Let's fire Trump

Changing institutions can be done directly. Changing society takes years. Changing institutions is one way to change society. Stopping smoking in public did a lot more to cut smoking in a couple of years than all the decades of public service announcements, surgeon reports, education in schools over decades.

Oh geeees, livnglava's brother. I hope its not the boogaloos.

I don't think you're understanding our point of difference correctly... You seem to think that I was saying you have to wait until you've changed attitudes on a societal level before you can start looking at what reforms need to be made in relation to institutions. This is not what I was suggesting, so the "smoking" reference is moot.

Let's say for example, and all things being equal you start at the societal level, in that; we understand what is acceptable police force, and (just as importantly) what circumstances such force should and should not used. You would ALSO be looking at what reforms could be made to the police AT THE SAME TIME.

Think of it this way: If I have a problem with my PC, I get as much data about the issue as I can, then I look at what's relevant to the problem I'm having. While ALSO looking at what the possible causes of the problem are. The point? It's impossible to solve the problem, if you don't know what it actually is to begin with. You also need to know if it's a part of a wider problem. In other words: you deal with the cause of the problem, rather than just treating the symptoms. Why? Because if you don't deal with the root cause of the problem, you aren't solving the problem. Then you have the same problem all over again - the current events in your country are case in point of that.

So let's take a brief look at the example that has sparked the latest events in your country...

What should have been a very simple arrest resulted in a man's needless death. You had four police officers dealing with ONE man, you had three of those same officers holding the same man face down on the street, with one officer compressing the same guy's neck into the street. The same man appeared to already be in cuffs, and most certainly under control, and therefore did ***not*** pose any threat to anyone - he was firmly under control and could not have done anything to hurt anyone concerned. But it took at least eight minutes for those same officers to let the guy up, by which time he was already unconscious due to the lack of oxygen.

But why did the guy even need to be put face down onto the street to begin with, if he was already under control and in cuffs? Why did it take eight minutes with even bystanders clearly saying "he CAN'T breathe, let him up" ?

Well, there are answers to these questions. Is it because four police officers set out to murder someone that day, and George Floyd just happened to cross their path? I doubt it.

Is there a reason that these same incidents have happened right across your country? Yes, there is. Is there only one police force responsible for all of the same sort of incidents that have happened in your country? No. Join the dots.

I'll tell you one more thing; I don't give the furry crack of a rats ass what race the person is, there's no way such a simple arrest should EVER result in one's death...

Most people in the thread can see that you offer childish name-calling instead of real arguments.

Because they didn't want to be down on the pavement beside him, because they knew while cops might well shoot someone, they didn't think the cop would cold bloodedly squeeze the life out of the suspect, because cops get even - look into what happened to the guy who videoed Eric Gardners Murder under a pile of cops. And it took SIX YEARS just to fire ONE.

Hardly murder. Eric Garner died of injuries that he sustained while resisting arrest.

Hopefully the courts restore the officer's job with back pay.

Right. Which not only proves what I'm saying, it's all the more reason why the problem starts at a societal level. And therefore, needs to be dealt with at both societal level, right up to the very institutions, and not only the police. In other words: the police are only a part of the wider problem. Look at how black people are disproportionately represented by things like high incarceration rates, poverty, lack of the same educational outcomes compared to most white people (think higher education in particular), unemployment/underemployment, you name it.

You don't think all of those things are all a part of a wider problem? Well if not, think again. You don't think all of the above start at a societal level? If so, think again. You think the USA is the only country in the entire world that has such problems? Think again. You think trump or the democrats are ever going to save your countrymen and women? Good luck with that if history is anything to go by.

The police are the spark that's ignited the fire - all of the above is the fuel that's burning... that's why just focusing on one or two institutions isn't likely to change much.

Look at the root causes creating the symptoms to begin with, if you're in any ways interested in actually solving the problem.

They say the US criminal justice system sets nine guilty people free in order to prevent one innocent person from being falsely incriminated.

Why wouldn't you expect it to work the same way for police?

It would be wonderful if there were no criminal organizations systematically searching for power to get rid of the police they don't like and keep the ones they do, but there are.

The challenge is to differentiate between bad cops and good cops who are unpopular with criminals because they don't 'play the game,' and cooperate with criminals in a way that makes them happy. Obviously organized crime is going to have lawyers who are out to get good cops, who are going to paint those cops as bad and corrupt in order to get them fired.

So when something happens that really warrants firing/prosecuting an officer, they have to be really careful not to just let organized crime generate public noise to get good cops fired because they pose a threat to organized crime and all the spoils it spreads around to its friends throughout the public.

What would be really great would be if crime could stop being brutal, so that cops would not get pulled into the same dark level of brutality as crime. Police should not lower themselves to the level of criminals, but the reality is that it's going to happen to people who see atrocities happening on the streets day after day for a long time and the frustration of not being able to control it gets to them.

Trump may be unpopular for distinguishing between legitimate protestors and criminals at this point, but it is an inconvenient truth that should not be ignored. There is a difference between peaceful protest and exploiting a protest situations to stoke violence, destruction, and criminality.

If you don't do something to stop crime from taking over peaceful protests, aren't you just sacrificing peaceful protestors to criminals?

Why is "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" so popular with you guys?

That expression makes no sense with regard to the post you're responding to.

What 'baby' and what 'bathwater?'

Your biggest take from the protests and Floyd's death is "but the looting".

Property damage is not very high on the list of outrages associate with whats going on. Quit twiddling in the bathwater.

Clear communication doesn’t cut the ice with the verbose.

Rik Mayall’s outburst from The Young Ones makes more sense than that party.

“ Let’s storm the Reichstag.
Excuse me are you the tsar?
Well yes I am actually.
Well take that you fascist.”

The data says those outrages just are not that outrageous. More unarmed white men are killed by police. Not to mention Blacks kill more Blacks than any race or profession such as the police. Don't let facts get in the way of destroying the country.

Their cultural grounding is sadly lacking.

No, my biggest take is that people can use a death to excuse violence, property-destruction, and theft in the name of peaceful protest.

I don't have to take anything from these protests because I've been concerned and confused by racial inequality and violence for years. There's something fishy in the secretiveness of both the racist underground organizations like the KKK as well as organized crime that makes special targets of the poor, and so when riots in the streets like this erupt, it's like they've been triggered for political-economic reasons.

It's like a dog fight where two dogs are kept caged and angry at each other until the humans decide to open the cages and start the match. There's something fishy about claiming it's all spontaneous and only about protesting police brutality.


You say that because you are a labor-ist who likes when property is destroyed because it creates opportunities to make money rebuilding it.

What you should be outraged about is that the desire for economic-rebuilding is so strong that it engenders a whole culture of destruction and waste and systematic racism is actually part of that, not the other way around.

In short, if people weren't greedy and wasteful for the sake of generating more money; the culture of slavery in the US would never have evolved into a culture of repressing free blacks. Free blacks are repressed in the US to stimulate artificially high levels of wealth for middle-class whites (which now includes more people of color than a few decades ago, but is still based on the same principle of waste for the sake of boosting the middle-class).

Go read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. They burn perfectly good fruit because doing so drives up the price of the fruit they don't destroy. That's the same reason drugs are pushed on certain neighborhoods/areas and why black people are generally kept at a lower socio-economic level; i.e. because that socio-economic level is necessitated to have the middle-class at the level it is, and whites know how to favor each other so that most don't end up in the ghettoes.

What people like you want to believe is that you can have middle-class life the way rich US and EU citizens enjoy it without having disenfranchized classes, but the disenfranchisement is built into an economic culture that motivates people to make more money to avoid having to live in poor areas around poor people and have their children subject to the kind of social problems that people in those poor areas are subject to.

If you want people to be free from the problems of living in poor areas, you have to reform the middle-class to live at the same material level as the poor. Only then will you have an economy that is sustainable for everyone to live in peace, i.e. because they are not fighting over a level of middle-class consumption that is impossible for everyone to have without making the economy and planet more unsustainable.

Peace is about accepting that a little is enough because you have family and education and public resources like libraries and parks. When money-hungry criminals go into poor neighborhoods and push drugs and feelings of social inferiority where people used to have strong religious communities, they sew seeds of social unrest and crime where people could have maintained peace and made do with what little they have.

Part of Marxism is removing religion as 'the opium of the people,' so that they will stop ignoring their oppression and rise up against their oppressors, but when you take away religion, morality, and thus peace, you are taking away the true wealth that makes it unimportant to seek equality with richer people who are unhappy anyway because they lack the peace and connection with God that brings true happiness.

So there's an easy freaking solution: STOP GIVING THEM PRETEXT.

No go outside and get that baby!!