Paris Attack - April 20, 2017

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

Mass shootings in the USA are now just a constitutional fact of life but for the life of me I can't get with the program on Trump being a racist!

A "constitutional" fact of life. I don't even know what that means. I also don't know what that has to do with Trump's racism and xenophobia - two completely different issues.

I can get where he suffers from xenophobia or bigotry towards people prominently from Muslim country's but that still doesn't make him a racist preacher.

No, but his treatment of black, brown and yellow people do. Trump has a very long public history of racism, both in the media and in the courts.

I get that Trump is a narcissistic spoon fed moron but I just can't get behind the term racist just because he thinks the radical muslims are evil or mexicans sneaking across the border aren't good for the country. If you took a worldwide poll I think 90% would agree with him.

If you honestly think that, then you're not a very bright person. The religious identification numbers alone don't stack up well to support that claim. About 23% of the world's populations are Muslim. Another 45% are of religious beliefs that don't really care one way or another about the Islamic, Abrahamic, or Christian beliefs. In fact, only 32% of the world's population have any belief in the Abrahamic or Christian beliefs, and in parts of the world Christians and Jews are viewed with the same skepticism as Muslims are in the west. So 90% of the world is likely to NOT agree with Donald Trump. Hell, you wouldn't even get 90% support for that on this board. I would actually think a larger percentage of people would think Trump is a racist than not. It would probably be a close poll, but I think it probably goes 60-40 to Trump being a racist, because the facts support that claim.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/o...-a-racist.html

Here's a really good article on why people are accepting of Trump's racism and other behaviors. I'll add, it's because we harbor those same behaviors deep down and we find it liberating to see a powerful person exhibiting the same shortcomings, making it alright for us to feel or do the same.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a..._a_racist.html

And Time with a spot on article of what Trump is really doing in "his" war on terror. He's not fighting terrorists, he's spreading racism.

http://time.com/4658366/donald-trump-terrorism-racism/

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

I think we need to stop reporting these the way we do to keep perspective.

Caveat: I understand we can't for many reasons, I just think we need to.



By making this world renowned news, it moves needles in policy decision towards ideas that are reckless, bad for world peace, and not based in fact.

By making this small act a large message, you embolden those with messages we don't care to hear. This wasn't hard to do, nor was it particularly deadly. The effect was perfect. Some sound bites from world leaders and more pressure to "act".

In reality, more people in the US have died because of climate change. More have died because of the opiate crisis. More are dying because of vaccine preventable diseases. Hell, more people probably died of heat stroke in the last year on the Champs Elysees. There's literally thousands of things to be preoccupied with over this. This shouldn't move any needles.

Not only is this not something to be "terrorized" over, it's not worth discussion.

By that token, since far more children in Canada die in automobile accidents than are killed by predators, the media shouldn't report on child abduction and murder. All it does is stoke fears of parents and give a false impression of how dangerous the world is for children. It also feeds into irrational impulses for revenge in our criminal justice system.

Perfectly true. Perfectly rational. Also unlikely to happen anytime soon.

The murder of random people in public places is a shock to a society. It's different from killings between criminal gangs, or automobile deaths on the highway. Random public murder makes people who lead otherwise safe and happy lives feel vulnerable. Governments that can't protect people from these kinds of attacks lose trust.

It may not be rational, but it's human nature.