And honestly, if your response to black people being murdered by the police is essentially "well we're not going to do anything about this problem until you people calm down a little," you're an enabler and part of the problem.
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I posted a bit about this earlier. But it's really important to see how cops are trained in the US. It's absolutely alarming. In a country where everyone is armed, this is what you get. And in a country with a bunch of agro men pretending to be hero's, this is what you get. And we're not at all any better. We just don't have as many guns.
To paraphrase a little...don't worry about being sued, it's just an opportunity for more over time.
I posted a bit about this earlier. But it's really important to see how cops are trained in the US. It's absolutely alarming. In a country where everyone is armed, this is what you get. And in a country with a bunch of agro men pretending to be hero's, this is what you get. And we're not at all any better. We just don't have as many guns.
To paraphrase a little...don't worry about being sued, it's just an opportunity for more over time.
Watching that just makes me sick to my stomach. America is so f&$%ed...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
This individual is not affluent and more of a member of that shrinking middle class. It is likely the individual does not have a high paying job, is limited on benefits, and has to make due with those benefits provided by employer.
And this is the issue I have with the "they shouldn't riot" crowd, because there is legitimately no way for black people to protest that doesn't get condemned or criticized.
Surely you can differentiate between rightful and wrongful condemnation, and thus between effective and ineffective means, proportionate and disproportionate actions, etc.
And honestly, if your response to black people being murdered by the police is essentially "well we're not going to do anything about this problem until you people calm down a little," you're an enabler and part of the problem.
This is pretty much what America does for anything and when people calm down they just forget about it.
There have been no civil rights advances without riot and violence typically, if every time a black guy was shot 2 or 3 hundred cops died as a consequence shooting black guys would stop pretty quick regardless of the morality of it.
The real problem with these riots are they are not organised and destructive enough, what you need for change is a real threat to over throw, even if temporarily, law and order in a city for a few weeks, that happens and the establishment will change policing pretty damn quick. There may be other better more democratic non violent ways of making change happen as well but at this point the US police are no more than an army of occupation in most of the poorer parts of the US and really do deserve a response like any other army of occupation gets, bullets and bombs.
I think that the thing that makes Canada better in this regard from the States is the average intelligence and educational background of police officers in Canada being higher than that of the states. This is all anecdotal so it isn't worth much, but I have found that the police in the States to be much less educated than the police in Canada. Not saying the all the police in Canada are great or even good, but I have noticed that they are in general less aggressive than police in the States.
I honestly believe that if you put someone into a position who has life experience, who has interacted with others outside of their social circle, and who has developed at least a modicum of critical thinking that they will be less likely to revert into a mode where everyone is seen as the enemy. That is essentially what Grossman seems to train to - is that everyone needs to be seen as a potential enemy and that if you let down your guard at any time, that is when you will be attacked and killed yourself, which is in itself incredulously dumb.
The real problem with these riots are they are not organised and destructive enough, what you need for change is a real threat to over throw, even if temporarily, law and order in a city for a few weeks, that happens and the establishment will change policing pretty damn quick.
You're actually right about this, just not in the way that you think.
Congratulations on the worst post in the thread by far.
__________________ "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
If the point of protesting by rioting, smashing police cars, and the like is to "effect broad change", then the protests are misguided. The public was already quite focused on the incident and unequivocal in its condemnation of the police officers involved, who were all quickly fired, and may yet face prosecution. You have mayors, Senators and Governors calling for investigations, giving press conferences... riots distract from that unerring and uncomfortable focus on the problem.
Now people can slip back into their normal comfort zone, decry the protests, and argue on the internet with the people who are saying things like "you love to see it" and "those cops deserve it" and calling anyone who opposes rioting in the streets a racist. Standard culture war BS.
Of course, this seemed inevitable, so no one is surprised, but similarly, no one should be suggesting that maybe rioting is the ticket to changing the way people feel about this issue. And really, the responses were starting to give me the impression that this incident - for whatever reason, because it's not like there haven't been terrible incidents caught on camera before - might actually result in some substantive policy measures, at least in Minnesota, which could then have a knock-on effect. Well, we'll see if that happens, because this stuff just creates a fresh news cycle.
I'm not going to say riots are good, but after so many deaths of which I'm sure many have had peaceful and not-so-peaceful riots - hard to say one way or the other is going to generate any change.
I guess at worse people who would have never changed anything anyways can now pretend they would have done something but these riots changed their minds.
I think that the thing that makes Canada better in this regard from the States is the average intelligence and educational background of police officers in Canada being higher than that of the states. This is all anecdotal so it isn't worth much, but I have found that the police in the States to be much less educated than the police in Canada. Not saying the all the police in Canada are great or even good, but I have noticed that they are in general less aggressive than police in the States.
I honestly believe that if you put someone into a position who has life experience, who has interacted with others outside of their social circle, and who has developed at least a modicum of critical thinking that they will be less likely to revert into a mode where everyone is seen as the enemy. That is essentially what Grossman seems to train to - is that everyone needs to be seen as a potential enemy and that if you let down your guard at any time, that is when you will be attacked and killed yourself, which is in itself incredulously dumb.
Ah... well I can't speak for everywhere, I suspect the main difference is just that our cops are much less likely to shoot anyone which I'd tie to being less likely to encounter random guy with a gun. We have our fair share of power hungry cops here.
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“I don’t favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I’m also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people.”
— Malcolm X
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
---Frederick Douglass
I say riot away if that's the only way to make change happen. I'm all for it.
You can scream, shout and cry at the top of your lungs, but if no one is listening, it doesn't matter. As long as the Orange Dotard and his reich are in power, nothing will change. Not that it changed much prior but you can definitely double down right now on def ears pointed elsewhere.
The U.S is a militarized police state, dangerously moreso than Canada could aspire to be. Youd need massive groundswell support and politicians committed to making fundamental changes to pretty much everything in the government. How likely will that happen?
You can scream, shout and cry at the top of your lungs, but if no one is listening, it doesn't matter. As long as the Orange Dotard and his reich are in power, nothing will change. Not that it changed much prior but you can definitely double down right now on def ears pointed elsewhere.
The U.S is a militarized police state, dangerously moreso than Canada could aspire to be. Youd need massive groundswell support and politicians committed to making fundamental changes to pretty much everything in the government. How likely will that happen?
I don't think you have to depend on a top down approach. It is mostly at the municipal and State level. Do all States have the same issues with cops, or do some have good systems? The ones with problems need to figure it out. You don't need to wait for the Dotard.
I don't think you have to depend on a top down approach. It is mostly at the municipal and State level. Do all States have the same issues with cops, or do some have good systems? The ones with problems need to figure it out. You don't need to wait for the Dotard.
Actually it is a bit of a top down approach. After the riots in LA and ten years of mucking about by state and municipalities, it took a special federal decree to actually get the LAPD to change its procedures. It was change your tune or get sued you into oblivion by the DOJ. It worked too.
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Right, so a top down can work, but you don't need to wait for it. Another 4.5 of Trump is not gonna see that happen. You just need people in charge with the will do actually do something.
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I don't think you have to depend on a top down approach. It is mostly at the municipal and State level. Do all States have the same issues with cops, or do some have good systems? The ones with problems need to figure it out. You don't need to wait for the Dotard.
I think you do. And as I pointed out its not just the Dotard, but those he has in strategic places as well. He's has control over all the integral systems like the DOJ to stamp out anything. Actually, I should stop saying "he" and should use "they".
They have a lock down on it right now. Otherwise we would have seen am impeachment, sweeping changes at all appointment heads of departments to purge them.
Anyways, I don't want to get off thread here, that was a murder and they better get charged with murder. People need actual tangible justice here.
And they should riot IMO. Doubly so if those 4 cops aren't convicted.
Right, so a top down can work, but you don't need to wait for it. Another 4.5 of Trump is not gonna see that happen. You just need people in charge with the will do actually do something.
You've got that right for sure. I'm still waiting for some idiotic Trump response to this but I suppose no response is stupid enough. I'd not hold my breath for anything constructive from that administration.
You've got that right for sure. I'm still waiting for some idiotic Trump response to this but I suppose no response is stupid enough. I'd not hold my breath for anything constructive from that administration.
Trump's reply is obvious: both sides, many sides.
And a "my African American" thrown in there.
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I think you do. And as I pointed out its not just the Dotard, but those he has in strategic places as well. He's has control over all the integral systems like the DOJ to stamp out anything. Actually, I should stop saying "he" and should use "they".
They have a lock down on it right now. Otherwise we would have seen am impeachment, sweeping changes at all appointment heads of departments to purge them.
Anyways, I don't want to get off thread here, that was a murder and they better get charged with murder. People need actual tangible justice here.
And they should riot IMO. Doubly so if those 4 cops aren't convicted.
OK, put it this way...is there anything at the federal level that is preventing States from taking actions that could prevent this sort of thing from happening, and create cutlers within police departments that see this sort of thing wiped out, instead of encouraged?
I'm not saying the Feds couldn't make positive changes, just that there is plenty else that could be done, and waiting for the Feds is not really a tenable path at the moment.
I think that the thing that makes Canada better in this regard from the States is the average intelligence and educational background of police officers in Canada being higher than that of the states. This is all anecdotal so it isn't worth much, but I have found that the police in the States to be much less educated than the police in Canada. Not saying the all the police in Canada are great or even good, but I have noticed that they are in general less aggressive than police in the States.
I honestly believe that if you put someone into a position who has life experience, who has interacted with others outside of their social circle, and who has developed at least a modicum of critical thinking that they will be less likely to revert into a mode where everyone is seen as the enemy. That is essentially what Grossman seems to train to - is that everyone needs to be seen as a potential enemy and that if you let down your guard at any time, that is when you will be attacked and killed yourself, which is in itself incredulously dumb.
In Canada we only have one group of racially distinct citizens who have, for most of the countries history, been seen as an alien group that needed to be suppressed, obviously they are our indigenous population, and on the occasions our police act in a wholly inappropriate manner it still tends to be in areas and towards people they perceive as native, the main difference between the native experience in Canada and the Black experience in the states is that Canada never felt the same level of threat from natives as the States did and still does from their black population
