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A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans

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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by The E   » Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:10 am

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Senior Chief wrote:I have family whose ancestors came from Africa, Mexico, and Europe; we have Catholic, Jews, Protestants and Latter Day Saints in the family and of course we have Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and homosexuals. You know what? None of us go out and do the kind of BS that is going in Portland or other places.

My family are teachers, military, police officers, office workers, lawyers, doctors, students and retirees. What our family has in common is love of country and we are very prejudices against bias media of all kinds, stupid, ignorant, racist individuals and groups.


ah, so your entire family is a bunch of milquetoast centrists who believe that the status quo was good and didn't need to be changed, let alone challenged.
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by Senior Chief   » Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:11 pm

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The E wrote:
Senior Chief wrote:I have family whose ancestors came from Africa, Mexico, and Europe; we have Catholic, Jews, Protestants and Latter Day Saints in the family and of course we have Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and homosexuals. You know what? None of us go out and do the kind of BS that is going in Portland or other places.

My family are teachers, military, police officers, office workers, lawyers, doctors, students and retirees. What our family has in common is love of country and we are very prejudices against bias media of all kinds, stupid, ignorant, racist individuals and groups.


ah, so your entire family is a bunch of milquetoast centrists who believe that the status quo was good and didn't need to be changed, let alone challenged.


Status Quo, No we use the ballot box to make changes without destroying property or harming anyone physically.

Most protestors are sheep or stupid, just look at the people who protested this Bed and Breakfast Inn for flying a flag or Norway, idiots thought the Norway flag was a battle flag of the Confederate army.
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by Daryl   » Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:40 pm

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I'm vanilla white, both from family history and from dna analysis, but have protested occasionally over the years. Starting with the Vietnam war, and more recently the gay marriage debate.
However I agree with Senior Chief that destructive protests are wrong. Apart from destroying our own infrastructure it is counter productive to any cause.
By all means seek change by the ballot box, but often neither of the main political groups have the particular policies you want, so protests show them there is support for the policy.
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by Annachie   » Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:46 pm

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The US electoral system makes ballot box changes hard.

Preferential voting will help that enormously.
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by n7axw   » Sat Aug 01, 2020 12:19 am

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Senior Chief wrote:
Status Quo, No we use the ballot box to make changes without destroying property or harming anyone physically.

Most protestors are sheep or stupid, just look at the people who protested this Bed and Breakfast Inn for flying a flag or Norway, idiots thought the Norway flag was a battle flag of the Confederate army.


I wholeheartedly agree with your comment on the ballot box. That is the most precious thing we have as a democracy and we must zealously guard it.

I am going to respectfully disagree with your comment on protesters. Peaceful protest is a valid way of challenging the status quo. I have never participated in a protest myself. But there can be no doubt that peaceful protest has advanced the cause of civil rights, bringing the Vietnam war to an end, etc.

But... It is also true that peaceful protest can be sabotaged or co-opted. Sometimes that happens when very angry people espousing the same cause as the protesters become violent and irresponsibly begin smashing stuff. Also it can happen when people opposed to the cause of the protesters intervene and and begin acting out in an attempt to discredit the protest. The umbrella guy who walked down the sidewalk smashing windows in Mpls turned out to be a white supremist trying to incite a race war.

The aforegoing does not mean the we should give up our right to peaceful protest or the right to assemble lawfully to advance whatever cause we might embrace.

Don

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When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by Senior Chief   » Sat Aug 01, 2020 1:42 am

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n7axw wrote:
Senior Chief wrote:
Status Quo, No we use the ballot box to make changes without destroying property or harming anyone physically.

Most protestors are sheep or stupid, just look at the people who protested this Bed and Breakfast Inn for flying a flag or Norway, idiots thought the Norway flag was a battle flag of the Confederate army.


I wholeheartedly agree with your comment on the ballot box. That is the most precious thing we have as a democracy and we must zealously guard it.

I am going to respectfully disagree with your comment on protesters. Peaceful protest is a valid way of challenging the status quo. I have never participated in a protest myself. But there can be no doubt that peaceful protest has advanced the cause of civil rights, bringing the Vietnam war to an end, etc.

But... It is also true that peaceful protest can be sabotaged or co-opted. Sometimes that happens when very angry people espousing the same cause as the protesters become violent and irresponsibly begin smashing stuff. Also it can happen when people opposed to the cause of the protesters intervene and and begin acting out in an attempt to discredit the protest. The umbrella guy who walked down the sidewalk smashing windows in Mpls turned out to be a white supremist trying to incite a race war.

The aforegoing does not mean the we should give up our right to peaceful protest or the right to assemble lawfully to advance whatever cause we might embrace.

Don

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I agree I have no problems with law abiding peaceful protestors protesting it is their right.
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by The E   » Sat Aug 01, 2020 7:46 am

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Senior Chief wrote:Status Quo, No we use the ballot box to make changes without destroying property or harming anyone physically.


So yes, you do think that the status quo is largely good and doesn't really need to be challenged or changed. Given the way federal elections work in the US, factions who have access to lots of money have a massive advantage over those who don't; this inherently makes them unlikely and unwilling to actually change the status quo and more likely to excuse excursions into outright white supremacy.

Most protestors are sheep or stupid, just look at the people who protested this Bed and Breakfast Inn for flying a flag or Norway, idiots thought the Norway flag was a battle flag of the Confederate army.


That's cool, do you have anything more substantial to base this "sheep or stupid" thing on than two small anecdotes?

Or do you fear that researching these issues would expose you to too much "bias"?
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by The E   » Sat Aug 01, 2020 7:56 am

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n7axw wrote:I wholeheartedly agree with your comment on the ballot box. That is the most precious thing we have as a democracy and we must zealously guard it.


Too bad that you seem to be in a tiny minority on this topic, given how badly your electoral systems have been corrupted and damaged over the years.

I am going to respectfully disagree with your comment on protesters. Peaceful protest is a valid way of challenging the status quo. I have never participated in a protest myself. But there can be no doubt that peaceful protest has advanced the cause of civil rights, bringing the Vietnam war to an end, etc.


Peaceful protest has its place, but it requires that people are able and willing to listen. It only works if your protest is targeting issues where people are willing to change their minds; as the BLM protests are about deeply entrenched and institutionalized racism and are thus hammering at some pretty foundational elements of american politics, the political establishment is largely unwilling to actually engage with it.
That you have a regime intrinsically hostile to the concept of truth and a deeply segregated and divided fourth estate that can't agree on what truth is isn't helping matters, neither is the cumulative effect of people being caught in small-world networks.

The aforegoing does not mean the we should give up our right to peaceful protest or the right to assemble lawfully to advance whatever cause we might embrace.

Don

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Peaceful protest is fine, I guess, but as stated above, can only work in pretty specific environments. And, do recall that peaceful protests were tried for decades to little or no effect. Under those circumstances, expecting people to keep being peaceful even when they have absolute evidence that it doesn't work is stupid. You cannot sow winds and be surprised when a storm comes over for a visit.
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by n7axw   » Sat Aug 01, 2020 10:36 am

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I am going to comment about a number of things here...

First money in politics. Yeah, That's a serious issue. But I'm a bit less worried about it now than when the Citizens United came down from the Supreme Court. First, money only speaks so loud. It has been demonstrated that a good candidate with strong grass roots support can prevail, even with less money. Secondly, it has been proven that a host of small dollar donations can outmuscle the big donors. Again that happens with a good candidate with strong grass roots support.

Secondly, overall corruption of the electoral system... Actually, no. Our elections have a pretty strong record for integrity. Usually the results reflect the public mood pretty well. On the presidential level, we do have some issues...esp. the Electoral College. But still, we have had a series of good men elected to the office in my lifetime, the exceptions being Nixon and Trump. Until Trump I never doubted that however vehemently I might have disagreed with policy, the man sitting in the Oval Office had the country's best interest at heart. We do have issues with voter suppression to deal with... and gerrymandering. But those problems are solvable.

Finally, the effectiveness of protests... E has a point. Things can get frustrating when change comes so slowly. But change does come. African American people are better off now than in the 50s even though the journey ahead seems long. Martin Luther King said, "the arc of the universe bends toward justice." Yes, but it bends slowly. Nonviolent protest is an idea that King got from Ghandi. I have often wondered how nonviolent protest would have worked had Ghandi have been dealing with Nazis rather than Brits. I'm afraid that his accomplishment would have been to stack up bodies. Nonviolence assumes that the other guys have a conscience. When push came to shove, the Brits did have conscience. That's why Ghandi succeeded. I believe that we Americans have a sense of conscience as well.

Don

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When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: A Clearing House of Crimes against African Americans
Post by The E   » Sat Aug 01, 2020 12:21 pm

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n7axw wrote:First money in politics. Yeah, That's a serious issue. But I'm a bit less worried about it now than when the Citizens United came down from the Supreme Court. First, money only speaks so loud. It has been demonstrated that a good candidate with strong grass roots support can prevail, even with less money. Secondly, it has been proven that a host of small dollar donations can outmuscle the big donors. Again that happens with a good candidate with strong grass roots support.


That gets you some good candidates, but they, too, require exceptional circumstances, i.e. an exceptional level of personal charisma and an exceptional level of community engagement.

Secondly, overall corruption of the electoral system... Actually, no. Our elections have a pretty strong record for integrity.


Yes, they do. That's not what I meant by corruption and damage.

Usually the results reflect the public mood pretty well.


Yes, but if your electoral districts are gerrymandered to hell and back, it doesn't matter how well the election result represents the people in the district; the result will still be distorted.
Secondly, the winner-takes-all nature of most elections forces a binary outcome between the two largest parties; This is fine in a competitive district, but disastrous when there is an "eternal" majority for one or the other party; in those districts, and there are a lot of them, you have problems where candidates are either unchallenged or unable to be challenged from anyone but a more extreme candidate and more importantly, the people who are in the minority in those districts have no incentive to vote, let alone run for office, given the uphill battle they face.
This is something that is solved in democracies that treat political parties as an integral part of the system rather than an emergent effect of it; there are mechanisms available there to make sure that parties that can't gain a majority in any one district can still influence politics if they gain a large enough share of the overall vote, which leads to a more pluralistic and less polarized political climate.

On the presidential level, we do have some issues...esp. the Electoral College. But still, we have had a series of good men elected to the office in my lifetime, the exceptions being Nixon and Trump.


I'm not going to argue that the system you have to elect your [s]king[/s]president is completely broken, but it, too, forces binary outcomes between the two largest parties and requires a level of financial support that is hard to obtain.

Which, again, skews the candidates available for election towards being more conservative and less willing to really change the status quo.

Until Trump I never doubted that however vehemently I might have disagreed with policy, the man sitting in the Oval Office had the country's best interest at heart. We do have issues with voter suppression to deal with... and gerrymandering. But those problems are solvable.


Yes, they are .... or rather, they would be, if there wasn't a high level of institutional resistance against it. I hope that it happens, I really do, but ... there are many problems that need to be addressed in this regard.

Finally, the effectiveness of protests... E has a point. Things can get frustrating when change comes so slowly. But change does come. African American people are better off now than in the 50s even though the journey ahead seems long. Martin Luther King said, "the arc of the universe bends toward justice." Yes, but it bends slowly. Nonviolent protest is an idea that King got from Ghandi. I have often wondered how nonviolent protest would have worked had Ghandi have been dealing with Nazis rather than Brits. I'm afraid that his accomplishment would have been to stack up bodies. Nonviolence assumes that the other guys have a conscience. When push came to shove, the Brits did have conscience. That's why Ghandi succeeded. I believe that we Americans have a sense of conscience as well.


Gandhi's and MLK's success was in making the establishment flinch, in building enough Empathy with their cause that to put their protests down with violence was seen as an impossibility. But... consider Standing Rock. Consider BLM. Even as protests about police violence erupted nation-, even worldwide, the police did not cease to be brutal. Quite the opposite, in fact; The number of recorded and verified incidents of unwarranted police brutality and subsequent coverups during these past few weeks alone is astonishing. There was little to no hesitation to use violence here; no indication of the same sort of willingness to step back from the brink on the side of the authorities that happened with Gandhi and MLK.

Change in these matters does come slowly, yes. But it doesn't come at all if the establishment is not occasionally reminded that they rule by consent, not by fiat.
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