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Now that we have a new thread, 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 complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On June 04 2020 10:44 puppykiller wrote:Here is our post office. Why would a protester want to deny a community its mail? Or the ability to send money overseas to families in 3rd world countries? https://postimg.cc/gallery/5b3k3w5
Can you read up on the Rodney king riots? Minneapolis is doing much better than LA did during that time...
On June 04 2020 10:40 puppykiller wrote:
And another
This was primarily not caused by protesters. Other destructive organizations, suspected white supremacists and anarchists are doing the worst damage of arson.
Some other group seems to be running an organized raid on pharmacies, even as far as Maple Grove. They are not protesters. They are taking advantage of the chaos. One crazy white guy drove up from Wisconsin just to riot and was handing out fire bombs. Thank God they caught him.
Why would a protester want to be associated with that crowd?
This is the same tactics white supremacist always use, we shouldn't let that stop the protestors.
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False dichotomy, trying to make my post about me so you can completely ignore what I showed you... and you call my city "garbage"? Disgusting bro.
Nice edit to remove the word "garbage" from your post....
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On June 04 2020 10:56 puppykiller wrote:
False dichotomy, trying to make my post about me so you can completely ignore what I showed you... and you call my city "garbage"? Disgusting bro.
Nice edit to remove the word "garbage" from your post....
I never called your city garbage. I said that it sounded like you cared more about buildings than the actual value of life, but I read the rest of your posts after refreshing, and removed that.
Also I’m sorry you took offense, did not mean to which is why I edited out my original statement, I knew I sounded like an ass.
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On June 04 2020 10:56 puppykiller wrote:
False dichotomy, trying to make my post about me so you can completely ignore what I showed you... and you call my city "garbage"? Disgusting bro.
Nice edit to remove the word "garbage" from your post....
When you use the quote button, you can avoid that problem
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On June 04 2020 10:39 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2020 10:08 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 09:50 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 09:36 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:30 Gorsameth wrote:On June 04 2020 08:13 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:04 Mohdoo wrote:On June 04 2020 07:56 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 07:43 Mohdoo wrote:On June 04 2020 07:25 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
You're still conflating important concepts in American society that are perhaps difficult to articulate to this kind of audience. The flag, to many people, symbolizes the best of us. Call it the ideals to which we aspire. The first amendment, rule of law, role in the world wars, defense of democratic governance against communism, humanitarian relief, etc. This doesn't apply to Black America. And because it doesn't apply to them, I can't respect the flag. We are a country that does not fulfill its obligations to its citizens. How can I respect that? What should I still be respecting? Did you even read the part when I acknowledged not everybody views the flag as a set of aspirational American ideals? Go reread it. If you have any sense that there are owed "obligation", then maybe you can think your way through to understanding something might represent that obligation that doesn't do the same to you. What I am saying is that after reading your original post, I did not walk away with a proper understanding. Since you said most of this is misunderstanding, I asked if you could elaborate on your original post in pursuit of understanding. What don't you understand about the original post, or what didn't you understand about my response? Two different groups (or more) view the flag in different ways, and the last posts from you showed you were in one camp and can't acknowledge that the other one exists. Everything you've said views the flag as the everchanging moral balance of the US domestically and abroad, instead of a set of ideals that may not be well achieved currently, but preserves the capacity to change. See: right to peacefully assemble, the vote. Now, I was a little shocked that you were into the whole "you're not really Black if Biden actually has to win your vote over Trump," so we may be seven layers apart on issues of race and we will never come to agreement. If the flag represents a set of ideals that may not be achieved currently, then surely it makes sense for a peaceful and respectful protest to remind people that those ideals have not been achieved and that everyone should continue to work towards those ideals? Once again, protesting the flag itself means + Show Spoiler [...] +there is no uniting ideal even to work towards. No ideal of rights worth better protecting among all people, with an army defending their restriction by foreign conquest, and a police from domestic unlawful transgression. And honestly, if you think there is no worthwhile uniting pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, then tear that flag apart and let's break up the nation.
It's perfectly natural to view the flag as the unifying declaration, imperfectly followed, and the current protests (such that there's a large peaceful contingent) as the means to achieve closer adherence to those principles. There's no point saying the police are hindering the right to peaceful assembly if you don't believe in the nation that has it in the constitution via amendment.
I want to be very inclusive here. If you think the constitution and what's enshrined in there needs to be taken down violently, and this country or several countries should be founded with a new set of aspirations, then the flag is exactly what you should target to get that message across to more groups. Give your design for a new flag.
Maybe the people that recognize my point here can move on because this is getting to be kinda a digression, and mods have historically disfavored that kind of thing. You can still agree with me, and want to change this perception of the flag to fit your conception of what it should represent, as long as you can see how people like Brees are being perfectly self-consistent from their group view of the symbol. I realize you’re replying to a million people at once, but genuine question: why do you get to decide what it means? I believe in ideals like civil rights, due process, and rule of law. I also believe those ideals are being devastated by the way our criminal justice system treats people of color. The whole point of the kneeling thing was to draw attention to that devastation, in pursuit of better achieving those ideals. Frankly, conservatives have a long history of dismissing their opposition as unpatriotic, and this just feels like yet another instance of that. If this was a little more of a nuanced topic, it would be how the conversation between how two groups do a cultural dialogue on what each thinks the other means. If we pretended Drew Brees was a major cultural icon, then more people in the BLM movement might come to see that showing respect to the flag and backing peaceful protests are not at all in conflict, and they learn more about the other meaning. In turn, maybe while not approving of the protest, the group all about the aspirational aspect of the flag are less viscerally pissed off at the kneeling protests, because they view it differently. But in terms of the communication dimension, it isn't like Kaepernick is using his protest to speak towards people that already think the flag symbolizes oppression or unequal society ... or it isn't his primary audience. His speech is on a symbol towards the people that think it's the ultimate symbol of unity and an ideal worth striving towards (im generalizing a little bit to make the point). In which case, the message comes out "There is nothing in America or being American that is uniting, no set of ideals in its founding document which might be worth working towards." The first point straight-up needs to be understood if you ever dream of changing America. It's kind of a heated time right now, so I understand a lot of this anger directed at people and groups that don't think like them. It's high tide of the culture war, that some people pretended didn't exist during the Obama years, and think can be solved if only Trump were never elected. But you’re still doing it! Saying BLM should learn respecting the flag doesn’t conflict with their protest is indirectly saying that kneeling was *meant to disrespect the flag*. They didn’t think so! Kneeling isn’t exactly a disrespectful gesture. It was just a nonstandard response to the flag and anthem, meant to draw attention to some widespread and often-ignored violations of the ideals that flag represents. Not to mention there were plenty of attempts to modify the protest to avoid offending people. It didn’t matter. The backlash was rooted in some combination of a) filthy liberals hate America, no matter what they say or do, and b) celebrities should stop interrupting my sports with politics. Given the gravity of the issue being protested, I really don’t think the refusal to acknowledge that issue while hating Kaepernick with a passion for trying to bring it up can be chalked up to communication issues.
It isn't saying that it was meant for that purpose, and I would advise you to leave off the misgeneralizations when we're talking about rather distinct groups. I'm engaging with anyone I think can identify that messages sent from one person or group can be received in quite a different way by another person or group. There's entire TV shows that feature this as a major means of comic effect. How dumb or funny it is that they thought it would be taken this way, haha!
I appreciate the presumption of ill will on your part, and I identify the same part in my side as well. It usually takes the form of presuming the protests were meant to be violent, or they're being led by hard-left groups. I hope we can move beyond this into some really interesting issues in the future!
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On June 04 2020 10:44 puppykiller wrote:
Here is our post office. Why would a protester want to deny a community its mail?
Bills come in the mail, no one likes those.
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Northern Ireland25259 Posts
On June 04 2020 11:17 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2020 10:39 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 10:08 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 09:50 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 09:36 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:30 Gorsameth wrote:On June 04 2020 08:13 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:04 Mohdoo wrote:On June 04 2020 07:56 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 07:43 Mohdoo wrote:
[quote]
This doesn't apply to Black America. And because it doesn't apply to them, I can't respect the flag. We are a country that does not fulfill its obligations to its citizens. How can I respect that? What should I still be respecting? Did you even read the part when I acknowledged not everybody views the flag as a set of aspirational American ideals? Go reread it. If you have any sense that there are owed "obligation", then maybe you can think your way through to understanding something might represent that obligation that doesn't do the same to you. What I am saying is that after reading your original post, I did not walk away with a proper understanding. Since you said most of this is misunderstanding, I asked if you could elaborate on your original post in pursuit of understanding. What don't you understand about the original post, or what didn't you understand about my response? Two different groups (or more) view the flag in different ways, and the last posts from you showed you were in one camp and can't acknowledge that the other one exists. Everything you've said views the flag as the everchanging moral balance of the US domestically and abroad, instead of a set of ideals that may not be well achieved currently, but preserves the capacity to change. See: right to peacefully assemble, the vote. Now, I was a little shocked that you were into the whole "you're not really Black if Biden actually has to win your vote over Trump," so we may be seven layers apart on issues of race and we will never come to agreement. If the flag represents a set of ideals that may not be achieved currently, then surely it makes sense for a peaceful and respectful protest to remind people that those ideals have not been achieved and that everyone should continue to work towards those ideals? Once again, protesting the flag itself means + Show Spoiler [...] +there is no uniting ideal even to work towards. No ideal of rights worth better protecting among all people, with an army defending their restriction by foreign conquest, and a police from domestic unlawful transgression. And honestly, if you think there is no worthwhile uniting pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, then tear that flag apart and let's break up the nation.
It's perfectly natural to view the flag as the unifying declaration, imperfectly followed, and the current protests (such that there's a large peaceful contingent) as the means to achieve closer adherence to those principles. There's no point saying the police are hindering the right to peaceful assembly if you don't believe in the nation that has it in the constitution via amendment.
I want to be very inclusive here. If you think the constitution and what's enshrined in there needs to be taken down violently, and this country or several countries should be founded with a new set of aspirations, then the flag is exactly what you should target to get that message across to more groups. Give your design for a new flag.
Maybe the people that recognize my point here can move on because this is getting to be kinda a digression, and mods have historically disfavored that kind of thing. You can still agree with me, and want to change this perception of the flag to fit your conception of what it should represent, as long as you can see how people like Brees are being perfectly self-consistent from their group view of the symbol. I realize you’re replying to a million people at once, but genuine question: why do you get to decide what it means? I believe in ideals like civil rights, due process, and rule of law. I also believe those ideals are being devastated by the way our criminal justice system treats people of color. The whole point of the kneeling thing was to draw attention to that devastation, in pursuit of better achieving those ideals. Frankly, conservatives have a long history of dismissing their opposition as unpatriotic, and this just feels like yet another instance of that. If this was a little more of a nuanced topic, it would be how the conversation between how two groups do a cultural dialogue on what each thinks the other means. If we pretended Drew Brees was a major cultural icon, then more people in the BLM movement might come to see that showing respect to the flag and backing peaceful protests are not at all in conflict, and they learn more about the other meaning. In turn, maybe while not approving of the protest, the group all about the aspirational aspect of the flag are less viscerally pissed off at the kneeling protests, because they view it differently. But in terms of the communication dimension, it isn't like Kaepernick is using his protest to speak towards people that already think the flag symbolizes oppression or unequal society ... or it isn't his primary audience. His speech is on a symbol towards the people that think it's the ultimate symbol of unity and an ideal worth striving towards (im generalizing a little bit to make the point). In which case, the message comes out "There is nothing in America or being American that is uniting, no set of ideals in its founding document which might be worth working towards." The first point straight-up needs to be understood if you ever dream of changing America. It's kind of a heated time right now, so I understand a lot of this anger directed at people and groups that don't think like them. It's high tide of the culture war, that some people pretended didn't exist during the Obama years, and think can be solved if only Trump were never elected. But you’re still doing it! Saying BLM should learn respecting the flag doesn’t conflict with their protest is indirectly saying that kneeling was *meant to disrespect the flag*. They didn’t think so! Kneeling isn’t exactly a disrespectful gesture. It was just a nonstandard response to the flag and anthem, meant to draw attention to some widespread and often-ignored violations of the ideals that flag represents. Not to mention there were plenty of attempts to modify the protest to avoid offending people. It didn’t matter. The backlash was rooted in some combination of a) filthy liberals hate America, no matter what they say or do, and b) celebrities should stop interrupting my sports with politics. Given the gravity of the issue being protested, I really don’t think the refusal to acknowledge that issue while hating Kaepernick with a passion for trying to bring it up can be chalked up to communication issues. It isn't saying that it was meant for that purpose, and I would advise you to leave off the misgeneralizations when we're talking about rather distinct groups. I'm engaging with anyone I think can identify that messages sent from one person or group can be received in quite a different way by another person or group. There's entire TV shows that feature this as a major means of comic effect. How dumb or funny it is that they thought it would be taken this way, haha! I appreciate the presumption of ill will on your part, and I identify the same part in my side as well. It usually takes the form of presuming the protests were meant to be violent, or they're being led by hard-left groups. I hope we can move beyond this into some really interesting issues in the future!
Symbolism goes both ways.
You’ve argued Trump’s responses to this aren’t impactful because his executive power is limited and he can’t do various things. Realistically how much of the population is au fait with the exact limits of the executive branch?
I agree with the power of symbolism, which informs most of my critiques of Trump at this time.
The flag can be important and galvanising, what the President says and does are pretty fucking important too.
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One reaction that goes against thread opinion / hasn't been expressed or debated much:
This is probably because the looters have been doing so much visible damage. I agree that it sucks that the greater part of the protests have been nonviolent. See Cotton's oped in the New York Times ]defending the same. This is now a mainstream view.
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In a healthy society Cotton would be ousted from office before the end of the day, but the military hasn't had a fraction of their crimes shown on national TV (as crimes instead of action movies or whatever) so people still think they are the good guys.
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On June 04 2020 12:02 Danglars wrote:One reaction that goes against thread opinion / hasn't been expressed or debated much: https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1267851865099821058This is probably because the looters have been doing so much visible damage. I agree that it sucks that the greater part of the protests have been nonviolent. See Cotton's oped in the New York Times ]defending the same. This is now a mainstream view.
This is funny because it shows the disconnect. As soon as people see the military shooting protestors, that plummets. But the privileged have this idea in their head of evil brown looters stealing capitalist's hard earned millions and twitch in resentment. Once they see people running away from the military, it gets dark. The issue is that a portion of the country is incapable of mental models. They aren't able to imagine things beyond the immediate.
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A lot of people (I would fully admit, even myself) come to conclusions through a mix of emotions/inarticulated values and work backwards from there.
I think in a lot of cases here you have people who identify themselves more with the businesses being looted than they do with the black people getting indiscriminately killed by police or the protestors facing police violence. Even during the older BLM protests there was a large amount of butthurt about mostly trivial things like blocking off highways.
Of course those same people probably didn’t really care about the police violence in the first place. So it doesn’t really matter if they don’t like the looting or protests. In fact if inconveniencing/scaring them makes them more likely to put pressure on politicians to stop the mayhem (even via concessions) it’s a net win for the protestors. The whole point of protests or social movements is not only to raise awareness but to put pressure on neutral bystanders.
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On June 04 2020 11:17 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2020 10:39 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 10:08 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 09:50 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 09:36 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:30 Gorsameth wrote:On June 04 2020 08:13 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:04 Mohdoo wrote:On June 04 2020 07:56 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 07:43 Mohdoo wrote:
[quote]
This doesn't apply to Black America. And because it doesn't apply to them, I can't respect the flag. We are a country that does not fulfill its obligations to its citizens. How can I respect that? What should I still be respecting? Did you even read the part when I acknowledged not everybody views the flag as a set of aspirational American ideals? Go reread it. If you have any sense that there are owed "obligation", then maybe you can think your way through to understanding something might represent that obligation that doesn't do the same to you. What I am saying is that after reading your original post, I did not walk away with a proper understanding. Since you said most of this is misunderstanding, I asked if you could elaborate on your original post in pursuit of understanding. What don't you understand about the original post, or what didn't you understand about my response? Two different groups (or more) view the flag in different ways, and the last posts from you showed you were in one camp and can't acknowledge that the other one exists. Everything you've said views the flag as the everchanging moral balance of the US domestically and abroad, instead of a set of ideals that may not be well achieved currently, but preserves the capacity to change. See: right to peacefully assemble, the vote. Now, I was a little shocked that you were into the whole "you're not really Black if Biden actually has to win your vote over Trump," so we may be seven layers apart on issues of race and we will never come to agreement. If the flag represents a set of ideals that may not be achieved currently, then surely it makes sense for a peaceful and respectful protest to remind people that those ideals have not been achieved and that everyone should continue to work towards those ideals? Once again, protesting the flag itself means + Show Spoiler [...] +there is no uniting ideal even to work towards. No ideal of rights worth better protecting among all people, with an army defending their restriction by foreign conquest, and a police from domestic unlawful transgression. And honestly, if you think there is no worthwhile uniting pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, then tear that flag apart and let's break up the nation.
It's perfectly natural to view the flag as the unifying declaration, imperfectly followed, and the current protests (such that there's a large peaceful contingent) as the means to achieve closer adherence to those principles. There's no point saying the police are hindering the right to peaceful assembly if you don't believe in the nation that has it in the constitution via amendment.
I want to be very inclusive here. If you think the constitution and what's enshrined in there needs to be taken down violently, and this country or several countries should be founded with a new set of aspirations, then the flag is exactly what you should target to get that message across to more groups. Give your design for a new flag.
Maybe the people that recognize my point here can move on because this is getting to be kinda a digression, and mods have historically disfavored that kind of thing. You can still agree with me, and want to change this perception of the flag to fit your conception of what it should represent, as long as you can see how people like Brees are being perfectly self-consistent from their group view of the symbol. I realize you’re replying to a million people at once, but genuine question: why do you get to decide what it means? I believe in ideals like civil rights, due process, and rule of law. I also believe those ideals are being devastated by the way our criminal justice system treats people of color. The whole point of the kneeling thing was to draw attention to that devastation, in pursuit of better achieving those ideals. Frankly, conservatives have a long history of dismissing their opposition as unpatriotic, and this just feels like yet another instance of that. If this was a little more of a nuanced topic, it would be how the conversation between how two groups do a cultural dialogue on what each thinks the other means. If we pretended Drew Brees was a major cultural icon, then more people in the BLM movement might come to see that showing respect to the flag and backing peaceful protests are not at all in conflict, and they learn more about the other meaning. In turn, maybe while not approving of the protest, the group all about the aspirational aspect of the flag are less viscerally pissed off at the kneeling protests, because they view it differently. But in terms of the communication dimension, it isn't like Kaepernick is using his protest to speak towards people that already think the flag symbolizes oppression or unequal society ... or it isn't his primary audience. His speech is on a symbol towards the people that think it's the ultimate symbol of unity and an ideal worth striving towards (im generalizing a little bit to make the point). In which case, the message comes out "There is nothing in America or being American that is uniting, no set of ideals in its founding document which might be worth working towards." The first point straight-up needs to be understood if you ever dream of changing America. It's kind of a heated time right now, so I understand a lot of this anger directed at people and groups that don't think like them. It's high tide of the culture war, that some people pretended didn't exist during the Obama years, and think can be solved if only Trump were never elected. But you’re still doing it! Saying BLM should learn respecting the flag doesn’t conflict with their protest is indirectly saying that kneeling was *meant to disrespect the flag*. They didn’t think so! Kneeling isn’t exactly a disrespectful gesture. It was just a nonstandard response to the flag and anthem, meant to draw attention to some widespread and often-ignored violations of the ideals that flag represents. Not to mention there were plenty of attempts to modify the protest to avoid offending people. It didn’t matter. The backlash was rooted in some combination of a) filthy liberals hate America, no matter what they say or do, and b) celebrities should stop interrupting my sports with politics. Given the gravity of the issue being protested, I really don’t think the refusal to acknowledge that issue while hating Kaepernick with a passion for trying to bring it up can be chalked up to communication issues. It isn't saying that it was meant for that purpose, and I would advise you to leave off the misgeneralizations when we're talking about rather distinct groups. I'm engaging with anyone I think can identify that messages sent from one person or group can be received in quite a different way by another person or group. There's entire TV shows that feature this as a major means of comic effect. How dumb or funny it is that they thought it would be taken this way, haha! I appreciate the presumption of ill will on your part, and I identify the same part in my side as well. It usually takes the form of presuming the protests were meant to be violent, or they're being led by hard-left groups. I hope we can move beyond this into some really interesting issues in the future!
Yeah, I understand what communication issues are. I’ll even acknowledge that a lot of people on the right might just not know that Kaepernick and most others on the left don’t actually profess to hate America; that might be a miscommunication of sorts. But come on, they saw a black man kneeling during the anthem, asked why he’s kneeling, and were told it was to protest police brutality. I’m not even asking for interpretive charity, I’m just asking them to take a person st their word for whether they hate America or not.
The response wasn’t inquiry about the injustice he was protesting. It wasn’t indifference or disinterest. It wasn’t even simple disagreement. It was calling for him to be fired, for teams to be punished, for the ENTIRE SPORTS LEAGUE to be boycotted if it wasn’t prepared to eradicate this sort of performance with extreme prejudice. You want me to chalk this up to a miscommunication? To two groups using similar symbology in different ways and misunderstanding each others’ signals?
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On June 04 2020 12:50 Mohdoo wrote:This is funny because it shows the disconnect. As soon as people see the military shooting protestors, that plummets. But the privileged have this idea in their head of evil brown looters stealing capitalist's hard earned millions and twitch in resentment. Once they see people running away from the military, it gets dark. The issue is that a portion of the country is incapable of mental models. They aren't able to imagine things beyond the immediate.
Is the military shooting protesters? I wonder if the military is better than the police at remaining calm.
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On June 04 2020 13:59 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2020 12:50 Mohdoo wrote:On June 04 2020 12:02 Danglars wrote:One reaction that goes against thread opinion / hasn't been expressed or debated much: https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1267851865099821058This is probably because the looters have been doing so much visible damage. I agree that it sucks that the greater part of the protests have been nonviolent. See Cotton's oped in the New York Times ]defending the same. This is now a mainstream view. This is funny because it shows the disconnect. As soon as people see the military shooting protestors, that plummets. But the privileged have this idea in their head of evil brown looters stealing capitalist's hard earned millions and twitch in resentment. Once they see people running away from the military, it gets dark. The issue is that a portion of the country is incapable of mental models. They aren't able to imagine things beyond the immediate. Is the military shooting protesters? I wonder if the military is better than the police at remaining calm.
There’s a general expectation that the military would be better if only because they have some standards and the whole military court system.
I support the protests and tolerate the violence as an expression of the people’s dissatisfaction of decades of little to no progress and would admit the US military to probably handle these protests better than the police have right now.
Of course that changes the minute they start beating up on peaceful protestors and start shooting at the media.
Also, that polling is pretty meaningless because everyone loves maintaining the status quo. When the civil rights law passed, the vast majority of Americans ended up supporting civil rights but wanted to slow its enforcement and lower the scope of the laws which tells you everything about what the majority of Americans believed in. They wanted the chaos to end but still didn’t want blacks people to get their rights enforced by the law.
And getting a majority of white Americans to support some form of civil rights law took the police started beating up actual children and cities burning down to happen. They too wanted to forcefully stop the protests before the chaos started to sink in.
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On June 04 2020 08:49 Starlightsun wrote:
It's weird how our flag has become almost a quasi religious symbol. I remember as a kid if you did flag duty (putting it up on the pole) you were told it must NEVER touch the ground. And of course we recited our pledge of allegiance to it each morning. I never questioned it as a child, and it seems some people never do even as adults.
Thinking about it more, the pledge of allegiance is first "to the flag", and only afterwards "to the republic for which it stands". Odd.
I came back kinda just to answer this: No its not odd at all when you think of religion as probably part of the human condition. If you examine the atheists back when atheism was in its rhetorical heyday it seemed to take many of the forms of a religion. In a society that is supposedly becoming "more secular" (a thing I don't think is actually possible) other religions will pop up, only they will have different deities. Sometimes it will be the flag, sometimes it will be environmentalism, sometimes it will be dear leader. I think denying this is denying the human condition and being intentionally ignorant to thousands of years of philosophers, poets, etc from all sorts of cultures.
Also as long as I am engaging, I'd like to ask a question to those like Moodoo and GH. Why do you think change doesn't happen in policing despite minorities being an essential part of the ruling coalition on most of the places where these incidents happen. Now, I know many people have asked questions like this in bad faith before. The "hurr durr Democrat Mayor, Democrat Governor" types. I understand that the Democratic party is the party that minorities happen to be in, not the party of minorities. But what is the kind of reform that lets the Democratic party (or some other majority party that supplants them as the party of the cities) be more responsive to the demands of minorities?
I ask this question because maybe I thought of a solution: Breaking up cities. I say this because the answer cannot be something like, "make less things crimes". Old ladies are the dominant voters in any jurisdiction, and they love making everything into crimes.
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On June 04 2020 13:33 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2020 11:17 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 10:39 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 10:08 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 09:50 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 09:36 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:30 Gorsameth wrote:On June 04 2020 08:13 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:04 Mohdoo wrote:On June 04 2020 07:56 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
Did you even read the part when I acknowledged not everybody views the flag as a set of aspirational American ideals? Go reread it. If you have any sense that there are owed "obligation", then maybe you can think your way through to understanding something might represent that obligation that doesn't do the same to you. What I am saying is that after reading your original post, I did not walk away with a proper understanding. Since you said most of this is misunderstanding, I asked if you could elaborate on your original post in pursuit of understanding. What don't you understand about the original post, or what didn't you understand about my response? Two different groups (or more) view the flag in different ways, and the last posts from you showed you were in one camp and can't acknowledge that the other one exists. Everything you've said views the flag as the everchanging moral balance of the US domestically and abroad, instead of a set of ideals that may not be well achieved currently, but preserves the capacity to change. See: right to peacefully assemble, the vote. Now, I was a little shocked that you were into the whole "you're not really Black if Biden actually has to win your vote over Trump," so we may be seven layers apart on issues of race and we will never come to agreement. If the flag represents a set of ideals that may not be achieved currently, then surely it makes sense for a peaceful and respectful protest to remind people that those ideals have not been achieved and that everyone should continue to work towards those ideals? Once again, protesting the flag itself means + Show Spoiler [...] +there is no uniting ideal even to work towards. No ideal of rights worth better protecting among all people, with an army defending their restriction by foreign conquest, and a police from domestic unlawful transgression. And honestly, if you think there is no worthwhile uniting pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, then tear that flag apart and let's break up the nation.
It's perfectly natural to view the flag as the unifying declaration, imperfectly followed, and the current protests (such that there's a large peaceful contingent) as the means to achieve closer adherence to those principles. There's no point saying the police are hindering the right to peaceful assembly if you don't believe in the nation that has it in the constitution via amendment.
I want to be very inclusive here. If you think the constitution and what's enshrined in there needs to be taken down violently, and this country or several countries should be founded with a new set of aspirations, then the flag is exactly what you should target to get that message across to more groups. Give your design for a new flag.
Maybe the people that recognize my point here can move on because this is getting to be kinda a digression, and mods have historically disfavored that kind of thing. You can still agree with me, and want to change this perception of the flag to fit your conception of what it should represent, as long as you can see how people like Brees are being perfectly self-consistent from their group view of the symbol. I realize you’re replying to a million people at once, but genuine question: why do you get to decide what it means? I believe in ideals like civil rights, due process, and rule of law. I also believe those ideals are being devastated by the way our criminal justice system treats people of color. The whole point of the kneeling thing was to draw attention to that devastation, in pursuit of better achieving those ideals. Frankly, conservatives have a long history of dismissing their opposition as unpatriotic, and this just feels like yet another instance of that. If this was a little more of a nuanced topic, it would be how the conversation between how two groups do a cultural dialogue on what each thinks the other means. If we pretended Drew Brees was a major cultural icon, then more people in the BLM movement might come to see that showing respect to the flag and backing peaceful protests are not at all in conflict, and they learn more about the other meaning. In turn, maybe while not approving of the protest, the group all about the aspirational aspect of the flag are less viscerally pissed off at the kneeling protests, because they view it differently. But in terms of the communication dimension, it isn't like Kaepernick is using his protest to speak towards people that already think the flag symbolizes oppression or unequal society ... or it isn't his primary audience. His speech is on a symbol towards the people that think it's the ultimate symbol of unity and an ideal worth striving towards (im generalizing a little bit to make the point). In which case, the message comes out "There is nothing in America or being American that is uniting, no set of ideals in its founding document which might be worth working towards." The first point straight-up needs to be understood if you ever dream of changing America. It's kind of a heated time right now, so I understand a lot of this anger directed at people and groups that don't think like them. It's high tide of the culture war, that some people pretended didn't exist during the Obama years, and think can be solved if only Trump were never elected. But you’re still doing it! Saying BLM should learn respecting the flag doesn’t conflict with their protest is indirectly saying that kneeling was *meant to disrespect the flag*. They didn’t think so! Kneeling isn’t exactly a disrespectful gesture. It was just a nonstandard response to the flag and anthem, meant to draw attention to some widespread and often-ignored violations of the ideals that flag represents. Not to mention there were plenty of attempts to modify the protest to avoid offending people. It didn’t matter. The backlash was rooted in some combination of a) filthy liberals hate America, no matter what they say or do, and b) celebrities should stop interrupting my sports with politics. Given the gravity of the issue being protested, I really don’t think the refusal to acknowledge that issue while hating Kaepernick with a passion for trying to bring it up can be chalked up to communication issues. It isn't saying that it was meant for that purpose, and I would advise you to leave off the misgeneralizations when we're talking about rather distinct groups. I'm engaging with anyone I think can identify that messages sent from one person or group can be received in quite a different way by another person or group. There's entire TV shows that feature this as a major means of comic effect. How dumb or funny it is that they thought it would be taken this way, haha! I appreciate the presumption of ill will on your part, and I identify the same part in my side as well. It usually takes the form of presuming the protests were meant to be violent, or they're being led by hard-left groups. I hope we can move beyond this into some really interesting issues in the future! Yeah, I understand what communication issues are. I’ll even acknowledge that a lot of people on the right might just not know that Kaepernick and most others on the left don’t actually profess to hate America; that might be a miscommunication of sorts. But come on, they saw a black man kneeling during the anthem, asked why he’s kneeling, and were told it was to protest police brutality. I’m not even asking for interpretive charity, I’m just asking them to take a person st their word for whether they hate America or not. The response wasn’t inquiry about the injustice he was protesting. It wasn’t indifference or disinterest. It wasn’t even simple disagreement. It was calling for him to be fired, for teams to be punished, for the ENTIRE SPORTS LEAGUE to be boycotted if it wasn’t prepared to eradicate this sort of performance with extreme prejudice. You want me to chalk this up to a miscommunication? To two groups using similar symbology in different ways and misunderstanding each others’ signals?
You're going to have to do much better than that. Kaepernick gets abundant empathy for what he wants to say, yet his audience gets zero empathy for what the object of his speech symbolizes. He can even choose Rev Martin Luther King Jr as the subject of protesting adultery, and his audience will still rally towards the civil rights cause he represents. Trump too picks the worst objects to rally for a cause, and everybody roasts him for the choice. But he's right wing populist, and that matters ... because polarization apparently.
You really need to look to history at what the consequences of miscommunication, or misappropriation, have yielded. The verbal message of "police brutality" pales in comparison of the object protest of "what unites us as Americans" every day of the week, and twice on Sunday. Black lives matter has its own symbols (mostly inherited) like the raised fist and Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Maybe I stage my protest that the raised fist is actually anarchy, and Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are [insert revolting thing here]. You gonna just catch that vibe and change your thinking, or are you somehow misunderstanding my message?
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On June 04 2020 13:59 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2020 12:50 Mohdoo wrote:On June 04 2020 12:02 Danglars wrote:One reaction that goes against thread opinion / hasn't been expressed or debated much: https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1267851865099821058This is probably because the looters have been doing so much visible damage. I agree that it sucks that the greater part of the protests have been nonviolent. See Cotton's oped in the New York Times ]defending the same. This is now a mainstream view. This is funny because it shows the disconnect. As soon as people see the military shooting protestors, that plummets. But the privileged have this idea in their head of evil brown looters stealing capitalist's hard earned millions and twitch in resentment. Once they see people running away from the military, it gets dark. The issue is that a portion of the country is incapable of mental models. They aren't able to imagine things beyond the immediate. Is the military shooting protesters? I wonder if the military is better than the police at remaining calm.
Not yet, but that's what the poll implies people would support. Cultural hegemony has brought us to the point where the poor side with the king against Robin hood. But when they watch it happen, it'll change. The average human is just wildly inadequate and needs training wheels to make basic moral judgments
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Didn't Robin Hood steal from the rich and give to the poor? not steal from the hard working to enrich himself?
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On June 04 2020 15:42 Taelshin wrote:
Didn't Robin Hood steal from the rich and give to the poor? not steal from the hard working to enrich himself?
can you please clarify what you mean?
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On June 04 2020 14:19 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2020 13:33 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 11:17 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 10:39 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 10:08 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 09:50 ChristianS wrote:On June 04 2020 09:36 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:30 Gorsameth wrote:On June 04 2020 08:13 Danglars wrote:On June 04 2020 08:04 Mohdoo wrote:
[quote]
What I am saying is that after reading your original post, I did not walk away with a proper understanding. Since you said most of this is misunderstanding, I asked if you could elaborate on your original post in pursuit of understanding. What don't you understand about the original post, or what didn't you understand about my response? Two different groups (or more) view the flag in different ways, and the last posts from you showed you were in one camp and can't acknowledge that the other one exists. Everything you've said views the flag as the everchanging moral balance of the US domestically and abroad, instead of a set of ideals that may not be well achieved currently, but preserves the capacity to change. See: right to peacefully assemble, the vote. Now, I was a little shocked that you were into the whole "you're not really Black if Biden actually has to win your vote over Trump," so we may be seven layers apart on issues of race and we will never come to agreement. If the flag represents a set of ideals that may not be achieved currently, then surely it makes sense for a peaceful and respectful protest to remind people that those ideals have not been achieved and that everyone should continue to work towards those ideals? Once again, protesting the flag itself means + Show Spoiler [...] +there is no uniting ideal even to work towards. No ideal of rights worth better protecting among all people, with an army defending their restriction by foreign conquest, and a police from domestic unlawful transgression. And honestly, if you think there is no worthwhile uniting pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, then tear that flag apart and let's break up the nation.
It's perfectly natural to view the flag as the unifying declaration, imperfectly followed, and the current protests (such that there's a large peaceful contingent) as the means to achieve closer adherence to those principles. There's no point saying the police are hindering the right to peaceful assembly if you don't believe in the nation that has it in the constitution via amendment.
I want to be very inclusive here. If you think the constitution and what's enshrined in there needs to be taken down violently, and this country or several countries should be founded with a new set of aspirations, then the flag is exactly what you should target to get that message across to more groups. Give your design for a new flag.
Maybe the people that recognize my point here can move on because this is getting to be kinda a digression, and mods have historically disfavored that kind of thing. You can still agree with me, and want to change this perception of the flag to fit your conception of what it should represent, as long as you can see how people like Brees are being perfectly self-consistent from their group view of the symbol. I realize you’re replying to a million people at once, but genuine question: why do you get to decide what it means? I believe in ideals like civil rights, due process, and rule of law. I also believe those ideals are being devastated by the way our criminal justice system treats people of color. The whole point of the kneeling thing was to draw attention to that devastation, in pursuit of better achieving those ideals. Frankly, conservatives have a long history of dismissing their opposition as unpatriotic, and this just feels like yet another instance of that. If this was a little more of a nuanced topic, it would be how the conversation between how two groups do a cultural dialogue on what each thinks the other means. If we pretended Drew Brees was a major cultural icon, then more people in the BLM movement might come to see that showing respect to the flag and backing peaceful protests are not at all in conflict, and they learn more about the other meaning. In turn, maybe while not approving of the protest, the group all about the aspirational aspect of the flag are less viscerally pissed off at the kneeling protests, because they view it differently. But in terms of the communication dimension, it isn't like Kaepernick is using his protest to speak towards people that already think the flag symbolizes oppression or unequal society ... or it isn't his primary audience. His speech is on a symbol towards the people that think it's the ultimate symbol of unity and an ideal worth striving towards (im generalizing a little bit to make the point). In which case, the message comes out "There is nothing in America or being American that is uniting, no set of ideals in its founding document which might be worth working towards." The first point straight-up needs to be understood if you ever dream of changing America. It's kind of a heated time right now, so I understand a lot of this anger directed at people and groups that don't think like them. It's high tide of the culture war, that some people pretended didn't exist during the Obama years, and think can be solved if only Trump were never elected. But you’re still doing it! Saying BLM should learn respecting the flag doesn’t conflict with their protest is indirectly saying that kneeling was *meant to disrespect the flag*. They didn’t think so! Kneeling isn’t exactly a disrespectful gesture. It was just a nonstandard response to the flag and anthem, meant to draw attention to some widespread and often-ignored violations of the ideals that flag represents. Not to mention there were plenty of attempts to modify the protest to avoid offending people. It didn’t matter. The backlash was rooted in some combination of a) filthy liberals hate America, no matter what they say or do, and b) celebrities should stop interrupting my sports with politics. Given the gravity of the issue being protested, I really don’t think the refusal to acknowledge that issue while hating Kaepernick with a passion for trying to bring it up can be chalked up to communication issues. It isn't saying that it was meant for that purpose, and I would advise you to leave off the misgeneralizations when we're talking about rather distinct groups. I'm engaging with anyone I think can identify that messages sent from one person or group can be received in quite a different way by another person or group. There's entire TV shows that feature this as a major means of comic effect. How dumb or funny it is that they thought it would be taken this way, haha! I appreciate the presumption of ill will on your part, and I identify the same part in my side as well. It usually takes the form of presuming the protests were meant to be violent, or they're being led by hard-left groups. I hope we can move beyond this into some really interesting issues in the future! Yeah, I understand what communication issues are. I’ll even acknowledge that a lot of people on the right might just not know that Kaepernick and most others on the left don’t actually profess to hate America; that might be a miscommunication of sorts. But come on, they saw a black man kneeling during the anthem, asked why he’s kneeling, and were told it was to protest police brutality. I’m not even asking for interpretive charity, I’m just asking them to take a person st their word for whether they hate America or not. The response wasn’t inquiry about the injustice he was protesting. It wasn’t indifference or disinterest. It wasn’t even simple disagreement. It was calling for him to be fired, for teams to be punished, for the ENTIRE SPORTS LEAGUE to be boycotted if it wasn’t prepared to eradicate this sort of performance with extreme prejudice. You want me to chalk this up to a miscommunication? To two groups using similar symbology in different ways and misunderstanding each others’ signals? You're going to have to do much better than that. Kaepernick gets abundant empathy for what he wants to say, yet his audience gets zero empathy for what the object of his speech symbolizes. He can even choose Rev Martin Luther King Jr as the subject of protesting adultery, and his audience will still rally towards the civil rights cause he represents. Trump too picks the worst objects to rally for a cause, and everybody roasts him for the choice. But he's right wing populist, and that matters ... because polarization apparently. You really need to look to history at what the consequences of miscommunication, or misappropriation, have yielded. The verbal message of "police brutality" pales in comparison of the object protest of "what unites us as Americans" every day of the week, and twice on Sunday. Black lives matter has its own symbols (mostly inherited) like the raised fist and Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Maybe I stage my protest that the raised fist is actually anarchy, and Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are [insert revolting thing here]. You gonna just catch that vibe and change your thinking, or are you somehow misunderstanding my message?
Rather than get too upset over your condescending tone, I’m gonna try to back up a bit. Fundamentally, you’ve got a justice system in which the basic protections we’re supposed to be entitled to as Americans are effectively not afforded to people of color. The particular dynamics vary by community, but in general blacks can be searched without a warrant, arrested without committing any notable offense, and required to submit to whatever indignity cops demand without protest or retaliation. Even the death penalty can be applied with no due process to speak of. And these threats aren’t just hypothetical, they’re very real and regular occurrences that black people deal with every day.
Then you’ve got a significant population, especially right-wing but including a fair number on the left, that are either ignorant of or indifferent to the tyrannical relationship between police and people of color. Few probably know many of the particulars of it, having never faced it themselves, although virtually all of them are aware to some degree of the hostile relationship between blacks and cops, through cultural osmosis if nothing else.
Now perhaps I’m misunderstanding you, so tell me one more time. What, exactly, do you think is the problem here? Are these people simply unaware of the injustice? Because there’s been ample attempts to draw attention to it, videos depicting it, books and articles and podcasts and everything besides describing in detail the dynamics at play. If they’ve still managed to be ignorant of it, at what point does it become their responsibility to dig their head out of the sand and look around them?
You seem convinced the problem is “miscommunication.” Perhaps all the attempts to communicate the injustice to them just happened to be expressed using overloaded symbology which these people interpreted to mean something else? But if so, at what point is it their responsibility to step outside their cultural context long enough to try to understand what these people are trying to communicate to them?
And if the problem really is mere ignorance, how are these people still sufficiently aware to have visceral partisan reactions directly opposing reforming this injustice? Slogans like “stop and frisk,” “blue lives matter,” “boycott the NFL” each in their own way indicate an awareness of, and explicit support for, the exact systems we’re pretending they’re merely ignorant of.
So before you accuse me of ill will or lack of empathy or something again, why don’t you try to describe why you think these people tolerate this injustice and react against calls to reform it (since I apparently lack the empathy and good will to intuit their motivations on my own)?
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EPT
