Yet that's the argument what people can discuss? — ssu

No I just question how saying a random Finn on the internet has a "walnut-sized brain" because he thinks that an American cop shooting an American 13-year-old white kid entails that systemic racism in America is an inflated concern (if not an non-issue) "divides people" and keeps American power structures intact. I can assure you, nothing I say to you will have any effect whatsoever on American power structures.

Did I say it's inflated or non-issue? No, absolutely not.

It's quite apparent that with American police the racial profiling and how they differ in their response according to a suspects race is beyond comparison to many countries, for example (from a large number of examples) shown with how police approach in video a white man carrying a rifle and a black man carrying a rifle. (The white young male is stopped and asked what he is doing while the black man is ordered by gunpoint to hit the ground with more police patrols being deployed to the sight.) So yes, race is a factor. However the simple fact is that it isn't everything and race and racism doesn't explain everything.

Just pointing out the bias towards blacks and thinking that this is an issue only with blacks and minorities makes the argument about police being racist, which leaves behind the fact that the police uses excessive force towards the majority whites too. Not so much, but still does. Similarly the system protects the police in these cases also. In a country so filled with guns the police simply resorts to lethal violence. Yet is behind everything just racism?

The argument could be also made with income: that poor people are likely to be shot and rich aren't as usually, in every country actually, the "customers" of the police are indeed on average poorer people. Then accuse "the rich" and divide the people by simply their income level. If the people belong to one race, then the division could be made so.

Yet in both cases, be it by race or by income, we are dividing the population into two groups where one is the victim and where one is the accomplice to police brutality as somehow the police working for one group and not for the other. As if it wouldn't be people in high crime areas that need good policing. We don't look at the issue as the police using excessive force and the legal system being biased and protecting the police as a problem for the whole country. We don't emphasize that that this can happen to anyone in and try get people to think of the others. The other people are privileged and it isn't a problem for them, so they somehow make it possible. And we hear everywhere dog whistles and see hidden racism. When one imagined part of the people are accomplices, then there is no need to seek allies or broaden support to get reforms. And that of course prevents large reforms of happening, when popular outrage isn't used to create a larger agreement on what to do. That there is less racism now than fifty years ago hardly matters.

And does making those accusations on others that are fellow citizens help? No, but it keeps the citizens, the people, disunited. And that divide keeps the status quo of the present.

I can assure you, nothing I say to you will have any effect whatsoever on American power structures. — Maw

Of course not, but perhaps I do get to understand your point.

Fuck off you rat, you're the lunatic whose first response to having mentioned the riddling of an autistic boy with bullets as being BuT hE wAsNt BlaCk! Don't pretend to be above this shit when you perpetuate it. — StreetlightX

There's our Aussie moderator doing his job of moderating a Philosophy Forum.

Police brutality does not apply to just blacks. Don't think anyone who's the least bit knowledgable on the subject thinks that it does. There's overlap though, and disproportion...

Pointing out examples of white victims misses(or devalues) the point in much the same way that "All lives matter" does...

Pointing out examples of white victims misses(or devalues) the point in much the same way that "All lives matter" does... — creativesoul

Well that's too bad because if you're trying to effect change it might come in handy to show those largely (but not entirely) white suburbanites that police violence actually effects people like them.

Just pointing out the bias towards blacks and thinking that this is an issue only with blacks and minorities makes the argument about police being racist, which leaves behind the fact that the police uses excessive force towards the majority whites too. — ssu

No one suggested this is an "issue only with the black and minorities" you dumb fucker, we've spent this entire summer alone watching cops unleash unrestricted brutality against protesters regardless of skin color.

Police brutality does not apply to just blacks. Don't think anyone whose the least bit knowledgable on the subject thinks that it does. There's overlap though, and disproportion...

Pointing out examples of white victims misses the point in much the same way that "All lives matter" does... — creativesoul

So better to not point out that there are white victims too? Is even mentioning that some kind of dog whistle?

Just as someone even referring to colorblindness is a racist? Yes, some racist can use the phrases. But what is wrong in trying to judge people as individuals and never judge as groups of people by race, nationality etc?

There's our Aussie moderator doing his job of moderating a Philosophy Forum. — ssu

No one suggested this is an "issue only with the black and minorities" you dumb fucker — Maw

You might want to just not engage with people who are talking to you like that. I, for one, don't.

Then why not simply police brutality and what we do about it?

You might want to just not engage with people who are talking to you like that. I, for one, don't. — BitconnectCarlos

When those interested in philosophy cannot exchange ideas with each other, all is lost. Sounds dramatic, but there's a truth to it.

(And I still have confidence on the administrators following the rules of the forum equally with everyone.)

When those interested in philosophy cannot exchange ideas with each other, all is lost. Sounds dramatic, but there's a truth to it.

(And I still have confidence on the administrators following the rules of the forum equally with everyone.) — ssu

Sure, but I would ask myself whether those who use that type of language are actually interested in a discussion or if they're just more interested in venting.

Anyway, you do you. I can't help but notice that the insults here always seem to flow from the left to those on the right though.

Then why not simply police brutality and what we do about it? — ssu

There is no absolutely no difficulty in understanding that Black Americans are disproportionally targeted by police numerous ways and that police have been militarized in American which effects all Americans regardless of skin color. The preponderance and reaction engendered by the former (e.g. Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake), in fact, helps provide credence to the latter, as evidenced by the fact that there is no major protest as a result of a 13-year-old autistic boy being cut down by cops.

Well that's too bad because if you're trying to effect change it might come in handy to show those largely (but not entirely) white suburbanites that police violence actually effects people like them. — BitconnectCarlos

Oh, many know and thus also realize that pointing to white ones as a means to divert from black ones is rather beside the point.

So better to not point out that there are white victims too? Is even mentioning that some kind of dog whistle?

Just as someone even referring to colorblindness is a racist? Yes, some racist can use the phrases. But what is wrong in trying to judge people as individuals and never judge as groups of people by race, nationality etc?

I think the only thing wrong is that the very notion of justice threatens their collectivist project, that “treating equals equally and unequals unequally” renders guilt and innocence by association completely useless. That groups are composed of individuals makes collectivism founded on a base of shifting sands.

So better to not point out that there are white victims too? Is even mentioning that some kind of dog whistle? — ssu

I would not say that. If the context is police brutality or abuse of power, it would seem appropriate. If the context is the disproportion, it would not.

So the New York Times got hold of Trumps tax returns and it turns out that he’s a shitty businessman and cheats on his taxes. Who would have guessed?

Claimed a $72k business expense for doing his weirdass hair. Not a great deal, if you asked me.

We’ve learned he has great accountants.

We’ve also learned that they couldn’t drum up any evidence of ties to Russia or paying off stormy Daniels.

Nothing-burger so far, though they promise more stories.

No. What we've learned is that Trump is getting away with doing everything in his power to stop any and all investigations into him. What I hope is that he loses, because then he will no longer have that power...

I smell a Biden pardon, and suspect it will be framed as a means to move forward and past these issues that have divided our nation. Framing it all as a means to bring the nation closer together, and possibly avoid the civil unrest brewing amongst armed civilians who've been convinced to be angry at all the wrong people for a very long time.

I could be wrong about the pardon.

30+ investigations, an impeachment, the most scrutinized man in modern history. And this is all we’ve found? At what point does this become political persecution?

The officials in charge of those investigations are in the positions they hold for the very specific reasons that such institutions were first created. Trump has done everything in his power to remove and/or replace those officials. Sessions would not do it. Barr has.

Oversight and accountability measures are the only means we have to prevent too much power from being in too few peoples' hands(abuse of power). That is required in order to uphold one basic principle underwriting the birth of the nation itself; Liberty. The division of power in the federal government is required and designed specifically for the preservation of liberty of the minority(and/or smaller states). That need to separate the powers was so carefully considered immediately after the Revolutionary War, that it resulted in the formation and/or continuation of the Continental Congress in the years prior to the drafting of actual Constitution, as well as the Bill of Rights.



You speak here as if those investigations have been allowed proceed uninhibited and/or unobstructed. They most certainly have not.

So, to directly answer your question...

As soon as Trump stops obstructing justice and getting away with it, I'll gladly accept whatever the findings turn out to be. As long as Trump does everything in his power to impede any and all investigations into himself and/or his friends and allies, the charge of "political persecution" is a distraction. A rhetorical device meant to discredit the investigations themselves.

That's another well-established pattern of Trump's behaviour, by the way. The deliberate aim to discredit any and all who disagree with him and publicly speak about it, simply because they do.

Turns out Trump is either a loser who has lost almost all of his daddy's inheritance or a corrupt tax dodger. There is some serious coping going on with his delusional supporters now. Funny and sad. Anyway, it's over, people.

Then why not simply police brutality and what we do about it? — ssu

Which actually is named after George Floyd. It is confusing.

which is right next to 50 George Square — ssu

Is your suggestion here that if police brutality is disproportionately aimed at black people specifically and other minorities generally, the correct thing to do is pretend it is aimed at white people equally? Is it so hard to see why that is racist?

We’ve learned he has great accountants.

We’ve also learned that they couldn’t drum up any evidence of ties to Russia or paying off stormy Daniels. — NOS4A2

He owes the IRS over 100 million and you’re saying that he has great accountants?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

...

What’s more, the tax records show that Mr. Trump has once again done what he says he regrets, looking back on his early 1990s meltdown: personally guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, a decision that led his lenders to threaten to force him into personal bankruptcy.

This time around, he is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/09/28/a-national-nightmare-whoever-owns-trumps-enormous-debts-could-be-running-the-country/

One fact stands out far above all the others in its staggering implications: Donald Trump is personally responsible for $421 million worth of loans coming due in the next few years. Not his business. Him. Personally. He has no means of repaying them. He already refinanced his few profitable properties, and sold off most of his stocks to stay afloat. He appears short on liquidity. And we still don’t know to whom he owes the money.

This fact has frightening implications for public policy and national security. Even minor debts are a frequent reason for the government to deny a security clearance, for the obvious reason that indebted and financially desperate public servants make easy marks for bribery, blackmail and potential treason. The potentially destructive power of that sort of hold on a President of the United States is beyond comprehension. It is the stuff of nightmares, bad spy movie plots and otherwise outlandish conspiracy theory. Imagine if a president owed millions to the mob or to those with close ties to a foreign government, and those individuals both controlled the president’s financial future and knew of corrupt criminal activity. The president might act with otherwise strange deference to said mobsters and those connected to them, and bend public policy on their behalf. If they were tied to fossil fuel interests, the president might set the globe on fire rather than cross them. If his creditors were simply a wealthy set of Wall Street tycoons, he might rig all financial policy on their direct behalf.

What we do know is that beginning in the late 2000s, no one would lend to Donald Trump. His history of bankruptcies, combined with whatever horrors were on his personal and organizational financial statements, clearly made every bank run the other direction. Every bank but one, that is: Deutsche Bank. Donald Trump’s history with Deutsche Bank has always merited special scrutiny, but never more than now. The head honchos at Deutsche would have known just how desperate Trump’s financial position was. But they lent to him anyway. Why? It certainly looks even more ominous that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son was managing the real estate division at Deutsche that lent to Trump, and that Justice Kennedy unexpectedly retired to ensure Trump could seat his replacement. And it looks triply suspicious that Deutsche Bank has been fined and sanctioned over multiple money laundering scandals, including $20 billion from Russian kleptocrats.

https://www.businessinsider.com/former-fbi-agent-says-donald-trump-is-compromised-by-russians-2020-9

Former FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who was at the center of the investigation into Donald Trump's ties to Russia, said he continues to believe that the president "is compromised by the Russians."

"They hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interest, the national security, ahead of his own," Strzok said Sunday in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"One of the largest ways that foreign governments gain leverage — certainly in the case of the president — is through financial entanglements," Strzok said. "And I think when you take a look at the Trump financial enterprise, particularly its relationship with Russian monies and potentially those related to organized crime and other elements, that those interactions have placed them in a position where the Russians have leverage over him and are able to influence his actions."

Would explain why he is so deferential to Russia, even siding with Putin against his own intelligence agencies.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1310342791336284160.html

Total debt accounted for so far: $1.1 billion

Is your suggestion here that if police brutality is disproportionately aimed at black people specifically and other minorities generally, the correct thing to do is pretend it is aimed at white people equally? Is it so hard to see why that is racist? — Kenosha Kid

Is it really aimed? You really think that this isn't a problem in very poor white communities in the US?

Blacks make up 13% of the US population yet of those people arrested each year, over a quarter (in 2018 27%) are black. So is this really an issue of police brutality being aimed at somebody or the police using excessive force generally when arresting people? I have said myself that yes, there is an obvious difference how the police approach suspects based on race, but is this really so huge that we can say that police brutality is aimed at a specific racial group? If so, what is the intent?

If the real issue is that police uses excessive force and has a low bar to use deadly force, wouldn't the procedures themselves be worth to focus or do we look for a segment that the brutality is aimed at?

Where there is disproportionately more crime you will find more contact with the police. And with more contact, there is the possibility of excessive force. Since it's an obvious fact that poorer communities have more crime than prosperous communities, you could thus also make the argument that police brutality is aimed at the poor. The statistics would support that. Yet defining this an issue of either racism or income or both doesn't actually focus on the obvious and that is how police operate, how they approach their job and how the legal system protects the use of excessive force. One is making a larger accusation on the society itself, which many people might have different views. I think this problem needs support from as big as possible segment of the population.

Yet defining this an issue of either racism or income or both doesn't actually focus on the obvious and that is how police operate, how they approach their job and how the legal system protects the use of excessive force... — ssu

That's just not true. Focusing upon the need for racial injustice reform sheds light upon all sorts of things, including but not limited to, law enforcement issues like abuse of power/brutality.

It's the only reason that so many people have become painfully aware of the lack of accountability...

There is no absolutely no difficulty in understanding that Black Americans are disproportionally targeted by police numerous ways and that police have been militarized in American which effects all Americans regardless of skin color. — Maw

And I would argue on the way how to communicate the latter issue correctly is important. If we divide the people by race or income and say "the police works for you, not for me!", it's not hard to see that it will turn off some people who otherwise would agree with you that the police uses excessive force and starts confronting criminal suspects as enemy combatants, which is really a bad thing.

That's just not true. Focusing upon the racial injustice reform sheds light upon all sorts of things, including but not limited to, law enforcement issues like abuse of power/brutality. — creativesoul

I do understand your point. Yet how do you approach these injustices is important. Do you make accusations and divide the people (as happens) or do you make the case that the country simply should live up to it's values and try to find the broadest support to do so? I would argue that there is a dedicated effort to keep the people divided in the US.

Sure, but I would ask myself whether those who use that type of language are actually interested in a discussion or if they're just more interested in venting. — BitconnectCarlos

Well, the Forum isn't a "safe space" and simply going away isn't an answer.

Anyway, you do you. I can't help but notice that the insults here always seem to flow from the left to those on the right though. — BitconnectCarlos

Philosophy students are usually leftists. Yet increasing amount of members here are what would be called centrist or even on the right, I think.