US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8459

On August 17 2017 12:24 xDaunt wrote:
So let me start by addressing why Vox Day's 14th Point ("The Alt Right believes we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children.") is not about white supremacy. And let me preface this by saying now that some of you are going to feel really retarded by the time that I'm done, because everything that I'm about to say is right in the 16 Points. Point 15 is the first big hint:



Just in case there's any ambiguity here, let's look at Points 10 and 16, respectively:



Here, Vox Day is clearly advocating for peaceful coexistence among peoples and advocating directly against the supremacy/imperialism of one people over another. Not exactly the typical skinhead dribble, right? So now let's talk about his reasoning for ethnostates. We see it stated right in Point 11:



Now, unlike the previous points, I am willing to cut people a little bit of slack for not fully understanding the significance of what Vox Day is communicating here given the terseness of the statement and the fact that most probably have not had the opportunity to read or hear Vox Day elaborate on this point. But his argument is basically as follows: history shows that conflict -- often violent conflict -- occurs when different cultures either a) exist in close proximity to each other, or b) find themselves in a situation whether they otherwise have to compete with each other over the same resources. Stated another way, multiculturalism breeds strife that is not easily repressed and eliminated until there is some degree of convergence between the cultures because people tend to be assholes to "the other." It's just who we are and what we do. Vox Day's solution to this human condition is to keep everyone separated and allow each people the right to national self-determination. This is stated in Point 5:



Accordingly, securing the future of white people is merely the logical extension of this principle. The goal, is the preservation of Western Culture, of which Vox Day writes in Point 4:



For the numerous posters who struggle with reading, let me make the following abundantly clear: All of what I have said so far is what Vox Day thinks. Not necessarily what I think.

Like I have said many times before, my primary disagreement with the Alt Right lies in its preoccupation with race. And this is where I deviate from Vox Day as well. Here is what he writes in the summary section of his 16 Points:



While I am willing to entertain the idea that there is some genetic variation between races, I do not accept the idea that this variation is significant enough to affect the ability of members of a given race to be able to embrace, or assimilate into, a certain culture, particularly if we are to assume tabula rasa immersion into that culture (ie taking a baby from one race/culture and raising it in another race/culture). Stated another way, Vox Day thinks that race and culture are largely inseparable. I don't. Now, for practical purposes, I can see why race might be a useful proxy for culture given that every culture is the product of predominantly one race, but it doesn't change the basic point that a member of any race can, in theory, adopt any culture.

So let's turn to IgnE's post:



First, I mentioned that "political pluralism" is a pillar of western civilization, referring mostly to the idea that we value truly democratic and representative rule, as opposed to some form of autocratic or even single party rule. As for cultural pluralism, it really boils down to a matter of degree. While I reject outright multiculturalism, I do think that there is some room for variation within a culture. Or using IgnE's terminology, the xDaunt brand of fascism does require a certain level of cultural homogeneity within the nation. I'll just say right now that I don't know exactly where the line is as it pertains to the US. However, and per my previous posts addressing this matter, I do think it critical that everyone within the US, at a minimum, accept and embrace the most important traditions of Western culture: individual liberty, inalienable rights, political plurality, rationalism, and the rule of law. And I will be first to say that we have not done a good job of imprinting these values upon our own people (as is amply evidenced by some of the posters around here), thus this isn't even strictly an issue of insider vs outsider.

We can see a nice little microcosm as to why cultural homogeneity matters just by looking at what has been going on over at Google. How was the internal reaction to Damore's memo any different than a cultural conflict? As with cultural conflicts between nations or peoples, conflicting values were the issue. And as we with so many cultural conflicts, one side is clearly working to eliminate the other. As Vox Day says, diversity + proximity = war.

A lot of people are counting on special counsel Robert Mueller.

Ana Navarro, a Republican and frequent critic of Trump on cable news outlets, beseeched him on Twitter to "hurry the hell up!" and get to the bottom of any connections between the Trump campaign and Russians. The satirical website the Onion said he's gorging on chicken nuggets to "get into the mind" of President Donald Trump. And T-shirts bearing the logo "It's Mueller Time" are on sale at Amazon and Etsy.

But the online community that's fervently depending on the 73-year-old former FBI director to shake up the Trump presidency may be in for its share of disappointment.

The special counsel and his team of 16 lawyers are working under a fairly broad mandate from the Justice Department. Their task: to uncover any links and/or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, and to examine any other matters that may arise because of that investigation.

"Bob Mueller understands and I understand the specific scope of the investigation and so, it's not a fishing expedition," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told Fox News Sunday earlier this month.

Three months into the job, however, it's not clear what if anything investigators may uncover about the president, who has repeatedly denied any improper contacts with people in Russia and has called the special counsel probe "a witch hunt."

"They're investigating something that never happened," Trump told reporters last week. "There was no collusion between us and Russia. In fact, the opposite. Russia spent a lot of money on fighting me."

Moreover, even if authorities uncover damaging information about Trump or anyone else in the White House, there are serious questions about whether that material will ever be made public, short of an indictment or impeachment.

Regulations governing the special counsel say that at the conclusion of his work, he "shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions." Then, it's up to the attorney general to determine whether releasing some information would be in the public interest. (Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from the Russia investigation because of his association with the Trump campaign; Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein is overseeing the investigation.)

Another complicating factor: Mueller is using grand juries in Alexandria, Va., and Washington, D.C., and grand jury information is rarely made public.

"It is going to be hard and frustrating to get this information out," said Peter Zeidenberg, a lawyer at the Arent Fox firm who worked on the special counsel team investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity in the George W. Bush administration.

In the months ahead, Zeidenberg said, "there is going to be a lot of noise, but not much clarity as to what's going on."

In his leak investigation, a lot of information eventually became public through the prosecution of former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Absent a decision to charge someone with a crime, investigations in Congress may be the best way for people to understand what happened and why in last year's election interference.

True to form, a spokesman for special counsel Mueller declined comment for this story.

On August 17 2017 19:05 GreenHorizons wrote:


Drug use is the most frequently sampled, but loitering, trespassing, disorderly conduct, and similar offenses show the same patterns.



Source

We know for any crime people admit to that white people commit it at the same or higher rates than black people and yet are arrested and convicted at a far lower rate.

The problem of racial and ethnic disproportionality in imprisonment appears to be less about criminal justice practitioner racism but rather societal inequities that foster higher rates of serious, especially violent, crime among blacks and to a lesser extent, Hispanics. These inequities include racial segregation and isolation and the resulting concentration of disadvantage in black and Hispanic communities. Such structural disadvantage, in turn, has long been linked to higher rates of violent crime (Peterson and Krivo 2005). Thus, it is arguable that valuable research and policy resources would be better allocated toward addressing the complex of criminogenic social and environmental factors that push minorities toward violent or criminal conduct (see Tracy 2005). In short, the sources of black and (to a lesser extent) Hispanic disproportionality in imprisonment appear to reside mostly outside the purview of the criminal justice system, and have more to do with societal disadvantages that place minority peoples, especially African Americans, at much greater risk of being both offenders and victims of violent crime. So, while there is a need for continued concern with possible racial discrimination in justice system processing, this concern should not distract scholarly or policy attention from what arguably is the more important matter—explaining and ameliorating disproportionate minority (especially black) involvement in violent crime.

An image that appeared to capture a member of an anti-fascist group beating a U.S. police officer with a club during a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, is fake.

The doctored photograph, the Associated Press and Snopes.com found, turned out to be a Getty Image shot in 2009 during clashes between police officers and protesters in Athens, Greece. An “Antifa,” or “antifacist,” logo was digitally superimposed onto the jacket of a protester, who is seen attacking an officer with a blunt object.

The image was widely shared shortly after Saturday’s car attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, which followed a rally organized by neo-Nazis and white nationalists to protest the relocation of a Confederate statute. Some users flagged the photo on Twitter.

The fake image circulated among social media accounts that opposed anti-fascist activists and was often used to support President Donald Trump’s statement that “both sides” were to blame for the Charlottesville violence.

Anti-fascists comprised a small portion of the counter-protesters who opposed the white nationalist rally over the weekend. NewsHour reporters in Charlottesville said they did not see a large Antifa presence in the crowd of counter-protesters, who were largely peaceful.

Charlottesville native Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in the car attack. Authorities charged suspect James Alex Fields Jr., 20, with second-degree murder in Heyer’s death.

On August 17 2017 20:50 farvacola wrote:
That last paragraph from your cherry picked study doesn't make any sense after reading the following:



Wiki

On August 17 2017 20:11 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Whoa.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/898136462385979392

On August 17 2017 21:24 farvacola wrote:
The data in the study is fine, its conclusions are the problem given the study's reliance on a very small snapshot of one state's prison numbers and the unexplained contemporaneous rise in non-violent incarceration going on throughout the country. Further, the study plays games with what counts as "serious" and couches its findings in accord with a mix of current and clearly out of date studies. No where does it discount its "looks like it can't be racism" against the utter lack of available data, differentiation across states, nor its reliance on violent index crimes in lieu of a wider snapshot of what is putting minorities in jail.

On August 17 2017 20:11 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Whoa.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/898136462385979392

On August 17 2017 21:46 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

Huh. So is there going to be some massive confederate states of america museum built for all of these statues at some point? Or are they planning to mothball all of them?

On August 17 2017 20:38 Ghostcom wrote:


This does not support your initial statement that:



Or at least I'm missing it in the linked - could you indicate which part specifically you think supports your statement?

I'm not really sure how far into the can of worms I want to go with regards to this new claim before we have finished with the initial, but you might find this article interesting:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4111266/



The quoted is the last paragraph of the paper - they also compare arrest rates with conviction rates in the study (arguably a proxy measure for rightful arrests, although likely a rather weak one at that).

The report also finds that, on average, a Black person is 3.73 times more likely to be
arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, even though Blacks and whites
use marijuana at similar rates. Such racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests
exist in all regions of the country, in counties large and small, urban and rural, wealthy
and poor, and with large and small Black populations. Indeed, in over 96% of counties
with more than 30,000 people in which at least 2% of the residents are Black, Blacks are
arrested at higher rates than whites for marijuana possession.