White People Get Policed Like Black People, Chaos Ensues - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15208633
I see, @Steve_American, you got a third like on your original reply.

Good on you, a nice dopamine hit.

The first time I got arrested I was 13. I was arrested many more times, and always for a bunch of bullshit.

Maybe you grew up in an era of 'white privilege', in wherever you grew up. I don't doubt the driving while black shit, but I speak from my experience.

I've never been racist, and most people I knew didn't express racism. Oregon is one of "the whitest states", and also, as you saw, it was the epicentre of the BLM protests for a while. They protested and rioted for months, and constantly got tear gassed.

That is how it is here.

In my neck of the woods, it wasn't quite like that. We protested, and had a bunch of hicks with guns counter protesting (we had some guns too).

Open carry.

Generalizing and stereotyping is always noxious as fuck, and I am no longer a liberal, or progressive, or whatever term you prefer. Haven't been for quite a while. Liberals/Progressives are actually stupid as fuck. "Conservatives" are stupid as fuck, too. That's about what it comes down to.
#15208634
The whole liberal OR conservative dichotomy is a product of the pollution of American politics.

It is stupid as fuck.

We are people.

Plus, I have to work with the fuckhead right wingers.

They aren't really fuckheads though, and most people are not that political, especially these days. At least where I am.

Dichotomy, black and white, is always bullshit, and excuse my French, but 'liberals' can be really fucking annoying.
#15208635
Crantag wrote:The whole liberal OR conservative dichotomy is a product of the pollution of American politics.

It is stupid as fuck.

We are people.

Plus, I have to work with the fuckhead right wingers.

They aren't really fuckheads though, and most people are not that political, especially these days. At least where I am.

Dichotomy, black and white, is always bullshit, and excuse my French, but 'liberals' can be really fucking annoying.

Progressive vs conservative is the masculine/feminine of politics. A child is better off with both a mother and father for a reason. They will teach the child different things about life. Usually one will be tougher on them, the other more compassionate and forgiving/generous.

In that same sense, we need both progressives and conservatives to battle each other to come to some kind of equilibrium. That way we usually don't go too far right or left socially, or at least not for too long. Economically the US leans to the right because its corrupted and controlled by the wealthy.
#15208637
Unthinking Majority wrote:
Progressive vs conservative is the masculine/feminine of politics. A child is better off with both a mother and father for a reason. They will teach the child different things about life. Usually one will be tougher on them, the other more compassionate and forgiving/generous.



Crock-of-shit metaphor. It's paternalistic and patronizing since your statism is making the state sound like some kind of ahistorical, a priori construction that we all have to be infantilized to.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
In that same sense, we need both progressives and conservatives to battle each other to come to some kind of equilibrium. That way we usually don't go too far right or left socially, or at least not for too long. Economically the US leans to the right because its corrupted and controlled by the wealthy.




Latin America

During World War II, the United States military operations had widespread support across Latin America, except for Argentina. After 1947, with the Cold War emerging in Europe, Washington made repeated efforts to encourage all the Latin American countries to take a Cold War anti-Communist position. They were reluctant to do so – for example, only Colombia sent soldiers to the United Nations contingent in the Korean War. The Soviet Union was quite weak across Latin America. Not until the late 1950s did Moscow achieve diplomatic or commercial relationships with most Latin American countries.,[98] Before then it had only two trade agreements (with Argentina and Mexico.) The communist movements that had existed in Brazil and elsewhere in the 1930s had been disbanded or outlawed.[99] Washington exaggerated the dangers, and decided on a preemptive attack against a possible communist threat.[100] It sought anti-communist resolutions at the annual meetings of the Pan American Union (renamed the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948) and paid special attention to the growth of left-wing forces in Guatemala.[101] A compromise was reached whereby the Latin American states agreed on vague statements of support for the American Cold War position, and the United States provided expanded financial grants and loans to stimulate economic growth. In 1954, at the 10th Inter-American Conference in Caracas, Washington demanded a resolution that the establishment of a communist government in any American state was a threat to the peace of the hemisphere. Guatemala cast the only negative vote. Guatemala's military, with CIA encouragement, overthrew its left-wing government later that year.[102] Fidel Castro engineered his revolutionary takeover of Cuba in 1957–58 with very little Soviet support. The United States and the smaller Latin countries, outvoted the larger powers by the required two-thirds majority in 1962 to identify Cuba as a communist regime and suspend it from the OAS.[103][104]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_o ... in_America
#15208651
Potemkin wrote:Good point. Unlike American police departments, the Mafia at least give the public what they want, by catering to their private vices. You want to drink whisky during Prohibition? No problem. You want to pay to have sex? Knock yourself out. You want to gamble away your kids’ college fund in a plush Vegas casino? Step this way, my good sir. What do the police give people? A bad attitude and traffic fines.

This just isn't true. I notice this post already has 4 Likes, so you're expressing a very common sentiment, which I've run into time and again over the years.

I live in Britain, (probably for the best) I've never had occasion to cross the path of the American Mafia. But in an earlier incarnation I did cross the path of both the Hells Angels and some of the more violent members of the Hippy Peace Convoy. So I know exactly how the American Mafia worked and it wasn't by giving people what they want, but by stopping other people from giving people what they want. Or more often limiting the suppliers and distributors to those that were paying The Mafia. We've been manufacturing alcohol for thousands, possibly tens of thousands of years We certainly didn't need the Mafia to provide illegal booze or indeed any of the other "vices" that they were supposedly sating.

I have no hesitation in calling the Mafia out for what they were, parasitic criminal scum. Its true the Mafia did use love as well fear to strengthen their power, but nearly all the love was actually directed towards the police. The Mafia were at the height of their power when the a substantial amount of the income they extorted from the general public went to paying off the Police. So even if you hate the police it makes no sense to love the Mafia.

Also in an earlier incarnation (In a minor way) I have had occasion to cross the path of Special Branch. I've met and gone for a drink with Paul Hill of the Guildford 4, so I'm not some nieve completely closeted individual who is blind to the dark side of the British State. But just because you can't imagine how policing, law and order and the justice could possibly be worse. It can always be worse.
#15208654
Rich wrote:This just isn't true. I notice this post already has 4 Likes, so you're expressing a very common sentiment, which I've run into time and again over the years.

I live in Britain, (probably for the best) I've never had occasion to cross the path of the American Mafia. But in an earlier incarnation I did cross the path of both the Hells Angels and some of the more violent members of the Hippy Peace Convoy. So I know exactly how the American Mafia worked and it wasn't by giving people what they want, but by stopping other people from giving people what they want. Or more often limiting the suppliers and distributors to those that were paying The Mafia. We've been manufacturing alcohol for thousands, possibly tens of thousands of years We certainly didn't need the Mafia to provide illegal booze or indeed any of the other "vices" that they were supposedly sating.

I have no hesitation in calling the Mafia out for what they were, parasitic criminal scum. Its true the Mafia did use love as well fear to strengthen their power, but nearly all the love was actually directed towards the police. The Mafia were at the height of their power when the a substantial amount of the income they extorted from the general public went to paying off the Police. So even if you hate the police it makes no sense to love the Mafia.

Also in an earlier incarnation (In a minor way) I have had occasion to cross the path of Special Branch. I've met and gone for a drink with Paul Hill of the Guildford 4, so I'm not some nieve completely closeted individual who is blind to the dark side of the British State. But just because you can't imagine how policing, law and order and the justice could possibly be worse. It can always be worse.

Actually, I agree with you about this. I was overstating my point for comic effect, as is my wont. Nevertheless, when the police department of some hick town starts behaving like this, it’s difficult to feel much love for the police. They are essentially behaving like a (nerfed) Mafia crime family, using their monopoly of physical force and their relation with the justice system to shake down the public for nickels and dimes.
#15208669
ckaihatsu wrote:Crock-of-shit metaphor. It's paternalistic and patronizing since your statism is making the state sound like some kind of ahistorical, a priori construction that we all have to be infantilized to.

What i'm saying is that people need both a "masculine" and "feminine" outlook on life, society, and how they treat others.

Stereotypically "feminine" traits are associated with compassion, kindness, generosity, forgiveness etc, which are typical of a left-wing political philosophy on how to treat others, while stereotypically "masculine" traits include things toughness, inner strength, independence/self-reliance, personal responsibility, perseverance in the face of adversity etc.

So with rightwing and leftwing politics, it becomes a matter of how do you want the government to treat you? Like a mother or even a kind female social worker, or like a father or a psychologist like Dr. Phil (a Texan) who will be tougher on you but maybe less nurturing and coddling.

So take an issue like illegal immigration. The left will be more compassionate and forgiving of illegals, while the right tends to be less compassionate and want them accountable for their own actions and maybe prosecute them or return them home despite family separations.

I contend you need to balance both masculine and feminine approaches or you will be too soft and be taken advantage of or enabling, or too harsh. If you look at ie: dealing with Russia or China, being too soft means they will test you and step all over you, but if you're just a domineering dick like Trump or Donald Rumsfeld you can cause cruel and unnecessary harm.
#15208676
Crantag wrote:

The whole liberal OR conservative dichotomy is a product of the pollution of American politics.




It goes back a little further than that.

My understanding is that it's a product of capitalism. Back in the 1800s, in England, the Tories held the power. The problem was that they were turning the economy capitalist.

That meant a steady stream of problems that threatened the goose laying all those golden eggs. I think the liberals back then were called Roundheads. In any case, they lacked raw political power, but won most of the fights.

The landed gentry hated it, but when the crisis of the day threatened the economy, they caved.
#15208686
Unthinking Majority wrote:
What i'm saying is that people need both a "masculine" and "feminine" outlook on life, society, and how they treat others.

Stereotypically "feminine" traits are associated with compassion, kindness, generosity, forgiveness etc, which are typical of a left-wing political philosophy on how to treat others, while stereotypically "masculine" traits include things toughness, inner strength, independence/self-reliance, personal responsibility, perseverance in the face of adversity etc.

So with rightwing and leftwing politics, it becomes a matter of how do you want the government to treat you? Like a mother or even a kind female social worker, or like a father or a psychologist like Dr. Phil (a Texan) who will be tougher on you but maybe less nurturing and coddling.

So take an issue like illegal immigration. The left will be more compassionate and forgiving of illegals, while the right tends to be less compassionate and want them accountable for their own actions and maybe prosecute them or return them home despite family separations.

I contend you need to balance both masculine and feminine approaches or you will be too soft and be taken advantage of or enabling, or too harsh. If you look at ie: dealing with Russia or China, being too soft means they will test you and step all over you, but if you're just a domineering dick like Trump or Donald Rumsfeld you can cause cruel and unnecessary harm.



These psychologizations / anthropomorphizing is only possible (I do it myself, as in calling the real estate market 'psychotic') because of the *existence* of such an arbitrary, abstract entity in the first place -- the bourgeois nation-state.

Many, myself included, take *exception* to the arbitrary borders / boundaries of the nation-state to begin with, because they have no value for those who are impeded and harmed / *killed* by these political impediments which *don't* affect either flows of capital or the travel plans of the wealthy. Nationalism is elitist, in other words.
#15208688
late wrote:
It goes back a little further than that.

My understanding is that it's a product of capitalism. Back in the 1800s, in England, the Tories held the power. The problem was that they were turning the economy capitalist.

That meant a steady stream of problems that threatened the goose laying all those golden eggs. I think the liberals back then were called Roundheads. In any case, they lacked raw political power, but won most of the fights.

The landed gentry hated it, but when the crisis of the day threatened the economy, they caved.




The English Revolution

In January 1649 an executioner’s axe cut off the head of the king of England and Scotland, Charles I. The event shocked the whole of Europe.102 Rulers throughout the continent—Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist—severed diplomatic relations with the English government.103 It had committed sacrilege against a principle they shared—the right of some to rule over others because of an accident of birth.

The men who ordered the execution were far from being extreme republicans. Only 20 months before, their leader Oliver Cromwell had defended the principle of monarchy, saying that ‘no man could enjoy their lives and estates quietly without the king had his rights’.104 Now he famously declared, ‘We will cut off his head with his crown on it.’ He was, despite himself, opening the door to a new era, which would question the assumption that some human beings were divinely ordained to superiority over others.

There are fashionable accounts of the English Revolution which see it as a result of mere jockeying for position between rivals within a homogenous ‘gentry’ elite. Such accounts chart the patronage and family connections which tie one upper class figure to another and explain the battles and beheadings as flowing from a process of plotting and counter-plotting which got out of hand.

Such interpretations fail to see that 1649 was not some historical quirk. It was a product of the clash between the same social forces which had been tearing much of Europe apart for a century and a half—forces unleashed as market relations arose out of and transformed the old feudal order. It involved not just rival upper class courtiers and politicians, but merchant interests similar to those prominent in the Dutch revolt; it involved artisans and small traders like those who had carried the Reformation through south Germany or been burned at the stake in France; and it involved peasant protests, much smaller in scale but not different in kind to the German Peasant War of 1525. Binding together the parties in the English Civil War were the rival religious notions thrown up by the European Reformation.
Peaceful prelude

The Reformation in England had, like the ‘princely reformations’ in parts of Germany, been carried through by royal decree. Henry VIII had broken with the Roman Catholic church for diplomatic reasons and bound the majority of the English ruling class to his policy by selling former monastery lands at knock-down prices.

But there was more to the Reformation in England than just princely self interest and upper class greed. It sank roots among all those open to a new worldview which seemed to make sense of the changing society, especially among the trader and artisan classes but also among some of the landed gentry.

The gap which separated the Reformation from above and the Reformation from below in England was blurred through the latter half of the 16th century. The bitter experience of an attempt to reimpose the old Catholicism by force under Mary Tudor (married to Philip II of Spain) caused lordly recipients of church lands to stand shoulder to shoulder with Puritan burghers in support of her successor, the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 203-204
#15208695
ckaihatsu wrote:

history ( I didn't delete it, it didn't show up)





All that is true, and you could add a few more. It was in the late 1600s that the English govt started investing in science.

But it was a long, slow process, and I find the 1800s the most interesting part of it.

You've got the way the Corn Laws were a large part of why the Irish starved, the horrible working conditions, (conditions so bad that the general public has no idea how bad they were), the Disreali/Gladstone feud, and on and on.
#15208708
ckaihatsu wrote:Many, myself included, take *exception* to the arbitrary borders / boundaries of the nation-state to begin with, because they have no value for those who are impeded and harmed / *killed* by these political impediments which *don't* affect either flows of capital or the travel plans of the wealthy. Nationalism is elitist, in other words.


You wouldn't mind if all 7 billion earthlings had free access to cross in to your country's borders? It would go 3rd-world pretty quickly?

Now i would put limits on capital flows definitely, but our politicians are the wealthy themselves or in bed with them so. The elites swapped monarchy for democracy and convinced us we have all the control, which is a joke.
#15208712
Unthinking Majority wrote:
You wouldn't mind if all 7 billion earthlings had free access to cross in to your country's borders?



We're all now 'earthlings', as though identity-politics has fused us onto the surface of the earth somehow -- ? Couldn't just use 'people' -- ?

'My' country's borders were here before I was even born. I assure you I had no hand / input into *this* country's border geography.

That said, I don't care who goes to what countries, really. Sleeping well at night, thanks.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
It would go 3rd-world pretty quickly?



Some would say that this is a racist statement.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
Now i would put limits on capital flows definitely, but our politicians are the wealthy themselves or in bed with them so. The elites swapped monarchy for democracy and convinced us we have all the control, which is a joke.



Okay, I do appreciate this, but I'd like to point out that it *implies* a lot politically, and if you're going to acknowledge the plutocracy then you *can't* continue to argue for some gauzy-hazy idealized nationalism.
#15208716
ckaihatsu wrote:Some would say that this is a racist statement.

It has nothing to do with race. Bringing in doctors and lawyers from the 3rd world won't hurt 1st world countries. These aren't the people who commit crimes and can't get jobs due to poor education.

Okay, I do appreciate this, but I'd like to point out that it *implies* a lot politically, and if you're going to acknowledge the plutocracy then you *can't* continue to argue for some gauzy-hazy idealized nationalism.

Well the problem with this is go look at any country that has more than 1 ethnic/cultural group of sizeable population. The majority often dominates the minority politically, and so the minority gets upset and wants self-determination (nationalism) so they can determine their own rules/laws to live under and construct their own society the way they want to live it. That is the reason for nation-states, not capital.

Examples in the West: Scotland, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Catalonia (Spain), US black nationalism in the 1960's etc.
#15208719
Unthinking Majority wrote:
It has nothing to do with race. Bringing in doctors and lawyers from the 3rd world won't hurt 1st world countries. These aren't the people who commit crimes and can't get jobs due to poor education.


Well the problem with this is go look at any country that has more than 1 ethnic/cultural group of sizeable population. The majority often dominates the minority politically, and so the minority gets upset and wants self-determination (nationalism) so they can determine their own rules/laws to live under and construct their own society the way they want to live it. That is the reason for nation-states, not capital.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
Examples in the West: Scotland, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Catalonia (Spain), US black nationalism in the 1960's etc.



You could have said this a long time ago. Do you consider yourself to be a Third Worldist / Maoist / etc. -- ?

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