Baden, if I had no one disagreeing with me I could easily prove it doesn’t exist. — Brett

Baden, you just proved me right. — Brett

We are not responsible, for the mental illness that has been afflicted upon our people by the American government, institutions, and those people in positions of power.

I don't give a damn if they burn down Target, because Target should be on the streets with us, calling for the Justice that our people deserve.

Where was Autozone at the time when Fernando Castillo was shot in a car, which is what they actually represent. Where were they?

So if you are not coming to the people's defense, then don't challenge us when young people and other people who are frustrated are instigated by the people you pay. You are paying instigators to be amoung our people out there, throwing rocks, breaking windows and burning down buildings. So young people are responding to that, they are in rage. And there is an easy way to stop it.

Arrest the cops.

Charge the cops.

Charge all the cops.

Not just some of them, not just here in Minneapolis, charge them in every city across America where our people are being murdered. Charge them everywhere.

That's the bottom line.

Charge the cops. Do your jobs. Do what you say this country is supposed to be about, the land of the free for all. It has not been free for black people, and we are tired.

Don't talk to us about looting. Y'all are the looters. America has been looting black people. America looted the native americans when they first came here, so looting is what you do. We learned it from you. We learned violence from you.

We learned violence from you.

The violence is what we learned from you.

So if you want us to do better, then damn it, you do better. — Tamika Mallory, Minneapolis

If you think police brutality is something for black people only... — EpicTyrant

Great quote. I often point out in race-and-poverty-related discussions that point about addressing poverty regardless of race being sufficient to counteract the racism left after explicit legally enshrined racism is eliminated, and often people attack that idea as itself racist faux race-blindness. — Pfhorrest

It’s heartening to see that MLK himself had things very much along those lines to say too. — Pfhorrest

The class-race connection StreetlightX highlights has the interesting implication that a lot of structural racism can be fixed without explicitly addressing race at all. If you help all poor people equally regardless of race, you disproportionately help black people automatically because the poor are disproportionately black. — Pfhorrest

I am convinced that segregation is as dead as a doornail in its legal sense, and the only thing uncertain about it now is how costly some of the segregationists who still linger around will make the funeral. And so there has been progress. But we must not allow this progress to cause us to engage in a superficial, dangerous optimism.

[...]

It is now a struggle for genuine equality on all levels, and this will be a much more difficult struggle. You see, the gains in the first period, or the first era of struggle, were obtained from the power structure at bargain rates; it didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate lunch counters. It didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate hotels and motels. It didn’t cost the nation a penny to guarantee the right to vote. Now we are in a period where it will cost the nation billions of dollars to get rid of poverty, to get rid of slums, to make quality integrated education a reality. This is where we are now. Now we’re going to lose some friends in this period. The allies who were with us in Selma will not all stay with us during this period. We’ve got to understand what is happening. Now they often call this the white backlash … It’s just a new name for an old phenomenon. The fact is that there has never been any single, solid, determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans to genuine equality for Negroes. There has always been ambivalence … In 1863 the Negro was granted freedom from physical slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation. But he was not given land to make that freedom meaningful. At the same time, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the Midwest and the West, which meant that the nation was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor, while refusing to do it for its black peasants from Africa who were held in slavery two hundred and forty four years. And this is why Frederick Douglass would say that emancipation for the Negro was freedom to hunger, freedom to the winds and rains of heaven, freedom without roofs to cover their heads.

[...]

The second evil that I want to deal with is the evil of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus it spreads its nagging prehensile tentacles into cities and hamlets and villages all over our nation. Some forty million of our brothers and sisters are poverty stricken, unable to gain the basic necessities of life. And so often we allow them to become invisible because our society’s so affluent that we don’t see the poor. Some of them are Mexican Americans. Some of them are Indians. Some are Puerto Ricans. Some are Appalachian whites. The vast majority are Negroes in proportion to their size in the population … Now there is nothing new about poverty. It’s been with us for years and centuries. What is new at this point though, is that we now have the resources, we now have the skills, we now have the techniques to get rid of poverty. And the question is whether our nation has the will …

Now I want to deal with the third evil that constitutes the dilemma of our nation and the world. And that is the evil of war. Somehow these three evils are tied together. The triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. The great problem and the great challenge facing mankind today is to get rid of war … We have left ourselves as a nation morally and politically isolated in the world. We have greatly strengthened the forces of reaction in America, and excited violence and hatred among our own people. We have diverted attention from civil rights. During a period of war, when a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs inevitably suffer. People become insensitive to pain and agony in their own midst … — Martin Luther King, speech May 10, 1967

A common sense reply, that also tells Trump is going to have a new secretary of defence again, if he has the time to fire this one. — ssu

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingness" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For htre is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now streets, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negros will, our of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in back-nationalist ideologies.

[...]

If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. — Martin Luther King, Why We Can't Wait

I must make two confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may provoke violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. — Martin Luther King--Why We Can't Wait

Good point about King. However I think non-violent resistance was not limited to civil disobedience, and included peaceful protests. And his dedication to nonviolence is quite explicit. — NOS4A2

For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in the airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected titles "Mrs."; when you are harried day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"-- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged intro the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." — Martin Luther King -- Why We Can't Wait

If Martin Luther king lived today he would be joyful over how far black people have progressed and how much freedom they have been given in society. — EpicTyrant

In the bursting mood that has overtaken the Negro in 1963, the word "compromise" is profane and pernicious. The majority of Negro leadership is innately opposed to compromise. Even were this not true, no Negro leader today could divert the direction of the movement or its compelling and inspired forward motion.

Many of our white brothers misunderstand this fact because many of them fail to interpret correctly the nature of the Negro Revolution. Some believe that it is the work of skilled agitators who have the power to raise or lower the floodgates at will. Such a movement, maneuvered by a talented few, would not be a genuine revolution. This Revolution is genuine because it was born from the same womb that always gives birth to massive social upheavals--the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations. In this time and circumstance, no leader or set of leaders could have acted as ringmasters, whipping a whole race out of purring contentment into leonine courage and action. If such credit is to be given to any single group, it might well go to the segregationists, who, with their callous and cynical code, helped to arouse and ignite the righteous wrath of the Negro.

[...]

It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people. Of course, there were generals, as there must be in every army. But the command post was in the bursting hearts of millions of Negroes. When such a people begin to move, they create their own theories, shape their own destinies, and choose the leaders who share their own philosophy. A leader who understands this kind of mandate knows that he must be sensitive to the anger, the impatience, the frustration, the resolution that have been loosed in his people. Any leader who tries to bottle up these emotions is sure to be blown asunder in the ensuing explosion.

[...]

The hard truth is that the unity of the movement is a remarkable feature of major importance. The fact that different organizations place varying degrees of emphasis on certain tactical approaches is not indicative of disunity.

[...]

only one answer can come from the depths of the Negro's being. That answer can be summarized in the hallowed American words: "If this be treason, make the most of it."
— Martin Luther King -- Why We Can't Wait

I don't live in america so i can't look from a white persons perspective there. — EpicTyrant

Black people in low class society should rise up against themselves and really show the world that they're ready to make a change and be left out of the typical "afro american" stereotype that you see in movies, that would be beautiful and remarkable human feat to see. — EpicTyrant

But why would Trump ever do that? — Marchesk

With so many instances of being able to (re)consider his actions during those 8 minutes and 46 seconds and the possibility of asking for help from fellow officers or moving Floyd to the car, the continued stranglehold using his knees became premeditated during the course of those 8 minutes and 46 seconds. — Benkei

So what is so different in: Norway, Netherlands,
Finland. — ssu

I think it's very difficult to assess the value of the rioting if what followed was organised armed violence, i.e. war. Unless we're in a position where we intend to follow the rioting up with outright war, if necessary, the example has a flaw. — Echarmion

No, because a lot of people will die, regardless of the outcome. — Marchesk

Fighting a literal war of secession is a patently absurd suggestion. — Echarmion

I am not saying they must be condemned because they are violent. I am saying they are likely to be ineffective. Waxing poetically about their "right to be angry" doesn't change the facts on the ground. — Echarmion

Those things are not justifiable . Most black people in America get on with their lives with no more problems than white people. It may be the case that black people are more likely to engage in illegal activity and that is why the police have more "run-ins" with them. I also notice, from the UK, that many US cops are black... — Chester

What you're missing is the fact that such uprisings need public support...most normal people think these rioters are cunts. Your revolution ain't going to work. — Chester

Which violent protests have? Just saying what doesn't work isn't enough. — Echarmion

Twitter has just suspended antifa's US account lol...you leftists still love Twitter now? — Chester

I don't fully agree with Baden (or yourself), but he wasn't turning this into a revolution against capitalism. — Marchesk

Baden was making a more reasonable argument. — Marchesk

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. — Baden

They have been successful before. That doesn't mean everything can be fixed at once. So more are needed. — Marchesk

Fuck you assholes who justify this shit. — Marchesk

Well then, may all of your experiences be harsh. Of course not the Kantian kind, that's not harsh. As to your understanding of the psychology of the thing, that's equally bizarre. At the very least, harshness is a kind of noise that detracts or impairs or inhibits. That is, the only thing harshness facilitates is harshness. And btw, harshness not to be confused with all the things in the world that are not harsh nor harshness. — tim wood

Harsh, if you will, though it's not the word I would choose. But as he describes the subject of his criticism, such a person would not be interested in his efforts, assuming it is not indeed an entirely straw- subject.

"To all the people ignoring me, you are wrong to ignore me." It is close to a performative contradiction to address 'the worthy gentleman' who is not interested. And Kant avoids that. One is left therefore with the backhanded compliment that flatters the actual reader who is 'not like them'. — unenlightened

Kant harsh? Someone does not know what "harsh" means.

Just for a point of reference:
"harsh
/härSH/
adjective
1.
unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses.
2.
cruel or severe.
3.
excessively critical or negative." — tim wood

1.
unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses.

"drenched in a harsh white neon light"

2.
cruel or severe.

"a time of harsh military discipline"

(of a climate or conditions) difficult to survive in; hostile.
"the harsh environment of the desert"

(of reality or a fact) grim and unpalatable.
"the harsh realities of the world news"

having an undesirably strong effect.
"she finds soap too harsh and drying" — google definition

Now if an empirical engineer tried to disparage general mechanics, or an artilleryman the mathematical doctrine of ballistics, by saying that whereas the theory of it is nicely thought out it is not valid in practice since, when it comes to application, experience yields quite different results than theory, one would merely laugh at him — Kant

Yet it is easier to put up with an ignorant man who declares that theory is unnecessary and dispensable in his supposed practice than with a would-be expert who concedes it and its value in schools (perhaps only to exercise the mind) but at the same time maintains that matters are quite different in practice — Kant

Harsh
1.
[...] Opposite: soft, dulcet, subdued
2.
[...] Opposite: enlightened, kind, lenient, comfortable
[...] Opposite: balmy
[...] Opposite: mild smooth — "google

Someone does not know what "harsh" means. — tim wood

Freud in his analysis provides explanations which many people are inclined to accept. He emphasizes that people are dis-inclined to accept them. But if the explanation is one which people are disinclined to accept, it is highly probable that it is also one which they are inclined to accept. And this is what Freud had actually brought out. Take Freud’s view that anxiety is always a repetition in some way of the anxiety we felt at birth. [...] It is an idea which has a marked attraction. It has the attraction which mythological explanations have, explanations which say that this is all a repetition of something that has happened before. And when people do accept or adopt this, then certain things seem much clearer and easier for them. — Wittgenstein 1966, p. 43

Freud has not given a scientific explanation of the ancient myth—what he has done is to propound a new myth.” — Wittgenstein (1966, p. 47)

I have a thread that summarizes the Tractatus, that should give you some idea of what the Tractatus is about. — Sam26

Having developed this analysis of world-thought-language, and relying on the one general form of the proposition, Wittgenstein can now assert that all meaningful propositions are of equal value. Subsequently, he ends the journey with the admonition concerning what can (or cannot) and what should (or should not) be said (7), leaving outside the realm of the sayable propositions of ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

You've now switched back to Wittgenstein's early philosophy, which really has nothing to do, or very little to do with his last work called On Certainty. — Sam26

You seem to be contradicting yourself, to know is to give a justification in some form. — Sam26

Where did you get this idea from? — Sam26

When it comes to bedrock beliefs or foundational beliefs, my point has been consistently that they are not beliefs that can be known, i.e., they are not epistemological. They are beliefs that are shown in our actions. The best way to understand this, is to think of them nonlinguistically, as I have already pointed out in other posts. The difference is connected with Wittgenstein's saying and showing. — Sam26

As a reminder, it is widely held that the law of non-contradiction cannot be justified on account of being a first principle. Again though, if it can, why would it not then be a known? — javra

Have to go soon, however: If a so deemed bedrock belief - such as that of experiencing two hands - can be justified, why do you then object to it being termed a known? — javra

However, as to so termed bedrock beliefs such as that of experiencing having two hands, I gave an example of how such may be justified. — javra

Which I attribute to Scalia, in service of what or whom I do not know, but nothing or anyone good. — tim wood

Can anyone make sense of Scalia's Heller decision without tearing the 2d amendment to pieces? — tim wood