USA Politics

[Karl Henning]

My sister is hard into this conspiracy theory. She posts on FB every day about it. She's an antivaxxer too.

Ugh. Sorry, mate!  I have siblings who voted for Trump, and (I expect) will again, but they are decidedly non-activist.

[milk]

Ugh. Sorry, mate!  I have siblings who voted for Trump, and (I expect) will again, but they are decidedly non-activist.

Thanks. She tried hard to convert me and she's really emotionally committed to this stuff. I'm not super close to her but I'm a little worried about her alienating family and friends on FB. She posts the most ridiculous videos and links. She thinks masks are actually health hazards and part of a conspiracy to control us (or something like that). I keep telling her that I live in Japan where half the people have always worn masks. Somehow it doesn't get through.

[greg]

Marriage, as an institution, has been around a long time and does work. Bad comparison, dude.

This isn't the 1950s any more... just read the comments. It used to work. But nowadays, if you are a man, be prepared to give away all of your freedom and power.

(of course, it can work for some dudes, but that's just survivor bias)

It's idealistic of the past in the same way that leftism is idealistic of the future. Both are incompatible with the present. Better to navigate in the present... idealism is for fiction, unless you are a billionaire that can actually change things.

[JBS]

Jeebus, the hyperbole here has got to stop. I heard on Sam Harris' podcast that there are about 10 million arrests or encounters between police and civilians every year but we're made to believe that a few isolated cases are the norm. If anything, we need media reform to prevent the kind of dishonest, sensational reporting that blows everything out of proportion and leaves cities in ruins, law abiding citizens at the mercy of thugs, businesses destroyed and the police handcuffed from doing their job. 

I'm all for chokeholds if a suspect is resisting arrest and a threat to the officers. If you take an officer's taser and point it at him like that guy in Atlanta you deserve the consequences of your actions.

So because the police don't kill 9,999,000 people it's okay if they kill 1000?

Did it ever occur to you that police don't need to kill near as many people as they do? That they don't need to arrest as many as they do?  Did it ever occur to you that "that guy in Atlanta" (his name was Brooks) didn't need to be shot? Did it ever occur to you that just because you don't see it in the news does not mean police act like thugs?

[greg]

Marriage isn't an experiment. It's a reflection of human nature. One man's castle may be another man's gulag, sure, and there are unhappy marriages. Yet, I've known plenty of folks who are happily married; in fact, I've known plenty of bachelors who were much happier after getting married. Purely anecdotal, I know, but there's a reason why the institution was created and has survived: it's perfectly natural, reflects a human desire to have intimacy and companionship and was the best bet at not just passing your genes along but raising them to adulthood.

The "modern" notion of living and dying alone is unnatural and not healthy, imo. Viewing children as a burden is another weird attitude I don't get. As a species do we want to go extinct?

Wow, have to disagree hard on literally everything. 

Us dudes are hardwired to want many different women, not just one. History shows that. Your own mind shows that. Marriage is very unnatural but possibly the best thing for society (maybe second to abundant good jobs).

If you aren't introvert then you have no idea...to each his own, but I have lived alone the last few years and it's freaking awesome. Just thinking of someone living in my space is irritating... but again, that point is very relative, and many people do need to live with someone else.

I have no idea how anyone wouldn't see kids as a burden, unless you are an African farmer or something. What was it, $200,000 to raise a single kid? Nah, I think I'll actually retire instead.

As for the species, lol, who cares? I won't be around to see the future anyways. Why should anyone care? I mean, it's fun to think about futuristic technologies but we'll never see it. If I even make it to the 2080s that'd be insane.

[SimonNZ]

Some may be bad apples but that's life. You address it individually without this hysterical French Revolution style demand of restructuring government, the economy and society along some leftist ideology.

Jeebus, the hyperbole here has got to stop.

[JBS]

Yup, if they were a threat and put themselves in that situation. I'm sure you'll put a halo over the head of every dead criminal "murdered" by the police but I won't.
Yeah, he was a career criminal like that guy in Minnie. I won't second guess those in LE, either. Some may be bad apples but that's life. You address it individually without this hysterical French Revolution style demand of restructuring government, the economy and society along some leftist ideology.

So you don't care if cops act like thugs.

Sorry, the rest of us do.

[JBS]

Not all of us see the cops as thugs or share a hostile attitude towards LE.

Here's a data point that might suggest the hostile attitude is deserved.

Streetsblog recently reported that of the 440 tickets police issued to people for biking on the sidewalk in 2018 and 2019, 374 — or 86.4 percent — of those where race was listed went to Black and Hispanic New Yorkers. The wildly disproportionate stats followed another report showing that cops issued 99 percent of jaywalking tickets to Black and Hispanic people in the first quarter of this year.

From here
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/06/25/campaign-to-remove-nypd-from-traffic-enforcement-gains-steam/

The fact is, a lot of people who are not criminals experience the police as a hostile force, not a friendly protective one.  Step out of your bubble.

[greg]

That's terrible reasoning. Why care about the environment, climate change or anything if you'll just be dead someday? Future generations shouldn't be screwed because of the selfish or myopic attitudes of today. I heard countries like Japan and South Korea will be extinct in 500 years or less if the birth rates remain the same. They're not just being childless but sexless. Talk about being introverted. That kind of celibacy used to be found among religious types but it's affecting secular culture.

You can care as much as you want, but on an individual level you can't change anything.

Japanese people are too busy for love. They barely even get vacations... South Korea is also way too hypercompetitive (probably hard to think about love when you are suicidal over exams).

Highly developed/late stage capitalism is highly incompatible with love and family. The current generation of Japanese have seen their dads overwork themselves like crazy. See your wife and family once a week, give your wife almost all of your money for her to decide how it's spent, maybe screw like twice a year... why even bother?

And my original thesis was that marriage is a bad idea for men in the US/Canada because... divorce. Basically.

Your view is a tradcon version of the blue pill, just in case you aren't aware of the labeling... liberals also have their own version of the blue pill.

[drogulus]

Not all of us see the cops as thugs or share a hostile attitude towards LE.

     I think it's unlikely that any of us do. I want the best law enforcement I can get with the least brutality. These are not contradictory, and I don't know why think they are.

[arpeggio]

Democrats are not perfect.  We have our share of nut jobs.

Just because our rhetoric is not perfect does it mean we are wrong 100% of the time.

[Herman]

So because the police don't kill 9,999,000 people it's okay if they kill 1000?

If those 1000 killed are all colored, that makes a certain kind of American feel not bad at all.

[arpeggio]

Reviewing all of the rhetorical rationalizations that appear in this thread reminds of the relationship between the Babel fish and God:

"Oolon Colluphid used the Babel fish as the main theme of his best-selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up For God. More specifically, Colluphid uses the Babel fish as an argument for intelligent design (or - and there are some subtle differences here) in a version of the so-called teleological argument for God's existence. But Colluphid then goes further - using the existence of the Babel fish to try to prove that God does not exist.
The whole argument runs, roughly, as follows.
1. God refuses to prove that they exist because proof denies faith and without faith God is nothing.
2. Man then counters that the Babel fish is a dead giveaway because it could not have evolved by chance. So the fish proves that God exists - but hence also, by God's own reasoning (see 1) that God does not exist.
3. God says that they hadn't thought of that (hadn't thought of 2) and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
4. Man then remarks about how easy that was (and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing).
It should be noted that most leading theologians think that Colluphid's argument is "a load of dingo's kidneys."

[milk]

Yup, if they were a threat and put themselves in that situation. I'm sure you'll put a halo over the head of every dead criminal "murdered" by the police but I won't.
Yeah, he was a career criminal like that guy in Minnie. I won't second guess those in LE, either. Some may be bad apples but that's life. You address it individually without this hysterical French Revolution style demand of restructuring government, the economy and society along some leftist ideology.

I think there' a distinction to be made in these cases. Call me crazy, but it seems obvious to me that these were entirely different situations. The guy in Atlanta needed to be arrested, he was drunk and behind the wheel of a car. He committed two felonies in what amounts to a death struggle for cops trying to subdue him. The cops tried to use their tasers first, which showed much restraint and professionalism. But the guy went after them in a very dangerous way and needed to be apprehended. He ran away and had to be pursued. They could not let him go. The cop who was accused of stepping on him, after he was shot, received a concussion during the struggle. The other cop shot him after he aimed the stolen taser. The DA who filed these charges is obviously trying to get re-elected. There's no way those charges make sense.
In the Minneapolis case, the cops had him subdued and this death was entirely gratuitous and unnecessary. It was murder. In the Atlanta case, it was reasonable and justified.

[milk]

So because the police don't kill 9,999,000 people it's okay if they kill 1000?

Did it ever occur to you that police don't need to kill near as many people as they do? That they don't need to arrest as many as they do?  Did it ever occur to you that "that guy in Atlanta" (his name was Brooks) didn't need to be shot? Did it ever occur to you that just because you don't see it in the news does not mean police act like thugs?

The Atlanta guy gave the cops no choice. They couldn't let him run off after he committed two violent felonies - fighting with/resisting cops (one of them got a concussion) and grabbing the cop's taser. After he aimed something at them, what could they do? Even if there were a better choice, one can hardly hold them responsible in any criminally intentional way as they were fighting for their own lives on the ground.
As to police generally, I doubt good will come from social media-driven hysteria. There's not any strong evidence for racial motivation in police brutality, for racial killing by police, etc. I think cops are trained badly in the US and that cops are militarized but the causes are complex and certainly not settled. The hysteria of the moment says that everyone must subscribe to woke/BLM/intersectional ideology and there's a rush to enforce a discourse and stifle critical debate. I certainly won't risk the backlash I'd get by going on FB and even questioning whether there's a known racial element to the famous cases of police killings. One is just not allowed.

[Herman]

There's not any strong evidence for racial motivation in police brutality, for racial killing by police, etc.

Look at the statistics.

[Karl Henning]

If those 1000 killed are all colored, that makes a certain kind of American feel not bad at all.

And, feel that the police are pretty much doing their job.

[milk]

Look at the statistics.

I'm a Democrat and open-minded. In the past I simply accepted that America was institutionally racist. These days, I think it's more complicated than that.
Please show me any statistics that suggest black people are being disproportionally killed by police.
My guess is that African Americans are stopped more often in some places. On the other hand, I'm not sure there's any evidence that the biggest danger for people, especially blacks people, is cops. I think communities need police and poor neighborhoods, black and otherwise, need police more than most.

[Todd]

Please show me any statistics that suggest black people are being disproportionally killed by police.

That one's easy:



The motivation bit is the hard thing to come up with data on.

[milk]

That one's easy:



The motivation bit is the hard thing to come up with data on.

Yes, I've got to see what you're saying if there's a serious discussion based on something I brought up. I've just been listening to the "other side" lately, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. I'm not putting this precisely enough perhaps but I am curious about what's the best way to understand this topic.
They're saying that this statistics don't show that racism is motivating cops to kill black people - not when controls aren't taken into account. I think they rely on studies like Fryer's. It seems Fryer found That there is bias but not in shootings.


This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399