Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

the threat and the menacing were purely in your own imagination, not in chris's actions

or in ahmaud's.

simp;y because someone white imagines falsely, or you imagine falsely, for them, that there was an imaginary threat because you have a racist imagination does not justify shooting someone..

that ain't the law,

and your three s's are in fact murder,

Yesterday, David Ignatius had a piece in the Washington Post that uncovered the attempt of the Trump administration to reorder the Middle East along an axis anchored by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudia Arabia (more popularly known as MBS), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Jared Kushner of the U.S.

To make the deal, the leaders involved apparently wanted to muscle Jordan out of its role as the custodian of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, a role carved out in the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan that was hammered out under President Bill Clinton. The new dealmakers apparently wanted to scuttle the U.S.-backed accords and replace them with economic deals that would reorder the region.

This story has huge implications for the Middle East, for American government, for religion, for culture, and so on, but something else jumps out to me here: this story is a great illustration of the principles behind Critical Race Theory, which is currently tearing up the Fox News Channel. Together, the attempt to bypass Jordan and the obsession with Critical Race Theory seem to make a larger statement about the current sea change in the U.S. as people increasingly reject the individualist ideology of the Reagan era.

When Kushner set out to construct a Middle East peace plan, he famously told Aaron David Miller, who had negotiated peace agreements with other administrations, that he didn’t want to know about how things had worked in the past. “He said flat out, don’t talk to me about history,” Miller told Chris McGreal of The Guardian, “He said, I told the Israelis and the Palestinians not to talk to me about history too.”

Kushner apparently thought he could create a brand new Middle East with a brand new set of alliances that would begin with changing long standing geopolitics in Jerusalem, the city three major world religions consider holy. It is eye-popping to imagine what would have happened if we had torn up decades of agreements and tried to graft onto a troubled area an entirely new way of interacting, based not on treaties but on the interests of this new axis. Apparently, the hope was that throwing enough money at the region would have made the change palatable. But most experts think that weakening Jordan, long a key U.S. ally in the region, and removing its oversight of the holy sites, would have ushered in violence.

The heart of the American contribution to the idea of reworking the Middle East along a new axis with contracts, rather than treaties, seems to have been that enough will and enough money can create new realities.

The idea that will and money could create success was at the heart of the Reagan Revolution. Its adherents championed the idea that any individual could prosper in America, so long as the government stayed out of his (it was almost always his) business.

Critical Race Theory challenges this individualist ideology. CRT emerged in the late 1970s in legal scholarship written by people who recognized that legal protections for individuals did not, in fact, level the playing field in America. They noted that racial biases are embedded in our legal system. From that, other scholars noted that racial, ethnic, gender, class, and other biases are embedded in the other systems that make up our society.

Historians began to cover this ground long ago. Oklahoma historian Angie Debo established such biases in the construction of American law in her book, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes back in 1940. Since then, historians have explored the biases in our housing policies, policing, medical care, and so on, and there are very few who would suggest that our systems are truly neutral.

So why is Critical Race Theory such a flashpoint in today’s political world? Perhaps in part because it rejects the Republican insistence that an individual can create a prosperous life by will alone. It says that, no matter how talented someone might be, or how eager and dedicated, they cannot always contend against the societal forces stacked against them. It argues for the important weight of systems, established through time, rather than the idea that anyone can create a new reality.

It acknowledges the importance of history.

The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded a special citation Friday to the teen who filmed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, touching off a summer of protests against systemic racism and police brutality.

Darnella Frazier's video and courtroom testimony played key roles in the conviction of a former police officer, Derek Chauvin, for causing George Floyd's death outside of Cup Foods on May 25, 2020.

That thug threatened Amy Cooper and then acted on his threat by trying to lure her pet away from her.

Trayvon Martin was shot in justified self defense as he tried to murder the captain of the neighborhood watch.

Black Lives Matter mean for black men to be allowed to murder police officers with impunity, murder white men with impunity, and rape white women with impunity.

With a little effort comments can be written in a more neutral manner and still effectively convey one's point of view.

someone wrote:

Christian Cooper, isn't a "thug".

The unarmed Martin was pursued by Zimmerman, ending in a physical struggle.

There were no eyewitnesses to the beginning of this fight and we only have Zimmerman's first-hand account -- which he very well may have falsified so as to seek defense under the state's "Stand Your Ground" law.

An objective person with some knowledge of the facts might conclude that the provided quotes were written by a racist:

If someone wishes to be thought of as a racist they should carefully choose words, using words like "thug" to describe a peaceful black man.

If someone doesn't care if people think he's a racist, he should refer to racial incidents in such a way as to make the non-white victim appear to be the sole guilty party, even when the facts surrounding the case are disputed or ambiguous.

If someone really wants to look like a racist he should use well-known racist tropes such as treating BLM as an organization which promotes anti-police violence instead of one dedicated to the victims of police violence. He should emphasize racial tensions between white and non-whites. And, most importantly, he should use time-worn racist imagery like that of black men raping white women — which goes back 400 years and has led to the lynchings of thousands of black men.

The person who wrote these examples has very effectively made himself look like a racist.

Fortunately I've not revealed his identity and the anonymous quotes relieve the author of any need to defend himself and explain why he wants to be perceived as a racist. We're just left to try to figure it out on our own.

With a little effort comments can be written in a more neutral manner and still effectively convey one's point of view.

It is merely your fallacious OPINION about chris cooper. It is given the lie by the video and his description of the encounter, as well as by the actions of the NYPD and NYC legal department.

Amy broke the law. Chris merely tried to get her to follow it. she wouldn't.

And every particular of your trayvon account is wrong. Testimony and a maps of the encounter show T ran away from a possible encounter with Z.

Z pursued him, around two corners,

encountered a STATIONARY t IN t'S OWN Backyard,

arrived out of brEATH, GRABBED T and accosted him. He was the aggressor,

T was in deserved fear for his safety from this crazed stranger.

Most Americans support requiring students who are old enough to receive a coronavirus vaccination for fall class attendance, with strong support for requirements for high school and college students, according to a new Gallup survey published Friday.

About 61 percent of the more than 3,500 people surveyed between May 18 and 23 backed requiring vaccinations for college students. Survey results showed similar support for high school students, at 56 percent, and middle school students, at 51 percent.

The survey was carried out shortly after the Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for youths as young as 12.