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On April 27 2021 08:33 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 06:54 Doublemint wrote:@LL + Show Spoiler +On April 26 2021 23:20 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2021 18:08 Doublemint wrote:
Lenin had a name for people being used under false pretenses, and without understanding the whole devious point. don't be that. There's also a word for people who, under false pretenses, ask the question of "what about?" in regards to some foreign devil or other in order to distract from the very real problems in one's own country. "Yes things are bad - but Russia and China are murderous dictatorships!" the saying goes. Then a caricature of the latter countries is propped up to hide the fact that the Western countries being propped up as a paragon of virtue have some serious moral failings of their own. The question of "which is worse/better really?" is often glossed over because few people have the knowledge or inclination to provide nuance to such a point. But it's safe to say that people who uncritically bash those other countries without really evaluating the reality of what life is like there are just lapping up propaganda used to hide the ugly nature of the problems in the Western world. The stagnating economic situation that only serves the wealthy is a good place to start looking if you need some concrete evidence that the Chinese position isn't entirely baseless. Show nested quote +On April 26 2021 20:00 Doublemint wrote: you gave the answer yourself. a quarter does not like the Chauvin verdict. as I see it, that is quite the minority, no?  A quarter of the country looked at an obvious murder-by-police, a case so cut and dry that a large swath of people have no sympathy for the "Black Lives Matter" movement look at this and see it as a bridge too far, and thought that a conviction of the policeman responsible was the wrong decision... and you see that as a good thing? people can only deal with what is infront of them. and life is anything but dealing with absolutes. so we are comparing relatives here - and relatively speaking - our system of government is (working) better, and not just on paper. that is what I mean. the people are a different matter, I am sure the average Chinese person and the average Russian is about as smart and lovely - or brutish and simple - as the next one anywhere else, including any Western country. btw, if you are modestly wealthy you can live rather nicely just about anywhere in the world, you have to live by certain rules as well... mostly unwritten ones. so that is a low bar to pass imho. and given that at one point in a not too distant past America was so split into two camps that they would not even agree on the color of the sky, I would say the Chauvin verdict is an open and shut case with just about 25% doing their best Ostrich impressions. China's system of government clearly, unambiguously worked better in 2020. Whether or not that will continue going forward is of course a matter for the future. I hate to admit it, but I don't think that it was just a fluke. Not much else to comment on if the nuance of what it's like to live in each of these countries is something to be abstracted away. It's clearly not as simple as "West good, Russia and China is living under a dictatorship" as you seem to be reluctantly coming around to admitting.
I’m always amazed at you guys ranting about the US all day but being kind of ok with Russia and China. If you are revolted by what happens in the US - and god knows there is lots to be revolted about - you should be absolutely bat shit mad at what’s happening in Russia.
The fact you are completely unable to recognize the value of, say, a free press, separation of powers, free elections, the state of law and so on, however imperfect and imperfectly they are applied, make the whole of your discourse feel unnuanced, disconnected and ultimately very uninteresting. But that’s just my opinion. You keep doing you I guess.
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On April 27 2021 13:50 plasmidghost wrote:
The cops have that famous slogan of "to protect and serve". It's true when you realize that the only thing they protect and serve is corporate interests. They did this to someone who couldn't fight back in any capacity for simply forgetting to pay for $14 of items from Walmart, a company that made literally $14,881,000,000 in net profit in 2020 (according to their 2020 SEC filing) and then watched in glee and celebrated. Police cannot be reformed. The entire institution is built for the sadistic power-hungry borderline evil people in society and the longer it continues, the more people it will kill, injure, and traumatize.
Yup. The sooner people in the US come to grips with this the better imo.
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On April 27 2021 11:40 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 11:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2021 09:56 Archeon wrote:On April 27 2021 09:31 GreenHorizons wrote:what I meant to say was that he should move on from (just or mainly) the pointing out of bad stuff - of which there is an overabundance in a fucked up world - and not forget the hope and progress side. GH should never stop fighting for his right and what is right, the day you stop and go the way of (inner) resignation is when you die, little by little. I don't point out the horrific crimes against humanity that the US has inflicted since inception (and the colonists in both Americas before) and continued largely uninterrupted because I've given up hope. I do it because it contextualizes the US prioritizing profits for a handful of wealthy people at the expense of countless lives in the global south as consistent with what the US has always been. As to the "it's better now" trope (that also existed in the 60's preceding the civil rights movement), I like to look at the economics since it's not a vague emotion, but a trackable statistic. To that point, the wealth gap between Black and white people was already stagnant from the 60's and by all estimations much worse since the pandemic. That means an entire generation of Black people that saw MLK march for equity, voted for Democrats relentlessly for 60+ years are dying + Show Spoiler +(many, disproportionately so from corona virus because of decades of neglect by states for medical infrastructure in their communities) without any progress being made on wealth inequity despite decades of promises and appeals to empty legislation. My perspective that Democrats are generally useless or worse when it comes to this stuff isn't a lack of hope, it's a persistence of hope that other people capable of critical thinking also come to this realization. I mean the USA have a system where both parties switch every x years and then revert everything the other party did. Like look at that abortion bill that's currently making rounds, the funding of pro abortion groups was established by Clinton and has since been reverted by every republican president and reinstated by every democratic one. Obama and Trump both ran promising large changes and Trump reverted 90% of what Obama did and Biden will revert 90% of what Trump did. The US 2 party election system is completely paralyzing any possible long term change even if the dems were willing to do something for the poorer part of society and not in bed with the economy. There's a lot of value in closer inspection of the ~"10%" that persists regardless of the party in power. Namely the richest getting richer, the racial wealth gap, and the ever increasing military industrial complex (including the militarizing of authoritarian police). I think you are going to need to define what you means with "authoritarian police". Sure it has issues, LOTS of them, we've spent pages talking about a few. But we are not talking about China, Venezuela, Philippines, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, and so on and so on. Those police forces have way more power, deal out more extrajudicial executions, are not trying to get around warrants they simply don't need them, and so on.
Unless you can cite serious sources, I'm going to call bullshit on this. According to Wikipedia, Pakistan and India (what great places to compare a developed western country with!) actually have significantly lower rates of police killings than the US does, and while official statistics for China or Russia are difficult to find, people getting shot by police is always headline-worthy news in Russia due to how rare it is. You can write some story about Russian FSB or Chinese SPU or whatever 'suiciding' people if you like, the numbers still wouldn't be anywhere near the 3+ average daily cop killings of the US. Regular Chinese police doesn't even carry guns most of the time.
Yes, police in Russia and China both can be genuinely frightening (I'm not going to talk about Syria or something here because that's just dumb), and yes they often 'insist' on bribes and can genuinely make people's lives hell -- but you're still way less likely to 'die by cop' there than you are in the US, and that's with just the averages and without considering just how much more likely a black person is to be shot in America than a white one.
I’m always amazed at you guys ranting about the US all day but being kind of ok with Russia and China. If you are revolted by what happens in the US - and god knows there is lots to be revolted about - you should be absolutely bat shit mad at what’s happening in Russia.
The fact you are completely unable to recognize the value of, say, a free press, separation of powers, free elections, the state of law and so on, however imperfect and imperfectly they are applied, make the whole of your discourse feel unnuanced, disconnected and ultimately very uninteresting. But that’s just my opinion. You keep doing you I guess.
Those are all wonderful buzzwords, but how does it translate to real life? China has gone from being one smoldering ruin in mid 20th century to what pretty much amounts to a developed super power at this point, with their quality of life improving rapidly across the country year on year. People are simply living better there than they have 10 or 50 years ago, and it's foolish to discard that under the usual 'but authoritarian! but no free speech!' nonsense. Trust me, if you've got no money for food, free press is the least of your worries -- I've been there, I know how it feels. Meanwhile in the US, the only things that's grown in the same time frame are income inequality and debt. Oh, and military spending, I guess.
Russia isn't as cut and dry, but it's not as if free press would suddenly solve their issues, either; and what is 'free press', anyway? Most of the media (certainly mainstream media) in the west is extremely biased and largely driven by feelings and narratives rather than facts, anyway. I'd argue that this pretense of independence and truthfulness is just as insidious and harmful as full on propaganda of China is. I mean, if 'respected' news outlets push the bullshit about 'forced sterilization in Xinjiang' or 'Chinese debt traps in Africa' as if those are real things, what's the use of this 'free' media at all?
If you are genuinely interested in having honest and nuanced discourse, I don't think you can default to the 'Authoritarian China / Russia bad, free and liberal west good' since it's a lot more complicated than that.
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Northern Ireland26028 Posts
On April 27 2021 16:45 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 13:50 plasmidghost wrote:The cops have that famous slogan of "to protect and serve". It's true when you realize that the only thing they protect and serve is corporate interests. They did this to someone who couldn't fight back in any capacity for simply forgetting to pay for $14 of items from Walmart, a company that made literally $14,881,000,000 in net profit in 2020 (according to their 2020 SEC filing) and then watched in glee and celebrated. Police cannot be reformed. The entire institution is built for the sadistic power-hungry borderline evil people in society and the longer it continues, the more people it will kill, injure, and traumatize. https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/1386795388724781064 Yup. The sooner people in the US come to grips with this the better imo.
Plenty seem happy for criminals to be brutalised regardless of the severity of offence, if there’s been any offence at all. Kind of hard for some to make the jump condemning the enforcers of justice for overreaching if they don’t think there’s an overreach.
One example sure, but amongst lots of other shitty behaviour caught on film, the callous attitude displayed is more instructive than the actions themselves.
It gives lie to the idea that deficient training is the problem, and not the purpose and culture of the institution. If the former was the crux of the issue you’d have distraught officers upset they fucked up, or officers in general not treating suspects as if they were total scum as a matter of course.
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On April 27 2021 17:04 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 16:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2021 13:50 plasmidghost wrote:The cops have that famous slogan of "to protect and serve". It's true when you realize that the only thing they protect and serve is corporate interests. They did this to someone who couldn't fight back in any capacity for simply forgetting to pay for $14 of items from Walmart, a company that made literally $14,881,000,000 in net profit in 2020 (according to their 2020 SEC filing) and then watched in glee and celebrated. Police cannot be reformed. The entire institution is built for the sadistic power-hungry borderline evil people in society and the longer it continues, the more people it will kill, injure, and traumatize. https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/1386795388724781064 Yup. The sooner people in the US come to grips with this the better imo. Plenty seem happy for criminals to be brutalised regardless of the severity of offence, if there’s been any offence at all. Kind of hard for some to make the jump condemning the enforcers of justice for overreaching if they don’t think there’s an overreach. One example sure, but amongst lots of other shitty behaviour caught on film, the callous attitude displayed is more instructive than the actions themselves. It gives lie to the idea that deficient training is the problem, and not the purpose and culture of the institution. If the former was the crux of the issue you’d have distraught officers upset they fucked up, or officers in general not treating suspects as if they were total scum as a matter of course.
This is something I see on reddit a lot. The reality is, many (maybe even most) people believe that anyone guilty of breaking the law is basically less than human and 'deserves' anything that might happen to them, no matter how cruel or disproportionate it is. It's not just a US thing, but it does seem a lot more common in the Anglosphere than anywhere else; alongside with the ridiculous notion that killing someone for 'threatening' your property is totally acceptable etc.
I remember a thread on a local subreddit started by a guy asking what can he do if someone 'bothers' his girlfriend in a club, because he's worried that beating the shit out of the offenders could get him in trouble with the local police; and a whole bunch of British / American expats joined in to lament just how shitty local laws are that forbid people from starting violent confrontations over some unpleasant drunk remarks or an inappropriate touch while dancing. For me that was shocking, since the obvious and easy solution is to simply go to another club, but there definitely seems to exist a culture of solving any issue with disproportionate amounts of violence in the US.
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What kind of solutions could there be to a culture of callousness? Is it a matter of politics, education, religion? My tired brain can't think of how to approach it even in an individual, much less a whole society. Can't even assess to what degree I too am infected by it.
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On April 27 2021 16:54 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 11:40 JimmiC wrote:On April 27 2021 11:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2021 09:56 Archeon wrote:On April 27 2021 09:31 GreenHorizons wrote:what I meant to say was that he should move on from (just or mainly) the pointing out of bad stuff - of which there is an overabundance in a fucked up world - and not forget the hope and progress side. GH should never stop fighting for his right and what is right, the day you stop and go the way of (inner) resignation is when you die, little by little. I don't point out the horrific crimes against humanity that the US has inflicted since inception (and the colonists in both Americas before) and continued largely uninterrupted because I've given up hope. I do it because it contextualizes the US prioritizing profits for a handful of wealthy people at the expense of countless lives in the global south as consistent with what the US has always been. As to the "it's better now" trope (that also existed in the 60's preceding the civil rights movement), I like to look at the economics since it's not a vague emotion, but a trackable statistic. To that point, the wealth gap between Black and white people was already stagnant from the 60's and by all estimations much worse since the pandemic. That means an entire generation of Black people that saw MLK march for equity, voted for Democrats relentlessly for 60+ years are dying + Show Spoiler +(many, disproportionately so from corona virus because of decades of neglect by states for medical infrastructure in their communities) without any progress being made on wealth inequity despite decades of promises and appeals to empty legislation. My perspective that Democrats are generally useless or worse when it comes to this stuff isn't a lack of hope, it's a persistence of hope that other people capable of critical thinking also come to this realization. I mean the USA have a system where both parties switch every x years and then revert everything the other party did. Like look at that abortion bill that's currently making rounds, the funding of pro abortion groups was established by Clinton and has since been reverted by every republican president and reinstated by every democratic one. Obama and Trump both ran promising large changes and Trump reverted 90% of what Obama did and Biden will revert 90% of what Trump did. The US 2 party election system is completely paralyzing any possible long term change even if the dems were willing to do something for the poorer part of society and not in bed with the economy. There's a lot of value in closer inspection of the ~"10%" that persists regardless of the party in power. Namely the richest getting richer, the racial wealth gap, and the ever increasing military industrial complex (including the militarizing of authoritarian police). I think you are going to need to define what you means with "authoritarian police". Sure it has issues, LOTS of them, we've spent pages talking about a few. But we are not talking about China, Venezuela, Philippines, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, and so on and so on. Those police forces have way more power, deal out more extrajudicial executions, are not trying to get around warrants they simply don't need them, and so on. Unless you can cite serious sources, I'm going to call bullshit on this. According to Wikipedia, Pakistan and India (what great places to compare a developed western country with!) actually have significantly lower rates of police killings than the US does, and while official statistics for China or Russia are difficult to find, people getting shot by police is always headline-worthy news in Russia due to how rare it is. You can write some story about Russian FSB or Chinese SPU or whatever 'suiciding' people if you like, the numbers still wouldn't be anywhere near the 3+ average daily cop killings of the US. Regular Chinese police doesn't even carry guns most of the time. Yes, police in Russia and China both can be genuinely frightening (I'm not going to talk about Syria or something here because that's just dumb), and yes they often 'insist' on bribes and can genuinely make people's lives hell -- but you're still way less likely to 'die by cop' there than you are in the US, and that's with just the averages and without considering just how much more likely a black person is to be shot in America than a white one. Show nested quote +I’m always amazed at you guys ranting about the US all day but being kind of ok with Russia and China. If you are revolted by what happens in the US - and god knows there is lots to be revolted about - you should be absolutely bat shit mad at what’s happening in Russia.
The fact you are completely unable to recognize the value of, say, a free press, separation of powers, free elections, the state of law and so on, however imperfect and imperfectly they are applied, make the whole of your discourse feel unnuanced, disconnected and ultimately very uninteresting. But that’s just my opinion. You keep doing you I guess. Those are all wonderful buzzwords, but how does it translate to real life? China has gone from being one smoldering ruin in mid 20th century to what pretty much amounts to a developed super power at this point, with their quality of life improving rapidly across the country year on year. People are simply living better there than they have 10 or 50 years ago, and it's foolish to discard that under the usual 'but authoritarian! but no free speech!' nonsense. Trust me, if you've got no money for food, free press is the least of your worries -- I've been there, I know how it feels. Meanwhile in the US, the only things that's grown in the same time frame are income inequality and debt. Oh, and military spending, I guess. Russia isn't as cut and dry, but it's not as if free press would suddenly solve their issues, either; and what is 'free press', anyway? Most of the media (certainly mainstream media) in the west is extremely biased and largely driven by feelings and narratives rather than facts, anyway. I'd argue that this pretense of independence and truthfulness is just as insidious and harmful as full on propaganda of China is. I mean, if 'respected' news outlets push the bullshit about 'forced sterilization in Xinjiang' or 'Chinese debt traps in Africa' as if those are real things, what's the use of this 'free' media at all? If you are genuinely interested in having honest and nuanced discourse, I don't think you can default to the 'Authoritarian China / Russia bad, free and liberal west good' since it's a lot more complicated than that.
By that metric Hitler was a success before the second world war.
Look, if you want to discard the fact that those regime murder their opponents, silence dissent voices through intimidation and violence, literally rob the country ressources for a clan and so on and so forth because economic gains are being made, good for you, but I don’t want the same voices to complain about the US being a injust and so on.
The economic level of the average Joe is still way superior in the US, and it’s not a totalitarian dictatorship.
I think that the US are in many , many, many way kind of appaling. By the exact same metric, I think China and Russia are both a fucking nightmare. And in both case I take into account public liberties that ARE important because a good life is not only one that is more prosperous but also one where expressing your opinion doesn’t lead you in jail - and economic justice that is also actually much worse in Russia than in America.
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On April 27 2021 16:45 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 13:50 plasmidghost wrote:The cops have that famous slogan of "to protect and serve". It's true when you realize that the only thing they protect and serve is corporate interests. They did this to someone who couldn't fight back in any capacity for simply forgetting to pay for $14 of items from Walmart, a company that made literally $14,881,000,000 in net profit in 2020 (according to their 2020 SEC filing) and then watched in glee and celebrated. Police cannot be reformed. The entire institution is built for the sadistic power-hungry borderline evil people in society and the longer it continues, the more people it will kill, injure, and traumatize. https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/1386795388724781064 Yup. The sooner people in the US come to grips with this the better imo.
What are you proposing?
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On April 27 2021 18:41 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 16:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2021 13:50 plasmidghost wrote:The cops have that famous slogan of "to protect and serve". It's true when you realize that the only thing they protect and serve is corporate interests. They did this to someone who couldn't fight back in any capacity for simply forgetting to pay for $14 of items from Walmart, a company that made literally $14,881,000,000 in net profit in 2020 (according to their 2020 SEC filing) and then watched in glee and celebrated. Police cannot be reformed. The entire institution is built for the sadistic power-hungry borderline evil people in society and the longer it continues, the more people it will kill, injure, and traumatize. https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/1386795388724781064 Yup. The sooner people in the US come to grips with this the better imo. What are you proposing?
From past extremely lengthy discussions we had on the subject, he wants a socialist paradise where the police is not necessary because everybody has what they want so their is no need for crime while at the same time the police is mostly made of sociopaths that need to be disbanded and is actually usless because almost none of what they do prevents or solves crime. That’s at least what I have understood.
Edit: nvm the rest, but let’s please not get there. This discussion has been an absolute poison to the thread.
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Norway28706 Posts
You really thought that was a good contribution to avoid that?
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Probably not. Sorry about that.
I am just extremely frustrated that the thread is heading back to where it was a few months ago, on the same topics, for the same reason.
I think that calling directly or indirectly all cops power hungry sadists and killers really doesn’t help the discussion to be smarter, more productive and mire intelligent. That kind if sweeping statement is a flame war in the making.
But never mind and apologies for losing my temper.
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On April 27 2021 16:54 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 11:40 JimmiC wrote:On April 27 2021 11:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 27 2021 09:56 Archeon wrote:On April 27 2021 09:31 GreenHorizons wrote:what I meant to say was that he should move on from (just or mainly) the pointing out of bad stuff - of which there is an overabundance in a fucked up world - and not forget the hope and progress side. GH should never stop fighting for his right and what is right, the day you stop and go the way of (inner) resignation is when you die, little by little. I don't point out the horrific crimes against humanity that the US has inflicted since inception (and the colonists in both Americas before) and continued largely uninterrupted because I've given up hope. I do it because it contextualizes the US prioritizing profits for a handful of wealthy people at the expense of countless lives in the global south as consistent with what the US has always been. As to the "it's better now" trope (that also existed in the 60's preceding the civil rights movement), I like to look at the economics since it's not a vague emotion, but a trackable statistic. To that point, the wealth gap between Black and white people was already stagnant from the 60's and by all estimations much worse since the pandemic. That means an entire generation of Black people that saw MLK march for equity, voted for Democrats relentlessly for 60+ years are dying + Show Spoiler +(many, disproportionately so from corona virus because of decades of neglect by states for medical infrastructure in their communities) without any progress being made on wealth inequity despite decades of promises and appeals to empty legislation. My perspective that Democrats are generally useless or worse when it comes to this stuff isn't a lack of hope, it's a persistence of hope that other people capable of critical thinking also come to this realization. I mean the USA have a system where both parties switch every x years and then revert everything the other party did. Like look at that abortion bill that's currently making rounds, the funding of pro abortion groups was established by Clinton and has since been reverted by every republican president and reinstated by every democratic one. Obama and Trump both ran promising large changes and Trump reverted 90% of what Obama did and Biden will revert 90% of what Trump did. The US 2 party election system is completely paralyzing any possible long term change even if the dems were willing to do something for the poorer part of society and not in bed with the economy. There's a lot of value in closer inspection of the ~"10%" that persists regardless of the party in power. Namely the richest getting richer, the racial wealth gap, and the ever increasing military industrial complex (including the militarizing of authoritarian police). I think you are going to need to define what you means with "authoritarian police". Sure it has issues, LOTS of them, we've spent pages talking about a few. But we are not talking about China, Venezuela, Philippines, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, and so on and so on. Those police forces have way more power, deal out more extrajudicial executions, are not trying to get around warrants they simply don't need them, and so on. Unless you can cite serious sources, I'm going to call bullshit on this. According to Wikipedia, Pakistan and India (what great places to compare a developed western country with!) actually have significantly lower rates of police killings than the US does, and while official statistics for China or Russia are difficult to find, people getting shot by police is always headline-worthy news in Russia due to how rare it is. You can write some story about Russian FSB or Chinese SPU or whatever 'suiciding' people if you like, the numbers still wouldn't be anywhere near the 3+ average daily cop killings of the US. Regular Chinese police doesn't even carry guns most of the time. Yes, police in Russia and China both can be genuinely frightening (I'm not going to talk about Syria or something here because that's just dumb), and yes they often 'insist' on bribes and can genuinely make people's lives hell -- but you're still way less likely to 'die by cop' there than you are in the US, and that's with just the averages and without considering just how much more likely a black person is to be shot in America than a white one. Show nested quote +I’m always amazed at you guys ranting about the US all day but being kind of ok with Russia and China. If you are revolted by what happens in the US - and god knows there is lots to be revolted about - you should be absolutely bat shit mad at what’s happening in Russia.
The fact you are completely unable to recognize the value of, say, a free press, separation of powers, free elections, the state of law and so on, however imperfect and imperfectly they are applied, make the whole of your discourse feel unnuanced, disconnected and ultimately very uninteresting. But that’s just my opinion. You keep doing you I guess. Those are all wonderful buzzwords, but how does it translate to real life? China has gone from being one smoldering ruin in mid 20th century to what pretty much amounts to a developed super power at this point, with their quality of life improving rapidly across the country year on year. People are simply living better there than they have 10 or 50 years ago, and it's foolish to discard that under the usual 'but authoritarian! but no free speech!' nonsense. Trust me, if you've got no money for food, free press is the least of your worries -- I've been there, I know how it feels. Meanwhile in the US, the only things that's grown in the same time frame are income inequality and debt. Oh, and military spending, I guess. Russia isn't as cut and dry, but it's not as if free press would suddenly solve their issues, either; and what is 'free press', anyway? Most of the media (certainly mainstream media) in the west is extremely biased and largely driven by feelings and narratives rather than facts, anyway. I'd argue that this pretense of independence and truthfulness is just as insidious and harmful as full on propaganda of China is. I mean, if 'respected' news outlets push the bullshit about 'forced sterilization in Xinjiang' or 'Chinese debt traps in Africa' as if those are real things, what's the use of this 'free' media at all? If you are genuinely interested in having honest and nuanced discourse, I don't think you can default to the 'Authoritarian China / Russia bad, free and liberal west good' since it's a lot more complicated than that.
I mean sure, having something to eat and living in a dictatorship is better than dying of hunger. And yes the US police gets away with a lot and is overly willing to use lethal violence.
But if you compare current situation then it's a hundred times more pleasant to live in the USA. China censors what people can write or read, pushes propaganda in their schools, has a significantly weaker economy and infrastructure. On the HDI scale from 2019 adjusted by inequality (the USA significantly suffers from the adjustment) the USA rank 28th, Russia 42th and China 67. In terms of personal freedom the latter two rank 124th and 122th while the US is on place 26. Even with the high police violence and strong inequality there's no advantage living in one of the latter and that is assuming that the Chinese and Russian numbers aren't higher but don't get reported because the press is state-controlled.
Also Russia's number is going to be naturally decreased if you count total killings instead of per capita and I'd bet money that more than 3 people per day die in Chinese prisons. Amnesty in their 2019 report talk of "enforced disappearance" of human right activists and prisoners in poor physical condition said in interviews that they were tortured. And the systematic imprisonment, mistreatment, torture and disappearance without open courts of the Uyghurs is reminiscent of the ethnic cleansings of the early 20th century.
Did China develop massively within the last 15 years? Sure. But it also had a lot of room to develop and you are still comparing a second world country with one of the most oppressive regimes with a first world nation in almost every regard but police violence. And HDI development of Russia pretty much stopped growing since 2015, while it's still a terrible country in regards to personal freedom.
sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequality-adjusted_HDI
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freest-countries
https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/china/report-china/
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On April 27 2021 19:01 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Probably not. Sorry about that.
I am just extremely frustrated that the thread is heading back to where it was a few months ago, on the same topics, for the same reason.
But never mind and apologies for losing my temper.
I think it makes sense. Police killings of unarmed black men are a recurring occurrence in the US, so it is normal that we talk about it as they make a lot of headlines -- we just had the Chauvin trial so it's a very current topic.
You always have the option to not engage in the topic if you think it's boring 
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On April 27 2021 19:15 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 19:01 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Probably not. Sorry about that.
I am just extremely frustrated that the thread is heading back to where it was a few months ago, on the same topics, for the same reason.
But never mind and apologies for losing my temper. I think it makes sense. Police killings of unarmed black men are a recurring occurrence in the US, so it is normal that we talk about it as they make a lot of headlines -- we just had the Chauvin trial so it's a very current topic. You always have the option to not engage in the topic if you think it's boring
I think it’s a fascinating topic and that it has been led in a great way, with many nuanced and insightful arguments from all sides. This discussion on police brutality is one of the best we have had on this thread.
That’s why I kind of lost it when we started to head back to “abolish the police” and “all cops are power hungry killers and sadists”. I can of course not engage but I know well enough where this leads.
Let’s just not say stuff like that. It destroys constructive discussion.
My reaction was not the greatest, though, sorry about that.
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On April 27 2021 13:32 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 07:24 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 27 2021 07:08 BlackJack wrote:On April 27 2021 06:26 Artisreal wrote:On April 27 2021 06:13 BlackJack wrote:On April 27 2021 01:50 EnDeR_ wrote:Let me preface my response by saying that I wasn't aware that about 50 police officers lose their lives doing their jobs every year at the hands of armed civilians. I did not realise it was that bad, and probably explains why they are so quick to eliminate the threat as they probably feel constantly under attack. On April 26 2021 05:24 oBlade wrote:
You keep saying "routine traffic stop." It's not routine once they open fire. The two guys we were talking about who got shot after opening fire on the police officer, why did they do that? Because they had warrants out. There are not only so many criminals around, there are so many currently wanted criminals that pulling people over randomly for expired plates in the course of a day, can end up with you pulling over extremely dangerous people without knowing it. Why shoot at cops? Because you don't want to go to jail. Why not flee? Because a high speed chase is extremely stacked against you, whereas pretending to comply until you murder the cop and drive away gives you a way out. I saw the video of someone get pulled over for a tinted window machinegun the officer. I did, however, want to argue this point. The data shows that the majority of police shootings started with the police shooting, not the suspect. In fact, in only about a quarter of cases the suspect fired their gun, according to this study that looked at all police killings in 2015 onlinelibrary.wiley.com. The study is quite nice and includes a lot of data. I extracted the data from the paper so you can see it here: For 10% of the shootings, the suspect was completely unarmed which is kind of crazy. Mostly, people got killed for brandishing their gun/knife and attacking with non-gun weapons. 11 were shot for trying to run away, and 7 people were shot accidentally in 2015, which is a lot in my opinion. Clearly the issue is more with the whole justice system. I do take your point that criminals in the US seem to have less to lose than those in other western democracies, which definitely makes them more likely to shoot at police which exacerbates the problem.
In general, my thoughts are that crime is too widespread. The more dangerous it is for police on a regular basis, and the more they end up in dangerous situations, naturally the more they need training and equipment and tools that are suited for those situations and may misapply those. It increases the variance of everything. And the remedies for crime are education to prepare people for jobs, a strong economy to give them those jobs, arresting criminals, drug interdiction, family, and community.
I agree with most of this, but I still think a bit more emphasis on de-escalation before the situation gets to the pulling out weapons stage would not be amiss. At the end of the day, the narrative that people are getting shot for routine traffic stops while complying with police is just bullshit. Not to say that it absolutely never happens (see: Philando Castille) but it's obviously the rarest example that gets presented as the status quo. It's like Pro-lifers that make an argument against abortion because of late-term abortions when they represent 1% of all abortions. It's nauseating hearing all these uber wealthy celebrities and politicians saying "I have to wonder every day if my child is going to come home tonight or if they are going to be killed by the police." Really? Do their children not know you shouldn't pulled out guns/knives and attack police? Or do they just irrationally believe that their child is likely to be the 1 in a million case that gets killed like Philando Castille? I'm kind of surprised you didn't realize how rough it was for police in the US. Your own numbers show that multiple times a day police are being shot at, having a gun pulled on them, being attacked with knives, etc. Eri is basically the only person in this entire thread that when making a comparison between the US and a country like Norway will also acknowledge that Norway has a lot less violent crime than the US. Everyone else just conveniently neglects to mention that. Comparing the US which has a very weak social safety net to Norway and chalking up the difference in police shootings entirely to the behavior of the police is either ignorant or disingenuous. The best way to reduce police shootings is to reduce poverty, reduce desperation in people, reduce untreated mental illness, etc. But those things cost money. Have guns drawn on cops? Gun control. I agree with your conclusion how to tackle the problem. I don't understand your reasoning that cops aren't killing to many people. Don't have enough money for the measure? Have proper VAT, wealth tax, inheritance tax and income tax all over the country and your money problems are solved. Oh and while your're at it, close them loopholes for amazon and their ilk. My main point was that the narrative you offer below is bullshit On April 15 2021 18:00 Artisreal wrote:
If you're a black person and get stopped by police for fuck all reason, there's no fucking chance to opt out. If that was a thing, therer wouldn't be as many murders by the police.
Imagine a traffic control where you have to consent to having a 5% chance of being shot for no good reason, i.e. your skin color. No fucking body would do that.
There is quite a bit of truth to what artisreal is saying. From the same study i quoted earlier: The results indicated civilians from “other” minority groups were significantly more likely than Whites to have not been attacking the officer(s) or other civilians and that Black civilians were more than twice as likely as White civilians to have been unarmed. Basically, most of the black and minority people on that list were less likely to be armed and less likely to have been attacking the officers involved, and yet, they were still twice as likely to get killed than a white person. That's something that needs to be addressed and something worth protesting for. Also, 100 of those killings were with unarmed suspects, and 11 were with a fleeing suspect. At the bare minimum, that should never happen again. When Artisreal posts '5% chance of getting shot for your skin color' the post ends up being hyperbolic nonsense which has no relation to reality. There's so much real racism, and the actual numbers are bad enough, that we don't need to invent more racism or blatantly exaggerate the numbers. Looking at https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/, more than 50000 Americans are pulled over every year. Like 12% of Americans are black. They do get stopped more frequently, there's no question about that, although I'm a bit too busy to find exact numbers, but for the sake of the argument let's say they're stopped at twice the frequency, so 25% of those are black. That'd give us 12500 stops per day. (About 25% of police killings are black people, so I just went with that number for this reason. It doesn't really matter for the point I'm making.) At a murder rate of 5%, we'd see 625 black Americans shot by police during traffic stops on a daily basis. In reality, police killed just above 1000 people in all of 2020, 241 of those were black, and these were not all the consequence of traffic stops - according to this, it's more than a quarter (but presumably less than a third), so let's go with a reasonable.. 75. So instead of Artisreal's number of roughly 228125, we're looking at roughly 75. My post still contains elements of unacceptable racism - black people comprise 12% of the population but 25% of people shot by police. And it might well be that the actual shootings aren't even the worst element of the interactions between black people and police, maybe the whole.. having to be ultra-deferent, perception of police as enemy (reasonable when they demand ultra-deference), the perception of being considered suspicious.. It all contributes to a really unhealthy relationship. But we shouldn't make up numbers, and if we're throwing out ballpark numbers for the sake of discussion (this is totally fine, we can't be expected to research everything), then those ballpark numbers shouldn't be 3000 times higher than reality.
I agree that we should not overstate the problem, it doesn't help the discussion. The response 'this is such a rare occurrence that is therefore not important' is equally problematic in my view, because it is not about frequency; it's about the fact that it is happening at all.
I did like the 'how many nazi-sympathizer judges would you be happy having'. It's a nice way of encapsulating the argument against 'but it's only a very small amount of interactions!' -- one is already one too many.
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On April 27 2021 19:20 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 19:15 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 27 2021 19:01 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Probably not. Sorry about that.
I am just extremely frustrated that the thread is heading back to where it was a few months ago, on the same topics, for the same reason.
But never mind and apologies for losing my temper. I think it makes sense. Police killings of unarmed black men are a recurring occurrence in the US, so it is normal that we talk about it as they make a lot of headlines -- we just had the Chauvin trial so it's a very current topic. You always have the option to not engage in the topic if you think it's boring I think it’s a fascinating topic and that it has been led in a great way, with many nuanced and insightful arguments from all sides. This discussion on police brutality is one of the best we have had on this thread. That’s why I kind of lost it when we started to head back to “abolish the police” and “all cops are power hungry killers and sadists”. I can of course not engage but I know well enough where this leads. Let’s just not say stuff like that. It destroys constructive discussion. My reaction was not the greatest, though, sorry about that.
I think the abolish the police question is rather indicative of how far detached from the reality of the oppressed the "other side" is.
But imo it boils down to this:
If you're pushing for reform for 60 years and the status quo is what you get.
Would you still think reform is viable?
Correct me if you think I'm gravely in the wrong and/or if that is not what your gripe with the former discussions is about.
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On April 27 2021 19:25 Artisreal wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 19:20 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 27 2021 19:15 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 27 2021 19:01 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Probably not. Sorry about that.
I am just extremely frustrated that the thread is heading back to where it was a few months ago, on the same topics, for the same reason.
But never mind and apologies for losing my temper. I think it makes sense. Police killings of unarmed black men are a recurring occurrence in the US, so it is normal that we talk about it as they make a lot of headlines -- we just had the Chauvin trial so it's a very current topic. You always have the option to not engage in the topic if you think it's boring I think it’s a fascinating topic and that it has been led in a great way, with many nuanced and insightful arguments from all sides. This discussion on police brutality is one of the best we have had on this thread. That’s why I kind of lost it when we started to head back to “abolish the police” and “all cops are power hungry killers and sadists”. I can of course not engage but I know well enough where this leads. Let’s just not say stuff like that. It destroys constructive discussion. My reaction was not the greatest, though, sorry about that. I think the abolish the police question is rather indicative of how far detached from the reality of the oppressed the "other side" is. But imo it boils down to this: If you're pushing for reform for 60 years and the status quo is what you get. Would you still think reform is viable? Correct me if you think I'm gravely in the wrong and/or if that is not what your gripe with the former discussions is about.
I don’t think it’s a good way of looking at the problem.
But ok, here is my take:
Reform is probably incredibly hard to achieve. The main reason for that is that first and foremost you need mentalities to change, and culture to change. And that takes a long time. It’s not just making a reform or a revolution. It’s about people - not just cops, everyone - thinking differently.
I said it before in that thread, but as long as people think for example that killing someone who trespasses on your property is ok - or just that “killing the bad guy” is a good way to deal with trouble - you are going to have massive problems with people whose role is to exerce violence in the name of public good.
Meanwhile, there are many fronts on which the problem can be tackled: accountability, training, culture of descalation within law enforcement, etc. That’s done through a lot of protesting, a lot of voting, a lot of debating. And the good thing is that this is what is happening right now.
Like all complex and deep rooted problems, it’s infuriatingly slow and takes a lot of convincing.
What does not help is to instead give a ludicrous and completely unrealistic “revolutionary” general fix. That doesn’t achieve anything. We need a police force, there is no way to just lay down hundred of thousands of people, it’s politically totally infeasible, and so on and so forth. I think if you take a hard look at your solution, and factoring everything, there is 0% chance that it will be done, it’s a good idea to look for something else. What do you think are the odds that in 20, 30 or 50 years, the police is getting disbanded in the US?
Again it’s not because I find the situation is acceptable or tolerable that I say those things. Yelling very loud something totally unfeasible is not very efficient. Especially when it comes with accusing everyone who is actually working on actual solutions to be complicite, enablers, not caring and so in as it’s usually done.
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On April 27 2021 06:13 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 01:50 EnDeR_ wrote:Let me preface my response by saying that I wasn't aware that about 50 police officers lose their lives doing their jobs every year at the hands of armed civilians. I did not realise it was that bad, and probably explains why they are so quick to eliminate the threat as they probably feel constantly under attack. On April 26 2021 05:24 oBlade wrote:
You keep saying "routine traffic stop." It's not routine once they open fire. The two guys we were talking about who got shot after opening fire on the police officer, why did they do that? Because they had warrants out. There are not only so many criminals around, there are so many currently wanted criminals that pulling people over randomly for expired plates in the course of a day, can end up with you pulling over extremely dangerous people without knowing it. Why shoot at cops? Because you don't want to go to jail. Why not flee? Because a high speed chase is extremely stacked against you, whereas pretending to comply until you murder the cop and drive away gives you a way out. I saw the video of someone get pulled over for a tinted window machinegun the officer. I did, however, want to argue this point. The data shows that the majority of police shootings started with the police shooting, not the suspect. In fact, in only about a quarter of cases the suspect fired their gun, according to this study that looked at all police killings in 2015 onlinelibrary.wiley.com. The study is quite nice and includes a lot of data. I extracted the data from the paper so you can see it here: For 10% of the shootings, the suspect was completely unarmed which is kind of crazy. Mostly, people got killed for brandishing their gun/knife and attacking with non-gun weapons. 11 were shot for trying to run away, and 7 people were shot accidentally in 2015, which is a lot in my opinion. Clearly the issue is more with the whole justice system. I do take your point that criminals in the US seem to have less to lose than those in other western democracies, which definitely makes them more likely to shoot at police which exacerbates the problem.
In general, my thoughts are that crime is too widespread. The more dangerous it is for police on a regular basis, and the more they end up in dangerous situations, naturally the more they need training and equipment and tools that are suited for those situations and may misapply those. It increases the variance of everything. And the remedies for crime are education to prepare people for jobs, a strong economy to give them those jobs, arresting criminals, drug interdiction, family, and community.
I agree with most of this, but I still think a bit more emphasis on de-escalation before the situation gets to the pulling out weapons stage would not be amiss. At the end of the day, the narrative that people are getting shot for routine traffic stops while complying with police is just bullshit. Not to say that it absolutely never happens (see: Philando Castille) but it's obviously the rarest example that gets presented as the status quo. It's like Pro-lifers that make an argument against abortion because of late-term abortions when they represent 1% of all abortions. It's nauseating hearing all these uber wealthy celebrities and politicians saying "I have to wonder every day if my child is going to come home tonight or if they are going to be killed by the police." Really? Do their children not know you shouldn't pulled out guns/knives and attack police? Or do they just irrationally believe that their child is likely to be the 1 in a million case that gets killed like Philando Castille? I'm kind of surprised you didn't realize how rough it was for police in the US. Your own numbers show that multiple times a day police are being shot at, having a gun pulled on them, being attacked with knives, etc. Eri is basically the only person in this entire thread that when making a comparison between the US and a country like Norway will also acknowledge that Norway has a lot less violent crime than the US. Everyone else just conveniently neglects to mention that. Comparing the US which has a very weak social safety net to Norway and chalking up the difference in police shootings entirely to the behavior of the police is either ignorant or disingenuous. The best way to reduce police shootings is to reduce poverty, reduce desperation in people, reduce untreated mental illness, etc. But those things cost money.
I think the comparison with pro-lifers is not an apt one; not to re-start that particular debate, but there are (arguably) pros and cons to both positions. There are no pros to police killing unarmed people or people who are trying to flee.
One thing that you might want to try here is to put yourself in their shoes. Certainly the risk is overstated, but risk perception is very subjective -- several posters in this thread are happy to accept that when police overassess the risks, their behaviour is justified and it is seen as OK to just expect the absolute worst case scenario. Why not give affluent black folks the same treatment? The data is actually on their side, from a PNAS article from 2019 doi.org:
For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death.
We estimate that over the life course, at levels of risk similar to those observed between 2013 and 2018, about 52 [39, 68] (90% uncertainty interval) of every 100,000 men and boys in the United States will be killed by police use of force over the life course
If death by cop was a leading cause of death for your children, you would also overstate the case if you had a platform to do so. I know I would because I find it completely unacceptable.
With respect to your second paragraph, I have had very limited exposure to law enforcement in the US, and risk is difficult to gauge. 50 dead police officers a year is excessive by any metric, and I would imagine that police would be just as happy to have that number come down.
Certainly, policing is not an isolated issue, wealth inequality and a weak safety net all contribute to the problem we are currently observing. Nevertheless, there are certain interventions that could reduce the number of excesses. I think one of the points that Drone raised, that black people are forced to act extremely deferentially towards police in order to not have a negative interaction is problematic, particularly considering that black people are 5 times more likely to be unfairly stopped by the police, according to www.pewresearch.org.
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Norway28706 Posts
On April 27 2021 19:22 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2021 13:32 Liquid`Drone wrote:On April 27 2021 07:24 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 27 2021 07:08 BlackJack wrote:On April 27 2021 06:26 Artisreal wrote:On April 27 2021 06:13 BlackJack wrote:On April 27 2021 01:50 EnDeR_ wrote:Let me preface my response by saying that I wasn't aware that about 50 police officers lose their lives doing their jobs every year at the hands of armed civilians. I did not realise it was that bad, and probably explains why they are so quick to eliminate the threat as they probably feel constantly under attack. On April 26 2021 05:24 oBlade wrote:
You keep saying "routine traffic stop." It's not routine once they open fire. The two guys we were talking about who got shot after opening fire on the police officer, why did they do that? Because they had warrants out. There are not only so many criminals around, there are so many currently wanted criminals that pulling people over randomly for expired plates in the course of a day, can end up with you pulling over extremely dangerous people without knowing it. Why shoot at cops? Because you don't want to go to jail. Why not flee? Because a high speed chase is extremely stacked against you, whereas pretending to comply until you murder the cop and drive away gives you a way out. I saw the video of someone get pulled over for a tinted window machinegun the officer. I did, however, want to argue this point. The data shows that the majority of police shootings started with the police shooting, not the suspect. In fact, in only about a quarter of cases the suspect fired their gun, according to this study that looked at all police killings in 2015 onlinelibrary.wiley.com. The study is quite nice and includes a lot of data. I extracted the data from the paper so you can see it here: For 10% of the shootings, the suspect was completely unarmed which is kind of crazy. Mostly, people got killed for brandishing their gun/knife and attacking with non-gun weapons. 11 were shot for trying to run away, and 7 people were shot accidentally in 2015, which is a lot in my opinion. Clearly the issue is more with the whole justice system. I do take your point that criminals in the US seem to have less to lose than those in other western democracies, which definitely makes them more likely to shoot at police which exacerbates the problem.
In general, my thoughts are that crime is too widespread. The more dangerous it is for police on a regular basis, and the more they end up in dangerous situations, naturally the more they need training and equipment and tools that are suited for those situations and may misapply those. It increases the variance of everything. And the remedies for crime are education to prepare people for jobs, a strong economy to give them those jobs, arresting criminals, drug interdiction, family, and community.
I agree with most of this, but I still think a bit more emphasis on de-escalation before the situation gets to the pulling out weapons stage would not be amiss. At the end of the day, the narrative that people are getting shot for routine traffic stops while complying with police is just bullshit. Not to say that it absolutely never happens (see: Philando Castille) but it's obviously the rarest example that gets presented as the status quo. It's like Pro-lifers that make an argument against abortion because of late-term abortions when they represent 1% of all abortions. It's nauseating hearing all these uber wealthy celebrities and politicians saying "I have to wonder every day if my child is going to come home tonight or if they are going to be killed by the police." Really? Do their children not know you shouldn't pulled out guns/knives and attack police? Or do they just irrationally believe that their child is likely to be the 1 in a million case that gets killed like Philando Castille? I'm kind of surprised you didn't realize how rough it was for police in the US. Your own numbers show that multiple times a day police are being shot at, having a gun pulled on them, being attacked with knives, etc. Eri is basically the only person in this entire thread that when making a comparison between the US and a country like Norway will also acknowledge that Norway has a lot less violent crime than the US. Everyone else just conveniently neglects to mention that. Comparing the US which has a very weak social safety net to Norway and chalking up the difference in police shootings entirely to the behavior of the police is either ignorant or disingenuous. The best way to reduce police shootings is to reduce poverty, reduce desperation in people, reduce untreated mental illness, etc. But those things cost money. Have guns drawn on cops? Gun control. I agree with your conclusion how to tackle the problem. I don't understand your reasoning that cops aren't killing to many people. Don't have enough money for the measure? Have proper VAT, wealth tax, inheritance tax and income tax all over the country and your money problems are solved. Oh and while your're at it, close them loopholes for amazon and their ilk. My main point was that the narrative you offer below is bullshit On April 15 2021 18:00 Artisreal wrote:
If you're a black person and get stopped by police for fuck all reason, there's no fucking chance to opt out. If that was a thing, therer wouldn't be as many murders by the police.
Imagine a traffic control where you have to consent to having a 5% chance of being shot for no good reason, i.e. your skin color. No fucking body would do that.
There is quite a bit of truth to what artisreal is saying. From the same study i quoted earlier: The results indicated civilians from “other” minority groups were significantly more likely than Whites to have not been attacking the officer(s) or other civilians and that Black civilians were more than twice as likely as White civilians to have been unarmed. Basically, most of the black and minority people on that list were less likely to be armed and less likely to have been attacking the officers involved, and yet, they were still twice as likely to get killed than a white person. That's something that needs to be addressed and something worth protesting for. Also, 100 of those killings were with unarmed suspects, and 11 were with a fleeing suspect. At the bare minimum, that should never happen again. When Artisreal posts '5% chance of getting shot for your skin color' the post ends up being hyperbolic nonsense which has no relation to reality. There's so much real racism, and the actual numbers are bad enough, that we don't need to invent more racism or blatantly exaggerate the numbers. Looking at https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/, more than 50000 Americans are pulled over every year. Like 12% of Americans are black. They do get stopped more frequently, there's no question about that, although I'm a bit too busy to find exact numbers, but for the sake of the argument let's say they're stopped at twice the frequency, so 25% of those are black. That'd give us 12500 stops per day. (About 25% of police killings are black people, so I just went with that number for this reason. It doesn't really matter for the point I'm making.) At a murder rate of 5%, we'd see 625 black Americans shot by police during traffic stops on a daily basis. In reality, police killed just above 1000 people in all of 2020, 241 of those were black, and these were not all the consequence of traffic stops - according to this, it's more than a quarter (but presumably less than a third), so let's go with a reasonable.. 75. So instead of Artisreal's number of roughly 228125, we're looking at roughly 75. My post still contains elements of unacceptable racism - black people comprise 12% of the population but 25% of people shot by police. And it might well be that the actual shootings aren't even the worst element of the interactions between black people and police, maybe the whole.. having to be ultra-deferent, perception of police as enemy (reasonable when they demand ultra-deference), the perception of being considered suspicious.. It all contributes to a really unhealthy relationship. But we shouldn't make up numbers, and if we're throwing out ballpark numbers for the sake of discussion (this is totally fine, we can't be expected to research everything), then those ballpark numbers shouldn't be 3000 times higher than reality. I agree that we should not overstate the problem, it doesn't help the discussion. The response 'this is such a rare occurrence that is therefore not important' is equally problematic in my view, because it is not about frequency; it's about the fact that it is happening at all. I did like the 'how many nazi-sympathizer judges would you be happy having'. It's a nice way of encapsulating the argument against 'but it's only a very small amount of interactions!' -- one is already one too many.
I mean, I think the nazi judge framing is interesting, but I also don't think these are all that comparable. When talking about American police killing people, the frequency is pretty consistently how it's framed - because that's how the US differentiates itself from countries you might compare it with. Unless you want to rework the role of police - in a way we can't really see in any western country, Norway included, then occasional police killings is something we accept.
As long as society has violent criminals and police are supposed to handle those violent criminals, then occasionally people will die - even if all police are good at their jobs. The frequency is basically the main cause for concern here - if American police killed 50 instead of 1000 people every year and these 50 killings were distributed more evenly across races (and ideally if there was no history of extrajudicial killings of prominent black people), then police killing people wouldn't be any more of an issue in the US than it is in Norway. As far as nazi judges goes, 1 is too many, period, and nothing in society really justifies the presence of any.
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If people could stop the hyperbole for 5 minutes we could probably all agree on some common sense police reform, e.g.
-end no-knock warrants
-end qualified immunity
-stop letting police investigate themselves for wrongdoing
-stop asking police to arrest people for having some plants (war on drugs)
-stop letting shitty cops that are fired or forced to resign go to new towns and become cops there
etc.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.ibb.co/yfZdvPB/table.png)
