Sniper kills five cops
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, May 24, 2024 01:42
VIEWED: 5593
PAGE 3 of 5
Quote:www.gocomics.com/nickanderson/2016/07/10
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But the problem is that ALL statistics are suspect . . .
. . . police cannot help but remember that someone targeted them . . .
Adding another layer of fear onto that will probably make police even MORE . . .
Something more needs to be done than a day of mourning and a temporary cease-fire.
. . . which resulted in the Police Chief fbeing fired over a year later, only after the whole cover-up was exposed.
. . . the shootings between gangs is atrocious.
www.gocomics.com/nickanderson/2015/09/01
www.houstonchronicle.com/about/article/Good-Guy-8355315.php
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Do you want to know what I think is the root cause of inner-city violence, and police shootings?
Of course not, but I'm going to tell you anyway.
It doesn't help that the USA started its life with slavery: the creation of a permanent underclass which, because of its distinctive skin color could never hope to "blend in" like the Irish, Polish, and Italians did afterwards. RACISM exists to this day, in ways both large and small. It is pervasive, and shows itself in how the media presents people of color, and how white people react to people of color, and how people of color react to whites.
But racism by itself wouldn't be so bad if it weren't attached to systematic economic privation.
And economic privation wouldn't be so bad if it weren't embedded in a culture that worships money ... getting money and proving your status according to the things and people that you own (women, specifically) by any means necessary. There are impoverished cultures that manage to be non-violent because they have other ideals ... family, work, religion, community, or what-have-you. But not here, because we are a relentlessly commercialized, monetized culture in which everything and everyone exists to make money for somebody.
What is the difference between invading Iraq and killing up to a million people for oil, versus killing rival gang members for drug-turf. Nothing, except scale. Gangs have learned their lessons well by emulating the success of their "betters".
As a culture, we have a hard time holding up ideals of meritocracy, hard work, self-reliance, self-respect, and non-violence for "the black community" when everything else in our culture screams an opposing message. And it's all driven by the sleazebags and whores and manipulators at the top who rape the world (including their own nation) for profit.
So, if we really wanted to "do something" we would have a decent job available for everyone who could work. We would have training and education and even travel so people could broaden their minds beyond the small communities that they grew up in ... and that includes Castleton IN (heart of heroin addiction) as well as Watts CA. We would have therapy for people who have grown up in situations of endemic violence, leading to chronic PTSD for so many people, and drug treatment for those who sought to escape their misery via chemicals. And, to continue the diatribe, we would provide mental health treatment to those who are mentally ill.
But we will do none of this, because it costs the wealthy too much of their money.
So, we give cops guns to "solve" our social problems, or at least contain them in communities that we don't want to deal with.
Guns aren't our only problem, and "gun control" barely scratches the surface of what ails us. But it's a cheap fix that costs the wealthy nothing.
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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that they can get a few more shekels in their pockets.
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Quote:
Honest question: Do you think anything in this country works? - G
I know a lot of PEOPLE who work ... really hard. They work at their jobs, and then they take care of ill and dying parents or children (or both). If they have spare time and energy they volunteer through their church or some other organization, if they have spare money they donate to a cause.
But being a decent, caring, responsible person is being a sucker. Because, really, what is rewarded? Scamming and cheating. Cheating and scamming. If you want to get ahead, it doesn't come from hard work! Just look at our banking elite and our politicians and our Bishops and televangelists, our gang leaders and our welfare cheats.
Working hard and meeting your obligations? That just makes you the (heavily parasitized) donkey for this whole enterprise. And who the hell wants to be that? The only thing you get out of being a hardworking responsible person is a good feeling about yourself, and every four years the politicians running for office refer to you to milk your vote. But they will never, EVER, do anything to change the system of rewards that operates here.
No wonder this place is falling apart.
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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that they can get a few more shekels in their pockets.
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Another military-trained sniper kills another 3 cops, this time in Baton Rouge.
Baton Rouge shooter identified as Gavin Long, 29
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/07/17/baton-rouge-polic
e-shooting-suspect/87227644/
Yanno, I think it's well-past time we had that national conversation that I've been talking about. Not about blacks and whites, like Obama keeps yapping about, but about more fundamental questions:
What, as a nation, do we want?
What do we believe is right, and what do we believe wrong?
What do we reward, and what do we punish?
What do we have in common?
What brings us together, instead of pulling us apart into black-white, gay-straight, male-female, young-old, Democrat-Republican identities?
My god, if we can't have a meaningful and rational conversation HERE, on a no-account internet forum, what hope do we have as a nation?
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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that they can get a few more shekels in their pockets.
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The only "welfare cheats" you'll find are giant corporations.
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Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
The only "welfare cheats" you'll find are giant corporations.
Especially there. Thanks for pointing that out.
"Pity would be no more, If we did not MAKE men poor"
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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that they can get a few more shekels in their pockets.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Do you want to know what I think is the root cause of inner-city violence, and police shootings?
Of course not, but I'm going to tell you anyway.
It doesn't help that the USA started its life with slavery: the creation of a permanent underclass which, because of its distinctive skin color could never hope to "blend in" like the Irish, Polish, and Italians did afterwards. RACISM exists to this day, in ways both large and small. It is pervasive, and shows itself in how the media presents people of color, and how white people react to people of color, and how people of color react to whites.
But racism by itself wouldn't be so bad if it weren't attached to systematic economic privation.
And economic privation wouldn't be so bad if it weren't embedded in a culture that worships money ... getting money and proving your status according to the things and people that you own (women, specifically) by any means necessary. There are impoverished cultures that manage to be non-violent because they have other ideals ... family, work, religion, community, or what-have-you. But not here, because we are a relentlessly commercialized, monetized culture in which everything and everyone exists to make money for somebody.
What is the difference between invading Iraq and killing up to a million people for oil, versus killing rival gang members for drug-turf. Nothing, except scale. Gangs have learned their lessons well by emulating the success of their "betters".
As a culture, we have a hard time holding up ideals of meritocracy, hard work, self-reliance, self-respect, and non-violence for "the black community" when everything else in our culture screams an opposing message. And it's all driven by the sleazebags and whores and manipulators at the top who rape the world (including their own nation) for profit.
So, if we really wanted to "do something" we would have a decent job available for everyone who could work. We would have training and education and even travel so people could broaden their minds beyond the small communities that they grew up in ... and that includes Castleton IN (heart of heroin addiction) as well as Watts CA. We would have therapy for people who have grown up in situations of endemic violence, leading to chronic PTSD for so many people, and drug treatment for those who sought to escape their misery via chemicals. And, to continue the diatribe, we would provide mental health treatment to those who are mentally ill.
But we will do none of this, because it costs the wealthy too much of their money.
So, we give cops guns to "solve" our social problems, or at least contain them in communities that we don't want to deal with.
Guns aren't our only problem, and "gun control" barely scratches the surface of what ails us. But it's a cheap fix that costs the wealthy nothing.
This is why I rarely come here anymore - the tedium of American Exceptionalism spills over even into explanation of your problems.
Most Western countries (and most non Western as well) are based around materialism, wealth accumulation whatever you want to call it. That isn't exceptional to America.
Most Western countries (and many non Western) are involved or have been involved in military conflicts, usually for economic reasons both international and local. Nothing exceptional about that.
Many of the problems experienced in America, divide between rich and poor, complex social problems, disenfranchised underclass - nothing unique about them today or throughout history.
What separates you from most western nations is your gun laws, that you have a lots of guns, lots of weaponry easily accessible and easily obtained.
Oh and a population that seems largely in denial about cause and effect.
If you had different guns laws with less access to weapons, you'd still have the social issues, but not the guns deaths. Its incredibly
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Quote:Clearly you don't understand that the Republican Party, not the NRA, has a majority in both houses of Congress and the Republican Party is firmly against gun control and that your "close to 90%" who support tougher gun access laws are the same people that gave the Republican Party its majority.
Originally posted by G:Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
If you had different guns laws with less access to weapons, you'd still have the social issues, but not the guns deaths. Its incredibly simple.
Clearly you do not understand the problem.
This: "Oh and a population that seems largely in denial about cause and effect." for example, is very totally completely false. Our population voted overwhelming to support stricter background checks and tougher gun access laws, close to 90% - gun owners included! But we don't seem to actually run our own government when it comes to guns, and there's sadly, very little we can do. When the NRA and other gun lobbyists $own so much of Washington, they get to call the shots. It's deeply embarrassing and frustrating to many of us. It is incredibly simple to see, and nearly impossible to change with the current situation.
The "close to 90%" need to be reminded that it is their votes and their fault that gun access laws are not tougher. It is not the fault of the NRA because it and the Republican Party are just doing what they have for many decades announced that they are doing: opposing tougher gun access laws.
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Quote:You're the only one who has commented on that. I guess because you aren't American, you notice our exceptionalism more.
This is why I rarely come here anymore - the tedium of American Exceptionalism spills over even into explanation of your problems.
But, we ARE exceptional.
We have an exceptional economy. By all ordinary measures, we are either the world's largest economy, or the second-largest.
We have an exceptional military. No other army spans the globe like ours does ... ours is bigger than the ten next-largest militaries ....combined .... and that includes the armies of our allies and partners.
Because of that, an exceptional percentage of our exceptionally large budget goes to military spending, which means that's money we can't spend on anything else.
We have the exceptional petrodollar, which is supported by our exceptional military. The petrodollar allows us to buy anything from around the globe and run an immense trade deficit, decade after decade, without suffering the consequences that ordinary currencies would suffer.
Because of our exceptional currency, we have an exceptionally close bond with international banks.
We have an exceptional wealth gap, which is typically calculated as the GINI index. The USA's wealth gap is higher than all of other European and Commonwealth nations, and we're right in there with all of the Third-World nations that we think of as cesspools of corruption:
Republic of the Congo, Turkey, Senegal, Morocco, and Turkmenistan are ranked immediately LOWER than us, while Gabon, Russia, Uruguay, DR Congo,Argentina, Uganda, and Cameroon, and Nigeria are higher than us. That give you and idea of the company we keep.
For a comparison that you might appreciate, Norway has a GINI of 24.9, Australia has a GINI of 34.9, and the USA has a GINI of 41.1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
And, perhaps to protect that exceptional wealth gap, we have an exceptional prison population with the world's SECOND highest incarceration rate of approx 700 per 100,000 behind only the tiny Seychelles Islands. For comparison, Norway is 71 and Australia is 152. Hmmm... I see a trend.
The United States also has an exceptional health-care system within the developed world. Because nothing says We care about our people like making their health a source of profit.
We are an exceptionally religious nation, compared with European and Commonwealth nations. Sometimes I think that nations like Iran and the USA are comparable in religiosity.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/9016/worlds-apart-religion-canada-britain-u
s.aspx
http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/11/17/the-american-western-european-valu
es-gap/
I'm sure it must grate on your nerves to hear Americans thump on and on about the USA, either positively or negatively, but in fact the USA is probably THE largest driver of finance and warfare in the world. We ARE exceptional .... although maybe not for much longer... in ways that you, as a nation, probably don't want to achieve. So at least take a negative lesson from us.
Quote:EVERY nation is built around acquiring wealth. It would be a rare nation indeed that aspired to an ascetic life!
Most Western countries (and most non Western as well) are based around materialism, wealth accumulation whatever you want to call it. That isn't exceptional to America.
Quote:In minor ways. Not to the extent that the USA has committed to in terms of troops and weapons.
Most Western countries (and many non Western) are involved or have been involved in military conflicts, usually for economic reasons both international and local. Nothing exceptional about that.
Quote:I already addressed that, but will add at this point that any nation which continues with an exceptiona
Many of the problems experienced in America, divide between rich and poor, complex social problems, disenfranchised underclass - nothing unique about them today or throughout history.
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As a comment, a politician, I forget who, was making the point that an attack on our police is aimed at "the very fabric of our society" and all I could think of was...
Our society is held together by the police????
--------------
I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that they can get a few more shekels in their pockets.
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