This is bad, but the States has the potential to get much much worse before 2020 is out.
The rule of law is underpinned - ultimately - by the state's ability to exercise overwhelming force. Usually it doesn't have to, because people comply/capitulate/cooperate before things get to the point where that force has to be brought to bear. This is, in part, because people have trust in the system, and belief in the power of the state (usually in the form of the police). When that trust is gone, and the amount of force the state can (or is willing to) deploy is overwhelmed, things can snowball very, very quickly.
That's where things seem to be at right now. Add into the mix the division in the US, and the distrust in the media that prevents people from agreeing even on simple truths, and you've got a really explosive mix.
I think tonight is going to get really ugly. If there are counterprotests at some point, it's going to get even worse.
It's easy to applaud violence from behind a keyboard in Canada. But tell me - how would a female cop in Chicago getting beaten unconscious or killed help bring about a righteous outcome? Walk me through the steps.
The protesters who made a ring around the cops are the heroes in that encounter. If they hadn't stepped in, and those officers were beaten or killed, things would have gotten much, much worse for protesters all over the U.S. going forward.
You seem to think it's a matter of time before police just start killing people. It's not going to happen unless something goes wildly off the rails.
You seem to think it's a matter of time before police just start killing people. It's not going to happen unless something goes wildly off the rails.
You don't think the current situation qualifies as "wildly off the rails"? I'm amazed that it hasn't already happened in multiple cities.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
According to a WaPo article I read a while ago, almost an equal number of unarmed white and black people have been killed by police since 2017.
By percentage of population in the U.S., an unarmed black person is 2.5 to 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police officer, but that doesn't mean that white people are not also victims of unnecessary police brutality. It's definitely a bigger issue for black people, but it's an issue everyone regardless of race should be concerned about.
__________________
"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
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This is bad, but the States has the potential to get much much worse before 2020 is out.
The rule of law is underpinned - ultimately - by the state's ability to exercise overwhelming force. Usually it doesn't have to, because people comply/capitulate/cooperate before things get to the point where that force has to be brought to bear. This is, in part, because people have trust in the system, and belief in the power of the state (usually in the form of the police). When that trust is gone, and the amount of force the state can (or is willing to) deploy is overwhelmed, things can snowball very, very quickly.
That's where things seem to be at right now. Add into the mix the division in the US, and the distrust in the media that prevents people from agreeing even on simple truths, and you've got a really explosive mix.
I think tonight is going to get really ugly. If there are counterprotests at some point, it's going to get even worse.
That crazy bastard with the bow & arrow is just the beginning of the type of insanity we might see over the next several hours/days. Trump was on Twitter this morning basically inviting his cult members to show up at the WH to counter-protest, and when the POTUS is stoking the fire saying idiotic s**t like "when the looting starts, the shooting starts", it's only a matter of time before some MAGA/QAnon nutjobs start showing up to these protests with their AR-15s.
Of course they do, but that's a) not what we're talking about here, and b) I don't know what you intend to do to fix that. There are clear steps that can be taken to ameliorate the policing issue. They're fairly big steps, but if you have buy-in from local government, they're eminently do-able. Structural race inequality is centuries in the making and there are no clear steps to fix that. So when someone talks about vague goals like "shattering the power paradigm", my response is necessarily, "what the #### - in real world terms - does that even mean?"
Maybe we should be talking about it too, talking about it is the first step is it not?
Just a white man randomly beat up by a crowd of black people. No mention that he had a fricking bow and shot an arrow at a black man while claiming all lives matter.
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K what? You wrongly accused me of being some sort of police sympathizer, now your accusing me of being a racist? You’re hilarious.
I didn’t do either of these things. My remark, and I think it rings especially true after your reaction, is that you need to step outside of yourself for a moment and listen instead of treating this as some selfish thing that’s all about you. Nobody is calling you a police sympathiser, nobody is calling you a racist. I’ve questioned your positions, especially the one where you believe only a black man could have any idea what it’s like to be a black man, as if you’ve never taken the time to actually listen to others or try to understand their experiences. As if you’ve never even met someone different from yourself or heard them speak.
At the end of the day, nobody cares about you in this conversation, it’s not about you just like it isn’t about me, or Corsi, or afc, or whoever. You want to make it a personal thing, I get it, but we’re talking about ideas and current events here.. The whole “don’t call me a racist! I bet everyone wants cops killed!” dramatics, yeah, we get it, you want attention. If you’ve had enough, go spend the rest of your time trying to learn literally anything about the experience of being black in America, it’s less difficult than you think it is if you bothered to try. You could even just try watching the George Floyd video to start.
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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Don't take this the wrong way given the overall topic of discussion here, but... just shoot me now and be done with it.
This is short sighted. We would make a great team and you know it. Our differences create “comedic tension.”
Things are really devolving tonight across the USA. Philly, New York and LA are ugly tonight. It will be interesting to see how long these protests last in terms of days and how law enforcement and the governments get this situation under control.