I think conceiving of politics as a war of one group against another or how to elevate my group above others is essentially toxic. — BitconnectCarlos

Well, if conceiving reality is toxic then so be it because this is the way the powerful act as though they conceive. I think you are not so naive as to not know that.



Apparently, it's a crazy idea the way I phrased it.

In all other contexts, people agree that less guns usually leads to a better society. — Echarmion

Less guns for everyone would. If they took the guns off the police and the liberty freaks / racists then they could take them off everyone and it would be a better society. While the police are armed and dangerous to minority communities and the racists are literally hunting down black joggers then that does not apply.

I don't think I'm losing my mind at all. Read through my posts. The only "controversial" thing I've said is that the black community should have a right to defend itself with every legal means possible where and while it's under threat. But the responses to that and other very qualified suggestions regarding the possibility of violence as a tactic to achieve social justice have been received rather hysterically.

Guns aren't an effective defense... and they aren't for oppressed minorities. — Echarmion

Twisting your words? I'm just going to leave this here. Your words.

to kill a cop murderer. :up: — frank

There. Fixed it for you.

No, you didn't, frank. That would require more effort. Seriously, try taking it line by line. Tell me what you disagree with. Show me you understand what I actually said. Quote me. It's that easy. It's called dialogue. If you're not interested in that, just put a sock in it.

Yes, I'd love if dumb racist white guys weren't allowed to have guns to hunt down black joggers and that cops weren't torturing black suspects to death in broad daylight. But until I have my wish and nobody is allowed a gun then I advocate that black people arm themselves and defend themselves and others in their communities being victimized. It's utterly bizarre that you would try to deny them that right. And it has nothing to do with being against guns. I want the guns taken off everyone not just black people. Why on earth should they unilaterally disarm??

Are you even reading my posts? You keep responding to some caricature of everything I say as if you don't have the intelligence to understand what I actually wrote. Do you really not understand it? If so, I'll just stop now because I don't know how I could have put things more clearly.

I want murderers to be stopped with deadly force if necessary. When they get the message that instead of a promotion, their reward is a bullet in the head, they might think twice. As for sides, yours is clear and that explains your predictable position.

That's a great way to get a whole bunch of people killed. — Echarmion

No, it's a great way to stop their people getting killed. You have a right to protect yourselves from murderers, yes?

Yep. Good for him. It's a pity he's in a minority.

Black people need to arm themselves with the most powerful weapons legally available and when they see a cop trying to murder one of their community, make a citizen's execution arrest.

This to me just sounds Machiavellian and kind of evil to me to be honest. I'm fine with someone being self-interested in their personal or economic reality but for the political process... or when it comes to violence this is obviously horrible. I know you understand this so I don't know why you're presenting a view that you've probably rejected.

Honestly, if a black man or a white man came up to me and told me "ya know, I'm really only interested in my own community and I couldn't give a **** what happens to anyone else" I absolutely wouldn't engage in dialogue with this person. — BitconnectCarlos

The two groups I'm talking about are the elites, i.e. politicians, the donors who buy policy from them, and their apparatchiks in local administrations vs. the poor and minorities. Now we both already know, unless we live on different planets, that the more powered group are utterly self-interested both economically and politically and this leads to systemic discrimination and injustice, which is a form of violence against the less powered one. So, what's utterly horrible is to expect the poor to play Jesus while the rich and powerful are the only ones allowed to be Machiavellian. I mean, just to give one recent example, it was the poor who lost their houses and the rich whose investments were bailed out after the '08 crisis. The state (controlled by group 1) could have bailed out homeowners but it didn't and preferred to inflict the violence of depriving them of a place to live rather than risk hurting group 1's interests (even though group 1 would have hurt a lot less). That's vicious self-interested violence at work (your house is taken from you, your business is burned down, what's the difference?). And the fact that its obfuscated by layers of ideological bullshit only makes it more, not less, pernicious. So, again, the moral foundation your argument rests on is nothing but politically-loaded quicksand and there is no reason for anyone not sharing your skewed perspective to accept it. If you don't make an effort to see past it, we'll go nowhere. And that doesn't yet mean that burning down Target stores is justified or effective, it only means we've got to the point where it's not necessarily unjustified or at least not any worse than what's been done to the people who are doing it. From there, we move on to tactics. Could it work?

but I think a citizen force or militia like the Black Panther Party might be a good idea to keep a watchful eye on the interactions between the state and their community. — NOS4A2

Now you're talking. :up:

No, you have to keep your toys in the pram, so I can steal them and call it 'the American Dream'. Rock-a-bye baby...

It's OK, I already know it's the devil because some conservative dickwad on Fox told me so. :lol: :fire:

I was talking about the "free and open" bit. China operates a hybrid system which I'm rather familiar with, having lived there for several years.

BTW, this thread is not about whether capitalism is better than socialism or not. If all you have is to throw around the communism bogeyman, you're off-topic. Go do that in the ABCs of socialism thread.

They don't have mobile phones in China? Woah...

In your frame in which the rule of law and private property rights are inviolable or where the system responds effectively to appeals to its collective conscience, of course, your interlocutors seem insane. But your interlocutors reject that frame, they say there is no absolute legitimacy to the rule of law when the law itself is used as the cudgel of a dominant group against a dominated group. To them, it then becomes more a question of what tactics advance each group's interests than what are "acceptable"/lawful. From there, violence is an obvious option (which is not to say it's always justified, just that it's not by definition ruled out/insane). So, your cartoonish rendering of your opponent's position is imo a function of your inability to see their perspective not any inherent absurdity of the perspective itself. I mean, I can see things from the perspective of the status quo, so I can see how you would take the position you do. But what any reasonable person in search of real answers needs to do to contribute here is to take a more meta-view and ask themselves who, in this society, is doing more harm to who? Who is benefitting and who is being harmed on the macro-scale? And then, what's justified in redressing that harm becomes broader in scope. Fine, if you don't want to go there, but those of us who don't see a level playing field to begin with are not insane in not seeing what you're seeing as a means to reset it. I don't think you're insane either btw, just looking out for your own interests by getting behind an ideological position you see as protective of them. That's OK, but don't pretend to be the sole voice of reason here. We have thought this through.

In a nutshell: When the RICH steal everything, all that's left for THE REST OF US to eat is the RICH. — 180 Proof

:100:

What will happen is that the American capitalist machinery will continue operating as before other than the now vacant, burned, and uninsurable buildings in the already struggling part of town.

Those like our good mayor will move forward making sure such murders happen with lesser frequency in the future, and the rioters efforts will have added nothing positive to the mix. — Hanover

Maybe, but you haven't given us much reason to believe this. For example, charges were only made after the rioting began and, in general, it seems without pressure of whatever sort, cops are rarely prosecuted. To change that, systemic adjustments will have to be made. Your mayor on her own isn't going to be able to implement that outside Atlanta. What would the impetus be for such major change if there were no trouble?

OK, what does it say then? What's the argument? At least provide some of the evidence herein. I'm not here to argue with the authors of the paper.

I'm not going to read a paper you randomly chose from the internet without even reading yourself (unless you're a far quicker reader and a far more honest contributor than experience suggests). At least summarize your argument.

Unless you have evidence for that, we'll consider it just random speculation.

I'm interested in both sides of the problem but in this thread you're like 100% on one side here with many commentators actually supporting the destruction of property and assault of business owners. It's completely absurd. — BitconnectCarlos

That justification is absurd from a certain perspective. But that perspective is skewed as I said. I don't personally feel that random destruction of property is justified and I sympathize with any innocent small business owner who got caught up in this. But I also don't feel that in a situation where the law itself is corrupted that tactical violence against powerful interests, including corporate interests, is necessarily unjustified. You can make a utilitarian argument that weighs the material loss of large companies (like Target) against the gain of systemic change that reduces levels of violence by security forces against minorities. And you can make an inferential argument that draws a chain of causation from injury to powerful interests to political change. Now you can attack this attempted justification for some level of material violence by pointing to more effective less violent means of change, but I don't think you can attack it ethically if you accept its effectiveness. That's to say, I don't think considerations of corporate finances outweigh those of social justice. (And by the way, none of this argument relies on the idea of the overthrow of capitalism).

OK, that would certainly help.

If you want to quote something in one of my posts you disagree with, go ahead. If you're capable. Because you don't seem to be following what's going on in the argument so far.

This is my post. It's obviously primarily about racism and brutality.

But I presume if police were torturing members of your community to death in broad daylight some of you might take offence and behave "badly" too. Such is human nature. But the more important question to focus on is how do we get the police (and others) in the US to stop feeling like they have a licence to brutalize and mistreat minorities (and the poor and homeless, I might add). — Baden

But again, you seem to be here just to complain about property loss. Got anything else to say?

Pointing out that some bad things have been done by the protesters is fine as far as it goes. But I presume if police were torturing members of your community to death in broad daylight some of you might take offence and behave "badly" too. Such is human nature. But the more important question to focus on is how do we get the police (and others) in the US to stop feeling like they have a licence to brutalize and mistreat minorities (and the poor and homeless, I might add). Not focusing on that makes it look like you're not interested in what's significant here.

It's the difference between domestic terrorism and resistance to domestic terrorism. — 180 Proof

That sums it up for me and why most of the objections to what's happening are ill-founded. In a situation where there is no justice, there can be no legitimate appeal to some neutral foundation of law. The law itself and its enforcers are agents of violence, both overt and systemic. The system that allows Target to exploit workers by paying them less than a living wage (half the minimum wage of most western European countries) is far more nefarious than anything a few rioters can do to their physical property. In fact, there is a good argument to be made that looting such businesses is fair reappropriation if not full recompense for the looting they've done of the labour of those under their control. (And with no good alternative options provided so will it remain).

So, regardless of specific rights and wrongs, the imposition of a skewed perspective that makes the perpetrators of major systemic violence into victims where only minor instances of localised violence forms the 'crime' against them turns the conversation into a worthless back and forth where the forest is missed for the trees. Yes, some of the localised violence is uncalled for and counterproductive and even carried out for completely the wrong reasons but that does not negate the justification for fighting back and fighting back hard against a system that wants its victims forever on their knees feeding its greed and cruelty.



:up:

I guess then it's time to ask the million dollar question: Is there any race that's not racist? — TheMadFool

No, that's not the million-dollar question. And if you have nothing intelligent and on-topic to say, please exit the discussion now. Thank you.

:up: Just downloaded Violence: Humans in Dark Times by Lennard and Brad Evans.

I see. The phrase "systemic racism" has conspiracy theory written all over it. Can you imagine the level of intrigue necessary for such to be true? — TheMadFool

Ah, no, I can imagine the level of intrigue necessary for imagining it's not true in the US today though. It simply means institutional racism, such as the police force treating black people and other minorities less favourably than white people. That's undeniable.

You can focus on the 'systemic' part if you like. There is no other country in the developed world, for example, where a minority are routinely brutalised and murdered by police and where it is so hard to bring the perpetrators to justice. Why? And what to do about it? What is a justified response?

What would really get results is hitting big corporate donors, so they might buy some better politicians. In what way is another question. Anyway, yes, playing nice with folks who are stepping on your face (or neck) isn't going to get you anywhere.

It was not only murder in the second degree, Floyd was tortured to death in what must be considered a hate crime. The third-degree murder charge is a farce. Essentially the minimum that those in charge could get away with bringing forward. It's all about protecting the officers over there. Anything short of Chauvin's head on a stick is a travesty, but he'll probably get away with 10-15 years.

Yes. Can't stop thinking about that. I've settled on a hamster.

By the way, if anyone has any other off-topic comments or complaints, please make a separate thread or PM us.

You're allowed to insult politicians and other public figures, obviously. So, no, it doesn't violate any forum guidelines. That should be clear from reading them.

Banned @Syamsu for his insisting on posting about creationism. Pseudoscience is not welcome here. So, if you are of that persuasion, please keep it to yourself.