Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Police are one of the only few people you will interact with in your life that can completely ruin it - financial, socially, physically.

They can do whatever they want with immunity. The state protects them when they commit crime. the state orders them to commit crimes. The union protects them when they commit crime. Republicans protect them when they commit crime.

And even when you're the police commissioner, the police will arrest you on a trumped up charge when you speak up against the police/state.


Police are generally good people who are quickly jaded and tend to become exactly what they swore to protect us from; beyond that, they are simply armed pawns of the state. The vast majority of police are simply tax collectors that don't make the world a better place -- just the local government.










Award Winning Journalism, 2019:






shocker, the congresswoman who married her own brother in order to skirt immigration laws, and also wants to bring shira law the US wants the president impeached:

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

ProchOIcEOI iS IfUINSNIhed

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

^ Pretty much this.

I fundamentally disagree with the notion of "What every citizen should be afraid of...", as it presupposes that every citizen needs to be afraid of something in the first place. That's a good tactic for driving presidential campaigns, firearm sales, and broadcast news, but not the best advice for living.

While there are certainly edge cases (there are always edge cases for everything), the average American citizen who is not behaving in a provocative manner or doing criminal stuff has about as much chance of being killed by a law enforcement officer as they do of being attacked by an alligator while walking through downtown Chicago. Not zero, but small enough that it's not something you need to take a lot of precautions against.



And usually, when I hear 2A arguments which address the need to protect ones' self from tyranny, the old adage that gets trotted out is the US Revolutionary War, which is of course the wrong thing to worry about (and I acknowledge that, somewhat uniquely, Sam also makes this point.)

Well, when Thomas Jefferson & pals wrote a nasty breakup letter to King George, the king didn't responding by sending the FBI or the DEA. He sent the army.

Now, that's the last example I can personally think of where private citizens engaged in armed conflict with their own government in the US. And it ended well, largely because the French had their backs. And, of course, said action was well-organized by a consensus amongst the political leaders of the states, a situation which is not all that different from the US Civil War (which was also fought by the armies, rather than the police.)

But we do have plenty of examples of private citizens engaging in armed conflict with domestic law enforcement agencies, and even when those citizens are well-armed (eg: North Hollywood shootout, Ruby Ridge), it's never ended well for them.

All in all, better to avoid being in such scenarios in the first place. If you're being unlawfully deprived of liberty, the correct place to address that situation is in front of a judge, not while staring down the shooty end of a gun. There is really no* situation in which engaging in armed resistance against any organized government agency (the police, the FBI, the National Guard, etc) is going to be a good idea.


That having been said, the majority of us don't generally get deprived of our liberties by the police, we get deprived of them by Congress, and, less frequently, by the Executive and the courts.

And that's the real problem.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

An analogous situation was depictedin an XKCD comic a few years ago:



Title text: Actual actual reality: nobody cares about his secrets.

So, humor in two parts:

1: The way the situation unfolds is much simpler, and less pleasant, than how the person who took great effort to prepare for that situation envisioned it would, and
2: The likelihood of that situation even occurring in the first place is extremely low, presupposing that the person did nothing to provoke it.


Interesting how absolutely identical that scenario is to what we're discussing here.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

well, she is a liberal, so...

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/nu...71gz1nGxMwmkd4

z31maniac

More murders happen where there are more people, who would have guessed?

This is groundbreaking stuff.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Amazing.

Sadly, the data in that article is at least partially false.

Open the article, and then scroll down to where they show the murder map of Chicago. This is the one you're looking for:



(I shrank it to fit. )


Now, according to that, there were no murders at all during the first third of 2017 in either the Loop or River North neighborhoods (basically the business district, where Sears tower, etc are.) Now, that's definitely one of the safer neighborhoods in the city, but it's by no means a zero-murder zone. Just google Chicago Murder Map (or some variant), pick whichever one you want (I don't want to influence which dataset you look at) and filter it for the appropriate date range. There are definitely murders down there. (The Loop, in particular gets really sketchy in the wee hours of the morning.)






Random picture:





Also, a random picture:

z31maniac

I can't say too much as Tulsa (my hometown) and OKC (my adopted hometown for work) are way up on the scale for per capita violence. But you know, basically, where it's happening. It's concentrated heavily in the SW and SE portions of the city. I'll let everyone else devise why it is that way.

I think OK is also known for some of the highest rates of police officer shootings. Typically, in the same areas I mentioned.

I suspect, just from looking out the window when I work from home, I'm a minority in my neighborhood. We don't have these issues. Looking at the OKC crime map, I live in the safest neighborhood out of gated communities in the city.

(Sorry I know that was a bit non-sequitur)

olderguy

iTrader: (19)

Notice how there were no people named in this tweet, but the squad immediately took offense and called a press conference

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Today in simple disgusting humans who vote for obama:

https://www.foxla.com/amp/news/local...AZ0lTuWYYx-Sdo

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Skamba

When the president is literally a textbook racist.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

this sort of racist intolerance makes me sick to my stomach:




If the congresswomen referred to in his in his tweet were from EU countries, would it still be racist?

If I tell all my liberal America-hating white coworkers to GTFO, is that racist?

If he made a "racist" tweet against a known racist, does that negate the racism?

If he has said "go die" instead of "go back, learn how to fix a real shithole country, then come back and help us" would that still be racist?

If you marry your own brother in a blatant violation of the law in order to skirt immigration laws, does that make you racist?

skamba, did you even read either his tweet or the full statement you quoted?

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Depends on their skin color, but statistically unlikely assuming a random sample. (Maybe if they were all from Cyprus.)


No. Even though you are by definition a racist (because you are white), it's impossible to be racist against a white person, so that specific act would not be racist.


Highly unlikely. Given that it's impossible to be racist if you are non-white, and you said that the person in question is a racist, this means that they are white, and as explained above, you cannot commit a racist act against a white person.


Yes. By definition, anything a white person does or says concerning a person of color is racist. So if he'd have given them all nice gift baskets, that would have been racist.

And also patriarchal.

And also sexual harassment if the baskets contained any sausage, because that would be obvious phallic symbolism.

And also violence if if contains meat of any kind, because meat is murder.

And also cultural appropriation if any of the foods in the basket are traditionally associated with a South American, Asian or African cuisine.

And also assault if the baskets contain peanuts or gluten.



If you are both the same skin color, then no. If you are white and your brother is non-white, then yes. (See previous answer.)

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

So this pro-Palestinian bill is not racist against the Jewish people because the former is non-white?

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I don't see how a bill which states that “all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.” is racist under any circumstances. It could only appear so through a very orange lens.


Also, no comment on the gift basket thing? I thought that was really clever.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

By comparison, Rep. Mike Kelly (who is already racists to begin with, because he is white) was being more than baseline racist when he said:



Why is this? Because we all know that "people of color" actually means "people of low luminescence values."

Skamba

Not racist, but still harassment based on origin.
If you don't tell your liberal America-hating colored coworkers to GTFO as well, it is racist. If you tell all liberal America-hating coworkers to GTFO it is 'just' discrimination based on political views.

One plus one equals two, not zero.

Good question. He would still be targeting a group of colored women. So the question then is, is he targeting that group despite of them being colored women, or because of it. I think then arguments could be made that he is targeting them because of the recent mentions of them in the media, not because they are a minority group. In that case, I would give him the benefit of the doubt and say that specific tweet is not racist.

I feel like you're referencing something completely different here, so I'm gonna ignore it.

Yes.

As an overall note, I think it's weird to attack politicians because they are criticizing the country. It's literally their job to represent the opinion of their constituents on how to improve the country, which is impossible to do if you're not allowed to criticize it.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)