Comments

  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    It's not a law of nature. You can guess what will probably happen, but for that you need data. — Echarmion

    You're first response is that explaining "the definition of a threat" as it's used in a sentence is circular logic. That didn't work, so now you're claiming that "threat response isn't a law of nature".

    You are unable to follow this conversation, you either do not have the cognitive abilities or then are of ridiculous bad faith.

    Either way, you just demonstrate to anyone who is following you are a hack and a fool.

    But this of course doesn't actually tell me anything about your response. It can equally explain any outcome and therefore is useless as an analysis. — Echarmion

    That not what is at issue. It is part of my "threat identification process" to decide on some action, small or large, with regard to the threat I identify. I may misidentify a threat, I may have no effective actions available, I may at first simply think about it further, I may act immediately.

    If you want to create the straw man of someone else who does absolutely nothing about threats, that understand threats to be "that which someone should do nothing about", be my guest.

    It's even more ridiculous as the actual subject matter is states, and my personal example was just to illustrate what the word "threat" means. If you want to believe states are so inept as to have no threat identification process, or that such a situation is an edge of relevance to this situation, again, you simply demonstrate your inability to follow this conversation and that you are a threat and a fool.

    You have said nothing of "analytical value" about my statement:

    The state feels threatened because the state genuinely identifies with it's citizens and wants to protect citizens from unethical human experimentation. — boethius

    That you seem to have issue with.

    That's not at all a given. A state might not have enough power to fully control what is considered permissible or ethical. — Echarmion

    Again, a strawman. I did not say a state has some sort of omnipotence, only that they respond to what they "feel threatened" by (could be a state agent deciding whether to file or not file a report about what they have perceived, could be just filing a report to recommend "monitor" this threat further, could be large scale mobilization and declaration of war). I say "feel threatened" because response is with regards to perception, on the individual case as with the case of a group or a state.

    You do not have have the cognitive abilities to follow this conversation, and you are a hack and a fool.

    That's a useful heuristic (whatever the state funds it probably considers useful), but it's just a heuristic. There might be other considerations in play, since decisionmaking in a state isn't monolithic and a state might have to negotiate with other actors. — Echarmion

    Again, another strawman. I did not say the state does not need to negotiate with other actors, for instance other states (legitimate or not), its own state agents or its own.

    The state does not always get what it wants. State policy does not immediately translate into reality.

    The framework of this discussion is that state have policies, and the primary mechanism for selecting agents to carry out state policy is ensuring, state agents already believe in state policy when they are selected, and furthermore the primary mechanism of deciding on the vast majority of research that happens is through state subsidy.

    You do not have the cognitive abilities to follow this conversation, you are a hack and a fool.

    I did not say there is no negotiation that happens in such processes, nor that such mechanisms are perfect.

    If you want to argue that, because of ambiguity in what state policy actually is at any given time and imperfection of mechanisms to implement that state policy, that therefore "no states exist" or then "all states are legitimate", or "states have no influence on state agents", you are welcome to start a new OP that makes such a claim.

    I have also stated already said that "changing the system from within" can be done, it is just hard since institutions resisting such change will usually fire you as soon they understand what you are doing is a real threat.

    Edward Snowden did not remain a contractor for the NSA.

    Other "trouble makers" can remain nuances and avoid pretext for firing and navigate other responses. The state learns from such experiences to increase attention to filtering out such people in the first place.

    How state agents can subvert the state institutions they are involved in is a separate discussion to this OP.

    In terms of mental health under an illegitimate state, the argument of the OP is that psychologists are state agents that are employed to deny the reality of the illegitimate state and to promote productive or then benign "normal" behavior with regard to state power structures; therefore, insofar as they believe the sate is legitimate when it is not, they are delusional and one should be deeply suspicious of them, individually and as a community.

    A useful "heuristic", as you might say, for dealing with state agents.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    I am interested in hearing more on your thoughts about Stoicism and similar philosophies like Buddhism. I wanted that to be the focus of the conversation I was trying to start, but you barely said anything about it. — Pfhorrest

    Yes, I also rather discuss the actual OP.

    My argument is that philosophy cannot be approached from a point of view of mental health.

    It simply doesn't make sense to say "I will become Buddhist to improve my mental health through meditation" or "I will become a Christian to improve my mental health through forgiveness and church community" or "I will become a Stoic to improve my mental health through ataraxia".

    We cannot define mental health nor what is "good and bad" is in terms of mental states without a philosophical position in the first place.

    For instance, a Christian will view "guilt" as a healthy motivation towards accepting moral failing and asking forgiveness. Other philosophies may view the same "guilt" as unhealthy. Even within the Christian community there will be disagreement as to how far exactly this "guilt" should go, exactly what it should be and for what it should be felt.

    I say concluding that stoicism is actually true will improve mental health, not as a comment on the psychological process of truth conclusion, but because committing to the truth of some philosophy provides the basis of good and bad upon which mental states can be evaluated. From the perspective of assuming stoicism is true, it is mentally healthy to accept this as true, since it's true; likewise, for any other philosophy.

    Now, one might be tempted to say one must not only commit to the philosophy and that philosophy must be "actually true" to improve health, but that would be to miss the point. In so saying, we are positing that a characteristic of the "true true" is that it improves mental health; but if we just finished saying we need the true-true in the first place to evaluate mental health in the first place, then there is no outside objective perspective (such as the psychologist deceives people into believing exists and that they are some sort of expert on this deception) upon which an evaluation of mental health apart from belief about good and bad can be established. Such an erroneous approach also leads to the unintelligible perspective that "feeling" (as some sort of supposed objective measure of mental health) is some sort of barometer for truth, rather than the arguments that support such a truth conclusion; this is dangerous not only because there is no reason to assume feelings inform us of what is true, but even more dangerous because there is no reason to assume that the worst lies do not create the best feelings from this fictitious objective mental health perspective.

    In order to evaluate one's mental health, one must first conclude one's feelings and thoughts are "bad" or then "good", and how to go from the first to the latter. The psychologist wants to avoid the obvious philosophical implications of such an evaluation within which they have no epistemic authority, and change the conversation towards merely what appears to themselves (the key point) as good and bad and take the patient, and even society as a whole, through meandering maze of confusing discourse and, wherever possible to make a buck for themselves and their partners in this scheme, a pharmacology haze.

    If a psychologist really is an agent of a illegitimate state -- or then, again a key point, there is debate either way -- and the psychologist does not either advertise themselves as an agent of an illegitimate state or then invite the debate and defend their own case on equal epistemic footing, the psychologist is simply maintaining their own delusion, the delusion of the patient about the psychologist, and the delusion of society about psychology as a whole. They may say "it's good to be deluded about these things and avoid pointing towards these delusions" but that's a delusional thing to say as well.

    With regard to stoicism, therefore, it makes much more sense the simple question "is Stoicism true?" and "If so, how should a stoic consider things and what should a Stoic do about such considerations today?".
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    So you should have no trouble providing evidence of cases where this has happened, together with an explanation of the mechanism that was used. — Isaac

    You are telling me that you know of no cases in your field where people's research or practices that have been stopped by the state throughout the history of psychology? By stopped, I mean either a refusal of a request (refusing to sanction the requested actions) or then intervening afterwards due to (from the perspective of the state, deceptive description of the requested permissions) nor are you aware of changes to state policy that made previous kinds of actions no longer permissible.

    I'll provide examples if you are really so intent on claiming ignorance and demonstrating you are a total hack and fool before whoever is following this conversation.

    I said 'anywhere in the world' by way of asking for proof that such processes were endemic. Picking the most oppressive state in the world as an example hardly makes your case. — Isaac

    I never said the process was "endemic".

    You clearly do not have the cognitive capabilities to follow the conversation, one such cognitive ability being the "reading of words".

    I will, from now on, be simply pointing out the strawmen you create and repeating your lack of cognitive skills needed to debate, at least in good faith, each time I see it. I will no longer bother to go through the exercise of brushing aside your strawmen for completeness sake; if you want to surround yourself with an army of straw, that's only kindle for the burning of your own soul.

    That was not my claim, it was Echarmion's. You know, the one whom you earlier accused of not reading the posts carefully. — Isaac

    Ah, I am unable to tell you two apart, I will be more careful. Fools seem all the same to me, lacking any distinguishing personality.

    So, what is your view on the re-education camps?

    Let's continue the conversation from there.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    That's a nice bit of circular logic. The state will stop your from doing things it views as threatening. And it views as threatening that which it stops you from doing. — Echarmion

    It's not circular, it's simply the definition of "what you do when you see a threat: you act with regard to that threat".

    If you threaten my life, I will act; if you threaten my business, I will act. My action will be based on my evaluation of the threat and what is an justifiable and effective response.

    What is "ethical research", or otherwise permissible research, in a given state is the state policy about what kind of research it views as non-threatening. Research the state subsidizes in a given state, is that state policy of what kind of research it views as useful, under one argument or another (why else would it fund it).

    Not so complicated that we can't, when accusing one institution of being complicit in class oppression, racial segregation, genocide...produce just the tiniest shred of actual evidence beyond insinuation and conspiracy-theorist level speculation. — Isaac

    Class relations are not, in their essential character, conspiratorial. The class of people called "slaves" in pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary America was not a speculative thing; it really existed. The "institution of slavery" is in reference to real institutions that really existed to maintain slavery.

    Nothing has transpired politically since then to assume that similar structures of oppression relating classes of people to institutions, to one degree or another of oppression, can simply no longer exist, and, if they do, would have nothing to do with the institutions that we may find to be operating in any particular nation or globally; or that we may simply carve out broad exceptions to such query because it is inconvenient to the enjoyment of class privilege.

    You may argue a particular institution is not involved in maintaining oppressive relations, you may argue a particular institution is involved, yes, but "on the whole" contributing more to liberty than oppression (that the left hand washes the right). I am completely open to such claims and such analysis.

    But, if the claim is that institutions are by nature, or at least Western institutions, incapable of involvement in oppression, then it seems you have a psychological problem of interpreting reality. Unfortunately, there's no pill I am licensed to provide that fixes this level of denial.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    No, you absolutely will not. There are very few states left in the world where all forms of threat to state policy results in expatriation or imprisonment. Some will, others won't. — Isaac

    You have a complete inability to participate in the conversation at a cognitive level.

    I said three possibilities: "stopped, removed, or imprisoned". If the state feels your activity is threatening there will be a response, whether a legitimate or illegitimate state.

    In a legitimate state, the state is not threatened by legitimate research into the mechanism and consequence of state policy and power.

    However, the legitimate state will still stop you from conducting research it views as threatening. If you engage in human experimentation the state views as illegal and unethical, the state will stop you, arrest you, or then send you back to where you came from. The state feels threatened because the state genuinely identifies with it's citizens and wants to protect citizens from unethical human experimentation.

    Now, in a illegitimate state, if you carried out research to investigate and expose unethical human experimentation, then the state would feel threatened because it does not identify with its citizenry and requires what people elsewhere say is "unethical research" in order to understand and control its citizenry, and would stop you, arrest you or send you back to where you came from.

    If the state is not interested in your research, it is because the state does not feel threatened by your research.

    However, more generally, research conforms to state policy because research is funded by the state or proxies to the state. Researchers who insist on not conforming may have some degree of toleration by the state due to the potential for blow back of "interference in supposed objective researchers"; however, there is always a point beyond which the state will directly interfere, and, more importantly, what the state learns from such experience is that it needs to better filter out such people from getting the token of credible expertise to begin with.

    The legitimate state learns it must better filter out people willing to break "humane ethical principles" in human experimentation.

    The illegitimate state learns it must better filter out people unwilling to break such principles, and even more so people willing to "make a scene" about such unethical behaviour and institutional design in a general (both in terms of human experimentation and other things).

    Rambling on about China for a few paragraphs is not an answer. — Isaac

    You say "anywhere in the world" and I use the example of China and your own claim that "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation" and your ability to verify that "impression" by scientific research, and you view this as "rambling".

    Amazing, truly amazing.

    But we don't 'lend our credibility to Chinese state agents'. — Isaac

    This is off topic for this thread, as the OP is about mental health under a illegitimate state, so I will make a new thread and make my case that insofar as a community of psychologists conceive of themselves as part of a global community that includes China and derives their expert legitimacy, in part, from the global nature of the community, then they are both directly enabling Chinese state agency by supporting, collaborating with and training Chinese state agents, but also covering for Chinese state policy with their credibility, insofar as they don't vocally denounce it and cut community ties and are willing to say statements like "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation", which, of course, is only "scientifically" supported by the "evidence" provided by Chinese state agents carrying out the policy.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    No, you stated that all psychologists (clinicaland research) need a state license to practice. I'm asking you what form that licence takes around the world and where, in it's provisions, is the requirement to uphold state policy. — Isaac

    If you go to a state and threaten state policy, you will be stopped if not removed from the country, if not arrested and placed in prison.

    Go to China and verify if they are really "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation".

    Maybe this premise is true, or untrue. If it is true, you should be able to conduct research to demonstrate that, and perhaps, with sociologist colleagues, further investigate if this "lack of proper socialisation" is likewise true or untrue, in order to help verify or then help correct Chinese state policy.

    Now, insofar as you accept that Chinese state power would not allow you do to that (try to get to the truth as a so called "scientist" to verify your own "impressions"), then insofar as you can "research around the world" it is, in its essential character, a state license to uphold state policy wherever you go.

    Furthermore, insofar as you, or any in your profession anywhere in the world, lend your credibility to Chinese state agents as well as communities and institutions that help train Chinese state agents, then you are party to the crimes of the Chinese state.

    If you lend someone your credibility, you receive in return their moral culpability.

    Likewise, insofar as you cite in your research any research conducted in China or by agents or proxies of China, you are extending Chinese state power.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    Where, in non-clinical psychology, does the state dictate research policy? Which psychology policy document has the state been in executive control of, and which sections of it represent restrictions based on state policy? — Isaac

    I have already stated that the mechanism is the state selecting for people who already believe in state policy, most importantly of all that the state is legitimate.

    In a legitimate state, this isn't a problem: the state is legitimate and selects for people who believe this true thing.

    In a illegitimate state, there is a problem: the state is illegitimate and selects for people who deny this reality.

    The state is not by definition bad, only extremely dangerous. Handle with care.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    Well, why don't you show us the way? What is it the world of the — Isaac

    Yes, if it is agreed that all actions against a illegitimate state are justifiable in principle, that all that is remained to be analysed is what actions are effective we can have that conversation in a new thread.

    is doing that's not just going through the motions for the money. — Isaac

    I have already said I am an agent of the state as a conscript.

    I am also an agent of the state as a corporate executive. From time to time I de facto represent the state and state policy in diplomatic engagements, and, most importantly, I receive state subsidy to carry out state policy.

    The modern corporations are extensions of state power, they cannot even formally exist without the state, are the primary beneficiary of the state judiciary, police force, infrastructure, defense activity etc.

    I am not an important agent of the state; the state never sits down and says "we need boethius to go do this or that", but I am far more an agent of the state than the restaurant waitress or then the conscript that is unable to evaluate state policy and cannot be credibly said to be lending his or her agency to the state (this is not my case).

    As I have already stated, I have no problem living in and being an agent of the state in a legitimate state, which, to me, means majority rule with credible safeguards against the interference of both money and propaganda in political process.

    I will advise my fellow citizens that there are possibly even better ways of social organization worth considering, but I am content and grateful with what I already have.

    Everything hinges on state legitimacy; that is the central issue.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    It would seem there's no 'account' at all, just some fantasy being played out where psychologists are agents of the deep state - we're hoping to secure the film rights. — Isaac

    What the hell are you talking about? I never said "deep state agents".

    You seem to be going off the rails into some fantasy version of this conversation.

    Psychologists are agents of the state because they need state license to practice psychology (whether clinical or research) and therefore must conform to state policy to get and maintain such license. They represent state authority when dealing with individual patients or research subjects (far more so, when doing so with state and/or state proxi corporate subsidy).

    PhD is a token of the state. In return for that token certain actions and inactions are expected.

    I am referring to academic psychologists and clinical psychologists, both, of whom, cannot "do their work" without the state. I have already explained that they are selected because their beliefs conform to state policy. An illegitimate state will select for beliefs that help maintain an illegitimate state.

    Of course, this does not apply to simply anyone that has merely studied psychology, but only those engaging in state activity.

    Undergraduate students I would agree are not, or then barely so, agents of the state, they are merely filled with (again in an illegitimate state) state propaganda. You can verify this because if you poke them it spills out on the floor.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    That is what we hippies call 'a heavy trip' you're laying on us. It took me right back to the early seventies at uni, where, in the final year all my fellow revolutionaries ditched the flares for sharp suits, cut their hair to conventional length and started going to interviews with ICI and applying for teacher-training courses. And the story was that they were going to 'fight for change from within. Perhaps they believed it; I never did. — unenlightened

    Thanks for coming for the ride!

    Yes, the change from within strategy has clearly been unsuccessful. Of course it can work but invariably leads to getting fired as soon as the institution realizes it's working.

    I suggest that what is needed is despair. In 1968 the doomsday clock was at 2 minutes to midnight, and I did not expect to become old. And now there is a similar despair amongst the youth that their world will remain inhabitable. But as long as academics think academia inhabitable, they will not despair of it enough to risk their lives and livelihoods. — unenlightened

    Definitely, academics need to "adult up" and realize there is no point teaching the young to manage a world that cannot plausibly be argued will be there. There's not even any plausible jobs now, so I'm not sure what their apologetics even consists of today, justifying why these "lefty professors" go through the motions anyway ... ah yes, the money, I agree there.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    I'm sorry if you've had some bad experiences with psychologists — Isaac

    I have no experience with psychologists; I avoid them for reasons that maybe pretty clear.

    As a privileged corporate executive I am, in any case, immune from state interference in my personal life, insofar as I don't break any laws, and I am also, in any case, immune from the "call out culture" you are trying to engage in.

    I'm not about to fire myself for being called out on controversial "not ok" statements, so there's no use engaging in such theatrics.

    Which is why corporate executive life is the life for me, it is the only position in capitalist society where you don't have to censor yourself.

    but accusing us of complicity in genocide is not ok. — Isaac

    I can make whatever accusations I want. What matters is if those accusations are true.

    The global economic system is global, fully integrated with China as "the world's factory", and carrying out destruction on a before unimaginable scale.

    Academics have not only the knowledge and the time to understand how this global system functions, they are the group most responsible for creating it, and a group that can most easily undertake "non-violent" actions with disproportionate leverage (a large scale academic strike could not be ignored, cannot be easily solved with scabs off the street, and would bring about rapid policy changes).

    Since academics have the knowledge to understand the global system, have the skills and time to organize themselves, have actions available to disproportionately affect policy, have a supposed dedication to truth and justice, and they do not use their power, but primarily benefit from the global system, therefore they are responsible, perhaps the most responsible of any group, for the destruction the global system has brought to our planet and our people. With knowledge comes responsibility.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    It seems to me that it'd be better to implement those as concessions if they want everyone to return home. — Moliere

    Although I completely agree with the principles of your analysis; this is not just about the police, that was just the trigger.

    Indeed, ironically, the police are, in my opinion, the least of the problems in terms of state legitimacy.

    When visiting the US, what is the most clear thing about the police is that the job is in anyway impossible. The war on drugs, the lack of social programs, the judicial system that makes corruption legal and police brutality legal.

    As you point out, the state isn't implementing the laws it already has fairly, and if we look at those laws more closely there a long list of clearly absurd "laws" upon which no society can function. By "laws" I mean SCOTUS going through several levels of insane reasoning to create new laws directly opposed to the purposes of the law they are considering.

    How is law enforcement supposed to do their part to preserve the integrity of political process if corruption is simply declared legal by the judiciary?

    How is law enforcement supposed to "police themselves" if the SCOTUS declares the crazy notion that the constitution does not apply if it has not already directly been applied for the same thing in the same jurisdiction. It's impossible to even make such reasoning up as part of fictional world building.

    So, there is indeed a tragic element in the current conflict between the people and police. Of the judiciary, the legislature and law-enforcement, law-enforcement maybe the least to blame and there simply wouldn't be a problem if the judiciary and legislature were doing their jobs (which is an interesting difference with the 60s where the judiciary had a "what do words mean" approach to epistemology and the legislature functioned to reflect the majority "well enough").

    Certainly, the issue at hand should be dealt with as best as possible, as you are suggesting; I fear, however, because there are so many fundamental problems that the focus on police brutality, as separate from the other issues, is in a sense wasting time as so many unemployed people will simply continue to rebel until they are satisfied the state has regained legitimacy and genuinely cares about them (of course, solving police brutality would be a part of that caring).

    Even on the subject of police brutality as separate the context, so many nominal crimes have been committed that without a mass pardon (such as with the draft dodgers), it may be impossible to police anyway. Everyone who partook in the looting, if they start to fear the police are "coming to get them", will simply embrace a declaration of total war with the police even if some reforms are implemented. This is the "Mexico scenario" that I and @ssu have mentioned as a possibility.

    What is also clear is that Trump wants this conflict between the people and the state, and, even if there is a lull in the conflict today, it is likely the president of the United States can get what he wants.

    And there is still the pandemic happening.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    I don't think that follows at all. Maybe it is a sign of sanity in a mad world. — A Seagull

    I mean "mental break down" in the trivial cognitive sense that changing core beliefs is to "break down" those beliefs, but also in the social sense that so doing may lead people to accuse you of suffering a "mental break down" regardless of how you feel about it, while also the very real risk of, not in the sense of a disease, the "feeling of mental breakdown" when reviewing core beliefs. I do not mean "mental breakdown" in the sense of insanity; we are in agreement there.
  • Mental health under an illegitimate state
    But far from all illegtimate states rely on this. Most just brand dissidents as "traitors to the cause": Robust definitions of mental illness aren't required. — Echarmion

    It's not an exclusive definition.

    However, the roll of psychology to brand dissidents as mentally ill is primarily focused on children, over which the state has much more power and it is far more effective to destroy mentally a would-be-dissident adult in the name of mental health than to simply brand adult politically lucid dissidents as mentally ill, which is mostly ornamental as you suggest.

    So, who isn't an agent of the state? — Echarmion

    The vast majority of people of whom the state requires to create value, at at least shut up and not bother the state and who are not given any reasonable protection are not agents of the state. Academic benefit from the privileges the state provides (quality of life, reasonable legal protection of property, etc.), in return they are expected to conform to state policy and carry out state intellectual endeavors.

    Are they? I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation. They're called re-education camps after all, not asylums. — Echarmion

    Oh, my bad, just "lack of proper socialisation" requiring a little fun re-education camping to rectify.

    What? Is this direct from the politburo?

    Mass marketing is worse than genocide. You heard it here first folks. — Echarmion

    Yes, manipulative mass marketing underpins every modern destructive human enterprise, including the the Nazi genocide.

    What convinced women to smoke? What convinced society the "science isn't settled" on smoking? What convinces society to over-consume with reckless abandon? What convinces global society that sustainability would be "too inconvenient"? What caused the obesity pandemic? What convinced Americans to pursue disastrous endless wars? What maintains China's system of state control? What maintains Trump's echo-chamber of die-hard supporters?

    Anything truly terrible in society on most national and, moreso, on a global level, there is always manipulative mass marketing techniques convincing people to carry out or then do nothing to stop that terrible thing.

    I am fully convinced humanity does not "want" to destroy the planet's ecosystems, and, therefore, if that is the case, someone must be manipulating humanity to behave in away despite "what they want".

    And yes, the 6th mass extinction and the destruction of the entire world's capacity to support civilization, and perhaps any human, is far more terrible than any particular genocide. Clearly destroying the whole set is worse than destroying a subset.

    You have not heard it here first, it is a pretty old belief of the environmental movement that essentially destroying the entire planet is the worst thing we can possibly do and the main foe in trying to stop it is manipulative mass marketing. No one of note is making the case we should destroy the planet, and therefore the only cause of our actual planet destroying activity is the manipulative mass marketing techniques that lead people to do what they believe they shouldn't.

    Are you interested in my judgement on whether or not your post is worth building upon? — Echarmion

    I am not interested in your judgement; nothing you have so far posted leads me to believe I should seek your advice on any particular subject nor that you are debating in good faith with a genuine reflection upon any of the conversations you interject yourself within.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    I've not said they should just get back to work. I said they should find common ground. Apparently that's a controversial idea. Who'd have thunk? — Hanover

    It is extremely controversial, and simply wrong, in the way you present it.

    For nothing in what you say is a democratic process, but rather a fictitious fairness between you and your ideological opposition regardless of the numbers of who believes what.

    Did the American founding fathers get in a room and compromise with King George? Did FDR get in a room with Hirohito and Hittler and find "common ground"? Did president Bush get in a room and compromise with the Taliban, or Sadam, or Bin Laden for that matter?

    When it is your class using violence to reach political objectives, it's "serious discussion", "just war theory", "tough love", "doing what it takes", "no bleeding heart liberal hippy bullshit".

    Yet, as soon as other classes express their power for violence to reach political objectives, it's "woe, woe, peaceful protest! peaceful protest! Violence isn't the answer bro! This isn't the non-violence of Martin Luther King! For the love of God, listen to MLK, just listen! Partake with me in the sacred compromise in the arms of the Holy Goddess!"
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    no way I'll object. How could I? It's sacred justice for God's sake. — Hanover

    History teaches us something else:

    Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, but must be violently taken by the oppressed.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    My feeling is that African Americans are protesting what is happening in their communities by the police because they are subject to that violence and they want it to end. — Hanover

    Is this really just a feeling for you at this point?

    All of this is to say, even if I could objectively show that the US government was legitimate and that the current method of policing was the only effective and proper means of law enforcement, it's not like the African American community would be at all persuaded to accept their lot, put on a smile, and get back to work. — Hanover

    Translation: "Boohoo, the oppressed classes are revolting, it's not like providing an argument that I don't have is going to get them back to work. What I do have is the whip though, and therefore should use that whip to get things back to the way I like it."

    It's almost like maybe a state that asks a whole community "to accept their lot, put on a smile" is not a legitimate state, that even if there was a majority of people who wanted to oppress this community, that again, that would still not be legitimate because there would be no moral foundation to it.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    This strikes me as far afield and an entirely useless discussion from a pragmatic perspective. If you are able to prove the illegitimacy of the US government from a moral perspective with absolute certainty, the police will still keep doing as they are doing as will the citizens. It's not like a good solid argument is going to change the world or even change a single interaction between the government and its citizens. — Hanover

    It's completely relevant, it's the essential point of relevance in this whole conversation.

    If the state is legitimate, then there are better methods available to change the policy of the state than through violent confrontation with the police, rioting, and other revolutionary activity.

    If the state is illegitimate, then evaluating such illegal activity becomes a question purely of effectiveness in changing the policies and essential character of the state, despite the state not wanting that to happen.

    Therefore, a legitimate state should be able to easily explain to any citizen how to engage in political processes to attain political ends, and how those processes are fair and effective if the majority of people agree.

    Maybe things aren't fair right now, but a legitimate state (and the vast majority of its citizenry) can easily explain how things can be made more fair without recourse to violence; that is the whole point of democratic legitimacy.

    A legitimate state has nothing to fear from its citizenry nor analysis of what it means to be a legitimate state.

    US black people, and now a large portion of young people of all colours in the US, do not currently view the US government as legitimate.

    It is of critical importance whether this belief is true, and therefore should be brought to its logical terminus, or untrue, and therefore explained as a misguided notion and that better political means are available to achieve changes to state policy and essential state character.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    Tools are not extensions of authority. They are tools. An extension of authority would be something that is vested, explicitly or implicitly, with an official function.

    Otherwise you'll have to explain why a tool is responsible for its use.     — Echarmion

    Again, I suggest the tool of reading to participate in text base discussion:

    Exactly the same can be said of all science.
    — Isaac

    No.

    The same can only be said of all academic scientists: the primary roll of mathematics, physics and engineering becomes the arms industry, the primary roll of "political science" becomes apologetics for the state, the primary roll of creative pursuits becomes entertainment and distraction, the primary roll of psychology becomes manipulative marketing, the primary roll of philosophy becomes the denial of moral courage as a component of "the good life", if not the denial of any moral truth as such.     — boethius

    I am using the term "academics" to refer to the group of people in academics, not as synonymous with knowledge.

    So, if you're trying to say the academic is a tool of state authority, I agree. If you are trying to say that knowledge is a tool in the hands of the academic to service state authority, I agree.

    If you are trying to say the process of selection of who gets to be an academic is independent of state policy, then I disagree.

    You're being dishonest. You didn't initially bring up the Nazis or anything similar at all. You brought up military operations. That's what I was referring to. — Echarmion

    Again, what's with the not reading things?

    The Nazi's were deranged serial killers (with varying degrees of apologetics we can engage in depending on the Nazi) because the Nazi government was not legitimate, either in representing the people's will or then, if so, that will itself was not morally acceptable and had no moral legitimacy. — boethius

    We morally condemn the serial killer of legitimate state agents, we morally condemn illegitimate states and their killings and their state agents who kill.

    When a illegitimate state kills a lot of people we say it is "mass murder" (i.e. serial killing, just with a difference in scale).

    The nuances you might like to get into I am aware of and refer to as "with varying degrees of apologetics we can engage in depending on the Nazi". I agree each individual Nazi may not have the state of mind of a serial killer, but it is only because they are fully convinced they are engaging in just warfare on behalf of a legitimate state. Who we are not so morally lenient with are those orchestrating the serial killing and have the intellectual capacity to evaluate their actions and the system they are promoting as a whole.

    However, you said specifically:

    Your examples leave out obvious differences between the way a serial killer selects and kills victims and the functioning of an organised military. — Echarmion

    You are not referring to individuals soldiers who may not know better (and have been selected by the organization for this quality), but you are referring to the organization as a whole and its process of selecting and killing victims.

    This process of the organization as a whole is no different in it's essential quality than that of the individual serial killer: They do it because they can and it brings them immense fascination and satisfaction.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    Who are "the Nazis" you refer to? Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich or Eichmann? Wehrmacht soldiers? Prussian police officers? The answer depends. — Echarmion

    You say the difference is obvious, and yet you plunge directly into nuance.

    I don't see where you are trying to go. Yes, there is more "decorum" in the killing apparatus of an illegitimate state, but lot's of serial killers had themselves "decorum", so it doesn't seem an obvious difference.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    You haven't justified this claim that academics are extensions of state authority anywhere that I can see. — Echarmion

    However, please feel free to continue the existing conversation on this topic Psychiatrys Incurable Hubris.

    My central thesis in that conversation is as follows:

    Yes, this is my central contention, that psychiatry/psychology is a better tool of oppression than plumbing, that there will be more attention paid to who gets to be a psychiatry/psychologists (that their beliefs are compatible with state policy) than who gets to be a plumber. Plumbers are a group I would argue most oppressive states categorize as general population needing to be generally controlled.

    For instance, using pharmacology to make bad working conditions more tolerable, I would argue is a mechanism of oppression in an oppressive state; part of the control system. From the perspective of psychiatrists implementing this policy, people feel better at work, they feel they've "done good". This is not to pass moral judgement, as they may not have any information (thanks to control of media) to criticize what they are doing; but from the outside analyzing such a situation we can very much doubt if they are really "doing good".
    — boethius     — boethius

    I'm not sure why reading things is not part of your approach to text base discussion, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume there's a psychological motivation for it.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    That's a highly dubious conclusion. Your examples leave out obvious differences between the way a serial killer selects and kills victims and the functioning of an organised military. — Echarmion

    Yes please, how was the Nazi's process of selecting and killing victims obviously different than that of a deranged serial killer, except for the scale?
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    I'm still not seeing the connection between non-clinical psychology and state-controlled 'normal behaviour'. Could you give me some examples of a non-clinical psychology research area which relies on 'normal behaviour' as a foundational reference? — Isaac

    I said "they are part of the problem", just like the vast majority of police who are not trying to be abusive are part of the problem if they tolerate and cover for police that are. — boethius

    Dealing with this is a trivial extension of the argument I present.

    As representing state authority in a legitimate state, psychological research is a tool primarily for legitimate government actions to inform decisions and actions for legitimate purposes. In my moral system, in a state adhering (close enough) to my moral system, knowledge of object permanence in children under five will be used to inform educational and parental support policy to ensure society as a whole is promoting the best conditions we can for our children in order to have the mental tools later, as best as we can hope, to be morally autonomous participants in fair political process.

    Under an illegitimate state, psychological research is primarily a tool for further maintenance of state illegitimacy. Under my moral system, states that depart (far enough) away from my moral system, will use knowledge of object permanence in children under five to inform educational and parental support policy to dissuade our children from becoming autonomous moral agents able to understand and act to change unjustifiable social organization.

    In a legitimate state (according to me) you may find long maternity and paternity leave to support parent engagement in children to help develop, in part, that "object permanence", you may find universal health care, free and fairly distributed child care and educational resources, etc.

    In an illegitimate state (according to me) you may find maternity and paternity leave does not exist for the poor classes that must be kept uneducated, ignorant and docile, in part, due to a frustration of the development of "object permanence" and other skills at an early age. When an illegitimate state maintaining oppressive class relations hear's of the critical importance of the earliest years and parent engagement in the developing cognitive and social skills, it rushes to ensure such resources are distributed to the privileged classes and, whenever possible, further taken away from the oppressed classes.     — boethius

    What is not clear?
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    OK. So the idea is that all scientific research (in academic institutions) is actually just aimed at propping up the state in some way? So how far back does this go? What's the full extent of human knowledge we must abandon as nothing more than state propaganda? — Isaac

    I said "academic scientists" in terms of their actual primary activity, their moral culpability in maintaining oppressive structures.

    Secondary rolls might be making some bank for themselves and for the purposes of unfair appropriation by the investor class.

    I followed this up with "other sciences, apart from academics, may form, from time to tome, intellectual structures that are independent of academics as an extension of state authority."

    My argument does not go to a dysfunctional terminus of throwing out "all knowledge" only connects the level of reasonable doubt of state provided knowledge to the legitimacy of that state. If there does exist or has existed legitimate states with truly free intellectual discussion, such conditions maybe a source of more credible information that does not trigger aporic analysis of the roll of state authority in producing knowledge.

    Psychology is in a special class because it's foundational reference, normal behaviour, is by definition state controlled. Fortunately, states cannot yet control the laws of physics and mathematical deduction.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    Exactly the same can be said of all science. — Isaac

    No.

    The same can only be said of all academic scientists: the primary roll of mathematics, physics and engineering becomes the arms industry, the primary roll of "political science" becomes apologetics for the state, the primary roll of creative pursuits becomes entertainment and distraction, the primary roll of psychology becomes manipulative marketing, the primary roll of philosophy becomes the denial of moral courage as a component of "the good life", if not the denial of any moral truth as such.

    However, other sciences, apart from academics, may form, from time to tome, intellectual structures that are independent of academics as an extension of state authority.

    The physics student outside of academics does not require state authority to understand a ball dropping to the floor.

    The psychology student within academics requires state authority to ever imagine being able to say: "I know what's wrong with you and how to cure you."
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    You didn't even mention perception of object permanence in the under fives. I was asking how the political influence (let's take your example of the legitimacy of the state) should be taken account of when researching, for example, the perception of object permanence in the under fives — Isaac

    Dealing with this is a trivial extension of the argument I present.

    As representing state authority in a legitimate state, psychological research is a tool primarily for legitimate government actions to inform decisions and actions for legitimate purposes. In my moral system, in a state adhering (close enough) to my moral system, knowledge of object permanence in children under five will be used to inform educational and parental support policy to ensure society as a whole is promoting the best conditions we can for our children in order to have the mental tools later, as best as we can hope, to be morally autonomous participants in fair political process.

    Under an illegitimate state, psychological research is primarily a tool for further maintenance of state illegitimacy. Under my moral system, states that depart (far enough) away from my moral system, will use knowledge of object permanence in children under five to inform educational and parental support policy to dissuade our children from becoming autonomous moral agents able to understand and act to change unjustifiable social organization.

    In a legitimate state (according to me) you may find long maternity and paternity leave to support parent engagement in children to help develop, in part, that "object permanence", you may find universal health care, free and fairly distributed child care and educational resources, etc.

    In an illegitimate state (according to me) you may find maternity and paternity leave does not exist for the poor classes that must be kept uneducated, ignorant and docile, in part, due to a frustration of the development of "object permanence" and other skills at an early age. When an illegitimate state maintaining oppressive class relations hear's of the critical importance of the earliest years and parent engagement in the developing cognitive and social skills, it rushes to ensure such resources are distributed to the privileged classes and, whenever possible, further taken away from the oppressed classes.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    Perhaps you could join the dots for me? — Isaac

    No problem connecting the dots.

    Political analysis is not only about the organization of society today, in the past, and potential future organization and what actions might go where, it is also the moral evaluation of such organization and such actions.

    It is not simply a part of the "environmental conditions" that we happen to find ourselves in, but includes the moral argumentation to evaluate those conditions, where we might want to go, and how to get there.

    What is reasonable to do is completely different under a illegitimate and an legitimate state. What is reasonable in terms of doubting what society claims is acceptable behaviour, much more the truth, is completely different under an illegitimate and legitimate state. Psychology does not make this fundamental and totally obvious observation from which analysis of particular situations becomes completely different.

    A person killing agents of the state in a legitimate government is a deranged serial killer. A person killing agents of the state in an illegitimate government is a war hero. When the US army and co. killed all those Iraqi, Afghani, Libyan etc. state agents it is not considered deranged serial killing if those state agents represent an illegitimate government and the US army represents a legitimate government acting in self defense; those soldiers are therefore war heroes under such an assumption. When the US revolutionary fighters killed all those British soldiers they were war heroes and not deranged serial killers, under the assumption that taxation without representation is an illegitimate form of government. The Nazi's were deranged serial killers (with varying degrees of apologetics we can engage in depending on the Nazi) because the Nazi government was not legitimate, either in representing the people's will or then, if so, that will itself was not morally acceptable and had no moral legitimacy.

    Evaluation of behaviour cannot be concluded without first concluding the form of government is not only legitimate (enough) but moral (enough) to justify adhering to norms promoted by that society. Such an evaluation is outside the purview of psychology as an intellectual edifice, rendering psychology, at best, a hypothetical exercise.

    Such an evaluation is not only beyond the purview of psychology but beyond the purview of science as a whole.

    As I have stated from the beginning of this conversation, the argument that the US government in it's current form of minority rule is legitimate and therefore all civil disobedience relative curfew and police instruction as well as looting and destruction of objects are simply criminal, can be made. I have yet to hear it, but I am willing to listen.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    OK... So what evidence do you have that ""Environmental factors" is an abstraction to lead the gullible psychologist to believe that "all the bases have been covered", but they have not."? — Isaac

    "Environmental factors" does not consider the moral dimension of our political environment, only that behaviour and mental states do indeed depend on context. "Environmental factors" ignores the fact that the patient is able to participate in collective action to change the political conditions, and such activity will be, if justified, by definition frustrated, resisted, imprisoned, killed by the state, for which the psychologists are an agent and can do nothing of significance to help (that's not what they're paid to do).

    The key question is whether the state is legitimate or not, everything hinges on this reality. To attack state legitimacy, the psychologist must deny their own authority on the subject of psychology, which at the end of the day, is completely inseparable to state authority.

    And to be clear, I have no problem with any attempts to besmirch my character with accusations and implications of "mentally illness". My words remain untouched.

    Indeed, I whole heartedly embrace it.

    I am depressed. I am unstable. I am schizophrenic. I am bipolar. I have a deficit of coming to attention. Above all, I am the authority opposition disorder. I am a madman.

    I would not only rather be found among, but be considered as exactly the same as my down trodden brothers and sisters. I would rather not only hold out my arms to the refuse of society to comfort them, but also run to their arms to be comforted.

    I would rather be among the mob desperate and frantic to find a new light, a fresh breath of air, than pass the pipe of the privileged around in the ivory tower of disdain.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    If you're having trouble with these delusional thoughts I can recommend some effective medication to take care of that. — Isaac

    Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

    Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

    Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    What evidence do you have that non-clinical psychologist don't speak out about ignoring environmental factors in diagnosing mental illness? — Isaac

    Ah, such subtle bait and switching. Indeed you are powerful in the ways of psychology.

    "Environmental factors" is not the same as "politics". "Environmental factors" is an abstraction to lead the gullible psychologist to believe that "all the bases have been covered", but they have not.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    ↪Isaac


    I said "they are part of the problem", just like the vast majority of police who are not trying to be abusive are part of the problem if they tolerate and cover for police that are.

    As for the intellectual content of psychology as such: Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    Yeah, I don't think I'd have much to add there as I think most of psychiatry is a crock of shit. — Isaac

    Yes, we fundamentally agree.

    It's akin to blaming the whole academic field of Human Biology for the malpractice of the pharmaceutical industry. — Isaac

    The difference is that biologists do not decide what is a "mental disease" that needs a cure (biologists in such a context have only the moral culpability, but there is no reason to doubt the intellectual tool of biology as such; if the brain chemistry is altered as desired, the tool is clearly working). Academic psychologists, at the end of the day, provide these definitions and (more importantly) the entire intellectual framework that removes all political analysis from discussion to begin with, as well as run the experiments to prove any particular "cure" for any particular "mental disease".

    If the academics were not part of the problem, then they would be continuously denouncing the way their discipline is being implemented in practice and explaining why the element of politics complicates any mental disease diagnosis, much more definition. For, it is reasonable to be depressed in a self destructive society. It is reasonable to be violent in an oppressive society. It is reasonable to be schizophrenic in a gaslighting society. It is reasonable to be bipolar in an abusive society. It is reasonable to have a deficit of attention when fed a system of lies. It is reasonable to have disorder within the mind as an interpretive step in response to unjust state order without. Insofar as academics ignore such arguments, they are propagandists for state order, nothing more, and, indeed, far more powerful foot soldiers for evil than the police.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    OK, so since any long investigation of this issue would definitely be off topic, perhaps you could just point me in the direction of the research you're basing this assertion on, then I can make up my own mind. — Isaac

    Well, the thesis would not be supported by psychological research, for obvious reasons. The foundation of the argument is whether our system is sustainable or not; so it would be ecology that is the first thing to look into. If our system is not sustainable, then it is simply madness to continue it.

    But yes, maybe a tangent to the discussion at hand, as no one is (yet) accusing the protesters and rioters of having a mental disease that the state will need to "cure"; although, I am sure the general anxiety created by the situation for the middle and upper classes, psychology as a whole, will indeed intervene whenever and wherever possible to psychologize away both their personal anxiety as well as any larger political analysis of events (that the system is not to blame, young people are just mentally ill in one way or another and "let's see how we can try to focus on constructive things like working on that quarterly report").

    So, I would not say it is off topic. I'm sure there is already far more discussion in the mass media about what the police "feel" than their roll in maintaining oppressive class relations.

    However, please feel free to continue the existing conversation on this topic Psychiatrys Incurable Hubris.

    My central thesis in that conversation is as follows:

    Yes, this is my central contention, that psychiatry/psychology is a better tool of oppression than plumbing, that there will be more attention paid to who gets to be a psychiatry/psychologists (that their beliefs are compatible with state policy) than who gets to be a plumber. Plumbers are a group I would argue most oppressive states categorize as general population needing to be generally controlled.

    For instance, using pharmacology to make bad working conditions more tolerable, I would argue is a mechanism of oppression in an oppressive state; part of the control system. From the perspective of psychiatrists implementing this policy, people feel better at work, they feel they've "done good". This is not to pass moral judgement, as they may not have any information (thanks to control of media) to criticize what they are doing; but from the outside analyzing such a situation we can very much doubt if they are really "doing good".     — boethius
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    The only 'industry' around psychology in general is the academic one and its pretty unfair to accuse the entire enterprise of institutionally undermining class conflict and implicitly supporting racial division. — Isaac

    It's totally fair. There was a long conversation about this a while back.

    The functional roll of psychology within capitalism, as an academic field and medical practice, is to continuously blame the individual, and coach the internalization of that blame, for social problems that they are exposed to.

    In a sick society there can be no reference of what it means to be mentally healthy.

    To be "normal" in today's society is to actively participate in the destruction of the planet and enslavement of fellow citizens around the world; i.e. orchestrate a mass suicide. The roll of psychology is to legitimize this activity and to tell you, if you start to figure it out, that maybe you need to take a chill pill.

    A secondary roll is to make mad bank while accomplishing this first roll; a virtuous and "free" cycle from the perspective of maintaining the status quo.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?
    I'd say the school book story is that after MLK racism was solved, more or less. — Moliere

    The white man is intelligent enough, if he were made to realize how black people really feel, and how fed up with all that compromising sweet talk -- stop sweet talking him, tell him how you feel, tell him how, what kind of hell you've been catching, and let him know that if he's not ready to clean his house up, if he's not ready to clean his house up, he shouldn't have a house. It should catch on fire, and burn down. — Malcolm X

    Turns out branding Martin Luther King an extremist and killing him, and then ignoring what he did have the time to say for over 50 years, was an act of pure lunacy ... if you cared about your children's future, which of course those in power do not; for their children are cozying up to a nice little fire in the alps right now, I think they're doing pretty good; I often wave to them on the slopes.
  • Does systemic racism exist in the US?
    Baden, if I had no one disagreeing with me I could easily prove it doesn’t exist. — Brett

    You mean you would easily believe right wing propaganda.

    Baden, you just proved me right. — Brett

    This is just delusional.

    OP based on an accepted premise happen all the time.

    You're not making a new OP outlining your claim racism isn't systematic because there's no case to be made.

    You are simply trying to derail this conversation because obvious truths threaten your identity and you believe power should be enough to determine what the truth is. So you want to flex your trollish power here to frustrate good faith analysis and virtue signal to your cause. Maybe my diagnosis of your fascist psychology is off topic, but I'm glad you don't have a problem with that.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?

    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
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    If you think police brutality is something for black people only... — EpicTyrant

    You are completely correct that it is better to first consider that there is much more pervasive and severe systemic police brutality against the poor (the untermensch) and that within this system of systemic police brutality there is an additional and even more brutal system for black people and in particular the black poor (the double untermensch). A rich black man in a suite is treated similarly to a poor "white punk", still harassed but not over a line that might bring in the rich black man's lawyers or then the white punk's parents lawyers to make trouble.

    There is, beyond race, an even more deeply rooted unequal application of the law in terms of rich and poor. The rich are not prosecuted for their crimes no matter how heinous, as the Epstein network of elite child rapists demonstrates.

    For poor people more generally, police brutality is only one component of a wider justice system brutality. Whereas the brutality against black people can be simply spontaneous, against poor people more generally the brutality is dished out after bankruptcy, after repossessions, after eviction, after losing it, after "justice"; after, albeit more lenient, still incredibly harsh drug or thievery sentencing in the same traumatic and inhumane prisons. The police officer is only one cog in a much larger brutal machine. And indeed, for black people it is the same, a justice brutality involving many more intellectual jobs and not merely a police brutality, there is simply an additional brutal component that is most visible in direct physical abuse and killings by the police and easier to understand (but as you point out, not uniquely reserved for this class of untermensch).

    In my opinion, the riots are very much expressing outrage of all poor people, and their few middle-class allies, at the whole system on behalf of blacks and equally themselves. However, because blacks "have it worse", because the particular outrageous killing of George Floyd, and because exactly how the system is unjust to whites cannot be so easily interpreted by the average poor person, as the middle class whites continuously tell them it's their fault for being poor and police are just "doing their job", whereas, the blacks have literally centuries of analysis to understand racism, but the traditions that built up understanding of poverty more generally, anarchy and socialism, were wholly eradicated; black identity preserved this understanding, transposed into a black context, because, for black people, it is impossible to ignore and forget for even a single day. The white poor, by standing and fighting with their black brothers and sisters, are also standing and fighting for themselves. Because there are no real intellectual leaders of the poor nor the black community today, because such people have simply been murdered, what I describe is not an intellectual thing, but an intuitive one, a gut feeling of, in effect, "Fuck the Police" and an application of the simplest and most direct means available of expressing such a feeling. Within such a context, an intellectual approach to morality is no longer really applicable. The facts of history are unfolding and it serves no purpose to tell leaderless people they should have "a more morally perfect strategy of change".

    The only morally certain thing we can say is "If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness."

    "No Justice, No Peace" expresses the simple and unavoidable consequence of educated elites breaking the social contract in such obvious ways that even the uneducated poor can see through their crimes and their bullshit. It is not a peaceful slogan inline with the educated elites' conception of the law and of order.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    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

    Yes, I pretty much agree that had universal health care been passed decades ago (or even just one decade ago), equal (at least more equal) education been implemented, and homelessness been solved, that the US would not be in this current situation.

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

    Yes, he was killed essentially the moment he started to address white poverty, which for him would be his new allies going forward, as they are the whites that have as much to gain from ending poverty, but, if successful, would "cost billions". He was fully cognizant that rich white people were only allies during the legal phase which doesn't cost anything and because having to see police brutality "shocks the educated conscience", whereas poor whites would view desegregation (at first) as somehow "taking from them something"; but that in the second phase the rich would abandon them and they would need to grow the movement to solve poverty regardless of race by organizing the poor.

    I am fully convinced that had MLK and others, including white civil right leaders such as Bobby Kennedy, not been killed, the US today would be "a normal country" by the standards of the democratic world.

    However, by killing all the leaders, such organization MLK had in mind was no longer possible.
  • Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
    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
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