of a prole, like just about everybody else.

The elite's primary project is to remain the elite and keep the rest of us on edge with each other so we don't turn on them! They are good at this. They've been doing it for centuries, all over the world.

Take up the White Man's burden — Rudyard Kipling

Damn right!

More:

And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought. — Rudyard Kipling

Exactly! Those miserable lazy heathens are always screwing up progress. Where's the whip?

One might think that Kipling was talking about the British Empire, but Kipling was actually encouraging The United States to conquer the Philippines. The full title of the poem is ""The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands". Well he should have, of course -- the Philippines still has a lot of heathens who was never uplifted into the sweet knowledge of Jesus and the blessings of The American Way. Pity, that. Not too late, of course, just messier now,

The poem was written in 1899 -- the white men of the British Empire had already shouldered their burden pretty well by that time. And a burden it is, having to keep up one's property, keep the natives in line, extract wealth from the barely willing, and then cart it back home. It's soooo tiresome!

One of the reasons Prince Leopold of Belgium did so well in the Congo is that he didn't suffer from a sickly unwillingness to use force. He mowed 'em down if they didn't work fast enough, hauling in wild latex, ivory, and so on. Good Old Imperialists, laying the foundations of 21st Century First World wealth for us all.

Is 'thinking' necessarily 'conscious'? I am not conscious of all that goes on in my brain to produce this sentence. I am aware of the result as it flows out of my fingers, through the keyboard, and onto the screen. I am not -- I can not be, as far as I know -- conscious of how the neural networks located between my ears arrived at the result. A lot of thinking goes on unconsciously.

A large degree of self-awareness is a feature of human beings. I do not know how self-awareness is generated. I don't know whether and/or to what extent other animals (primates, canines, elephants, etc.) have self-awareness. My assumption (based on reports and some observation, is that other animals 'think' to some extent.

Do computers 'think'? No, not yet -- and maybe not for quite some time, or maybe ever. Computers, for all their electronic complexity, are really simple compared to animal brains. Even insects outperform computers. What makes computers do interesting things are tons of human input (programming). Nobody programs a bee; it operates independently.

Racial justice has suddenly (like a bolt of lighting) become a hot issue for all sorts of people who are not generally subject to discrimination, and officials in all sorts of institutions. At the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend, it wasn't hot in most quarters.

Will this new concern of the masses last? Will the officials accomplish everything they intend (like defund, dismantle, or abolish the police department)?

My guess is that it will last for a while, and will then gradually fade. The iron is hot right now, but iron cools off. Achieving liberty and justice for all is a very complicated project, and remediating wrongs which have been perpetrated and maintained for many decades is going to be very tough.

Eliminating racism will be about as difficult as eliminating capitalism. Not saying they are the same thing, but they are both deeply, deeply entrenched.

At any rate, it's a job for young people. They have to carry out their projects and live with them. Us old folks will be exiting the stage before long. And as one old leftist said, "Revolution is a young person's game."

The brain does a lot; not all of it is thinking. Regulating breathing, heart, balance -- all those basal activities -- is not part of thinking. Emotions in their 'raw' form (like fear, lust, hunger) aren't thinking. So, if you see a snake and jump back, that's not thinking. These non-thinking functions are important, but... not thinking.

Whether conscious or not, thinking is grappling, wrestling with reality. Trying (and maybe succeeding) to make sense of the 'buzzing, blooming, confusion' that presents itself to us.

Some animals think, to a limited extent. They too grapple a bit with the reality presented to them. Granted, it's not high level, but it's an activity that developed before we became sentient.

The Minneapolis City Council claims it has a veto-proof majority to pursue a plan to dismantle the MPD over time (not in one fell swoop). We will see what happens over time. My guess is that the process will stretch over 2 or 3 city council terms, during which the council may change significantly, as might the mayor,

The MPD, like other PDs, has friends and they are themselves a capable political operation. Dismantling or pruning the police is by no means a done deal--even a started and then stalled out deal.

Some programatic changes a city council can and should be instituted right away.

Social workers and mental health intervenors should attend to most domestic disputes -- along with a police officer (in support, not in charge). Restorative justice programs should be established in neighborhoods where there are numerous misdemeanor property crimes (shoplifting, petty theft, etc.). Homelessness must be addressed with Housing First, then social services. Drug/alcohol addiction needs to be addressed with treatment, not jail time.

There are plenty of activities which the police can and should attend to: speeding, running red lights, murders, robbery, fighting, and so forth.

Part of the problem is that the police are only one, but maybe the most visible, of the problems many (not all) black people have to deal with: substandard housing, high unemployment rates, lower wages, less educational attainment, poor health, etc. A police action can be captured on camera and it is shocking; ratty housing, unemployment, low wages, poorer educational performance, worse health outcomes, etc, just don't yield high impact video.

Whether they deserve it or not, police become the cause celebre, and bear the weight of all injustices.

The number of black on black murders should be a stumbling block to the anti-police demonstrators, but it doesn't seem to be. In 2018 about 2600 black people killed by other black people. White people killed about 3300 other whites, but they make up a much larger share o the population 72% vs. 13%. In 2018 the total of persons shot by police was less than 1000. "Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 429 civilians having been shot, 88 of whom were Black, as of June 4, 2020."

The amount of distress caused by a drive-by shooting is probably not significantly less than a police killing. Of course, your run-of-the-mill drive-by-shooter isn't representing civil society. There's a difference there, but when you're dead you're dead regardless of who brought about your death.



https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls

Meanwhile... From 7 p.m. Friday, May 29, through 11 p.m. Sunday, May 31, 25 people were killed in the city, with another 85 wounded by gunfire, according to data maintained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Does systemic racism exist in the US?" I'm not sure how many kinds of racism there are, but does racism exist in the US? Is the Pope Catholic?

Of course racism exists in the US, and lots elsewhere. In affirming that, though, I would like to take most individuals off the hook. Most people are not individually responsible for the various 'isms' they display -- racism, classism, bodyism, ageism, ableism, sexism, etcism. The 'isms' in our baggage were/are constructed over time and place, solidified, and widely distributed. We take on the 'isms' through our participation in the culture. We take on many positive and negative values, some serving us well, some not.

Individuals are back on the hook when they practice 'isms' against others, are conscious of doing so, and continue doing so. (Example: being aware of how much they dislike fat people as a category and the refusal to consider a fat woman or fat man for a job they are qualified to perform.) The book WHITE TRASH The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg traces the disgust the ruling classes in England felt for the poor and menials, and how they installed their values in the colonies, and continued on into the present.

Racism in America has a history too -- well enough known, I think; we don't have to rehearse it here.

Officer Chauvin's hard core race hatred isn't unique. I don't know how many people in Minneapolis share it: 1%? 5%? 10%? Ballpark guess: Probably somewhere in-between 5% to 10%. There are about 250,000 white people in Minneapolis (63% of the population); 12,000 to 25,000 citizens sharing officer Chauvin's view are a lot, even if 225,000 don't.

I have no idea how many people dismiss out of hand people who are obese, disabled, poor, sexist, old, and so on. It's probably a large number, sweeping every prejudice up together.

Our dog was informed early on that if she engaged in coprophagy she would be express-deported to the pound. She never touched the stuff.

Brutal and visible repression is no longer exercised — David Mo

Be patient. When the State and it's corporate stockholders feel sufficiently threatened, brutal and visible repression will be very hard to escape.

Professional journalists share common training. Networks and stations offer economical programming formats which the public is familiar with. The public consumes programming because it is moderately interesting and not very demanding. All media have at least one common agenda: making money by selling advertising displayed during shows. The more audience, the more one can charge for the ads.

Do media have other agendas? Fox News apparently does, (I haven't watched a network news broadcast for several years.). By and large, though, I think they are mostly about earning revenue, and that agenda drives what they do.

MPR might have had a significant effect on the narrative followed by the US pubic radio audience, since the event was here, and they covered it thoroughly. So might stations like WAMU (Washington, D.C.), and stations in New York, Boston, LA, and so on. WAMU's "1A" program is carried by a lot of stations.

It would be interesting to compare media hours of coverage, how long Ferguson, MO occupied the Number One topic list, how much coverage was live reporting, and so forth. It was fairly heavy, as I remember. I don't have any of those stats.

IF a particular newspaper, website, or radio station originated a unique and particularly inflammatory story, one might be able to follow how the story spread and influenced audiences. But the cable and broadcast networks--even a few overseas news teams--and major newspapers were all covering the same story in a generally similar way--video of people demonstrating, close-ups of signs, footage of fires, tear gas--all that.

One group that could have had a more significant impact on an internet audience was "Unicorn Riot" -- a small operation. Their coverage tends to be "man in the street" interviews in the middle of uproar. For instance, they were live-streaming at the Wednesday night arson and looting scene in the Longfellow neighborhood where I live. The reporter/anchor was in the middle of the crowd with a mic and a camera offering anyone who wanted the opportunity to speak.

It was thanks to their coverage that I decided to go over to Lake and 27th (near where I live) at 2:00 a.m. to see how bad it was -- it was very bad and also a three-ring circus. Unicorn Riot isn't a slick operation, but I give them credit for going to events like the anti-oil pipeline demonstrations at the Standing Rock Reservation, and giving an up-close-and-persona on-the-ground picture of what is happening.

Indeed, the media was swift. Likely, it is possible to represent what happened using the following scheme, dividing it into steps:
1) Selection 2) Prioritizing 3) The way of covering/reporting (labelling) 4) Maintaining the created momentum
5) Back-Referencing, so that all previous steps, all that was constructed looks as a set of real facts.
Probably, the selection was made on the base of the corporate policy, as well as aspiration to advance and to shape particular political agenda. The policy is debated and renovated by the small group of big bosses, and it is entirely out of public awareness. — Number2018

Indeed.

I get most of my news from Minnesota Public Radio, here in Minneapolis. MPR was very much social-justice-forward in their treatment of Floyd's death. Several call-in shows were reserved for black callers; white listeners were invited to not call -- just listen. Their reporters accepted the narrative that police regularly murdered black people -- citing some cases in the Twin Cities and cases in other cities over a few years time.

Does the Minnesota black community have reason to complain? Certainly. Disparities in wealth, housing, opportunities, environment, education, and so on are readily visible. They report a history of negative interactions with the police.

FBI statistics show that the incidences of police killing citizens is correlated with violence in the communities being policed. Minority police are as likely to be involved in deaths of citizens as majority police. Whatever the racial make up, very peaceable communities sustain fewer police-citizen deaths than violent communities. This does not excuse suffocating George Floyd, of course.

Poor people all have good reason to resist the powers-that-be -- usually personified in the police force. Unfortunately, the powers-that-be operate at great distance from the victims of their economic predations, and aren't easily targeted.

I think that the media is partly to blame for the current state of affairs by labeling the murder an act of racism, with no evidence (at least that I’m aware of) other than the fact that the race of the murderer and victim were different. — Pinprick

I blame the media for a lot, but a little bit of recent history first:

The critical event on May 25 was captured on video by bystanders and was posted on social media. The community in which the event occurred reacted swiftly with an impromptu march and demonstration, labeling the death of George Floyd as a racist murder by the police. The media I follow picked up on the demonstrations and the rhetoric used.

News media, social media, interpersonal networks and demonstrations produced a feedback loop. Within 48 hours (on May 27) looting and arson were in progress.

You do not sound at all like a misanthrope. 10% - 20% of people annoy you. Only 20%?

We are an inherently annoying species. Being annoyed by other people is not misanthropia; it is a sign of complete normality.

We the people are naturally, and of necessity, mostly wrapped up in our own busy internal worlds. Our brains are in a box and it often gets more sensory input than it can manage. It takes considerable patience, skill, effort and attention to look out into the world and track what other members of our species are doing, what they need (like adequate braking space between cars), what their limitations are (and how that relates to our own limitations--which are also difficult to keep track of), and so on and so forth.

In addition to all that, the world was surprisingly not created for our convenience. We are repeatedly appalled by how inconvenient life can be, and that's before other people get in our way.

And all this is on a good day.

It helps to remember CLASS when analyzing race relations. Here's a quote from an article on "the paradox of Minneapolis"

"White, non-Hispanic residents in the Twin Cities have median household incomes that are almost double that of black households. Here’s a look at the disparities between both groups."

That's not a paradox; that's the preferred, if not the planned outcome. What 20th century history shows is that blacks have been consistently barred from the avenues of economic advancement which have benefited many whites.

The major actions that keep and kept many blacks relatively or absolutely poor were not passed by a plebiscite or a ballot initiative. They actions were hatched and executed by the white wealthy Washington, D.C. elite, for their own interests. The post WWII boom was carefully tailored to build up a stable middle class and along the way, generate a landslide of wealth from the various consumption industries (real estate, construction, furnishings, autos, etc.).

Are white people, in general, to blame?

Some people -- white and not white -- would affirm white people's general guilt. I don't, even if white (middle class) people were the beneficiaries of the government policy.

The conditions of housing, employment, health, and education are bound together. Poor housing, unemployment, and low-performing schools go together. Poverty, poor housing, mediocre education, unemployment, and poor health outcomes are arranged in a circle, one factor aggravating the next. The same is true for affluence, good housing, excellent education, steady and upward mobile employment, and good health. One factor strengths the next.

Many working class white people, like working class black people, were left out of the good deals of the post WWII boom. They may not have been subjected to the same discrimination that blacks were, but in time their marginally superior economic position eroded down to about nothing.

Is there a SOLUTION? Next week? Next year? By 2030? No, The intervention required is multigenerational. We can certainly spend money on interventions, restitution, and uplift but carrying out an intervention over 40 or 50 years that yields excellent results is, literally, difficult to conceive.

Certainly the white power structure (the one that is IN CHARGE, IN CONTROL, AND IN PLACE) is pretty unlikely to come up with anything effective. That leaves the victims of the much longer multigenerational program of degradation to come up with a plan.