It seems like this forum is missing someone who is really pro-MAGA now that the Banana guy or whatever is gone. I might fill in for a while.
Printable View
It seems like this forum is missing someone who is really pro-MAGA now that the Banana guy or whatever is gone. I might fill in for a while.
I tried to fill that role but frankly I'm not nearly interested enough in American politics.
Good because we don't want your foreigner ass sticking your fucking nose in our politics. That's why this country is going to hell in a handbasket in the first place. We've got 900 bazillion dollars to give to Israel every fucking year, but we can't get [insert anything, idk I'm too lazy to pick something] in our own goddamn country because of people like you.
I'm not going to debate anything back and forth, but I guess with my trolling history, it could be useful for me to spell out what I actually think in one place. Overall, I support Trump for some things, and I'm against him for some things.
On a macro and long-term level, I enjoyed someone who was a complete outsider beating like the top 15 people the Republican Party had to offer followed by beating Hillary Clinton, who is probably the most prolific politician we have who hasn't been president. I love that the guy the left likes to call a "failed reality TV star who was banging porn stars while his wife was pregnant" or whatever is the guy who beat them all because it really brought to light how disconnected politicians are from the people they supposedly serve.
In terms of policy, I like the push for building a legitimate wall on the southern border, something Democrats were pushing hard for just a couple of decades ago. Our southern border is absolutely insane with human trafficking, and anything that puts a reasonable dent in that is something I'll be in favor of. It's also a simple matter of national security. I also like the push for limiting immigration for people who will not have a net positive effect on the country, however you want to reasonably determine that. I like doing anything to gut the "Affordable Care Act" that was supposed to be our universal healthcare legislation but is actually just unaffordable yet compulsory health insurance that doesn't cover much (this gets into eliminating the insurance industry, which is its own clusterfuck of a discussion and which is something that will never happen).
Now for some of what I don't like.
On him as a person, the thing that stood out to me the most about the "pussy grabbing" tapes was him talking about trying to take this woman furniture shopping. It was the most embarrassing, non-pimp shit I have ever heard in my life.
I really didn't like him putting his kids and son in law into positions of power, especially at a cost to taxpayers. That early situation not being able to utilize controlling both houses of Congress to any effect was also really bad.
In terms of policy, I didn't like some of the things he had to say about gun control, specifically comments in favor of things like what we call "red flag laws" that allow guns to be taken away without due process just due to allegations that do not have to be proven or substantiated in any real way.
I wasn't a fan of how he handled Mattis late in the game, but I was a fan of how he handled him early in the game. Trump came in suggesting certain military policies, Mattis disagreed and laid out why, and Trump went with what Mattis suggested instead because he recognized that Mattis was the expert on that subject.... and then all of that went out the fucking window.
On the issue of the coronavirus stuff, he got called a racist for trying to initiate a travel ban for people who had visited China so early on. A couple of months later, and the same news outlets (the NYT as one example) were saying he didn't do it soon enough. My problem is that he seemed to fold in the face of things like this instead of taking it on the chin. It's like when the riots broke out this summer, I thought that he needed to do more to put those down because of the pandemic. He definitely cared too much about what people thought about him compared to just doing his job. (Side note: AOC appears to be the opposite of this for now, which is why I like her as a person a lot while being against many/most of her policy ideas.)
His position on the masks stuff stayed pretty close in line with what the Surgeon General, the CDC and WHO were saying, so I can't hate on him for that anymore than I hate on those three (which is a lot). That shit in the Rose Garden, however, was some of the most ridiculous bullshit I've ever seen in my life, and he should have never allowed that to happen.
The big thing that a lot of people are talking about now is his speech before the Capitol situation. I've watched the entire speech more than once, and it wasn't anything out of the ordinary in terms of political figures encouraging a protest. He specifically told them to be peaceful. With that said, he shouldn't have been encouraging any protest during a fucking pandemic anymore than the riots and protests this summer should have been encouraged. Here's the speech: "Keep your fucking ass at home." The end. That's it. That's all it should have been.
Overall with the coronavirus stuff, Trump really got dealt a shitty hand with that happening at all, especially in his first term, especially starting around the beginning of an election year. But he didn't exactly do himself a lot of favors with how he handled it either.
Anyway that's entirely too long of a post on politics for me, so don't get used to it.
^^^ OK well that's actually pretty well thought-out. I take back the nihilism comment, though that was the vibe I got from banana.
I think it's nihilism from that type as well, but there's not really much of a cure for it when every source of meaning has been stripped from a large demographic. I also think it helps to explain the QAnon bunch as well since it gives them some source of meaning.
Of course, that's not necessarily all that different from people who make "social justice" and being "woke" as their entire identity because they have no meaning from anything else.
When people talk about politics being the new religion, they aren't joking, but it gets at the same thing. These groups from both "sides" are getting the same thing from their respective sources of bullshit.
https://i.ibb.co/g4MJG0F/lauren.jpg
Speaking of the MAGA agenda, I'm a really big fan of Lauren Boebert. She's a newly elected Congresswoman from Colorado, and she's MAGA as fuck.
8/10 definitely would fuck
I like crazy. 9/10, definitely would fuck.
Moving this discussion over here, as it doesn't belong in the MEGA thread.
This is a perspective that I want to embrace and really let it be my center as a starting point to examine all political issues. Not to simply pick a side before we get started, but to see how the many variables affect the entire state of the system. I do find it difficult to maintain that perspective, as it's much easier to be a bonehead, but I don't like feeling like a bonehead, so ...
As a foundation, this feels right.
Onto some specifics:
Understanding that all office holders abuse their power - i.e. citing that someone has abused power is not in-and-of-itself a moral judgement. That's the game they're playing, and rules are meant to be broken in a democracy. Intent matters.
Did any of Trump's abuses of power strike you as dangerous precedents for the stability of the US on the world stage?
E.g. the nepotism, leaving many state department roles unfilled, etc. pick whatever drives your opinion or a simple "no" is fine, too.
You've spoken about Trump and the Republican party in 3rd person because I kinda misspoke initially.
Do you support anything about Trump? If so, what?
Do you oppose anything about Trump? If so, what?
Scroll up a few to post #8707 in this thread:
https://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerf...60#post2311160
That should answer most or all of what you're asking.
Minority and majority should be switched here. My bad.Quote:
However, if limitations on this exploitation are too severe, then it's ultimately bad for the less powerful minority because the powerful majority will simply leave and go somewhere else, taking opportunities with them.
All that makes sense, but only if the premise "there's always going to be a powerful numerical minority" is true. One could argue that humans are innately egalitarian, that's how hunter-gatherer societies worked and still do. I'm not convinced we shouldn't even try to achieve that goal, and just aim to maintain some fragile balance, where the majority isn't too badly screwed over to make them revolt.
Some humans are innately egalitarian, and other humans are innately authoritarian.
Ignoring either group is not going to work in the long run.
There will always be charismatic people who excel at persuasion and gain political clout over it. No matter how many egalitarian people there are, there will always be other people who want to follow a charismatic leader. Charisma is easily mistaken for competence, IMO.
So a chunk of Oregon might be trying to leave the state and join Idaho: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...te-escaping-g/
Quote:
Five Oregon counties will ask voters in the next election whether they want to detach from the deep-blue state and join neighboring red-state Idaho.
Move Oregon’s Border, also known as Greater Idaho, confirmed Tuesday that the initiative to move swaths of largely rural eastern and southern Oregon into Idaho qualified for the May 18 special election ballot in five counties: Baker, Grant, Lake, Malheur and Sherman.
...
He cited the impact of Democratic Gov. Kate Brown’s novel coronavirus restrictions; ongoing Antifa unrest in Portland; a state task force’s unsuccessful effort to prioritize “Black, Indigenous and people of color” for novel coronavirus vaccines, and what he described as the state legislature’s bias in favor of Portland over rural communities.
“This state protects Antifa arsonists, not normal Oregonians, it prioritizes one race above another for vaccines and program money and in the school curriculum, and it prioritizes Willamette Valley above rural Oregon,” Mr. McCarter said.
What's fun about this is that a couple of counties have already approved the measures being voted on. This could have some minor implications for Congress and the Electoral College as well.
I'm not so sure.
Most people are authoritarian, since most people want a legal system and sufficient enforcement to ensure behaviour they believe to be immoral is disincentivised.
I am too, reluctantly. I'd be in favour of anarchism if I thought humans were ready for it. We're not, so I support a system of authority that protects people from violence.
Egalitarianism is the belief all humans are equal. Does anyone really think this? We like to think we believe it because we all like to think we're good people, but who here thinks Donald Trump is their equal? How about OJ Simpson? Some guy rotting in prison for murder?
Nobody who passes moral judgement on others is egalitarian.
https://i.imgur.com/OA2VONC.png
So I'm 36 years old. I've been hearing people talk about how much they hate politicians my entire life. I'm genuinely surprised that this type of shit hasn't happened more often.
A bit of a tangent, but I wonder if the only thing that stopped America from having a revolution in the late '60s was the vast amount of marijuana being smoked.
South Park is doing a Q special soon. They have a tremendous track record with this sort of thing, so I'm excited to see it.
However, I was surprised to look back and not see any serious discussion about the QAnon stuff, which surprised me because it's one of the most interesting things to happen in US politics in a long time. I was considering making it a separate thread, but we don't really do separate threads here. That left me wondering if I should put it here or in the randomness thread.
Here's the basic idea for my foreigner friends and other normies:
- In 2017, the year that Trump started his term as president, someone started posting anonymously on 4chan while posing as some type of undisclosed government official. This person is known as Q.
- In a lot of ways, this can be seen as the spiritual successor of Pizzagate. The primary difference is that Pizzagate actually had enough evidence to warrant consideration at first in a "where there's smoke, there's fire" sort of way. QAnon tried to recreate this dynamic to varying and often lackluster degrees of success.
- Q posts online messages in a cryptic form known as "Q drops." Somewhere in the range of 4,500 to 5,500 of them have been posted, which gives people plenty to work from.
- It's important to note that, with the way these imageboards work, it can be verified that it's the same person posting them even though the posts are anonymous.
- An online catalog in the form of a Google Spreadsheet of most Q drops can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1596710080
- The basic premise is that there's a massive conspiracy against the people of Western democracies, and Trump was/is going to put an end to it.
- What's so great about it from a structural standpoint is that it incorporates a wide range of lesser conspiracy theories, which means it can pivot endlessly when it fails to deliver on something specific.
- What's so great about it from a functional standpoint is that it frequently operates along the lines of a puzzle-solving game.
- The "telephone game" comes into play as well as things are amplified and passed on through memes. The fact that virtually no one in on it actually participates in 8chan, an obscure online imageboard where this "undisclosed government official" actually posts these days, ensures that people are getting the "information" second-hand at best, which further complicates the situation.
In short, it's an absolutely glorious clusterfuck.
To give you an idea of what a Q drop looks like, here is what's believed to be the first one from late 2017:
HRC = Hillary Clinton, NG = National GuardQuote:
HRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M’s will conduct the operation while NG activated. Proof check: Locate a NG member and ask if activated for duty 10/30 across most major cities.
Something really interesting about this from a psychological perspective is that once you "see the pattern" and "know what's really going on," you can start to pull in all kinds of things as a part of the conspiracy. In early 2018, autocorrect played a part in this when Trump accidentally send a tweet that included the word "consequential" when he meant "consensual."
Since there's a "Q" in that mistaken word, followers of the QAnon mess thought that this was Trump giving them a hidden message. And wouldn't you know it, the next Q drop "confirmed" that this is what had happened.
All of that aside, my personal favorite assertion from a Q drop is that Edward Snowden, the guy who had to flee the country permanently because he exposed the government spying on virtually every US citizen in violation of the Constitution, is a CIA plant that works for this global ruling interest that's at the heart of the thing.
Fast-forward until now, and I don't think there has been a single Q drop so far this year. I'm of the opinion that it'll pick back up once Trump gets back into public light.
How did they decode "covfefe"?
I like a good conspiracy but the whole Q thing just seemed like too deep a rabbit hole for me. It's like reading Lord of the Rings, first you read the Hobbit in a couple of days, and think "I enjoyed that read", so you pick up the Fellowship of the Ring, get a page or two in and think "fuck this".
I kept telling myself I'd pay it more attention when something happened to make me think the swamp was being drained. Don't get me wrong, I'm convinced there's an elite class of super wealthy who have global influence, I think nearly every government in the world, if not all, are corrupt, and I don't doubt there's a lot of sleaze going on involving underage boys and girls. Do I really want to know how deep this goes? Only if people are being held to account.
The problem with the whole Q thing is it's pure speculation. At least with 9/11 we watched the towers fall.
Keep the memory alive!
https://i.imgur.com/fqG0T8E.jpg
OnlyFans model says Catholic school expelled her children over her racy photos
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...r-her-n1258755
You can find her online as "Mrs. Poindexter" if you are so inclined.Quote:
A California mother of three said her boys were expelled from their Catholic school after administrators discovered her OnlyFans account.
Crystal Jackson’s increasing popularity on the adult, subscription-based site caught the attention, and ire, of parents at Sacred Heart Parish School in Sacremento, according to NBC affiliate KCRA.
After she and her husband spoke with a British tabloid about the controversy last week, Jackson said Theresa Sparks, Sacred Heart's principal, sent an email Sunday saying their children were not allowed to return.
In an email obtained by the news station, Sparks said, "Your apparent quest for high-profile controversy in support of your adult website is in direct conflict with what we hope to impart to our students and is directly opposed to the policies laid out in our Parent/Student Handbook.”
“We therefore require that you find another school for your children and have no further association with ours," she said.
Sparks declined to comment on the matter on Wednesday.
"We cannot discuss the status or circumstances of any member of our school or parish community," Sparks said in an email.
NBC News could not reach Jackson for comment, but she told KCRA that she is “still the same Crystal I was, like, two years ago, a year ago when we had coffee before you knew this. Now you just are judging me.”
Aren't schools regulated in USA? You can't do this in the UK, it would be appealed to a higher authority and the school would be forced to back down. The head would probably be forced to resign. I was "excluded" from school more times than I can remember, and the vast majority of the time the school was forced to take me back. Excluding children from UK schools is not easy when there's no suggestion of violence or drugs, you have to basically cause a teacher to have a meltdown.
They're regulated, but with private schools, you agree to a contract. If you don't uphold your part of the contract, they can end the agreement.
No one is forced out of schools in general. Everyone has public schools they can go to up to a certain age. Our private schools are an optional choice (just like homeschooling is).
I like the idea of someone on the school board trawling through porn and going "Hey, that's Sally's mom! I'm calling a board meeting, we can't have anything to do with this."
Still seems tenuous as fuck, legally speaking. An adult can be contractually bound to the school's terms, but how do you punish the child when the adult breaches that contract? You can't hold a child contractually responsible for the behaviour of the parents.
I can see a world where the school is entitled to sue the parent for damages, but expulsion of children for no fault of their own is not something that could happen here, and shouldn't happen in a country like USA.
If these were my kids I'd be kicking up a stink. I'd want the head's resignation, and anyone else I can hold legally accountable.
The question of how the school found out is certainly interesting. Chances seem high that someone somewhere was having a wank on OnlyFans, saw Sally's Mom, and had the neck to tell others about it.
Honestly, if I saw someone I knew on a site like that, I'd follow them and keep my mouth shut. I'd find it very amusing to think to myself next time I see Sally's mom "I had a wank over you last night" while talking about our kids' football game after school.
She's claiming she's being "body-shamed." I thought that was when someone was a big fatty and someone called them a big fatty or something.
This seems closer to a case of slut-shaming. But I suppose her lawyers don't think that's a sympathetic defense in bible country.
https://www.ladbible.com/news/news-o...hamed-20210227
lol, $15/mo. for a membership on OnlyFans. Wtf pays for porn these days?
https://onlyfans.com/mrspoindexter
I think the appeal with that is the "personal" touch. Porn is more interactive these days, you can actually have conversations with the women you're jerking off over. It's live and she's doing it for you. It's digital prostitution for her, and for him he feels like he has a relationship of sorts with the girl. If you're wealthy and lonely maybe you like giving money to an attractive girl who will finger herself in gratitude.
We've come a long way since I was a kid when porn was a jizz stained magazine dumped behind a bush.
While that scenario is hilarious, this particular situation is a little different. It wasn't just that she was doing the porn thing, but she was openly doing interviews about it with major publications.
I understand your frustration, but the only person legally accountable is the mother for breaking the terms of the contract she signed with the school.
Kids catch negative consequences for the behavior and choices of their parents all the time. That's just a part of life.
The kids still get to go to school. They just don't get to go to that particular school.
Dudes get off on the paying part specifically. They feel like they're helping to provide for this woman and whatever, and that gives them a positive feeling.
There are plenty of dudes who have addiction problems over this kind of thing that aren't completely different than how people get hooked on different types of gambling. It's really fascinating.
Don't confuse frustration with a tendency to talk shit. I couldn't give a fuck about this lady's children, I'm just surprised it's allowed to happen and feel there is likely some legal foundation to challenge it. But maybe these things are different in USA.Quote:
Originally Posted by spoon
https://i.imgur.com/UOZTq4K.jpg
*The Imperial March Plays*
Haha, this image exchange made my morning.
oskar is from Austria, right? This is Austria...
https://external-content.duckduckgo....jpg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....jpg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....jpg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....peg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....gif&f=1&nofb=1
Isn't someone here from Finland?
https://external-content.duckduckgo....6pid%3DApi&f=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....JPG&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....jpg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....378&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo....jpg&f=1&nofb=1
That steak looks awesome.
That burger looks ridiculous. Why not just have 3 separate burgers instead of trying to cram all three into your mouth at once?
Whoever booked this person has a great sense of humour.
https://twitter.com/JonathanPieNews/...35614447218690
That bear looks like he could use a triple-decker burger.
Wrong country, His best hope is a plate of pancakes with maple syrup, or the face of a camping child.
That triple decker burger is disgusting. If someone presented that to me I would probably have a heart attack looking at it.
I mean what I'd actually do is separate the meat from the non-meat, attempt to remove any mayo off the meat using a dry piece of bread, and eat the meat, leaving a pile of soggy bread and various fillings and sauces, while wishing I'd visited the steak house instead.
This is the MAGAposting thread, not the leafposting thread.
President Trump told everyone to get the vaccine, another gift from the Trump Administration, at CPAC.
Question: Why did Bill Gates name his company after his dick?
https://i.imgur.com/Effy6Km.png
Since we're doing pictures, here's resident schizo Alyssa Milano at it again.
When you're already great, there's no need to make yourself great again.
This should be our official trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSdJ6h-QEEU
Actually what I would like to recommend for anyone who wants to understand our political landscape is a documentary that unfortunately doesn't exist with subtitles afaik.
It was filmed around the inauguration of Kurt Waldheim who faced international criticism for being an ex SA member, which was basically pre-SS nazi brownshirts, and became a Lieutenant during the war.
To the international press, our political leaders including the previous president claimed that the accusations were overblown, but what this documentary shows is the support Waldheim got precisely because of his role leading up to the Nazi occupation. It's a series of interviews of inebriated austrians in pubs parroting old nazi propaganda. It is a brilliant insight into the fascist mindset and it is criminal that it was kept under lock for so long by the austrian broadcasting station that commissioned it.
It was filmed for TV in 1988, but did not air until 2016.
https://youtu.be/K3Efqw_y76E - link for reference, but useless without subs.
That's funny to say because the more typical attempt at a rebuke from Americans is, "America was never great," which is obviously laughable.
The problem is that it's those people, their tendencies toward being lackluster at virtually everything in their lives and them dragging down everyone around them that are the reasons for the again part.
Time to get MAGA as fuck in this motherfucker.
From the crazy bitch factory that brought you Laruen Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, we have a new contender for Senate in Arkansas with Jan Morgan:
https://i.imgur.com/Prff2bN.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ZGa0brQ.jpg
Ugh, she's so milf hot. I absolutely love slightly trashy milfy brunette milfs. They're soo much type. As such, Jan Morgan will be my new favorite over Lauren Boebert if she wins.
A few bits about her:
Quote:
Jan is an Associated Press Award Winning Veteran television investigative journalist, now turned citizen activist for the Conservative Movement. She is a weekly guest on Fox Business Network on 2A issues.
Quote:
During her 27 years as a television anchor and reporter, Jan’s work won Associated Press awards in spot news, documentary, and best continuing coverage.
She also seems to own and operate an indoor gun range called The Gun Cave.Quote:
Jan is NRA Certified in firearms/range safety and recently completed her testing to become a state certified concealed carry instructor in her home state of Arkansas.
They should just start a hot girls with guns party lol. This is getting to be a theme.
It does seem to have some implications for the climate there though. Like, our politicians are so useless we might as well just elect some eye candy.
That said, this is one of ours currently deputy leader of opposition.
Don't usually go for redheads myself, but I'd make an exception here.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAWTkxDW4AAoBTo.jpg:large
She's a poor man's Kari from Mythbusters. I'd give her a mere 10/10.
Kari is off the scale, obviously.
I mean, possibly the hottest person in history. Imagine being her husband. Imagine being that fucking lucky.
https://external-content.duckduckgo....jpg&f=1&nofb=1
EDIT - that guy in the plane is her husband.
Wanker. Absolute wanker.
1. Hot wife who can fix anything.
2. Hot wife with a machine gun.
3. Hot wife who's a politician.
This is doing the rounds on Twitter, obviously very critical and whatnot...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ev1ROicU...jpg&name=large
I seem to be alone in thinking she's hot as fuck now. I mean she was pretty, but now she's smoking hot. I'm definitely a fan of punk bitches.
Rofl
How's the civil war going?
Not sure if this counts as MAGA or not, but Chauvin just got convicted for murder and manslaughter in the George Floyd case. Good, that cop is a cunt.
His defence seemed to be that he didn't kill Floyd, the drugs did, which was torn apart by doctors. Weak as fuck defence.
I suspect the 2nd degree murder charge will get overturned upon appeal, since 2nd degree murder implies intent to kill (though not premeditation). I'm surprised the jury consider that to be proven. The other two charges are much more difficult to overturn though.
Hmm 2nd degree murder can be as a result of negligent or reckless behaviour, even if there's no intent to kill. Ok with that in mind, I can see how he's guilty of that too.
I didn't follow the trial. Trials are boring. I'm not familiar with the arguments made by either side.
I do remember those videos at the time, and that people on the sidewalk were shouting at Chauvin that he was killing Floyd, that Floyd was not struggling, and eventually that he was not responsive. I remember Chauvin grabbing his pepper spray and threatening those witnesses at the suggestion.
I was scared that our BS legal system that protects cops under all circumstances would let him go. So the fact that it didn't is a plus in an otherwise tragic tale.
Meanwhile, a lot has changed on paper, but it's not really clear if any of it will make a difference. Many states and cities passed laws regarding the use of choke holds by police, but many of those leave loop holes. Some efforts were made in a few places to provide protections for whistleblowers. But I'm still hearing about black people being killed by police fairly regularly. The recent 2 cops to do so were both "Oops. I thought I had my tazer in my hand, but I had my gun in my hand." Which... if that's your problem, you have no business holding either, IMO.
Anyway... I'm glad that a person caught murdering on many cameras was found guilty of murder. I'm still concerned that it took multiple cameras and a national outcry to affect that outcome.
The defense was embarrassing. Chauvin pleaded the 5th. The expert witness they dragged out was a white South African who sounded like they just had him change out of his Boer uniform seconds before taking the stand, and who was previously an expert witness in a strikingly similar case.
If you have a go-to guy for when your white cop murders an unarmed black man, maybe try to do better than a 70 year old white South African... incomprehensible decision, but then American cops are not known for their big brain moves.
They completely lost it when they filed a motion for mistrial because of something Maxine Waters said. You're basically telling the jury you know you're fucked and you're looking the get off through a technicality.
I did not expect guilty on all charges. iirc after the tapes came out officials were on the fence whether any charges were going to be brought against Chauvin, forget about murder charges. I don't think if at that point American patriots had failed to react appropriately by setting the country on fire, I don't think it would have ever ended the way it did.
I am hoping that this will bring a wave of police reform around the world.
On choke hold bans, check out Sam Harris' podcast Making Sense #246 with Rener Gracie. I'm pretty hard in the camp of "we've tried reform and additional training (increase police funding) time and again, and we just get more militarized thugs with badges" camp-- that said, while I think Harris is off on some points (the responsibility of the untrained public to behave adequately in the presence of an armed and trained agent of the state), or is weighting his values in a way I don't agree with (continuity and order vs the risk of drastic change), I think Harris and his guest, Gracie, make a very strong case that chokehold and other body restraint bans are a misstep that will have awful ramifications.
It was the first time in Minnesota that it happened.
I was relieved to hear the verdict, but FFS, a 13 yo black girl was killed by cops in the past week, and she was the one who called the cops in the first place.
That's on top of the 2 "Oops. Thought is was my tazer." shootings in the past month.
It's still a rate of about 1 black person killed by a cop every 3 days in the US over the past year, so it's not like a huge amount of progress is being made.
We need more (peaceful) protests. We need this to keep being raged at. We need to address the absolute shitstorm that is the US view on crime and punishment as a whole. The system is literally designed to strip the right to vote by black Americans by turning black culture into felony offenses. It's designed to keep poor people poor and to marginalize certain groups. It's designed to isolate those poor and marginalized people from the greater society and make it nearly impossible for them to re-enter.
I mean: What is it about Americans that makes us need to imprison such a vast swath of our people? Is it our freedom? Do we really believe in freedom? Do we?
The US legal system is clearly broken.
I agree with the sentiment. Though I do think it's absurd (at least after the body cam video came out) for people to be treating Ma'khia Bryant's killing as equivalent to George Floyds. It for sure was an absolute tragedy. Part of the tragedy being that she was in fact the one who called police for help because she was allegedly being attacked by the other girls. On a systemic level, this is troubling and a sign that things need to change-- but that cop made a tough call in the moment, and I just don't see how anyone can understand what the word murder means and think that applies here.
Also I bolded her age-- I don't know if this is a cynical move on the part of people who want to embellish an anti cop narrative (as if there's a need for that..), but I've seen 12, 13, 14, 15, and her actual age, according to her foster mom, 16. In actuality a very young person lost their life, and that's terrible, but in the narrow reality of whether it was a justified shooting, calling her a child is disingenuous and an attempt to smear the cop as a child killer.
btw, I'm pretty fucking anti cop, but what this cop did is simply not the same as what Chauvin was just convicted of.
I didn't use the word murder.
I appreciate that you may be arguing against a sentiment in other public spaces that I did not put forth.
Just wanted to be clear that I'm not equating Chauvin's actions to other situations.
Well... I am insofar as police violence against blacks is a cultural problem that is not changing fast enough.
Sorry about getting Ma'khia Bryant's age wrong. I wasn't trying to make a point with the age, just trying to attach a minimal piece of information to convey the situation I'm talking about, but I didn't actually look into the facts; I just repeated what I'd heard.
The "I thought it was my taser" defense strikes me as about equivalent to running someone over in your car then saying "I meant to put my foot on the brake instead of the gas." That's a pretty gigantic brain fart there. Not sure that would really be allowed to cut it as an excuse, either; pretty sure you'd be facing charges if that happened.
It certainly helped that the defense faceplanted at every junction.
I know jurys arent supposed to watch the news, but it would have been hard to miss a number of police killings in the week leading up to the verdict. I imagine that might have helped as well.
It's not justice, this is no substitute for reform, but its nice to win one.
Yeah, I was just kinda using your post as a starting point-- I should have clarified that more.
And agreed, the institution of American policing is deeply sick. It's evolved to exacerbate the worst tendencies inherent in policing and minimize the best. This is what gets me onboard with "abolish" in the sense that starting from scratch is probably easier and possibly the only viable option.
Well, this is why we have all different degrees of murder and manslaughter. It would appear that Kim Potter, the cop who shot Dante Wright, really did have a tragically consequential brain fart. When you think of the number of cops out there with a gun and a tazer, the number of interactions with the public these cops have, if we put our probability intuition caps on, it's not shocking that these errors would show up.
Yup, I don't doubt it was inevitable any more than it's inevitable that if enough people drive cars that have a brake and gas pedal next to each other, some of them are going to press the wrong one at the wrong time.
A shame really, but should be easy to minimise the chance of it happening to a cop from an ergonomic pov. Just make the taser have a completely different grip, or colour it orange or w/e you need to do to make sure it's obvious to someone whether something their holding is a taser or a gun.
Before I get into this, I should probably mention that I'm generally on the anti-cop side of the fence. I grew up in a very redneck environment out in the middle of nowhere in the Southeastern US, and probably 1/2-2/3 of the guys I grew up with and male members of my family had gotten into a fight with a cop at some point. That "thin blue line" shit doesn't really fly with me.
My thoughts on the whole thing, in no particular order:
- Derek Chauvin is a massive piece of shit. His history and the shit he's pulled is why people hate cops like they do. I'm glad that he's going to seemingly be locked up for a long time because the last thing he needs to be doing is carrying out his profession of being a cop.
- George Floyd was a massive piece of shit. While it's tragic that he died the way he did, and extrajudicial killings should absolutely not happen in an ideal world, society is probably better off with him dead.
- Nancy Pelosi is a fucking moron. "Thank you George Floyd for sacrificing your life for justice." I'm pretty sure he'd rather be alive you dumbfuck.
- There will be plenty of room for appeals, so this whole thing isn't over just yet. Maxine Waters didn't help the situation with her dumb shit (for international readers, this is absolutely grounds for a mistrial), but it's pretty much par for the course with her. Outside of that, this is still going to be a long, drawn-out ordeal.
On a somewhat related note, I very much support a complete and total overhaul of police training. In particular, I think they should be training a significant percentage of the hours they are paid for working each week. Moreover, I think the training involved to become a cop in the first place should be increased by a substantial amount.
Removing cops from the equation simply isn't going to work in the long run. The only option that leaves is reform.
lol, that was my first thought too. What a stupid thing to say.
Before I go google what she did, I'ma take a wild guess it was something along the lines of publicly supporting a conviction while the trial was still going on. brb.
Edit: Yeah I figured. The bit about confronting the justice system if the verdict was not guilty was a nice touch.
For people who supposedly make a living out of knowing how to read a room, these two are really out to lunch.
I haven't heard any sensible person call for a removal of police. "Defund the police" is a bad catch phrase in that it leads people to assume "defund" is the same as "abolish." It's not (at least, not to any sensible person). The call is to redirect some funding from the police to create a new public service that addresses mental health issues - something police have been begging for for decades.
When someone calls 911 over a mental health issue, the police come. They don't want to do that, and people saying "defund the police" are simply calling for the change the police themselves have requested. The phrase just sucks.
***
I think it's worth your while to research the history of policing in America. Having an organized, permanent police force is a relatively new invention, and not a staple of human civilization, not even in the US.
I am not drawing or implying direct links from the origins of US policing and any currently alive police officer. I am encouraging everyone to actually look into the history of policing in the US, because the popular view that civilized people must have police is simply false. There are other reasons we need police in modern societies, and that's worth exploring. The fact that having a police force is not (in all cases) necessary to a functioning society is noteworthy.
And it's well worth exploring that perfectly non-racist police are enforcing blatantly racist laws - often unaware of the historical racism that put the laws in place. The people doing the work didn't choose the work itself. They chose to uphold an ideal of service to their community - in most cases.
My point is that reforming the police is kinda another "criminalize the symptoms while you spread the disease" approach. Yes, we need reform in our policing, but we also need dramatic reform on the laws behind the criminal justice system.
Why do we have so many of our own citizens in our own prisons? Is it that our freedom makes us criminals? Or is it that the laws are broken?
Are Americans just fundamentally more criminal than the rest of the people in the world? Wouldn't that be something to be ashamed of?
The New York Times: Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/o...nd-police.html
Op-ed piece. The literal opposite of editorial.
I'd have no problem with abolishing the police. I don't think it's helpful as an agenda because it's just not going to happen. I'd take reform over nothing.
Do you not think, on the balance, the police prevent far more crime than they cause? What is the idea behind abolishing them?
no
I'm not aware of any statistics that show that policing prevents crime. Police react to crime. It's like that joke: If there's no police and your house gets robbed, who's going to show up and shoot your dog?Quote:
What is the idea behind abolishing them?
Traffic cops: not real cops. Should be a different agency. Don't need to be armed.
Drug enforcement: not needed, not wanted. Just get rid of them.
Welfare checks/domestic/homeless/mental health: hire social workers.
Counter terrorism, homicide, organized crime: already a different department.
I think in some countries reform can work, but when I see shit like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzlrSWSyJpw
This cannot be reformed.