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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On December 25 2014 15:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 25 2014 12:32 WhiteDog wrote:On December 25 2014 12:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 25 2014 11:33 WhiteDog wrote:On December 25 2014 11:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 25 2014 11:28 WhiteDog wrote:On December 25 2014 11:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 25 2014 11:18 WhiteDog wrote:On December 25 2014 11:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 25 2014 10:48 WhiteDog wrote:
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Being rude ? Me ? Man be a little more intelligent and read yourself.
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Yeah and there's racism against white people.
But please, feel free to show me a case where a guy was released after killing a cops because the court took into consideration the context in which the act had been made.
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Really ? We don't read the same forum then. Some post here oftentime clearly justify the killings "he should not have done that" (like during the Trayvon Martin case).
And you do not understand much about what other write (altho I don't mind it because I'm really used to that side of you). Mike Brown was the victim and not the murderer : contextualizing for him is a way to excuse the act. I want to see you discuss the background of a serial killer or a drug addict for a change.
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You believe in that ? Black people in the US are not sent in jail for ambiguous crimes ?
I love it when you tell me it's stupid bullshit, especially considering all the stupidity you post. I feel like I'm in the right. You aren't making sense. You're just saying things without justification that do not make good arguments. Sometimes cops are exonerated for shootings, sometimes not. Sometimes people are given lighter sentencing because of their rough circumstances, sometimes not. You seem to have done nothing but assemble a view based on, I don't know what. Some sort of weak literary critique? You are the one making no sense. It's like you don't know in which country you live in : do you know that 1 in 3 black males will go in jail in the US according to the statistics ? And you tell me that there is a balanced view ? That the court take into account the personnal history of a black criminal when they make judgement ? Would be great if you stopped insulting me tho. I understand you're impotent and all, but there are other ways. Yes, yes, yes. Are you telling me that you are not aware of these things? Yet you have such a strong opinion? WTF do you base your opinions on??? Hahahaha you're so good. You don't see a problem behind the fact that there are more black male in prison than in college in the US. A light in your head does not light up to connect the dot and understand that the system is heavily skewed and do not ever take into consideration the oftentime difficult personnal history of the black people it send to prison. Of course that's a problem. Where did I say it wasn't? Edit: oh, I didn't 'connect the dots' based off of WhiteDog's stellar analytical device of closing one's eyes and imagining the reason. I'm used to talk with people with brain. Next time you post I'll detail everything word by word, I'll try to define the word context for you, and all those things. Sorry. But I didn't say that it wasn't a problem. I argued with your opinion of the causes and implications. I don't have time to get into great detail, but citing examples of white cops being cast in a poor light or blacks cast in a good light in mainstream media isn't hard. So your proposition that cops are portrayed as angels and blacks as criminals isn't accurate. Just look at Treyvon Martin and Mike Brown - both had a very positive initial image in the media that tarnished with time. Exemples =/= statistics. You're the one quoting exemple (pretty funny if you think about it, but it's not the first time you're not logic). Treyvon and Mike are not exemples that contradict my point : they were only victim. In any other crime, you barely ever talk about the victim and focus on the agressor. But here, the discussion was not on the cop (are they a good or bad cops ? what do we know about their on duty history ? What kind of behavior do they have ? Drink alcohol ? Drugs ?) but about the victim (can we not find any evidences that those victim are not merely victims ?). You didn't cite statistics that backed up your argument, but I did offer examples to refute it. Examples > nothing. As for why the discussion was about the victim - there was a police officer involved. Police officers are allowed to use force. Therefore, the discussion is not "did he use force or not", as in "did he or she commit murder" but rather "was the force used legal or not". As for the character of the cop - it was brought up.
I didn't need to cite any statistics because everybody know that black are heavily punished in the US.
That a police officer is allowed to use force does not make it legitimate, nor justified, in every situation. There's plenty of legally right situations that create an uproar in the media.
That's not a meaningful point. Police rarely going to jail for shootings is not by itself proof that the system isn't working right. If zero police went to jail for shootings, and none should have, than everything's fine. If a lot of police are exonerated, but shouldn't be, then you have a problem. Just showing that blacks are shot, and police are frequently exonerated doesn't prove that one bit.
Nobody will ever be able to product a "proof" that the system is working "right" or "wrong". You thinking that the system has no "problem" or a "problem" is not true either, it's just an analysis of the subject because as a champion of the impotentness of our society, you refuse to see any structural implication of the abnormal number of black kid who die. You see this as a question, that can be "technically" adressed (when or if the complex situation is understood), a problem with no conflictuality, no opposition, it's not the class warfare or the racist nature of state institutions, but a minor bug in the program, like you always do. For some the system is working as intended, and thus is not simply just "problematic", in that it is putting in jail - or sometime killing - young black kids for non violent crime in order to manage social difficulties.
The "true" fact is that your society (and mine) punish heavily some type of people when they do mistakes (black male or arabic male mostly), despite their personnal history, and rarely if not ever punish cops for killing black people on duty. The other "true" fact is that somehow as soon as a black kid is killed, the media and also some of us wish to unveil everything on the victim, to assess its "moral" value - because if it's a violent drug addict, it's justified that he is dead right ?
And this necessity to always start your comment by you're an idiot, that's nonsense, that's not meaningful, makes me believe you will not understand much of my response.
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Norway28747 Posts
happy holidays people
I don't like moderating this thread because 1: I'm often involved in it and I have a clear, outspoken political bias, and 2: because I think it's good that discussions sometimes get a little heated, that just means we care. But these last two pages contained too many insults. if you get angry reading a post, try to wait a minute and reread your post before you actually press "Post", and see if you really think the insult is required to make your point. And if your only point is that you're arguing with an idiot, then maybe don't post.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
by balanced narrative i was talking about subjective view of the police and specifically their feeling of being threatened after the death of two police officers.
i find people who claim the police shouldnt feel threatened absurd and self destructive
on the social state of blacks in america the logic of agency blame and 'justice system' as a whole is all kinds of fail and not addressing deep sociological deficiency in black neighborhoods
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The "sociological deficiencies" of the "black neighborhoods" are criminalized by the judicial system. More than that, institutionalized habits tend to criminalize certain feats or caracteristics : the punishment is more severe with uneducated black male living in certain area, interaction with all public officers is always violent, sometime physically but always from a symbolic point of view (insult or quick judgement).
The absence of a developped social program, and public educationnal system, to face the transformation of the economic structure of lowest qualification jobs, from mainly industrial prior to 1980 to mainly services today, explain a big part of the "deficiencies" : the blacks are not more enclined to criminal behaviors "by nature".
All in all it is a struggle of power between groups or communities, the political game. Judging the entire justice system as flawed or biased is, from a strategical standpoint and also a logical standpoint, more efficient than discussing to no end (not to mention it is statistically true). Experts and thinkers barely ever had any role in big political change in our societies (they are too nuanced and their theories tend to put aside conflictual interests in favor of more subtile and complex analytic frame). Extremists and political activists did.
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On December 25 2014 23:03 oneofthem wrote:
on the social state of blacks in america the logic of agency blame and 'justice system' as a whole is all kinds of fail and not addressing deep sociological deficiency in black neighborhoods
well then fix the social issues, or fix the legal issues, fix at least something.That more black people are in prison than in college means that something has gone deeply wrong that needs an immediate big response.
That some people in America actually seem to think that all black people like to listen to jayz and live the thug life doesn't actually help either.
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Experts and thinkers barely ever had any role in big political change in our societies (they are too nuanced and their theories tend to put aside conflictual interests in favor of more subtile and complex analytic frame).
Extremists and political activists did.
As to American society, the protectionism that built American industry, the end of American isolationism, the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Ronald Reagan's immigration reform, and the Cold War itself say hello. None of those things were brought about by extremists or grassroots political pressure. There are plenty of other examples.
The term itself, "political activists," is so broad as to be meaningless; any change in society that ends up formalized in law or informally formalized in custom could be said to have been brought about by "political activists."
The "sociological deficiencies" of the "black neighborhoods" are criminalized by the judicial system. More than that, institutionalized habits tend to criminalize certain feats or caracteristics : the punishment is more severe with uneducated black male living in certain area, interaction with all public officers is always violent, sometime physically but always from a symbolic point of view (insult or quick judgement).
This would be more convincing if this confrontational situation between high-crime populations and societal institutions did not exist as much towards certain high-crime white subcultures (opiate and meth users mostly) as it does towards so-called 'ghetto culture.' Police are very much equal-opportunity if you fit their profile. "Young black male" is only one. They have plenty of others.
The absence of a developped social program, and public educationnal system, to face the transformation of the economic structure of lowest qualification jobs, from mainly industrial prior to 1980 to mainly services today, explain a big part of the "deficiencies" : the blacks are not more enclined to criminal behaviors "by nature".
The US spends over 2 trillion a year on social programs and the public education system. I'm almost certainly severely underestimating that number because I'm not really sure how much state and local governments spend (at least as much as the federal government does, probably more). The failure to build a robust non-university infrastructure for training/education for the entry-level jobs that are in-demand was not exclusive to blacks (and, the university system has failed to a great degree as well). Also, the US has somewhat of a shortage of newly-trained young workers entering the job market for those industrial jobs, both blue-collar and white-collar.
You're fitting an ideological prism over the situation that doesn't accurately encompass the actual facts. Blacks have not been singled out for bad education or overzealous policing in this country for 50 years.
Everyone has.
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"Everyone has."
He already pointed out that the chance for a black man to go to prison in his lifetime is 30% Do you not understand how insane this is? What's the number for white Americans again? Spoiler alert, it's 4.4%. Oh I guess black people just love their criminal culture so much that they simply can't resist to go to prison.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
i disagree that violent extremists are politically effective. the reaction is stronger
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On December 26 2014 05:19 oneofthem wrote:
i disagree that violent extremists are politically effective. the reaction is stronger
Who said violent ?
On December 26 2014 04:48 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Experts and thinkers barely ever had any role in big political change in our societies (they are too nuanced and their theories tend to put aside conflictual interests in favor of more subtile and complex analytic frame).
Extremists and political activists did. As to American society, the protectionism that built American industry, the end of American isolationism, the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Ronald Reagan's immigration reform, and the Cold War itself say hello. None of those things were brought about by extremists or grassroots political pressure. There are plenty of other examples.
Okay give me the name of an expert that tailored the idea of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security or the New Deal. The social security come from europe, no "expert" or intellectual defended it : they were always project based around moral value and not efficiency and a definition of "complex social matter". The ideas came from politicians, who were themselves heavily influenced by the mutualisation of ressources that the workers put in places during the long XVIIIth and XIXth century, and always in response to a social and political demand from the population and the syndicate.
The new deal appeared in the US, and not in England, while the only expert that basically defended it was English (Keynes). In fact the new deal was criticized by expert / economists in its time. If you go back to the history of that period, you'll see that there were plenty of riot and manifestation following the crisis.
The cold war I don't understand.
This would be more convincing if this confrontational situation between high-crime populations and societal institutions did not exist as much towards certain high-crime white subcultures (opiate and meth users mostly) as it does towards so-called 'ghetto culture.' Police are very much equal-opportunity if you fit their profile. "Young black male" is only one. They have plenty of others.
It's true but that does not contredict my point. I never said the police was only racist (I even said "uneducated" black male "living in certain area" showing that it is not only racism). Now you cannot say that the judicial system punish as heavily white opiate users than black because it's just untrue.
The US spends over 2 trillion a year on social programs and the public education system. I'm almost certainly severely underestimating that number because I'm not really sure how much state and local governments spend (at least as much as the federal government does, probably more). The failure to build a robust non-university infrastructure for training/education for the entry-level jobs that are in-demand was not exclusive to blacks (and, the university system has failed to a great degree as well). Also, the US has somewhat of a shortage of newly-trained young workers entering the job market for those industrial jobs, both blue-collar and white-collar.
The total amount of spending is irrelevant - we spend a lot more on education than you per capita, but it does not make our educationnal system good. Some northern countries spend less than us with better results.
There are way more to take into account than just spending when considering a good educational system : diversity in class (to create emulation), formation of teachers, allocation of teachers (not young teachers in the hardest areas), educational ways to compensate lack of cultural capital in certain famillies, etc.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
well ok, not violent, but extremists do not accomplish much without crossing some large threshold whereby they become the ruling group in the revolutionary minority etc.
there's no chance of that happening in the u.s. atm
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Blacks have not been singled out for bad education or overzealous policing in this country for 50 years.
Everyone has.
Wow... Just wow... Do people actually think this? No one is arguing the police/educational system don't abuse people of all colors, just some colors more frequently than others. Most people don't assume cops take off their uniforms at night and put on their robes and pillow cases. It's a prejudice issue that's embedded deep in our society. Prejudices people don't realize they have or how they end up resulting in clearly racist actions.
There doesn't have to be any openly racist people or anyone who thinks they are racist for us to end up with incredibly racist policy or results.
The easiest place to see it is in arrests for marijuana possession. Black people are just as likely to use cannabis but over 3x more likely to get arrested for it. Not because the cops are intentionally sticking it to blacks over whites, just their prejudices interfere. It's the same for most offenses where there is an option between a ticket or an arrest.
So sure, the justice system screws white people over too, just less frequently than non-whites.
This is part of what is so enraging about people who try to call it a 'community problem' or blame it all on 'fatherless homes'. Sure there are problems there, but they don't create or deny the very real problem of disproportionate treatment of blacks by the criminal justice system which some people want to deny no matter how obvious it is.
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On December 26 2014 05:40 oneofthem wrote:
well ok, not violent, but extremists do not accomplish much without crossing some large threshold whereby they become the ruling group in the revolutionary minority etc.
there's no chance of that happening in the u.s. atm
If you look at it with from an historical standpoint, most of the ideas that we now see as normal and worth fighting for were beforehand defended by extremists or minority of some sort. Democracy in France started with years of massacre and terror. This idea that extremists don't achieve much is just a political trend, in reality it is the opposite : the middleground is always the result of the conflict of extremes.
Luther King would never have had the political influence he had without Malcolm X and the black panthers, just like Mandela was labelled as a terrorist.
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On December 26 2014 05:47 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2014 05:40 oneofthem wrote:
well ok, not violent, but extremists do not accomplish much without crossing some large threshold whereby they become the ruling group in the revolutionary minority etc.
there's no chance of that happening in the u.s. atm If you look at it with from an historical standpoint, most of the ideas that we now see as normal and worth fighting for were beforehand defended by extremists or minority of some sort. Democracy in France started with years of massacre and terror. This idea that extremists don't achieve much is just a political trend, in reality it is the opposite : the middleground is always the result of the conflict of extremes. Luther King would never have had the political influence he had without Malcolm X and the black panthers, just like Mandela was labelled as a terrorist.
MLK was becoming more radical at the end of his life, he just never advocated violence.
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government."
"The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for the least of these"
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
These were the sorts of things he was saying in the last years of his life, he was attacked by a formerly supportive white house and turned on by a formerly supportive liberal press.
Extreme, radical, dangerous ideas =/= violent ideas.
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On December 26 2014 04:48 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Experts and thinkers barely ever had any role in big political change in our societies (they are too nuanced and their theories tend to put aside conflictual interests in favor of more subtile and complex analytic frame).
Extremists and political activists did. As to American society, the protectionism that built American industry, the end of American isolationism, the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Ronald Reagan's immigration reform, and the Cold War itself say hello. None of those things were brought about by extremists or grassroots political pressure. There are plenty of other examples.
...You do realize that the New Deal and FDR were viewed as radical extremists and there were some talks of an armed coup to prevent it right?
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Well, Mandela kinda was a terrorist (albeit a sympathetic one). I mean, he and his non-state group orchestrated bombings to instill terror in the state and its supporters. That fits most standard definitions of terrorism.
But he wasn't much of an extremist: world opinion and majority opinion in his country was generally on his side for a fair bit. He was arguing against a system that was literally the kind of thing Southern segregationists talked about as what an "actually racist" society would look like (e.g. no "separate by equal").
Martin Luther King, on the other hand, (or, to an even greater extent, Gandhi) was an extremist without being violent. When he started out, he was disagreed with by almost everybody who hadn't gone to seminary and plenty of people who had. But even then, he was always steadfastly non-violent. Which helped: it's a lot easier to change people's minds by looking like the oppressed good guys.
Mandela et al. had the luxury of an enemy so vicious that even violent (though relatively light in casualties) actions would still make him look like the good guy.
+ Show Spoiler +
And the whole "Black Panthers made MLK" revisionism is a myth. What made the Civil Rights Movement succeed was changing the minds of the population. White people were awakened to the plight of black people, and black people had a new-found sense of pride and belonging. Black Panthers only damaged that.
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On December 26 2014 07:03 Yoav wrote:Well, Mandela kinda was a terrorist (albeit a sympathetic one). I mean, he and his non-state group orchestrated bombings to instill terror in the state and its supporters. That fits most standard definitions of terrorism. But he wasn't much of an extremist: world opinion and majority opinion in his country was generally on his side for a fair bit. He was arguing against a system that was literally the kind of thing Southern segregationists talked about as what an "actually racist" society would look like (e.g. no "separate by equal"). Martin Luther King, on the other hand, (or, to an even greater extent, Gandhi) was an extremist without being violent. When he started out, he was disagreed with by almost everybody who hadn't gone to seminary and plenty of people who had. But even then, he was always steadfastly non-violent. Which helped: it's a lot easier to change people's minds by looking like the oppressed good guys. Mandela et al. had the luxury of an enemy so vicious that even violent (though relatively light in casualties) actions would still make him look like the good guy. + Show Spoiler +
And the whole "Black Panthers made MLK" revisionism is a myth. What made the Civil Rights Movement succeed was changing the minds of the population. White people were awakened to the plight of black people, and black people had a new-found sense of pride and belonging. Black Panthers only damaged that.
good post
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On December 26 2014 07:03 Yoav wrote:
Well, Mandela kinda was a terrorist (albeit a sympathetic one). I mean, he and his non-state group orchestrated bombings to instill terror in the state and its supporters. That fits most standard definitions of terrorism.
But he wasn't much of an extremist: world opinion and majority opinion in his country was generally on his side for a fair bit. He was arguing against a system that was literally the kind of thing Southern segregationists talked about as what an "actually racist" society would look like (e.g. no "separate by equal").
I agree but the point is Mandela was not Gandhi : he justified armed resistance, against apartheid but he also defended the usage of force from palestinians against Israelis. That's kinda extreme to a lot of people in here. You can justify the armed resistance because of the specificity of the situations, that does not change the fact that he didn't convoqued a group of expert to fight against arpatheid.
On December 26 2014 06:39 Dapper_Cad wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2014 05:47 WhiteDog wrote:On December 26 2014 05:40 oneofthem wrote:
well ok, not violent, but extremists do not accomplish much without crossing some large threshold whereby they become the ruling group in the revolutionary minority etc.
there's no chance of that happening in the u.s. atm If you look at it with from an historical standpoint, most of the ideas that we now see as normal and worth fighting for were beforehand defended by extremists or minority of some sort. Democracy in France started with years of massacre and terror. This idea that extremists don't achieve much is just a political trend, in reality it is the opposite : the middleground is always the result of the conflict of extremes. Luther King would never have had the political influence he had without Malcolm X and the black panthers, just like Mandela was labelled as a terrorist. MLK was becoming more radical at the end of his life, he just never advocated violence. "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government." "The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for the least of these" "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." These were the sorts of things he was saying in the last years of his life, he was attacked by a formerly supportive white house and turned on by a formerly supportive liberal press. Extreme, radical, dangerous ideas =/= violent ideas.
I agree - a lot of extremist movement do not justify violence (you can also be extreme and pacifist, which is the case of most leftist movements). But my point is that, even if MLK was non violent, his case was also pushed politically because other groups were resorting to violence. His arguments were also listened because there were armed and violent groups arguing for even more extreme measure.
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On December 26 2014 07:03 Yoav wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
And the whole "Black Panthers made MLK" revisionism is a myth. What made the Civil Rights Movement succeed was changing the minds of the population. White people were awakened to the plight of black people, and black people had a new-found sense of pride and belonging. Black Panthers only damaged that.
That sure makes white people sound rather pathetic if the only thing that can really convince them was incredibly slow non-violence that ended up with people cracking down on them. Seems like the history of liberals is talking about the unfortunate realities of the oppressor being able to get away with injustice but hysteria when the oppressed demands radical fairness in the face of radical injustice.
And the Civil Rights Movement did not succeed. MLK talked about racial equality and "I Have a Dream" but the majority of his speeches was about the economic situation of blacks. The famous incident at Washington was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and he was helping organize a union with their strike right before he was assassinated. Anyone looking at the economic situation for blacks to this day would easily state that MLK's dream was not realized.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On December 26 2014 05:47 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2014 05:40 oneofthem wrote:
well ok, not violent, but extremists do not accomplish much without crossing some large threshold whereby they become the ruling group in the revolutionary minority etc.
there's no chance of that happening in the u.s. atm If you look at it with from an historical standpoint, most of the ideas that we now see as normal and worth fighting for were beforehand defended by extremists or minority of some sort. Democracy in France started with years of massacre and terror. This idea that extremists don't achieve much is just a political trend, in reality it is the opposite : the middleground is always the result of the conflict of extremes. Luther King would never have had the political influence he had without Malcolm X and the black panthers, just like Mandela was labelled as a terrorist. confirmation bias examples. extremists do not normally win because of lack of broad/military support. if they somehow get that, it would obv work. which gets to my use of extremist u took issue with. why did i call the protesters at the cops memorial service extremists? because they are actively setting themselves apart from the mainstream view and sympathy. if you find a successful extremist group they prob enjoyed some degree of mainstream support at some point.
in the france example we are dealing with a different kindof politcal society so it doesnt really apply.
mlk succeeded because he drew sympathy and concern rather than militant confrontation. as soon as he and blacks lost this the progress stopped. something that should be obviouly just like reparation is seen as anathema. i wonder why. the ability to let the ignorant majority see your pov is important for the most crafty of the extremists, read ur gramsci
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On December 26 2014 07:18 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2014 07:03 Yoav wrote:
Well, Mandela kinda was a terrorist (albeit a sympathetic one). I mean, he and his non-state group orchestrated bombings to instill terror in the state and its supporters. That fits most standard definitions of terrorism.
But he wasn't much of an extremist: world opinion and majority opinion in his country was generally on his side for a fair bit. He was arguing against a system that was literally the kind of thing Southern segregationists talked about as what an "actually racist" society would look like (e.g. no "separate by equal"). I agree but the point is Mandela was not Gandhi : he justified armed resistance, against apartheid but he also defended the usage of force from palestinians against Israelis. That's kinda extreme to a lot of people in here. You can justify the armed resistance because of the specificity of the situations, that does not change the fact that he didn't convoqued a group of expert to fight against arpatheid. Show nested quote +On December 26 2014 06:39 Dapper_Cad wrote:On December 26 2014 05:47 WhiteDog wrote:On December 26 2014 05:40 oneofthem wrote:
well ok, not violent, but extremists do not accomplish much without crossing some large threshold whereby they become the ruling group in the revolutionary minority etc.
there's no chance of that happening in the u.s. atm If you look at it with from an historical standpoint, most of the ideas that we now see as normal and worth fighting for were beforehand defended by extremists or minority of some sort. Democracy in France started with years of massacre and terror. This idea that extremists don't achieve much is just a political trend, in reality it is the opposite : the middleground is always the result of the conflict of extremes. Luther King would never have had the political influence he had without Malcolm X and the black panthers, just like Mandela was labelled as a terrorist. MLK was becoming more radical at the end of his life, he just never advocated violence. "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government." "The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for the least of these" "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." These were the sorts of things he was saying in the last years of his life, he was attacked by a formerly supportive white house and turned on by a formerly supportive liberal press. Extreme, radical, dangerous ideas =/= violent ideas. I agree - a lot of extremist movement do not justify violence (you can also be extreme and pacifist, which is the case of most leftist movements). But my point is that, even if MLK was non violent, his case was also pushed politically because other groups were resorting to violence. His arguments were also listened because there were armed and violent groups arguing for even more extreme measure.
but mandela wasnt known for his palestinian stance. the violent uprisings ala black panthers were not able to identify as civil rights movement. the presence of a powerful voice, msnger like mlk was very necessary to frame the situation to the public. this voice is lacking atm. the sharptons are jokes, obama isnt taking up the role that he should be. who do we see on tv as the face of anti police protest? the jokers at the police funeral service. this is catastrophic.
obama tried a bit with the trayvon martin situation.but the way american society is segregated makes it hard for mainstream to sympathize with blacks. it is a delicate situation where the police shooting was very disruptive and i find the apparent careless dismissal of it very dumb.
media at fault yes but obviously so too. does not make tactical suicide ok
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