[rickc]

Thanos Thanos:

You're on block, Rick, so aim your rage-filled rants at someone else.

A simple question is a rage filled rant? Lol! I always thought that you had thicker skin than that.

[Tricks]

rickc rickc:

What action do you think should be taken? Who should be doing what?

Training reform and civilian oversight would probably be a good start.

[Martin15]

Tricks Tricks:

rickc rickc:

What action do you think should be taken? Who should be doing what?

Training reform and civilian oversight would probably be a good start.

For which cities ?
All the Democrat ones currently burning,

or for the National Police Force of the United States of America ?

[Tricks]

Martin15 Martin15:

Tricks Tricks:

rickc rickc:

What action do you think should be taken? Who should be doing what?

Training reform and civilian oversight would probably be a good start.

For which cities ?
All the Democrat ones currently burning,

or for the National Police Force of the United States of America ?

For all police forces. Most of them follow similar use of force continuum that we do in Canada. And while we get this from time to time, it's not as bad as it is down there. So obviously the approach is wrong. Maybe standardized training across the country. The states can come together and develop something in conjunction with federal agencies and use their cumulative expertise.

[Public_Domain]

[Thanos]

Just a note that the Congressional GOP deliberately stymied Obama's attempts to put an end to transferring military equipment to PDs. And Trump, as a favour to his rabid supporters in the police unions, put a stop altogether to any of the community-policing retraining and cooperative efforts Obama was able to implement with his own presidential authority. Both Trump and the GOP obviously WANT the communities and the police to hate each other because it's what The Fans want.

[rickc]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

rickc rickc:

What action do you think should be taken? Who should be doing what?

a maoist force being redeveloped among dedicated revolutionary black americans, armed, taking over some territory, publishing theory, kicking ass

oh oh, too much. uhhhh, make bernie the democratic nominee?

Lets say that he won the nomination and the general election. What is one man going to do in all this madness? The President is in charge of federal things. Police departments fall under town, city, county, and state jurisdiction. Those departments are the ones killing people,not the feds. TSA is not killing people. Thats why that whole kneeling for the National Anthem thing was stupid. The cops doing the killing are not federal employees. All that stunt did was piss off veterans like me who were on their side.

Lets not forget that BLM was formed under a black President, a black attorney general, and a black in charge of homeland security. If they could not fix the problem what chance does an old white man from the whitest state in the union have? Bernie is a nice guy and one of the few politicians who is not on the take, but the President does not have the power that most people think. Maybe he could order that every police department have and use body cameras. That would be a good start. I would rather the feds be giving away body cameras than tanks and armored personnel carriers.

[Freakinoldguy]

Scape Scape:

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

Anybody who claims these riots aren't about a blatant attempt to bring down the system and gov't need to wake up and smell the roses. If it was about police abuse like they're trying to claim we would have seen the same types of reactions that we saw after Ferguson, NY, LA and Baltimore when this woman was murdered back in 2017.

But we saw nada nothing zip. No riots, no protests, no BLM or Antifa rioting and attacking anything. So what other possible excuse could these rioters have for taking George Floyds tragic and unnecessary death to these extremes?

Except you did. Every time this happens the goal posts for what is acceptable under the overton window get shifted. What you are not accepting is that shift in cultural norms comes at a cost. Every time a black man gets killed by cop and NOTHING gets done there is a cost to that and it builds up like a plaque. So when you go back to 'normal' this is building up like a ticking time bomb and when the flood gates inevitably release this is the result.

It's not like there were not warnings and opportunities to address this, there were countless examples where there could have been meaningful reform. Every time it got shot down and the egregious issues get put to the back burner to be ignored. Now, we are LONG past that point and to fix this will be WAY more expensive and dangerous than it ever needed to be. Many will die for the callous attitude of the state being 'good enough' for too long.

Who knows, maybe the next time a cop kills a guy for being black and it being recorded we won't have riots in 75 cities but what has been done? All I see is racist tweets by Trump and zero action. No idea as to WHY the nation is on fire. So I can't see this simmering down anytime soon.

Don't get me wrong. I understand completely that everytime a black man gets killed there's a shift in the cultural norms by people trying to affect change through peaceful protest.

But, at what point does it go from being a legitimate protest to a free for all riot that destroys the communities alot of the protesters come from? Remembering that there is a huge difference between protesting to affect change and rioting which, to most outsiders seems to be more for personal gain, revenge and pleasure. And, why in alot of cases are the rioters are being extended the same courtesy of being lumped in with the legitimate protesters who should be the only ones to have the moral highground?

As far as I'm concerned the excuse that they're rioting because of police brutality towards blacks is a red herring for the rioters and major part of the problem. I've seen white kids breaking windows and destroying businesses right alongside black kids which means that the rioters use of the death of George Floyd has nothing to do with righting past wrongs and is an excuse for violence just like it was in every city that's had this type of troubles starting back in the 60's.

I'm also getting the impression that when these rioters start burning cities to the ground in a coordinated fashion it shows that there's more to this phenomenon than justice for the aggrieved and these actions have become a well thought out excuse by certain groups to try and force regime change rather than social change through violence. For the rioters and Antifa it's about power, not social change and George Floyd is just another in a long line of excuses.

Sadly these rioters aren't students of history because, if they were they'd have notice that this type of violence didn't effect social change in any of the previous riots starting way back in the 1960's. So, if they were really honest about their true intentions why would they assume that it'll be different this time.

[Public_Domain]

[Scape]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

Don't get me wrong. I understand completely that everytime a black man gets killed there's a shift in the cultural norms by people trying to affect change through peaceful protest.

It's not that they 'get killed' it is that they are clearly doing absolutely nothing wrong and STILL get shot. They can be complying with EVERY order and they still get blown away and there is not a dam thing they could have done. Everyone knows if you shoot a black guy while wearing a badge it's never going to end up with any meaningful repercussion for the individual or reform for the system or restoration for the survivors. That may sound stark but that's why 75 cities are burning.

Once the dam is burst there is no going back, you don't reason with rage. There is no reciprocity here as that is for civil societies that believe in the trappings of justice and rule of law. Here, there is no law and as the rules are clearly for one set of people and not for another when the riots break out there is no law for anyone. Both sides are now over the red line and there is no law everyone for themselves. You lost that right to be the arbiter of right and wrong when the law was selectively held up. Now it's all on the table and might is right as it is the only thing left that can evoke change.

I abhor this eruption of violence and the crackdowns will not be sustainable. Many will die not only from the violence but from the outbreak of the plague and the collapse of civil society. It was all avoidable but it wasn't George's fault.

[Thanos]

Tell me one legitimate thing that these poor and working-class white kids have to be happy about and I'll agree with you that they shouldn't be rioting. Anyone white kid born in the US in 1990 and later has lived to see this happen to their country:

- a pervert new president in 1992 selling out the Democratic party to Wall Street to the point that they're nearly identical to the GOP in terms of economic policy in making sure wealth will only flow upwards to the already-rich, with bare pennies ever making it down to the poor
- a non-stop stream of jobs leaving the United States so already-rich shareholders could make even more money by exploiting cheap foreign slave-labour to it's maximum extent
- Sept 11, 2001, which happened mainly because the president of the moment couldn't be bothered to read his daily briefings or listen at all to what his own intelligence people were telling him was going to happen
- an invasion and destruction of a foreign state in Iraq that had nothing to do with Sept 11, matched by the growth an even more slavish relationship with Saudi Arabia, aka the state that actually did Sept 11
- almost 10000 dead American military personnel in Iraq & Afghanistan, plus tens of thousands of wounded others, in a damn war that accomplished nothing except to add a couple of trillion dollars to the national US debt
- the 2008 economic meltdown; how many of those rioting white kids saw their parents lose their jobs, savings, and homes in that debacle, an economic catastrophe that did nothing except make the already-rich even wealthier, and one that couldn't have been stopped anyway because ever since Reagan all the laws to prevent white collar crime had been deliberately destroyed by those who call themselves fiscal conservatives?
- the first black president in American history being immediately attacked by a spontaneously-rabid right-wing, obstructed at every turn by an increasingly hardcore right-wing GOP that's driven any moderates out of it, and an active American Nazi movement springing up in response to his mere election by a majority of American voters
- a wave of school shootings, including kindergarten kids being turned into literal hamburger at Sandy Hook, just because keeping firearms out of the hands of lunatics and criminals is seen as too bothersome or a violation of "muh rites"
- finding out that most of them will never own their own home, because since the 1970's the baby boomers have sucked up all the property to themselves and will only sell it back to someone for about ten or twenty times the price they paid for it
- finding out that the cost of a college education for most of them will cripple them with debt for life, all because the right-wingers found a way to turn university into a for-profit experience and turned student loans into naked usury
- finding out that the cost of a basic health care will cost them up to a third of a year's salary, provided they can even find a fucking job in the first place
- their grandparents and parents losing their goddamn fucking minds altogether in 2016 and showing up en masse to vote in a crooked game-show host as president, a thoroughgoing piece of shit that's made each day that he "governs" that much worse than the day before
- finding out on a daily basis that the democracy they were told to be so proud of is nothing but a fucking chimera, a fucking illusion, because they're now living under a goddamn neo-aristocracy that doesn't even bother anymore to conceal how endlessly greedy and utterly vicious it is

Maybe the damn question should be why it took so long for the white kids to start burning shit down. They had more than enough reasons of their own to start doing it for themselves and shouldn't have had to wait for the black kids to show them the way.

[Scape]

Birmingham reporters attacked live on camera

Looters also took reporters wallet and ran

The nation's capital is legitimately on fire in every direction. This is unreal.

[Public_Domain]

[Public_Domain]

[Thanos]

...so that government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and absolutely only for the wealthy shall not ever perish, with the additional guarantee that it'll put it's jackboot in your face for all the days of your life...

It was never supposed to turn out this way. But it did, and it's not ever going to go away.