Camden NJ did not close their police dept down, they just fired everyone and then rehired them to make people like you shut up. 90% of the staff are the same as before and their budget was unchanged.

Is it even worth talking to you people any more. Its pointless. Unless someone actually says something besides 'you are wrong because I say so' and make easily falsifiable claims, Im not bothering to respond again.

If only the system was "woke" to what really matters! And, just to anticipate, I'm not for a moment suggesting racism doesn't matter, just that it's one (relatively) small piece of a gigantic conundrum.

Stubborn denial does not make it so. You're wrong, man. Give it up; you've no idea what you're talking about. Baden's right: get a new cat.

You're welcome to start a thread on overpopulation. For my part, I think the refrain of 'overpopulation' is entirely regressive. I don't think it is an accident that the populations that happen to be most 'responsible' for overpopulation are the poor, the dark, and the extremely underprivileged, usually from the global south. 'Overpopulation' is, as far as I'm concerned, classist bullshit. Especially insofar as those populations with the lowest growth rates tend to have the highest environmental footprints. The question of population is a distraction from how to make the world we currently live in liveable for everyone, for which we have plenty of capacity. I won't say any more on this though, 'cause it's off topic.

Un deux trex cat sank.

90% of the staff are the same as before and their budget was unchanged. — ernestm

Talk about easily falsifiable claims. About 100 from 460 were rehire.

you people — ernestm

Who are these?

I occurs to me that the “Autonomous zone” in a Seattle, which appears to have morphed from Blacklifesmatter into something else, is really what the core of the protests were for many people. But it’s what I’ve long felt, that the protests that begun with anger by blacks at the death of George Floyd have been hijacked. I don’t know if they’re being realistic, I suspect not. Their protest might address black issues but it now seems to me this is a class issue. That issue is the growing dominance of the cities and the economy by what might be regarded as the elite.

Amazing. When people protest on racial grounds, they're doing it wrong because it's really a question of class. When class comes to the fore, the question of race is being 'hijacked'. It's almost as if all these objections are just utterly unprincipled excuses which stand for nothing but the affirmation of the status quo :chin:

Lol, that's not a good example, it's an unreasonable comparison. Rejecting Nazism isn't a contentious issue, you can't compare it to the very many far-left ideas which aren't even accepted by most of society and how censorship works there and compare it to a fucking swastika. The censorship isn't even democratic, social influencers on twitter threaten businesses and get people fired for exercising free speech. Left-leaning universities and education boards make rules without needing widespread support.

Side note, this happens every time, systemic racism isn't about identity politics and the far left but somehow this topic ends up dominating the conversation. Unnecessarily inflammatory statements on both sides that just supports my claims about how we get distracted. You can't even have a serious debate about the issues, because the inevitable inflammatory remark about race, racial histories, identity politics or what have you is made and people get angry about it.

That's the rut we're in.

Necessary reading, especially for those pretending to give a shit about 'divisiveness' :

Meanwhile, as cops deploy chemical weapons and violence against protesters, we’ve seen the rise of the Tone Police — a battalion of keyboard warriors that patrols the terms of the discourse and berates protesters for the alleged crime of stridency. These pundits, think tankers, social media icons, and Democratic elites have started insinuating that the protesters’ language may be too divisive, discomfiting, and extreme — and therefore represents an act of political malpractice that will only harm the effort to make progressive change.... [But] If you actually believe that politics is more than some game you watch at a sports bar — if you actually believe it is about the real, tangible world — the more accurate and empirical way to judge success is to consider whether a cause, slogan, or movement has actually started changing public policy and the political discourse. By those metrics, contrary to the critics’ pooh-poohing, the protesters bellowing “defund the police” have had far more real-world political success than most naysaying Democratic consultants and pollsters that gets paid millions of dollars for political counsel.

In only a few short weeks, the protests have built up enough pressure to force New York and Colorado state lawmakers to pass police accountability initiatives, and Connecticut and Minnesota are on their way to holding special legislative sessions to consider doing the same. Whereas only weeks ago most public officials in the United States might have scoffed at the idea of ever reallocating police funds to other priorities, public officials in (among others) Minneapolis, New York, Denver, Boston, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Houston are now responding to protesters’ pressure by considering a wholesale reevaluation of bloated police budgets. Hell, protesters have brought so much pressure to bear that even congressional Republicans — the single most retrograde group of politicians in the entire nation — feel the need to pretend to support police accountability.

This is the political efficacy of mantras and slogans that the scolds say are too strident. However divisive you think the “defund” or “abolish” or “disband” language is, by creating easy-to-understand clarion calls, the protests have abruptly moved the entire Overton window. They have polarized the situation to the point where once-marginalized police reform proposals now seem like the absolute minimum conservative position, and long-overdue structural budget changes are now on the table. That’s far more political success in a few weeks than the know-it-all pundits, political consultants, and Twitter geniuses have ever mustered in their entire lives.

Most relevant for this particular thread:

The truth is, critics citing current polling snapshots as supposed proof of protesters’ electoral malpractice are inadvertently exposing themselves as immoral and politically shortsighted — and either hostile to the entire concept of mass movements, or embarrassingly ignorant of our nation’s history. ... Indeed, with an obsessive focus on polls, the critics of “defund the police” seem unable to cognitively fathom the political value of any cause that aims to be more than a thermometer. To them, public opinion is not dynamic, it is instead frozen in place forever, and any mass movement trying to change it must be committing electoral suicide....

What we do know is that those who actually want things to change are not the folks priggishly berating the language of protest amid a paroxysm of police violence. The pedants doing that are the “moderates” who pop up in every chapter of history — the naysayers who always try to undermine the righteous cause. They are the Tone Police standing in the way of progress. They should be ignored.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/black-lives-matter-blm-protests-george-floyd

More agitation, more divisiveness, more disunity, more unrest.

[reply="StreetlightX;422974"

It's almost as if all these objections are just utterly unprincipled excuses which stand for nothing but the affirmation of the status quo :chin: — StreetlightX

But the last line of my post is about questioning the status quo. If that is unclear then hopefully this corrects that.

I get why only 16% supports your version of defund the police. But defund the police, as has already been explained to you several times here, is not about disbanding police. It's about re-allocating resources so more can be done about preventing crime, instead of making every social problem in a city a police problem.

So your complaint really should be explained as "Ernestm is against preventing crime and rather locks people up". And put that way, it becomes clear how stupid your position is.

Thats a good point, but surely we can find a more reasonable cut off than the examples NOS used but that do include the example you used. What gets compared (and shut down) to your swastika example is pretty egregious. — DingoJones

There probably is a better way. We'd have to look at the examples in detail. As I said, when a topic is a hot button issue, bad decisions are more common. I just don't think it's evidence of some sort of organised suppression of dissent. For one, if it was, the people doing the suppressing wouldn't report on it. Rather it's society grappling with changing views on this issue and settling into a new normal. That inevitably means people that used to be within the acceptable mainstream no longer are.

Lol, that's not a good example, it's an unreasonable comparison. Rejecting Nazism isn't a contentious issue, you can't compare it to the very many far-left ideas which aren't even accepted by most of society and how censorship works there and compare it to a fucking swastika. — Judaka

I wasn't intending a comparison. The post I - indirectly - quoted was framing these firings as evidence of suppression of dissent in order to protect a "weak idea" from criticism. The example was intended to point out why that doesn't follow.

The censorship isn't even democratic, social influencers on twitter threaten businesses and get people fired for exercising free speech. Left-leaning universities and education boards make rules without needing widespread support. — Judaka

I think framing this as a conflict between free speech and censorship is a bad approach to the problem. The actors you note aren't state actors and the way trends spread online isn't analogous to a central authority deciding on what acceptable speech is. There is also the complication that the people involved in "censorship" are utilizing their own right to free speech to various extents.

I think that this is therefore more of an issue with how society is becoming more partisan than an issue of free speech as a traditional freedom from state interference.

Side note, this happens every time, systemic racism isn't about identity politics and the far left but somehow this topic ends up dominating the conversation. Unnecessarily inflammatory statements on both sides that just supports my claims about how we get distracted. You can't even have a serious debate about the issues, because the inevitable inflammatory remark about race, racial histories, identity politics or what have you is made and people get angry about it.

That's the rut we're in. — Judaka

I think this lines up nicely with approaching this as a problem of social dynamics, rather than one of censorship.

There probably is a better way. We'd have to look at the examples in detail. — Echarmion

Well, they have been arguing on talk radio for several weeks now whether religion is racist for depicting jesus as a white person. It was only when a listener was abducted by an alien and wanted to know about alien abductions in the bible that they thought something else had come up which was more important.

So depicting Jesus as a white person must be a good example of something worth examining in detail. From the sounds of it, if it hadn't been interrupted by alien abduction, they could have argued about it all year.

An older discussion that seems to be relevant to this discussion as well: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/409/disproportionate-rates-of-police-violence-against-blacks-racism/p1

Just in the space of the time driving occasionally, I heard of how dozens of renaissance painters were racist for depicting Jesus as white, with Michelangelo as even more racist, for depicting Adam and Eve, and God too, as white in the vatican, which the catholics never condemned, and therefore the entire christian church is racist. And it was repeatedly pointed out that jesus was from the Middle East, and therefore he should not be regarded as white at all.

I think framing this as a conflict between free speech and censorship is a bad approach to the problem. The actors you note aren't state actors and the way trends spread online isn't analogous to a central authority deciding on what acceptable speech is. There is also the complication that the people involved in "censorship" are utilizing their own right to free speech to various extents. — Echarmion

It's a necessary, modern approach and it's going to become increasingly important to focus on how the state protects free speech rather than how they interfere with it. The state has a role in both censorship and giving protection against censorship and both must be addressed. Honestly, censorship has very little to do with this topic and I understand now the point you were making with the swastika wasn't what I thought it was, my mistake.

I think this lines up nicely with approaching this as a problem of social dynamics, rather than one of censorship. — Echarmion

It's an extension of the same problem I was talking about earlier with race and racial histories, they're basically indirect disagreements. If you ask people about what sounds fair and reasonable versus about how black people have been mistreated and deserve compensation, even if you're selling the exact same policy, the result is different. My issue with some of the posters here is that they don't care about that at all, they stand by what they see as the pertinent facts and interpretations and couldn't be damned if they're making the topic politically complicated, even when it's just to satisfy their own anger at the expense of greater widespread agreement.

I fully expected this from the start, the newest post when I started looking at this thread was Baden saying how more people would accept systemic racism exists if their race had been enslaved and brutalised for hundreds of years. Then StreetlightX saying more people would think more like him if people of their race were getting murdered on a daily basis or something. How can you be simultaneously upset about opposition and resistance to your ideas while making every effort to make such controversial and inflammatory comments? It's so stupid that it makes me laugh but it's really quite sad when you look at the bigger picture.

how more people would accept systemic racism exists — Judaka

Yes people are definitely accepting it. I never heard people comnplain so much of depictions of Jesus as a white person before, especially as he was Middle Eastern, and therefore a possible terrorist too.

StreetlightX saying more people would think more like him if people of their race were getting murdered on a daily basis or something. — Judaka

Quote me, go on.

Im sure they will get to whether alien abductions are racist eventually. You will have to wait your turn.

It's cute how those who are not regularly murdered everyday on the basis of their skin color get to explain how skin color does not matter. It's like those celebs who, while hiding out in their multi-million dollar mansions, got to tell everyone that 'we're all in this together'. Everyone rightly told them to crawl into a hole and cark it. — StreetlightX

I even paraphrased you without making fun of your grammar, gotta give me props for that.

I'm getting pretty tired of you dragging in topics that no one is talking about - aliens and Jesus among other miscellaneous rubbish - so fully expect that trash to be deleted from here on out if you keep it up.

Oof. You think that translates into a thesis about what would make people 'think like me'? And you accuse me of being illogical? With a literacy standard like that?

It doesnt make any difference any more. When the autopsy report is read in the trial, showing the dead guy could have died of an overdose of meth and fentanyl he was on anyway, Black Lives Matter has already promised to raze the entire country.

Ah yes, it was his fault for not being healthy enough to be subject to police brutality.

you have programmed yourself to see everything in one light, havent you?

The policeman cant be proven guilty because the man on lethal drugs and had two bad heart conditions, so he could have died anyway. So the policeman will be acquitted. You better start complaining about 'innocence without irrefutable proof' now.

This is a point too stupid to argue, so sure, I'll leave you to it.

!0-year-old 'you are stupid and I am not' again? He will be aquitted. You know it. And you know what happens after that too. Might as well take a cruise or something, we didnt even need to drop nucleqar bunker busters on Korea or attack Iran. Weve destroyed our country by ourselves. Im waiting for my passport man, Im not sticking around for it. the rest of history will be laughing at how well we did ourselves in.

If he is acquitted, I hope your fucking country burns to ash.