Editor’s Note: Brett L has graciously allowed his Afternoon Links to be preempted today so that Mustang’s time-critical post can go up. Thanks, Brett!
I may be asked to discuss current events in a small group setting about diversity and inclusion. For context, it is written for a small military audience, mostly very senior officers and enlisted leaders.
There are two distinct things that are colliding right now. On the one hand, we have an unaccountable bureaucracy with an enforcement arm that feels immune from repercussions. On the other hand, we have minority communities that have been ravaged by socioeconomic policies that were first created to keep them poor and, following a righteous movement for equal treatment before the law, have poured over into all segments of society, resulting in a class divide that widens at a breakneck pace, swallowing everyone, regardless of the color of their skin. When these two forces collide, the result is the same as it always has been…violence on both sides. We have a State that does not like to have its power questioned and we have an aggrieved population that views that State with a sense of betrayal and mistrust. This is not politics; this is history. This is economics. It is exacerbated by politics and an educational system that has failed their communities.
Those socioeconomic policies were enacted decades ago, amid a country wrestling with a racist past and an identity crisis. These policies were enacted to protect the largely white, working class men from competition by making it too expensive to hire that competition. Labor laws that have been championed throughout the years artificially inflated the cost of labor, and in doing so, have relegated minorities to communities with few options for escape.
During the Civil Rights era, these minority communities rightfully fought for equal protection under the law. Unfortunately, that equal protection priced them, and increasingly poor white communities, out of the labor market. We see its effects now through the ever-increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor. We see it in the decline of young people in the labor market. Business owners, when faced with the challenges of complying with these regulations, simply cannot afford to hire young and/or unskilled labor, minority or otherwise.
Additional policies controlling the price of housing and business in city centers have made housing unaffordable. It’s nearly impossible for developers to create affordable housing. It has instead been replaced with barely-functional government housing, paid for by empty promises from people who make their living buying votes from the communities they claim to serve. Those same people prevent affordable, effective schooling by making choice illegal. The opportunities for a better education do not exist because they are banned under the false pretense that funneling money towards successful school choices rather than failing public schools is a bad thing. These communities are, quite literally, banned from advancing. It is a race to the bottom and minority communities have a head start, but with these policies now being enforced everywhere, Americans from every racial background are suffering as a result.
And who is enforcing those socioeconomic policies? Law enforcement that is behind the wall of qualified immunity, backed up by a grab-bag of petty crimes that do not have any real victims, protected by police unions that shout down any suggestion for accountability, and subject to ever-lower standards being put in place in order to make up for a supposed lack of diversity in the ranks.
Power corrupts. This adage is as old as a time and it is true here. It is doubly true for people who feel shielded from their actions in court and who haven’t been required to reach a higher standard. If you don’t believe me, I invite you to look at the standards currently required to become a Military Police officer. Near as I can tell, there aren’t any additional requirements beyond the basic standards for joining the military. I love my job, but I have never seen myself in law enforcement. I try my hardest to look at things from an outside perspective, and that includes my own career field, and when I do that, it becomes clear to me that law enforcement officers have been set up to fail from the start. If we want to hold our law enforcement officers accountable, we must advocate for the removal of qualified immunity, demand an end to the police unions that shield its members from repercussions, and reduce or eliminate the laws that create the victimless crimes that are used to target these communities.
If we ignore economics and history, it would be understandable to look at this situation through the lens of racism. That used to be the case. It is not anymore. Black-on-black crime is the largest killer of black men in the US, outside of health considerations. More black police officers kill more black men than white police officers do. If we were being honest about black lives mattering, we would be lining the streets in places like Chicago, where dozens of black men are killed every weekend without even a mention, demanding the removal of political policies that prevent minority communities from advancing, instead of waiting for the next news cycle outrage to whip people into a frenzy.
I want to make something perfectly clear though. This is not meant to be racist. It is a statement of fact and is in no way meant to denigrate the African American community, imply that it is more prone to violence, or any other horribly racist ideas that are typically attributed to these statements. What it does highlight is that it is not a problem that exists solely between black and white. These stats are the result of decades of socioeconomic policies that have resulted in minority communities suffering from a lack of education and work opportunities.
What does all this mean for the military? It means that when minorities join, they join at a disadvantage. They join a system that they have not been prepared for in any way. The result of this is the same within the military as it is outside of it…more minorities involved in petty crimes or failing to adapt, leading to the perception that racism is the issue rather than socioeconomic policies. This leaves people from these communities having to work twice as hard just to adapt to life in the military.
We have asked for solutions to end so-called racial disparity in the ranks and in doing so have fallen into the same trap that plagues law enforcement across the country…we are opening ourselves to the possibility of lowering standards to address a problem that has been incorrectly diagnosed. The answers to these problems are not within the ability of the military to fix. They require a socioeconomic shift that can only occur by freeing poor communities from the regulations that stifle their educational and business opportunities. I cannot stress this enough…I want to help people of all races. I recognize that in recent American history, minority communities were the target of policies designed to prevent them from succeeding, but now those policies have spread to all communities. The result is increased housing costs, increased labor costs, and fewer opportunities for education for all people.
If we want to have this discussion, we need to be willing to recognize where the real problems are. These discussions, where white people are treated as though they cannot erase the original sin of racism, where minorities are told that all issues in life are due to the color of their skin, are terribly counterproductive and will only deepen the animus between Americans. Every single one of us has biases, both good and bad. The entire point of these diversity and inclusion initiatives is to bring together people with different biases to provide new and creative ways to accomplish a mission. We ask penance for sins that we can never be absolved of, and when we leave here, we wonder what it is that we’ve really accomplished. If we want these discussions to be productive, then I implore each of us to look past what we are being told is the problem and dig deeper to find the actual, real obstacles that hold our communities back.
We are bombarded by a news cycle that has a financial incentive for everyone in this room to make decisions based on emotion rather than critical thought. There is so much more that we can do, but until we remove the economic barriers that prevent choice in urban areas, we will never see an end to this cycle of violence.
If the military is going to pick a side, and it has picked sides whether we want it to or not, then it needs to advocate for the elimination of the barriers to success I have highlighted here in order to accomplish its mission and protect all Americans, regardless of who they are or what they look like. I am deeply wary of using our military in such a manner, but Pandora’s Box has been opened. I hope that we can use that power appropriately.
Related links:
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/general-cq-brown-racism-video
I am first, but now I have to return some videotapes.
Be kind, rewind.
Meeting Cliff Huxtable at the Four Seasons afterwards?
He needed to make sure Debbie did all of Dallas and didn’t leave anything out.
For roofie-colada’s and something that resembles a pudding pop?
“Editor’s Note: Brett L has graciously allowed his Afternoon Links to be preempted today so that Mustang’s time-critical post can go up. Thanks, Brett!”
Translation: Brett is passed out naked in a strip club bathroom.
Again.
I thought he was passed out naked in the alley behind the strip club this time.
Ahem, A gay strip club.
Well, dancing is hard work, no wonder he passed out.
I may be asked to discuss current events
I’m not clear on what the goals are. A huge problem I see in the US is middle managers being painted into operational corners where upper management is not clear on strategic marketing, has no clear operational goals, and the budgets are not known. You can’t attack until you have forces and coordinates.
One new-age approach where there is no winning is to stay Socratic and just start a powwow ( I do that a lot so that I’m totally innocent: I’m just asking questions here; what is the collective wisdom, etc). You could couch the session as research, asking for help to develop a list of motives, issues, preferences for each of the parties as a starting place for the boys up the chain.
I’m not clear on what the goals are.
Me neither.
The stated goal is to close the racial disparity gap that is alleged to occur for military members under the age of 25. A recent study by the AFA (I think) says that minorities under 25 are disproportionately removed from the military. The individuals in that link took it, said their pieces, and ordered an immediate review of racism in the Air Force, that commanders conduct small group discussions focusing on the plight of African Americans in the ranks, and to give feedback on how we can close that racial disparity gap in the ranks.
For what reasons? Physical? Mental? Emotional?
Disciplinary issues mostly. Drugs, petty crime, things like that.
Kerouac has nothing on Brett L’s adventures.
The entire point of these diversity and inclusion initiatives is to bring together people with different biases to provide new and creative ways to accomplish a mission.
While I think for a typical audience, you need to say this, I have a very different idea about what the point of these initiatives is. More along the lines of graft, empire-building, the accumulation of power, and the joys of petty authoritarianism.
Yep.
I once had somebody explain this exact line of excuse-making to me, and I asked them to provide one concrete, actual example they’ve encountered where somebody’s diverse culture, skin color, or gender improved a project or work product in a way that positively impacted the bottom line of the company.
After they stuttered and stalled for a few minutes, they admitted that they had never encountered such a situation. I then proceeded to give an example where diversity was used to perpetuate and improve a diversity program, which I used as an opportunity to rail against the bureaucracy.
They then followed up with a question to me (with a smirk on their faces, they’re conservatives who know my libertarian leanings) “why do you hate diversity?”
I don’t know if it’s too much of a third rail, but I’d mention the breakdown of the family and replacement thereof with the welfare state as a major contributor to poverty, both urban minority and rural white.
And this, of course, is why there is no solution for government. The uncomfortable truth is the way to end poverty is to have more marriage. Two people, sharing expenses, can raise a family and build capital even if they’re flipping burgers.
I had the same thought.
Women stopped marrying men and started marrying the state.
The state has more money.
And has no expectations on her.
And depending on her socio-economic status, will kill her baby
The state created incentives that made not marrying more attractive. See, Moynihan report on African American families.
Agreed. I’m not especially concerned if it hurts any particular woman’s feelings, but people should be encouraged to only have children within the bounds of a stable two-parent relationship. Single motherhood isn’t something to be celebrated, but to be pitied. It was good that we switched from shaming and scorning bastardy to accepting it, but celebrating it is very corrosive to society.
I’m at the age now where many of the women I grew up with who have been divorced or split from the father for a while now, done the shack up with the long term boyfriend bit for as long as they could keep getting that child support check and are now suddenly betting on a ring from the boyfriend after the checks dry up.
A few have gotten a rather rude awakening from that idea when the now middle-aged but flush with some cash after milking off them and the baby daddy for years suddenly trades them in for a mid to late twenties party girl who’ll do the crazy shit they stopped doing years ago. And of course, party girl drains newly free middle aged idiot of all money and leaves him for the next one.
It’s a shitstorm all around.
I’m not even religious or especially conservative, I just looked at the shit that goes into raising a kid, and it’s more than I think any one person can handle adequately unless they’re independently wealthy. So I resolved not to have kids until I was married, did that, and now am busy hammering it into my own kids that having a baby out of wedlock is the road to poverty and a difficult life.
The people in these positions of power don’t see the typical “solutions” as political, whereas what you outlined will be labeled as blatantly such. It’s also far easier for the leader class to signal to one another how enlightened they are with ideas like renaming bases named after Confederates than it is to actually look at their policy failures.
We should absolutely rename bases named after traitors though.
Trump is still President. Shouldn’t we wait until he’s out of office?
Sure. We’ll rename them all after Trump and Reagan as a compromise.
Reagan yes. But no bases named for people that whined themselves out of service.
Sorry, but 8 different Fort Trumps are a thing now in my head and I’m not listening. It’s going to be like Alexander the Great and Alexandria, but classier.
Is Kushner Bucephalus in this analogy?
We should absolutely rename bases named after traitors though.
While I can see the logic in this, and would absolutely agree that no new bases should be named after traitors, I do disagree with renaming the bases. For most (all?) of the bases, the base itself is more associated with the name than the man who held it, and some of these bases have long and storied histories. But mostly, it strikes me as odd that we today should be more offended by an act of treason than were people who lived closer to the event. If the military found it acceptable to name these bases after these men within living memory of their acts, acts committed in part against the very institution, why is it unacceptable now that this has all faded into history? Of course, the naming was in all probability part of reconciliation attempts to reduce divisiveness in the nation (due to that whole within living memory thing) which is not needed now, so perhaps the calculus has changed.
If the people who lost brothers, sons, husbands, and fathers to the war decided to name a base or a unit after an enemy they nevertheless respected, whether that enemy be a Confederate, a Lakota, or a Japanese, then I don’t see where we as modern people stand to question them. We may think ourselves more moral, but we did not pay the price they did. I think these honorifics ought to stand and give us a sense of humility about ourselves versus the people who came before us.
Of course, this gets a lot less straightforward when the honorific or monument in question was made decades after the war and for other reasons and by other people than to honor the enemy by those who fought him.
Washington was a traitor. So was Jefferson.
The entire point of ‘diversity and inclusion’ is to destroy competency in both individuals and institutions. It is Marxist bullshit. As someone else said yesterday, I am more of an old fashioned Martin Luther King kinda guy. Your skin color, your gender, your religion mean Jack-shit to me. Are you competent? What is the quality of your character?
“…failing to adapt…”
You are talking about a cultural problem. Part of that problem comes from exterior forces but the majority comes from the culture itself.
^^^
Would that more people had that attitude. Being able to look past someone’s skin or facial features or religious beliefs or what have you and see the person underneath all that takes thought and effort. That applies to all people, and it’s difficult to accomplish. And yes, there are a lot of folks out there who aggravate the problems for political gain.
When diversity is nothing but skin color, gender, or sexual orientation, but everyone comes from the same socioeconomic background and same few schools, then yes, it’s bullshit. But I work on ad hoc teams that often have engineers, economists, physicists, and even psychologists and it is useful because people approach problems in different ways. I can’t think of a project where I haven’t said to myself I never would have thought of that. But of course, that’s not the diversity they mean. I do think class matters. I’ve been on a project where some others were puzzling over something in the data and the answer seemed obvious to me. We added a question to a survey and confirmed my intuition. The others grew up upper, upper middle class and I didn’t, (similar to the group we were studying) and my answer never occurred to them.
These discussions, where white people are treated as though they cannot erase the original sin of racism, where minorities are told that all issues in life are due to the color of their skin, are terribly counterproductive and will only deepen the animus between Americans.
This, this, a thousand times this.
Deepening the animus is the whole point of it. It is deliberate.
This is my analysis.
Nobody actually believes that a “conversation” begins and ends with “Now is not the time for you to talk. Now is the time for you to listen” and “You need to acknowledge your privilege and your blame in either perpetuating racism or failing to do enough to counter racism”.
That’s not only not a conversation, that’s not even a way to deliver a lecture that is going to be well received.
We either treat people as individuals or we do not. There is no middle ground.
I have no issue with opening up the requirements for the military to allow in more people who are socioeconomically disadvantage, in fact I applaud it. I object to the lowering of standards that allows them to get thru boot camp, officer training, etc… without fulfilling the the demands of the process.
If for no other reason, they must know that they earned it. That they weren’t given a pass, just an opportunity to prove themselves.
But how do you get disadvantaged individuals up to speed? Take someone who grew up fatherless with mom not being around having to work two jobs and his school didn’t teach him anything. Now you get a poorly educated and undisciplined person in the military and has to very quickly get with the system.
That may be a question for society at large as well.
You don’t acknowledge these sorts of people even exist.
Colleges and universities have long had remedial (though they are not called that) programs for students from “underperforming” schools. That is the last bastion, but not everyone gets into college.
I’ve long been an advocate of Notice of Educational Fraud where anyone with an HS diploma who is functionally illiterate or innumerate can file a claim with the school system that graduated them; the defrauded student gets free remedial classes, the taxpayers get the scalp of whoever signed off on diplomas and passing grades for areas where the individual is incompetent.
Oooo… I like that.
The unions would hate it.
If you actually had a universal standard and attempted to hold inner city kids to it, you’d simply have cries of racism when you have higher failure rates.
Then you ignore it and move on.
We tried that, it was called SOL exams, and they were universally loathed except by cranks like me. And then they caught and prosecuted those teachers and admins in Atlanta for cheating the tests so the school met their pass rate.
The state and federal governments always provide an out and a scapegoat. Make the parents and the community feel responsible for the outcomes of the schools and those results would turn around damn quick. The welfare state, the bureaucracy, and the dogooders are killing the cities and they face no real consequences for it.
As long as people believe money and good intentions are the solution to every problem, the problems won’t get solved. Calling it racism is just a way to deflect blame and keep the money flowing.
I am down with that, provided the school can not settle (I don’t think the Gov’t should ever be able to settle) and a notice has to be posted for others.
It needs to hurt.
Interestingly enough, the service academies – or at least the Naval academy has a post-HS prep school in Newport RI across the street from OCS.
There are a few enlisted folks there via the Seaman to Admiral program sometimes, but as I recall the vast majority are folks recruited for the academy’s athletic programs – and generally along the socioeconomic breakdown you’d expect.
Anyone with a decent internet connection could probably dig up a lot more details a lot faster.
You can’t spell “underperforming” without derp!
It’s a difficult question, but the exactly wrong thing to do is to continue to pass them along and make excuses. You’d be better off not admitting them to the program.
Maybe a remedial program before putting them into the real program. Completely separate and required before the rest.
You sound like one of those pro-meritocracy shitlords.
On an earlier dead thread, someone was saying that the U.S. Senate would likely flip to the Democrats, because so many more Republican seats up this year. 270towin seems to paint a different picture, where if Trump wins, Republicans could lose all 4 swing states and still retain control:
https://www.270towin.com/2020-senate-election/
That was me. I was looking at the gross numbers (how many are up this year, with retirements), with a shallow dive into current thinking on toss-up and “leans”/at risk states (from that very site). I think its too early to take polling very seriously at all. The gross numbers make this a very hard year for Repubs to hold onto a narrow majority.
And that was about it. YMMV on whether polling in May tells us much about results in November.
I am not a republican. And I cannot stomach an America where Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are the 3 people in charge. Even absent anything about Russia and impeachment, their behavior over the last few years has been disgraceful.
“I recognize that in recent American history, minority communities were the target of policies designed to prevent them from succeeding, but now those policies have spread to all communities. ”
Well, there was also Jim Crow, and plenty of non-institutional racism as well.
My cousin sent me some old advertisements that were horribly racist and sexist as kind of a “look how funny advertisers used to be” way. It actually made me mad, because after the civil war and civil right laws, we had a chance to move past the racial animus, but no, we have to insult women and minorities to get sales.
Those policies ended over 50 years ago.
Colfax, Louisiana has a large percentage of blacks. We have an awful history as this area was all plantations and the black residents are all descended from slaves. We also had this (I will give my take on that later) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre
We are also the location of one of the last hangings in Louisiana. Up until fairly recently whitecapping was a capital crime in Louisiana.
In spite of this I have struck up a sort of casual friendship with a local black kid who works in the grocery store. He is smart, well mannered, well spoken and polite. He is very nerdy. He spends all of his time either working or playing video games and eating microwave pizza. Neither he nor I am to blame for what other people in the past that weren’t him and weren’t me did to each other.
You are what you decide you want to be. No one in this country is required to be chained by the past. The ones who are choose to be.
whitecapping?
Nonwhite people are threatened by white people in order to stop or move them away from engaging in businesses, occupations, etc. that the whitecapper disagrees with the nonwhite doing.
Live feed of George Floyd’s funeral:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html
When I enlisted in the Marines in 89, they fanatically equalitarian – blacks were referred to as “dark green” and whites as “light green” Marines. I have no idea what it’s like today.
Promotion criteria was an open book and everyone knew what was required to move up. I met many a minority Marine who had drank all that Koolaide, loved it, and thrived in that atmosphere.
But statistically, a higher number of black recruits/marines probably fail than whites. So cue the cries of systematic racism.
Maybe, I don’t know. I remember 3 whites guys who didn’t make it through Boot Camp. One couldn’t do the PT, one was a sleep walker, one for discipline. I think every black guy in my platoon finished – not a balid sample size I know.
One black guy in my radio school class was obviously in the wrong profession. He even accussed our platoon sgt of racism (which had all the other black guys shaking their heads). The Staff Sgt took him to the school’s Sgt. Major (a black Korean War / Chosen Reservoir veteran) who ripped into the dumbass with an epic ass-chewing. We could hear it in the classroom on the other end of the building.
At that time were you aware of any quotas that would have made for bad incentives?
I’m imagining in our woke military that standards are not consistently applied, but I’d love to be wrong…
No. The idea of chicks in combat units was still considered ridiculous. Recruiters get all kinds of incentives so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were encouraged to sign up minority recruits. The promotion boards were strictly based on scores and blind to race.
When I left grad school I briefly considered going into the military for intelligence stuff like satellite image analysis, etc. A lab mate of mine was doing research for the Army that was related to biological warfare defense. The government was paying his way in everything… he tried to sell me on the idea, so I gave the recruiter a listen.
They took me down for an ASVAB. Two other guys were taking it that day. Perfect physical specimens for the Marines – 6’4″, chiseled, triangular physiques, good looking dudes with high and tight hair cuts already. Both of them black.
The ASVAB is not for grad students. I easily got all the questions right, as well as writing out a note for the proctor to pass along explaining that 3 of the answers were not correct – with explanations of why they thought the answer they had was the correct answer, and here’s what the actual answer is, and why. (which explains why being in the armed forces was not going to be my gig).
Both of the guys with me struggled. Neither could finish in the time allotted. I don’t think I used a quarter of the time. The recruiters gave them a little help with a few of the questions to make sure they passed.
They were really excited about my score. They said it meant I could have any specialty I wanted. They were pushing army recon.
Yeah… go out in front of the big guns and tell you where the shells land? Hard pass.
I think there is a technique to taking standardized exams. If you go to a school that caters to the college-bound set, with things like AP or iB classes and half a dozen SAT prep options, much of what you learn is in how to take standardized tests. That’s not to say that you don’t learn the material nor that the tests are total bullshit (they’re only somewhat bullshit), but you can take two similarly intelligent people and get quite divergent results when one of them has spent half his school career taking and preparing for standardized tests regularly and the other hasn’t. Then, of course, there’s the matter of intelligence vs. education. Lots of people don’t know the exact things that are being tested, even if they can be taught or know something equivalent.
I thought semi-seriously about enlisting in the Marines. Pater Dean was a Marine, so it was the only branch I thought about.
Given my list of physical issues – deaf in one ear, terrible eyesight, history of asthma, open heart surgery as a wee Dean – it was a nonstarter. I don’t mind highly structured environments and learned pretty early on the value of keeping my mouth mostly shut and keeping a low profile, so I think I would have been OK. It would have completely changed my life, and I wonder occasionally what that life would have been.
It was still like that in 2001 when I enlisted. “There’s no white or black here on Parris Island, just different shades of green” I’m sure there were bigots in the ranks – the military being a microcosm of society, there had to be – but whoever they were, they kept quiet about it. It was not tolerated.
Yeah, I was in the late ’80s and it was the same way.
Everyone below E-4 got shit on equally. A lot of solidarity came out of that.
Also laugh about one time having a guy in our squadron described as a “real light dark green Marine” without they guy trying to be funny. It was only afterwards that we realized it was pretty absurd. Then the light skinned dude in question started trying to get us to refer to him as pastel green.
Related: Seems like insurrection to me.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/06/09/antifa-militants-seize-seattle-police-hq-set-up-autonomous-zone-n512621
There’s your role for the military.
Test, probe, push until you encounter real resistance. All straight out of commie revolutionary instruction books.
That’s fucking crazy.
I’m OK with secession.
I don’t like Commies.
Hmm….
I know right. Voluntary communes if you can make them to work. I’m o.k. with that. Not big on the appropriating another’s property.
Yup. But secession is never going to be clean.
I’m ok with secession too, but it should be done peacefully through some kind of referendum and/or process. This isn’t secession, it’s revolution.
Does it matter to the 49% who voted against secession that the process was peaceful? It’s still against their will whether secession occurs through revolution or referendum.
/Not arguing for revolution or against referendums for secession.
I think its probably the least bad option. Once you get to a certain point, every other road is very dark indeed.
Shut off their electricity and water and don’t let anybody out until they all starve to death.
It is Seattle. They have a Life-sized statue of Lenin. Who do you think the city leaders are rooting for?
That can’t be real. I’m trying not to think about it to reduce my rage. I sincerely hope they don’t come to my town, I’d probably be in jail shortly thereafter.
Pfft. If you kill them in a no cop zone, who’s gonna arrest you?
During the 2nd Spartacist Uprising in 1919 the People’s Navy fought an overnight series of battles with Freikorps for control of the Berlin Police Headquarters. The sailors were finally routed with flamethrowers.
If we want to hold our law enforcement officers accountable, we must advocate for the removal of qualified immunity, demand an end to the police unions that shield its members from repercussions, and reduce or eliminate the laws that create the victimless crimes that are used to target these communities.
Yes.
I’ve said this many times, and been laughed at or shouted down.
Black-on-black crime is the largest killer of black men in the US
Apropos
Thanks Mustang. It was a good read.
Tetas de lado por Mammary Martes.
Mierda!
http://archive.li/VsoHq
#1 is #1.
#36 is Lindsey Pelas.
#38 is cute.
“George Floyd funeral turns on Trump as speaker Rev. Lawson says ‘first thing we have to do is clean out the White House’ to rid America of ‘the prejudiced and bigoted’ as Nation of Islam provides security and Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum watch on”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8401421/George-Floyd-death-energized-movement-buried.html
Classy.
How many Floyd funerals are we up to now?
Who’s paying for these massive productions?
It’s the George Floyd Endless Summer Tour now. It’s no doubt making money just like other summer tours.
That’s actually an important question.
It is clear that these are not “memorial services”. They are political rallies. And someone is paying. But is it declared?
They clearly intend it to be helpful to Biden. Well, if not directly to Biden, to Dems in general. Isn’t there a suite of election laws about disclosure about something like that. Particularly since you’d have to coordinate with Biden’s campaign if you wanted an appearance.
I have not seen any hard-hitting NYT journalism on the topic.
The Minneapolis police department was totally A-OK before Trump. It is known.
Hey, who was president when all that Ferguson stuff happened? Anyone remember?
That Irish guy Barry O’Bama?
The one who sent in a team of feds to investigate… and who had the answer “he grabbed the gun inside the vehicle and got shot in the hand inside the vehicle” within a day or two… . yet sat on any suggestion that it wasn’t “hands up, don’t shoot” until a month later?
The mass psychosis has destroyed people’s brains. A New Yorker escaped from the city and then gave up cash because he’s afraid to catch the virus from the banknotes.
Some people have good reason to be careful.
Christ almighty. Just wash already if it worries you that much. I’ve accidentally put my wallet in more than once. The money will be fine. Or just leave it outside on a sunny day for a short period of time, flip, and move on. The shitty job of handwashing after using the toilet probably poses more of a threat to your health.
Root of all evil, amirite?
I lick all my paper money for covid/coke residue. It really grabs you by the booboo.
In another case of “2020 leaves us alone!” a coworker was supposed to fly with her family to a funeral. She decided to stay in Orlando because her husband is a police officer and she was worried about him working the protest. The plane crashed killing all on board.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/georgia-plane-crash-florida-family-funeral-indiana-pilot-killed
This year needs to end.
Sorry.
Thank you for your condolences, but we weren’t close, just someone I know from work and a crazy story for a crazy year.
So she is OK?
She is but she lost her sister, father BIL and 2 nieces. She has a big support system in our group and the GoFundMe hit it’s target almost immediately.
Sorry 🙁
I think a lot of people miss the point, including some people here. It’s absolutely undeniable that there’s a racial component to policing. Blacks are more likely to be stopped than whites for any number of minor offenses, even adjusting for what percentage of each that might be committing that offense. And the more interactions between police and individual citizens you have, the more likely you are to see incidents like Eric Garner, like Philando Castile, like George Floyd.
The fact that black-on-black crime is so prevalent also stems from a lot of factors, some of which are systemic. How much of that would be eliminated if, for example, we ended the drug war? If we ended the policies (including many policies ostensibly started to “fix racism”) that keep so many black citizens unable to reach their full potential?
We’re looking at the wrong things to fix is my point. We need a lot of systemic change, and then a lot of things we’re looking at (like the military issues you discuss) are going to change for the better along with it.
Forgot to add this to the above (deleted it to reword it and then hit reply before I re-added it), but even if we could wave a magic wand and get rid of every racist thought in everyone’s head, it would do very little to solve the problems we see. And that’s something a ton of people, especially most of the left, seems to miss.
I don’t think anyone here disagrees with that.
There are tangible changes to law and policing that can be made which will vastly improve the situation. Some of them, you’re going to have to convince black people to push for, because quite often, they push for the very policies that harm them the most.
That’s definitely true. The mid-90s “tough on crime” era was pushed and encouraged by the Congressional Black Caucus.
“We need a lot of systemic change”
So much this. I don’t deny the racial component, however if you fix the policing process (along with the criminal justice system in general) the world gets better for everyone, including blacks.
“a racial component to policing. Blacks are more likely to be stopped than whites for any number of minor offenses”
Blacks are more likely to commit petty offenses. Cops, both black and white, stop people they think are committing offenses.
There is a problem with police but it isn’t racial. Have. you ever taken note of the racial make-up of police departments?
How much of that would be eliminated if, for example, we ended the drug war?
Only some.
I can’t imagine that, after Walgreens has taken his livelihood away, that the typical dealer is going to work the hours and settle for a wage in the real world. He’s going to try to replace his former net with similar bang, and often that will simply mean other crimes.
I don’t support the WoD, but bored and hungry comancheros just move on down the trail.
I was going to post that the economies of inner cities would likely collapse and things would get worse before they got better. But, really, most other forms of crime that would be even remotely as profitable are other things that the government has prohibited which it has no business prohibiting. There’s really nothing that could replace the revenue from drugs, though.
I’m not so sure about that. Most people in the drug game ain’t paid that well, just the people at the very top. Knock out gang violence and legitimate business may move in.
The people at the bottom would make more per hour at Walmart.
Or the drug dealers just open up brick and mortar shops and have legal recourse against theft and assault. If the market exists let it do so under the full light of the law, regardless of how we feel about the product personally.
I am often reminded in these cases of the Detroit city inspectors who patted themselves on the back for all the businesses they had shut down. Getting rid of drugs gets rid of one source of illegal income but as long as “legitimate” business is mostly illegal, the crime and violence will remain.
This is a good point JB. I was thinking about making a post on a similar line.
Individual police may not be racist on the whole, but I’m having trouble not seeing systematic racism in our criminal justice world (or whatever you want to call it). Before I get shouted down, l arrived at this point looking at gun control laws. It’s pretty much inarguable that gun control wasn’t enacted to keep guns lawfully out of the hands of black citizens. That was the motive. I’m not convinced that this motive hasn’t held strong to this day. Look at the racist shit spewing out of Bloomberg’s mouth, the country’s #1 gun grabber, about blacks and guns. A study in Illinois (a may issue state) found that blacks were statistically significantly less likely to be approved for gun ownership despite being legally eligible. This is textbook systematic racism in the police/justice/criminal whatever world. This isn’t socio-economic, it’s about race.
If we agree that systematic racism exists, at least as far as gun control, what about other areas? My knowledge of the war on drugs is much weaker, but it appears there is systematic racism here too. Sentencing guidelines for crack versus powder cocaine seems squarely targeted at blacks.
How can we not acknowledge the racist intentions of gun control and much of the War on Drugs without acknowledging systematic racism exists in the police/prison/criminal justice world?
Fuck, I screwed up my first and most important point.
It’s pretty much inarguable that gun control WAS enacted to keep guns lawfully out of the hands of black citizens.
It’s completely inarguable. That was specifically stated as the goal of gun control.
Fully agree. I added the ‘pretty much’ because gun grabbers still try to argue against it when they aren’t claiming the 2nd Amendment was added to keep guns away from blacks.
My friend that owned a gun store died. I had to find a new gun dealer. The guy I buy guns from now is black.
Yes, gun control was always about disarming blacks.
We do not agree that there is systemic racism.
Yes, gun control was always about disarming blacks.
We do not agree that there is systemic racism.
Serious question: How do you square those two thoughts? Isn’t the first an example of racism on a system-level?
Systemic racism does not exist. It has been illegal for more than 50 years.
Any private business, club, or organization that actively implemented racist policies has been sued out of existence.
We do, however, have government institutions that systemically protect government employees from the consequences of bad actions regardless of whether those bad actions are the result of mere incompetence or actual malicious intent.
Thus we uniformed goons that rape women in custody, throw flash-bangs into babies cribs, choke people to death on the street for minor infractions of the law, shoot innocent people to death in wrong door raids, and countless other tragedies.
The human race is hardwired to categorize people into groups. It is a survival instinct from the earliest days of humans on the plains.
Bigots will be with humanity forever.
The issue today is that government institutions protect bigots of all stripes.
I’m not sure why we can’t have a government that fucks everyone over but also has laws that are aimed more at some groups than others.
Systemic racism does exist.
The progressives created the modern public school system with the aim of keeping the lower classes uneducated and pliable to state control. They documented their intentions amply (See John Taylor Gatto’s books on the subject)
They pushed the minimum wage to make it uneconomical to hire anyone but protestant white males. Again they documented this amply (See the article penned by Jeffrey Tucker on the Eugenic History of the Minimum Wage).
They pushed state run welfare programs to further disincentivize ‘wage parasites’ from competing with ‘fit’ workers and also to use as a reliable voting block to support progressive politicians.
This isn’t a Democrat vs Republican thing. The Rockefeller Republicans and the Roosevelt Democrats worked hand in hand in all of this.
The War on (some) Drug( using minoritie)s similarly is intended to target people using the wrong sorts of recreational drugs as a proxy for further eroding the self sufficiency of the target ‘unfit’ groups.
Naturally, with the exception of the libertarians, every political movement of any consequence in the United States would be appalled at ending any one of these things.
It’s systemic. It’s persistent. It will not change until the U.S. government collapses, something those of us who haven’t retired yet are probably going to see happen in our lifetime, and something that will definitely happen in our children’s lifetime.
The progressives created the modern public school system with the aim of keeping the lower classes uneducated and pliable to state control.
I believe that the progressive movement has always been more about class than race. Progressives destroyed black communities in major cities.
And progressives have done just as much damage to poor white trailer trash.
The only difference is no one runs film at eleven of white people burning their trailers.
There remains the possibility of reform within the system. But it will not happen as long as government continues to cater to the whims and prejudices of well heeled right-thinkers. The effusive outpouring of support for black nationalist leftism in the wake of Floyd’s death is more of the same but with a slightly different veneer. Wealthy white liberals want to see themselves on the right side of history, and their prejudices are finely tuned to debasement of themselves. So while they embrace their own apparent antithesis they really just ensure that the structural causes that lead to the structural problems never get addressed. After all, it is ultimately about power and not about lives or liberties.
I dunno. There’s a list of attributes which cops ascribe to criminals. I’m sure they are fed stats and extrapolate from there. A white trash dude with lots of tats is just as subject to harassment as a black dude with saggy pants and not a black dude with a suit and nice car is nowhere near either. When you need to locate a particular subset, you tend to generalize. Couple that with the knowledge that you will likely be believed and covered for no matter what and that’s where we are. If you’ve never seen a well dressed criminal and you always see slovenly ones, you’re gonna gravitate towards the slovenly. I don’t have too much of a problem with that. It’s just that, eventually they decide that people who fit the image are guilty of something and therefore, it’s OK to frame them, beat them, and generally harass the hell out of them with bullshit, because you’re doing god’s work. Never a thought that they might be wrong with their magic eight ball sluething skills. It’s not too much to ask that they only investigate crimes that have tiny bits of evidence that they ever even happened, instead of targeting the types of people who often commit them. Fucking dress code with dire consequences, is what it is.
Hell, that’s why I dress like a business man when I go to the airport. I figure they’ll give me the benefit of the doubt when I get hammered at the skybar before boarding the plane, when they might not if I’m in flip flops and mesh shorts. It’s working so far.
Fully agree with all of that.
It had its origins as racist or race motivated, but the modern gun control movement (HCI/Brady Bill era) is flat out trying to ban private ownership of everyone. Race is not the motivation anymore.
I don’t know Gustave. I agree they want to ban private gun ownership for everyone, but I think some component is still about blacks.
I couldn’t find that Chicago study I mentioned, but here’s another I just found and quickly skimmed:
*Disclaimer: This study tried but could not find obtain the reasons for conceal carry permit denials. As mentioned, I just skimmed so could be glaring issues with the methodology.
Trends and Patterns of Concealed Handgun License Applications: A Multistate Analysis
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2329496517725334
Gustave, I couldn’t reply directly to you for some reason. I agree they want to ban private gun ownership for everyone, but I think some component is still about blacks.
I couldn’t find that Chicago study I mentioned, but here’s another I just found and quickly skimmed:
*Disclaimer: This study tried but could not find obtain the reasons for conceal carry permit denials. As mentioned, I just skimmed so could be glaring issues with the methodology.
Trends and Patterns of Concealed Handgun License Applications: A Multistate Analysis
Trends and Patterns of Concealed Handgun License Applications: A Multistate Analysis
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2329496517725334
Looks like it’s the link that’s the problem. Googling the study title should lead to the full-text though for anyone interested.
At what level is the issuance of CHLs handled? If it is handled at the state level, then a state level study such as this is appropriate and the apparent discrepancies disturbing and cause for further investigation (I don’t think that disparate impact is proof of discrimination, as there can be confounding variables, but it does raise a red flag). If it is handled at a local level, however, state level statistics are meaningless. Given habitation patterns, it is entirely possible that a discrepancy could be caused by nothing more egregious than the cities denying their residents more frequently than the suburbs, towns, and counties do.
These are good points Gadly. I agree about disparate impact being bunk, but I don’t think disparate impact is applicable here. Disparate impact applies for finding “evidence” of discrimination in neutral policies or actions by race hustlers. The stated goal of gun control was discrimination against blacks.
I don’t know about the policy for each state, but CHLs are typically handled at a local level. The difference in rates may be because a higher proportion of blacks live in cities and cities have a higher rejection rate. Even if that’s the case though and explains 100% of the difference (and not just partially), I’m still having trouble not considering gun control racist. Gun control was enacted to prevent black ownership of guns + blacks currently get denied CHLs at a much higher rate than whites = not racism because blacks choose to live in cities… that doesn’t seem right to me.
Counties in VA, although I think the state police oversees the process.
My question is, denied for what? If they deny for GP, then sure, that’s racist. If there has to be cause and there is cause, then we’re looking at a totally different issue. Arrest records, mental health, drug user registry, what?
And then I read the * disclaimer part. OOPS!
Your point is still a good one though. I wish the study had been able to obtain the reasons behind the denials.
-systemic policing issues
-systemic poverty program issues
-urban cultural rot
-macroeconomic issues
Take your pick, they’re all major contributors.
We should replace the word systemic with GOVERNMENT.
“We need a lot of systemic change”
So overthrow capitalism, right?
“Mayor de Blasio says NYC will rename a street in every borough after prominent black leaders and paint ‘Black Lives Matter’ on roads in each of the five ‘crucial locations’ – including one near City Hall”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8403281/NYC-rename-street-5-boroughs-prominent-black-leaders-support-BLM.html
See, this is the sort of stuff our “leaders” would like to be doing. The chattering classes don’t view it as political, but simple good think that only deplorables would have a problem with. It requires no real thought or effort.
…and it has the bonus of being completely ineffective at improving anyone’s lives.
…which is why I’m fine with it.
If politicians spent all their time doing meaningless things like this, our lives would get measurably better.
As long as it isnt with my money..
Have at it. Let BLM or a private investor pay for it. Going through and renaming, rebranding signs, etc costs taxpayers money that doesn’t do jack squat in the face of all the actual problems.
I’d be fine with it too, as long as the funds needed for it are completely via donation only.
Donation not taxation.
Seems like a good handle. You have my vote.
I mean, if you have any actual hope of positive change coming out of any of this, these futile gestures that further Kulturkampf are counterproductive.
I would say at least this part is anything but meaningless.
It’s a deliberate Fuck You to those of us who aren’t collectivist, racist Maoists.
What a clown. Get your own ideas, clown.
Mayor de Blasio says NYC will rename a street in every borough after prominent black leaders
It might be a nice gesture, but all I can think about is the inconvenience for everyone on those streets who have to change their address. They should at least let the residents vote on whether they want to do that or not.
Streety McStreetface it is, then.
LOL. I’m dumb enough I’d be tempted to vote for that, even though I would hate the hassle it would cause.
If you think individuals are going to get any voice in this business, I’ve got some news for you.
123 Fake St
Interesting article with many good points. When Obama decided to bring women into the “dirty” combat arms and “hard” SOF skills the chief complaint from experienced officers and NCO’s was the absolute belief that standards would not be maintained. There was a near mutiny at the USAJFKSWCS cadre for the SF Qualification Course. I still think the beliefs and fears were correct and justified. I was at SWC for a period of the wars and saw firsthand how the standards stumbled and fell under the pressures of manning the force to meet the demands of Iraq and Afghanistan. Add in the additional politically motivated pressures from the Obama Admin and of course the standards were moved down. The enemy doesn’t care about diversity and will exploit any weakness that can be identified.
There has been a long term and growing issue in training the current generation of recruits and officer cadets. Not basic field skills, those can be taught. The biggest issue is the belief by many of the young that they did the military a favor by joining and the institution should change to fit them. They don’t need to change- the military does. The battlefield is ruled by harsh gods and goddesses. The truths are eternal and unchanging. The young, who by and large have been coddled by the larger society, think otherwise. Some of this is eternal as well. There are multiple reasons why young men are used as combat soldiers (marines, sailors etc) but one reason is they think they are invincible. This is a positive- as long as it is tempered. In my small part of the military I saw the issue as a increasingly philosophically weak and unserious society- with race (or sex) being incidental to the larger problem.
MP’s share many cop attributes will the greater cop community. A mitigating influence is that MP’s work on bases and so see much less of the absolute shit side of humanity. Plus the UCMJ is there and the police union isn’t. That is not the same with the civilian police on bases- they are unionized and are aggressive about it. This is not the time or place to recount my battles with the base civilian police when I was a base commander. Suffice it to say, I wanted to disband the civilian popo and bring in MP’s only.
For just under an hour of your life this is one of the best explanations of how civilians are turned into soldiers. Worldwide and over time, the tenets don’t change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_G2u1RrLOk
The series is from the Cold War and holds up pretty damn well.
“The enemy doesn’t care about diversity and will exploit any weakness that can be identified”
I’m not in the military and even I consider this to be a no-brainer. Apparently some politico masquerading as a 2-star who cares more about good feelz than military preparedness knows more than me though.
I was one of the first classes through When they restarted Marine Combat Training – basically the first half of Infantry School for all Marines. The infantry guys stayed for the rest, everyone else went off to their MOS schools.
MCT was a brutal physical experience with long speed marches every other day. The last one was 40 miles with full gear. I talked to a young Marine recently who said MCT is now co-ed and an absolute joke.
It wasn’t co-ed when I was in, but it was already kind of a joke by 2001. There definitely was no 40 mile hump, that’s for sure.
That fucker damn near killed me. I wore jungle boots, got a little wet, and tore my feet apart. There was blood coming out the vents when we got back to the barracks at Geiger.
I question the actual efficacy of a 40 mile ruck march to begin with. Unless you’re doing it on a regular basis, the only real difference after a certain distance is an increased chance of things like the above. You aren’t actually making yourself physically stronger. Do it a few times a week and sure, you’ll probably adapt to it.
I personally found ruck marches to just be dull. It wasn’t a physical challenge. I was already used to running long distances and the weight didn’t bother me.
I would think the point of it is to put in your mind that you are capable of it and much more.
Serious question: How long would it take you, jogging steadily, to do 60 miles?
At this stage I don’t run anymore. Fuck that shit.
When I was in I did 20 miles at a 7.5 minute pace, so you’re talking 7.5 hours to do 60 assuming I could last that long.
I’d say 12 hours, but I hate running.
Thank you both very much. That was very helpful.
The cutoff time for the Western States 100 is 30 hours, so that’s a pace of 18 minutes/mile. That’s with a lot of ups and downs on crappy trails and includes rest stops.
Course record is about 14 hours or about 8.5 minute mile for men.
Over 4 weeks we did long marches pretty much every other day. Picked where we left off after boot camp at about 15 miles and worked to 30. The last one we started the day before graduation after an all-night fake battle was supposed to be 35 miles, but our Captain took a wrong turn so ended up 40.
One time we did 25 miles with light packs at a blazing pace on 95 degree day Then we stopped in a field by an standard obstacle course. After a couple minutes for water, we grounded our gear and lined up.
I clearly remember thinking “I just speed marched 25 miles, I can’t do this”. Then it was my turn and I ran it just fine – and ran it 2 more times no problem. The lessons was “holy shit I’m in good shape!”
My mom joined the Army at 34. On their version of the big hike, she broke both of her heels trying to keep up with men. She didn’t come home for a few extra weeks. My Dad and brother got some ass-whupins when she did. I like to learn from other people’s mistakes.
It’s a great talk. I think you make a great case. I do worry about your giving it, especially if the context is a D&I seminar. Can anyone there affect your career? It can be totally accurate, very respectful, and very thoughtful. And it could still put a target on your back. Then again, bravery is a virtue.
I second this. It could be too incendiary to be worth it, given the current social climate.
It could definitely affect my career. Removed with no questions asked and salting the earth where I stood if the audience wanted.
A well-regulated militia… Bedford County (VA) formally recognizes local militia.
FYI, Bedford is the county which is on the western border of the city of Lynchburg (of Falwell fame, not bourbon fame).
Thanks Mustang, a good diagnosis. Are you going to give this at your afternoon recital?
General Half Track: ” Damn it, Mustang, don’t bring me a bunch of problems, I already know that. Give me solutions! I need answers!. Happy hour at the ‘O’ Club in an hour, I expect everyone to be there to meet these Congressmen, ah, Congress people on the Budget Committee. I’m buying the first round.”
I really miss the old days, when life was so much simpler…
No shit, bro.
Has anyone posted this yet?
LOLOLOL something something Seattle
Get the popcorn folks, get a truckload, cause boy is this going to get good!
Yes.
OK. Thanks, I just found it, but some of us work.
Combine this action with Mayors/Governors ordering law enforcement to stand down amid looting, arson, riots, etc. and bail funds set-up across the country – certainly seems to be insurrection and collusion towards government overthrow.
These kiddes think it’s like a video game. But it’s better to do your gaming on computer, so you don’t like, like these dummies are about to.
Video games have multiple lives. Real life doesn’t. (shut up re-incarnationists I’m on my soapbox)
That’s what I meant to say, but I somehow wound up with ‘like’ instead of ‘die’ there.
I just want it made into reality TV. No interference, let’s see it!
We could capitalize off of commie fails and falls. Brilliant! *Orders drones and ticket to Socialist Seattle.
Don’t worry,they’re still arresting gym owners and barbers. Keeping the real criminals on their toes.
Yet, there is nothing on CNN, the cable channel or the website.
Umm, CNN? Really?
Yes, I specifically watched the CBS Evening News to see if they addressed it, but they were going all in on the George Floyd funeral.
But I am assured that there is no evidence of Antifa involvement in any of the rioting or looting. Even Reason.com says so….
Good read, Mustang. I don’t envy having to lead a discussion on this topic. It would be so easy for someone who is emotional and biased to derail it for a variety of negative reasons.
That being said, the link from military.com pisses me off. All injustices are not
identicalequal. If you are George Floyd, you don’t get to earn CMSgt of the USAF, and neither would Brown or Floyd. People need to parse things out a bit better and stop being so lazy. Rice><Floyd. Tell me all about the airmen committing suicide there, Chief.So treating black people equally == racism.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ucla-professor-suspended-under-police-protection-after-threats
Can anyone keep up with the new rules?
“So treating black people equally == racism.”
Yes, the black folk can’t do things on their own, we gotta take care of them. /democrats
“Can anyone keep up with the new rules?”
Stopped trying long time ago, as all the rules are now retarded.
MLK doesn’t get mentioned any more.
Colorblind = racism
Ikky Rethuglican, he was.
We gotta take down his new statue in DC and replace it with Floyd, a guy with a criminal record a mile long.
It sounds like the shitheel who wanted an extension wasn’t even black.
The prof should have said he’d agree to the extension, but any cracker who took advantage would have to submit pictures of the student with at least 5 different black people and have them write them a letter of recognition for their support.
Since schools are run by liberal pussies, everyone involved probably won’t be expelled and blocked from ever being admitted there again.
Unbelievable.
Kimber 1911 LW at Bass Pro for $600. That seems like a great idea.
DO IT
That’s a great deal
We see it in the decline of young people in the labor market. Business owners, when faced with the challenges of complying with these regulations, simply cannot afford to hire young and/or unskilled labor, minority or otherwise.
Non-discrimination regulations are probably the least of these. Minimum wage/employment costs, shifting labor market, and automation are bigger factors imo.
Additional policies controlling the price of housing and business in city centers have made housing unaffordable.
Not just city centers.
All my kids were mad because they had to wait until they were 16 to get a “real” job because labor laws made it so onerous to hire a 15 year-old.
Aren’t your kids industrious little half-breed Koreans, though?
Yeah.
The best/worst story along those lines is I happened to overhear my two boys one day grabbing a couple brooms to go walk over to the local convenience store. The plan was – according to Altar Boy #1 – to sweep up around the store in exchange for some candy.
I think they were around 7 and 4 at the time. I “hired” them instead because I didn’t want them to go get their dreams dashed by the yahoo at the convenience store.
To be honest, I still choke up a bit when I think of those two knuckleheads doing that.
That is my two 15 year olds that have been sequestered at home. Let the little fuckers work if they want and have drive to.
XY is champing at the bit about that too.
XX is limited to 32 hours a week when she’d rather have 40 and overtime.
My 19 year-old (Altar Boy #2) is limited to 30 hours a week this summer because his employer doesn’t want to even fuck around with having to abide by all the rules that kick in at 32 hours/wk.
And he is making $14.50/hr. Think about that. He’s making that much per hour, but the additional money that needs to be accounted for at 32 hours/week is so much that it isn’t worth it. He’s working on the dock of a big box store every morning. It isn’t rocket surgery.
Mine started at $11/hour. First job, too. Not sure if she got a raise yet.
Mine have all had several jobs and done well. I’m sure it helps.
I remember being a repairman for IBM in Memphis and making $10.20/hr and being so happy about that, that if my boss had asked me, I would have stabbed people for him.
All my kids were mad because they had to wait until they were 16 to get a “real” job because labor laws made it so onerous to hire a 15 year-old.
I wonder how recent this is (or perhaps it varies by state/locality), as I remember when working a summer job in college about a decade ago having co-workers fresh out of ninth grade.
Minnesoda rules (not as restrictive it seems as anywhere that OMWC resides)
Imagine me. 16 y/o and on the run with no visible means of support. Thank the dog it was in the eighties and you could work in construction undocumented. Might have had to turn to crime, otherwise. Thanks government!
I was able to work 20 hours a week at age 14 in rural New York State (I’m very old now). I had to go to the county seat and apply for a work permit, however. The school guidance office had to sign off on it, although where I am from that was pro forma since so many kids worked to help support their families. Besides babysitting and housecleaning, nobody was willing to hire me without that piece of paper.
First real job after I acquired the permit was 20 hours a week, evenings and weekends, in the local pizza joint. (Of course.) And, NO, there was no pineapple or tomato casserole on offer in that place.
Has the pizza changed much since 2005?
Still trying to displace SugarFree, I see.
I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up!
At our weekly IT rodeo meeting, our chiefs started talking about coming back to work. First off, they have already said that no one would come back until at least 8/1 (we are working remotely now).
Still we had chick after chick start asking how we can be sure that everyone will be 100% safe. Will we have temperature checks to get in the building? Will we be required to put contact tracing apps on our phone? It was hard to sit quietly. Luckily I could IM my outrage with some fellow shitlords.
Then I also saw this article about a talk Minnesoda’s own pandemic huckster gave about how it will affect the arts scene. I remember why Osterholm got run out of state govt now, because he’s always been a sky is falling screamer about pandemics.
It has to be killing him that it is Fauci and not him giving all those pressers.
What a fucking moron. Vaccine R&D is happening regardless of WHO, and the US is both a big part of it and funding it.
LOL, sure it is.
I keep hearing descriptions that sound like we are fumbling around in the dark blindly hoping we will stumble across a vaccine for the commie cooties. Maybe someone could look under the couch cushions. I am beginning to wonder if any of the people talking about it have ever been to school at all.
Fuck The WHO, fuck the UN and fuck ‘what the rest of the world thinks of us’. If it can be done it will be done in the US.
During the dead thread, I was taking a live zoom class on boiler installation issues. I thought it would be a complete waste of time, so I just kept right on enjoying the Glibertariat and just watching with one eye.
But the pictures rattled me, mostly the exhaust venting: long, uninsulated lines outside, water traps, vents that dumped inside the basement, vents that went to outside-air inlets.
This old world is full of fuctards, and it’s a doGdamned miracle we all don’t die every day.
*chuckle*
I deal with some odd construction scenarios. You have no idea how shoddy it can be.
Competent person is just white supremacist patriarchy. Now get into that improperly shored trench! It hasn’t collapsed yet.
“If the military is going to pick a side, and it has picked sides whether we want it to or not, then it needs to advocate for the elimination of the barriers to success”
How would the military “advocate for the elimination of the barriers” caused by “socioeconomic policies” and regulations? The U.S. military is not supposed to be involved in politics except for defending and expanding its own funding.
Just because Honest Trailers | The Fifth Element
I love that movie.
+1 moolteepass
Our standards were so low in the 90’s.
I wish they still were.
#metoo. It never gets old.
Expect more of this
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/06/driver-passes-portland-protest-blockade-on-i-84-sideswiping-subaru-altercation-ensues-video.html
They did this on their own or as part a criminal conspiracy for a supposed “spontaneous” protest onto a freeway? The repeated ramming by the car suggest its more that just cars stuck in the protests.
But it was “peaceful”
Just like preventing people from getting to the hospital is peaceful and preventing people from earning a living is peaceful.
Hey man! People should be free to walk down the middle of freeways without being threatened by vehicles. Pedestrians have the right of way in all situations.
https://www.oregonlive.com/resizer/1ABaR-vhcqZ1qfuEKN8V75N80l8=/700×0/smart/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/advancelocal/FL4A7TGO5FECHDWBIHUVFKFAGM.JPG
One of the PDX protest organizers. Where did that radio and earpiece come from? That to me seems like more than just a grassroots movement. Why not cellphones? Several reasons and none of them are spur of the moment.
These people have degrees in disruption. They actually teach that shit in higher Ed.
I want to see a full list of actions that have been labeled “peaceful” by the media in the past few weeks.
Their definition of violence doesn’t seem to include property destruction.
I tried several search engines. Nothing about the Seattle thing on any of them.
This one?
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/09/43873501/the-dawn-of-free-capitol-hill
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/welcome-to-free-capitol-hill-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-forms-around-emptied-east-precinct/
Even more fun here
https://m.facebook.com/pacificnorthwestintersectionalantifascistnetwork/?__tn__=CH-R
https://m.facebook.com/emeraldcityantifa/
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/9/headlines/protesters_establish_autonomous_zone_around_seattle_pd_building_as_police_retreat
Amy Goodman is about as useful idiot as they come.
Other than Andy Ngo, who is saying it’s Antifa? Not that it’s the most likely scenario, but I prefer to have additional sources. The Antifa sites are linking to these things but not claiming them (that I’ve seen, maybe I didn’t delve deep enough).
Anyway, in the comments to the CHS article, there was a lot of back and forth between true believers and others. At the end was this interesting comment [emphasis added]:
“What was a beautiful moment yesterday has today been tarnished by destruction. When police left the area I was dancing in the street and felt free. Protestors occupied the space and a door for a unique opportunity of peaceful messaging arose. All I see today is destruction and disrespect for what once was our beautiful capitol hill neighborhood. All of the violence, gas and noise has been so harmful for all of the people and animals in the area. Now that we have occupied the space how can we do better is what the movement should be asking? Instead of redoing their own version of exactly what the police were doing. Its pathetic and Lame not to come up with next level. What we do should be something beyond! Superior to what they did and peaceful. Im no longer supporting this movement.”
Already some sympathizers are realizing it’s not going to be a good thing.
And they turned against the avowed socialist pol. I wonder if the Proud Boys just gave up and went home. ?
Did you try Twatter?
Sleeping in Commietopia in Seattle
It’s mostly Ngo, while great, is only one reporter.
Odd. I was just reading about it on one of the news sites that I peruse and now I can’t find that article.
I did find this, though.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/seattle-police-abandon-precinct-protesters
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/welcome-to-free-capitol-hill-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-forms-around-emptied-east-precinct/
My point is that this should be the top story if pjmedia story is close to accurate, but it’s buried.
If a right-wing group so much as took over one of those police trailers they leave in big parking lots, there would be non stop screaming.
Not even a hypothetical, as that is exactly what happened with the Malheur Refuge sit-in.
As Marshall McCluhan said, “The media is the message.” Not the cops. Not the government. The media. And what is the media’s message today? Well just a few minutes ago it was George Floyd’s casket being transferred from a hearse to a a white carriage being pulled by a white horse. Like this guy was JFK or lady Di. Now George Floyd did not deserve to be murdered by cop, but he was no treasured hero to be treated like royalty or a head of state. Want to know who George Floyd was? Watch this video. It’s quite the eye-opener. It was for me.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=273957870461345&ref=watch_permalink
Anywhere non-derpbook folks can watch it?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/06/a-heroine-of-our-time.php
So what if George Floyd was a male slut or bulimic.
George Floyd is the MacGuffin to justify the rioting. The actual reason for the rioting has nothign to do with him. The reason why the Obamaites decided to initiate the riots was because
1) The Obamagate scandal was becoming too big for the media to ignore
2) The Covid 19 lock-downs were being increasingly exposed as a political exercise with no health benefit.
Just as Trump has been studying Obama and laying trap after trap for him and his supporters withing the government, Obama and his supporters are doing the same for Trump. They really got inside his head on both Covid 19 and with the Floyd murder. They exploited his need to seem like he is going to solve every problem with decisive leadership.
The good news is that this was basically a reenactment of the Battle of the Bulge; one last desperate plunge to alter the inevitable.
The riots are unsustainable. They have alienated lots of people. Their footsoldiers are undisciplined emotionally stunted monsters who will commit atrocity after atrocity that outrages the average American citizen. The police union will only take so much abuse before pulling its support for the Democrats, and the Democrats need that support.
At this point, if there are U.S. attorneys who are willing to put their fealty to the law ahead of a desire to cover for Obama, there is enough meat for the feds to start prosecuting anti-fa members for some pretty serious crimes. And, I suspect, Trump will not make the same mistake a second time, but make sure that any subsequent riots become a tar baby glued to the Democratic machines running the cities that are burning.
You forgot Biden stepping in it with the black electorate.
They’ve already plotted their next move, the next more scarier wave of the pandemic. The WHO are already starting on this lie and the media will start up on it soon. The plan is to lock all American in their homes once again, with no evidence of a 2nd more serious pandemic wave and require 100% mail in ballot voting for the elections.
We can talk about how that works out, but that is the plan.
Oh, and the MN AG has already intentionally fucked up the Chauvin trial by overcharging and paining Floyd as a saint. And they will make sure that trial concludes right before the elections with an acquittal.
They are extremely predictable.
Can’t they convict Chauvin on a lesser charge like manslaughter?
Yes, and if it were a mere mortal, they’d be charged with first degree murder and e’d have to pay for his own defense. They’d sit in jail until they finally agreed to plead to a lesser charge because they were near certain to get convicted. I saw a completely clear case of second degree murder on the tape. He did what he should have reasonably know would kill the guy, with full knowledge of what he was doing. Even the other cops were warning him. He has the obvious bias in favor of cops on his side. Might not work with all of the riots and soapboxing, but he has something no other defendant has. The guy he killed was allegedly committing a crime and he was sent to apprehend him. the spectator seats will be filled with cops and cops will testify on his behalf. The thing that might make it work here is the fact that the whole country burned for a week because of him.
I agree but I think a good defense attorney can manage to convince a jury to get him on a lesser charge. Floyd was high on a substance that depresses respiration, he had some kind of heart condition, and he had been recently ill with Covid. In addition to that, Minneapolis police were trained to use a knee to the neck as a means of restraint. A murder conviction might to be too much to reasonably expect but at least they’ll get him on something.
<emTrump has been studying Obama and laying trap after trap for him and his supporters withing the government
<emTrump has been studying Obama and laying trap after trap for him and his supporters withing the government
Really? I’d given up hope.
Hey all, first thanks Brett for allowing me to use this spot so I can get feedback before the struggle session. I still don’t know if I’ll use this exact diatribe. I’ve also distilled it down into several bullet points in case the audience is not amenable to something like this. I don’t think I’ll be sharing much though. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this session is for people like me to hear and understand, not try to solve things.
I agree with all the feedback I’ve read here. Some things I left off and some things I intentionally left vague to try and keep it as apolitical as possible, which probably makes it a confusing mess.
Mustang, I didn’t read it because I have the attention span of a gnat. So, knowing I didn’t read it, drugs may fall out of my ass. But something occurred to me just now. In an earlier thread we were talking about how people respond to emotion but not data. They go away saying they’ll study the data but come back with their emotional response unchanged.
My strong advice to you is to start with a story. Grab the emotions first. Make sure they are the emotions you want to grab to make them sympathetic to you. Make the story deliver your message before you begin the data-ish-ness.
I agree. I have a really hard time doing that but I’m trying. I’ve got the emotional range of a doorknob. I did find a video from someone who looks and speaks very differently than I do that also says what I’m flailing around trying to say. I have toyed with the idea of using that short video instead of this speech, agreeing with this person, and delivering my proposed reforms in quick bullets.
Someone better check on sloopy before he puts together tomorrow’s links
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2895412-pga-tour-plans-to-honor-george-floyd-with-moment-of-silence-at-tournaments
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2020/06/09/malcolm-jenkins-colin-kaepernick-apologize-nfl-quarterback/5328544002/
Goodell is just the spineless POS to force a team to pick up Crapernick as a kowtow to the mob.
I’m going to laugh when Crapernick gets mauled.
“Until they apologize specifically to Colin Kaepernick, or assign him to a team, I don’t think that they will end up on the right side of history.”
Assign?
Someone has to take one for the team.
Government football.
Done with all that.
“”WhAt WiLl We RePlAcE ThE pOLiCe WiTh?!?!”
Social Workers. Crisis staff trained in de-escalation. Womens’ shelters. Counsellors. Planned Parenthood. Therapists. Safe injection sites. Rehab. Community outreach. Night classes. Affordable health care.”
https://twitter.com/SimuLiu/status/1270329387364216833
Are you going to replace public libraries with mad libs?
“Welcome cynics and conservative trolls! Glad you’re dropping by. While you’re here, please take a gander as to what abolishing the police actually looks like. Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t mean absolutely no police anymore!”
None of those have jack shit to do with creating income.
Better hire a bunch of sexual assault recovery therapists and trauma ward specialists while they’re at it.
I think we need a “crisis management team for hot 19-22 year old women” entirely staffed by middle aged men who are paid to …. well, you can see where this is going.
That was too long a question.
Treat people as individuals.
The end
Not a haiku. 🙁
And no period?
Great job on creating an overarching narrative that describes why we are here.
Small side note that doesn’t pertain to the military, those reforms to the police would be a good start. But a lot of lefties are seriously putting forth suggestions for replacing cops with other organizations for certain roles. It wouldn’t hurt for libertarians to be involved in those discussions.
Ok, covered above.
They’re not actually gonna replace the cops though. They’re pushing to create new social welfare agencies that will hire all of the grievance studies majors.
Everything the American Left pushes for, every single thing, at some point involves college graduates who took on six figures of debt for a Lesbian Dance Theory degree needing a tax funded job.
I understand why you want to talk about helping everyone, but in the current emotional climate, I think it will be ineffective. Step back from the Black Lives Matter organization, saying BLM isn’t saying only black lives matter. It’s saying we matter too. (Yes, I know the arguments). Thus someone saying all lives matter comes across as an asshole. You note the history, that’s why this resonates. Some things have changed, but as you note, minorities are still stuck. Focus on policies that are keeping minorities trapped and how those should change without mentioning the impact on whites. This assumes you want people to listen and think about what you are saying and not tune out of get into an argument with you about who is hurt more.
Tulip, I think that’s reasonable. I distilled this down even further to just policy recommendations and framed them as a way to help the minority communities everyone is talking about.
You said yes, but I’m going to beat on this a little more. I also think it’s unfair to claim racism isn’t a problem anymore. It isn’t THE problem, but think about the way the media treats the disappearance of young pretty white women, compared to young pretty black women. The cops devote more resources to cases that get media attention. If I was young and black, I would see that as racism. I can’t get media attention and police resources because society is racist. That’s not a stupid perception. So now, with the media and government willing to talk about ME, and people like me, I’m going to be angry with any one that tries to make it all about them (white people).
The downside is this means you get more diversity officers and nothing really changes. So frame the talk as attacking structures that keep people poor and powerless
I don’t think I said that racism isn’t a problem anymore, but I do think it’s given a disproportionate share of the blame.
Sure, but perception, because of history and the kind of scenario I described make it look large. Talking about preventing school choice in the inner city while rich white people can send kids to private school lets you sympathize and address an actual structural problem. Still hard as every school choice proponent knows
Stories!
You don’t have to have real stories. Just make up examples. Heaven knows, there are plenty that can be pulled out of thin air just by cause-and-effect reasoning. You’ll hit a chord.
Example: I made up a character with a tragic past that was an amalgam of people I’ve known. None of these people had ALL my character’s problems. They each just had one. Anyway, I thought I went over the top and I was okay with that. Lo and behold I start getting email from men who said, “HOW DID YOU KNOW?!” None of the men who emailed me had ALL the character’s problems, but it was enough that he had one or two of the big ones that I had observed. That character helped a lot of people, to know that someone had OBSERVED, that they SAW and KNEW.
That’s where I’m coming from on the storytelling.
The above was to Mustang, not Tulip. Sorry, Tulip! Didn’t mean to lecture.
Yes you did, Karen. :-p
???
There was an Ohio woman (black) arrested for lying on a school registration so her kid could go to a better school. Look that up and use it.
I think what you’re describing would lead me to conclude that the media is the problem.
Fair enough, but I have a big problem separating the Marxist organization from the sentiment which they cynically appropriated for the name of the organization. It was a stroke of genius, I’ll give them that.
Its a stretch, but a bunch of the Marxist ideals that BLM and other groups have sprung from Islam and being a converted Muslim while in jail/prison. The theology matches the ideology, and you just need a target, which is The Man.
That’s the point. The upper crust is filled with Marxists. Then you have a bunch of little foot soldiers who are a mixture of opportunists and the genuine.
I can easily separate them.
The Marxists behind BLM are simply using blacks as a tool to bash further the Marxists’ goals.
Once no longer useful, blacks will be discarded and forgotten about.
They won’t be forgotten about. See: Cuba
I understand and agree with those sentiments. But, socialism (Marxism is one version) arose because capitalism is a harsh system. Victorian England was a cruel place and class prevented many people from escaping poverty – lack of education, no access to capital etc. So some people looked around and tried to find a system that would be more humane. It just doesn’t work. It’s very hard to create incentives – the information demand is unreal. That’s why the price system is so amazing. So a truly charitable read (which the organization doesn’t deserve) would be that all those Marxist goals are aimed at fixing the problems mustang identified. It won’t work, but most people can’t reason well enough to recognize that.
Marxism is a shell game. Marxists talk a lot of platitudes to draw in the masses but in fact the goal is total power. It was never about equality. It was never about some bullshit Utopia. It is about enslavement. The result is always the same because the methods and goals are always the same.
“It’s saying we matter too.” If that were the canned response to “All lives matter”, most people would agree. They are needlessly antagonistic when the claim it’s racist.
Critical thought? How old-fashioned! We have the internet now. It guides us via consensus. Clearly those screaming the loudest must be correct.
There are only two winners in all of this. Politicians and the media
This man gets it
Sure, I’m a dick. But there is no reasoning with these people. It gets worse by the hour. They want you to kneel and repent and give all of your stuff to them.
What do you mean “these people”?!?
Well, not YOU. You’re Gatorman. You’ll eat meth and take it anyhow.
Jokes on them, I don’t have shit! Ha!
Sympathy and understanding doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything. It gives you a way to have the conversation you want (bad policies) without getting into a fight. There are always unreasonable people, and you can’t have any conversation with the unreasonable. This is about finding common ground with people who are angry, but still reasonable
I don’t want to miss the opportunity of defunding the police. Cut their operations budget and maybe they can’t afford Maintence on that tank or shinny new swat gear or hellcat interceptors. Maybe not every interaction with the state should be with armed agents and we should look at people with mediation training or the like.
Mediation (for some things) is fine as long as it’s politically and racially neutral but I wouldn’t bet on that with the way things are going.
A cadre of mediators will result in a database of people who needed to be mediated, and their rights will be doled out accordingly.
The cops will most certainly scale back on the things which make headlines. They will find a lady who’s getting attacked and show up intentionally late. She gets killed or raped and it could have been prevented if you’d have not cut our funding. I can guarantee this is what they’ll do. All they want is the money back, and they’ll get it. They have ways. They aren’t going to triage with our safety in mind, put it that way. They are not in any real way “defunded.”
Yep
Yep ARV. That is all this is about. “All your stuff belong to me!”
There was a popular saying back in the day ” For a socialist what is his is his and what is yours is his”.
How long before they are burning the country and demanding 401Ks and all other property? How long before they are demanding a two tiered system of law? How long before they demand a return of segregation?
Oh they’ve already floated seizing 401ks. https://nypost.com/2015/02/28/white-house-looking-to-creep-into-401ks/
You should also notice I am offering advice for talking to non libertarians. But, hey, your way is totally persuasive.
Tulip, I definitely appreciate the feedback you’ve given here. It has helped me to reshape my frame of reference a bit and I do think you’re right. I’m definitely learning the limitations of my own experiences with all of this.
Didn’t notice at first, but apparently African-American is out. Black with a capital “B” is the dominant term now.
Ill just leave this here:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads22/BloomCounty1376517503.jpg
You arent allowed to refer to their race because….uh…any mention that they arent white is offensive because not being white is inherently inferior.
Of course they wont admit it but that is what underlies it. Tell me again, who are the racists?
They kept a few of them:
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&channel=iphone_bm&tbm=isch&source=hp&ei=GR_gXsbEM8iO9PwP3p-h2As&q=old+stalin+statues&oq=old+stalin+statues&gs_lcp=ChJtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1pbWcQAzIFCAAQzQI6AggpOgUIKRCxAzoFCAAQsQM6BQgAEIMBOgIIADoECAAQHjoGCAAQBRAeOgUIIRCrAlCLD1jXUWC0V2gAcAB4AIABVogB1AmSAQIxOJgBAKABAbABBQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-img#imgrc=IB-GGjAPsYkmgM
Sheesh, sorry
I cheered when people toppled statues of Lenin and Saddam. I’m not that bothered by taking down Lee.
Why?
All of them are despicable d-bags, depending on how you view it. But it’s history, and history isnt always kind.
Toppling those statues likely means they’ll get dragged away and never put up again. So they’re forgotten.
History is rarely kind- its often funny. But you have people trying to erase it.
Lee was an abolitionist in principle.
“Slavery is the greatest evil of our time. Slavery morally debases both the slave and the slaveholder.” – Robert E Lee
When his parent-in-law died he inherited their slaves. He did not free them. This was true of many of the founding fathers as well.
I am working on a write up on what that means, at least in my view.
Having read biographies of Lee and Grant, I don’t respect Lee.
Lee thought slavery was bad because of the affects on owners, but kept slaves out paternal bullshit for the slaves. Gross
There weren’t a whole lot of enlightened thinkers on the topic of race then. Lincoln, among many others, wasn’t much better either.
That’s fair, and I’m not trying to convince you to feel any kind of way, but I would just mention that paternalism was damn near ubiquitous as an attitude from white Protestants of western and northern European descent towards everyone else on down the line of the pseudo-scientific hierarchy of races that was popular at the time. And the paternalism is still very much at play in modern attitudes from the Progressive left, I’d argue. Also, I think there’s a difference between Lee, who was a general, and Saddam and Lenin, who were political leaders. It seems to me like Jeff Davis would be the equivalent, not Lee. But again, that’s just my opinion, and there’s nothing wrong with your opinion.
Like everything I’m sure it is complicated.
But it also might be as simple as “you don’t throw away your only means of production – a workforce that is worth far more than the land your family owns”.
My understanding is that in some (all?) states a slave owner could not free his slaves just by himself. It required either a bill passed by the legislature or the slaves could be freed after the slave owner died and put this into his will.
I’m more concerned by them removing the slave auction block in Fredericksburg. That has nothing to do with an endorsement of the Confederacy, which is what those statues of Lee and Davis are really about and why they were erected in the late 19th century and onwards.
I don’t want the government building monuments anyway. Let private entities do it and support it. The most totalitarian states that have ever existed absolutely love monuments.
I don’t want the government building monuments anyway. Let private entities do it and support it. The most totalitarian states that have ever existed absolutely love monuments.-
100 percent agree.
Same. State propaganda serves the state not the people.
Monuments to the right people. The others go away- thats how you history
Today I learned I had been receiving a military/law enforcement discount on my breakfast sandwiches.
I dress like a cop and have a cop body.
Pray for me.
You are fat?
Maybe you should look into a gym membership.
The PBA coming for you, bro.
“Mayor @KeishaBottoms announced the creation of the CoA Recovery Fund, a program to support businesses and facilities adversely impacted following the peaceful demonstrations in Atlanta.”
https://twitter.com/CityofAtlanta/status/1270452218999853058
How were they adversely impacted if the demonstrations were peaceful?
Shhhhh! You aren’t supposed to point that out.
Mayor @KeishaBottoms announced the creation of the CoA Recovery Fund, a program to support all the cronyism they can cram in during this time of adversity.
I assume from that statement that all the demonstrators did was block a little traffic…
I always thought this was clever and smart, but it didn’t get much attention. Too hard to reduce to a slogan. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2015/10/gentrified-park-slope-quality-of-life-summons-broken-windows/
Interesting. Although I wonder how much is racism and how much is classism (where you live, not who you are). I’m sure a lot of white people in the non-gentrified areas got cited more often, too.
Interesting tactic. I don’t know about NYC but last time I drove through a working class minority section of Philly, I saw no police harassment.
There were numerous double parked cars blocking a bus lane. There were kids on bikes terrorizing pedestrians. There were piles of trash. Loose dogs.
If these things were prevalent in the burbs, Karen would be calling the cops and they would show up and do something about it. In Philly, it appears a way of life and the cops aren’t going to get out of their patrol cars unless there’s a traffic accident or a knifing or shooting or stickup.
Thanks, Mustang. We’re lucky. The Best of the Web is right here.
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”
-Charles “Boss” Kettering
You actually make progress defining the problem.
Thanks Mikey. As the replies here have shown, there are a lot of ways to go about this. I asked for help here specifically because I knew I’d get a variety of respectful responses and I wanted to help define the issues. I don’t think anything will be resolved, honestly, and that has really been bringing me down lately. The struggle session is in a few hours…I’ll report back later.
https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2020/06/adidas-promises-lasting-change-says-30-of-new-hires-will-be-black-or-latinx.html
Congratulations on throwing raw meat to employment lawyers.
Anybody adding up all the money being shoveled at the inclusion/diversity complex lately? Better advice than “plastics”,
No shade thrown on Adidas, but I wish most large corporations would worry more about hiring at least 30% competent employees.
All it takes to get you roasted is for one asshole in the group to try to score virtue signaling points off your presentation by taking something you said completely out of context and spreading it on social media. Good for you if you do it anyways, but don’t forget that we are in a moral panic from hell at the moment.
You used the wrong politeness level on a bullet point again?
I had this discussion with someone else a bit ago. How do we pick the hill to die on? I still don’t know.
While we are trying to figure that out, the other side is charging hills nearly unopposed.
You can try avoiding some pitfalls by framing the discussion in more abstract, philosophical principles.
If the current trends continue we may have an easier time deciding that. It may no longer be a matter of risking ostracism if we don’t mouth slogans we despise; it may be a matter of dying in a camp or in a trench somewhere. I have continuously argued that civil war means the end of everything valuable about this country, but the current debate shows me most of what I value is already gone, and the left is intent on erasing even the memory of it.
It’s easy; they just point out that a 19th century person had 19th century views on race and boom unpersoned. Sorry but it sickens me to the core. None of the people denouncing Lee or Jefferson or Washington is a tenth the man they were. And we jump in with the libertarian cop outs about “shouldn’t be public monuments anyway so it’s ok.’ No it isn’t ok.
The left is never going to stop using the public spaces to push their ideology, when we cave and allow them to remove the remains of the old civic religion of American exceptionalism, we are not being neutral and fair, we are not upholding our principles, we are once again trying to meet a hostile force halfway. It is all very well to decry symbols and ‘great men’ as myths, of course they are myths! Myths are how culture is transmitted, and we are abdicating that space to the left. The place that once was filed by Lee is not empty because we remove Lee, it is immediately filled by Obama or some similar slimy little Marxist.
Quick note – saw a reference in the Dispatch email today (Jonah Goldberg’s new project) that the White House had already said removal of QI was a nonstarter. Anyone else seen that? A little disappointing – assuming Trump understood the question.
Side note for Richmond area Glibs. Gonna try and visit Colonial Shooting Academy as soon as they open on Saturday morning and put a few boxes of 9mm through my as-yet untested shield mp 2.0. Generally haven’t had issues there that early but I haven’t gone since Feb so I don’t know how busy it may be now. (Need to buy a couple more mags too).
It wouldn’t be surprising if that’s Trumps position as he’s going to be running in part as the law and order candidate who’ll keep your city from being burned to the ground. Maybe he’s amenable to some reforms though but who knows.
Not my usual commenting time, but I was intrigued by Mustang’s predicament.
For some reason*, it is taboo to notice that different groups of people (men vs women for example) tend to behave differently. Men are about 90% of the people in prison and when it comes to violent crime, it’s almost 100%. Yet this fact is not taken as evidence for a systematic bias against men or for women.
Whatever the standard is, some people people will pass and others won’t, and the rate of failure will most likely not be equal among different groups. I don’t have the stats, but it would not surprise me to learn that women tend to score higher than men on the ASVAB, because girls tend to read and study more in school than boys. I know for a fact that women in the military are better at learning foreign languages and likely for the same reason.
And if we are bold enough to move on the field of race, Americans of Chinese descent are far less likely to end up in prison than whites, who in turn are less likely to end up in jail than blacks. Interestingly, the children of immigrants from places like Haiti and Nigeria are *also* less likely to end up in prison than whites.
So for me, the question is not “how do we kick out fewer of group X?” or get more of group y in job z, but instead: how do you recruit and retain good people? I have ideas on that, which I will summarize by saying it is time to sort the absolutely essential stuff from what is merely nice to have. So long as the military prefers skinny guys with criminal records over law-abiding fatsos, they will be kicking out a lot of people. I say it’s easier to reform a guy’s waistline than his character or IQ.
*the reason is that the keystone of the mush-headed Marxist world view is that everyone is equal, so any difference must be the result of prejudice