Duke of Marmalade
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Oh dear. I withdraw all earlier comments. This subject is not my forté. I have enough on my hands grappling with tecate on divisibility of fiat/bitcoin.
While Black Lives Matter so do women's lives in extremist countries
- Thread starter Purple
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That's a huge issue. It creates a sort of pre-traumatic stress, an assumption of hostility with both parties.
Oh dear. I withdraw all earlier comments. This subject is not my forté. I have enough on my hands grappling with tecate on divisibility of fiat/bitcoin.
Hard to know which is the more complex topic!!!
This has been an issue 40 or 50 years in the making (short term - obviously a much longer problem). Up to the early 60's, the Democrats owned the South and were the segregationist party. From the original Jim Crow laws, they controlled the South - usually through the "management" of the voting system. This flipped in the 60's when JFK (and then Johnson) switched the Democrats to reversing the Jim Crow laws and remove desegregation. Nixon ran against this in '68 with a law-and-order policy that was really just a cloaked race driven strategy to flip the south. Erlichman (his domestic policy advisor) was quoted decades later as saying the "war on drugs" policy was a cloak to target black and left leaning parts of the population and criminalise them - the quote is disputed by his family but the effect of the policy is accurate. From late 60's right up to today, the criminal justice system is skewed to criminalise minority and marginalised communities - it is amazing how minor offences end up in jail time.
Allied to that - as mentioned above - the militarisation of the police and the stripping of social services means minor disputes, traffic offences, mental health issues etc can end up with a highly military response. And if you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Interestingly - the repeal of the segregationist policies in the 60's was the driver for the rise in the Southern religious movement which is also a driver in all of this. It led to the "religious freedom" defence which allowed schools be set up based on religion which in effect segregated. Also led to other social issues moving up the political agenda in the Republican party which had racial undertones.
It's a real example of current issues originating in a failure to close out the civil war and to appease the south. It's still bubbling away
This is a very important point. Everyone in the US is afraid of the police, even people who think they are not.
I am not suggesting the fear of the police and the reasons for it are the same for all groups in the US but to some extent everyone there is afraid of the police.
I have been stopped by the police in a number of countries in Eastern Europe, in Italy, and in Britain a number of times, including once under the PTA, I never once felt in anyway afraid. I have never been stopped by the police in the US, but my American friends attitude to being stopped even for innocuous traffic matters is best described as fear.
Lots of people in the US have Police Benevolent Fund bumper stickers on their cars, while those people would no doubt deny it, that always struck me as fear, or at least toadying up to authority.
Oh dear. I withdraw all earlier comments. This subject is not my forté. I have enough on my hands grappling with tecate on divisibility of fiat/bitcoin.
I still don't know how you have the energy to do anything after that thread......
Great post EmmDee. The details of that are will covered in the documentary 13th, although to prescribe racism as Nixon's only motivation for the War on Drugs is simplistic and inaccurate. While he was certainly a racist and the Southern Strategy were major factors he is beyond doubt that a intense personal dislike of drugs was also a major factor.
For balance is it also worth noting that Erlichman was bitter after being sent to prison over the Watergate affair and his family deny he ever said that about the war on drugs. That said the effect of the policy was to criminalise poor people.
Ceist Beag
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One stat which (probably shouldn't have but did) really surprised me is that although the USA accounts for about 5% of the worlds population, it accounts for about 25% of it's prisoners!*
*(source: )
Aside: Another startling statement from that report - "One out of every 100 American adults is incarcerated ".
*(source: )
Aside: Another startling statement from that report - "One out of every 100 American adults is incarcerated ".
Land of the free!
Not to mention "two-party" political system.
Population of how many? 330million, but only 'two' parties ever contesting for elections? I minded to think that it just one party with different factions.
Even Ireland has at least 6-7 parties elected to parliament. Throw in the North and there must be near a dozen parliamentary parties on this island alone. The European parliament has about 7 different groupings. But in the US, just one...sorry, two!
Spending on military would make most despot dictators look like weed-smoking pacifist hippies. TV audiences repeatedly called to give support to military personnel. Golf tournaments, MLB, NBA, NFL littered with military routines and flag-waving, national anthem displays, NK how are you?
Always in need of an enemy, communists, terrorists, Taliban, Bin Laden, Saddam, Russians etc...and if any of their own speak out and start ruffling feathers then snuff them out...JFK, MLK, Bobby Kennedy.
25% of world's incarcerated, including forced labour camps.
A private central bank, federal reserve, never been audited and can print money as it sees fit.
They do some cool stuff though, Movies, TV shows, music, art, technology etc....and if you are minded to make as much money as you can, without any limitations on wealth accumulation, it is the place to go.
It is a great country in so many ways, and a desperate one in many others.
All is not well when the only two runners from President are Trump and Biden. Whoever wins, it is a sad, sad indictment on the mental well being of US citizens.
Population of how many? 330million, but only 'two' parties ever contesting for elections? I minded to think that it just one party with different factions.
Even Ireland has at least 6-7 parties elected to parliament. Throw in the North and there must be near a dozen parliamentary parties on this island alone. The European parliament has about 7 different groupings. But in the US, just one...sorry, two!
Spending on military would make most despot dictators look like weed-smoking pacifist hippies. TV audiences repeatedly called to give support to military personnel. Golf tournaments, MLB, NBA, NFL littered with military routines and flag-waving, national anthem displays, NK how are you?
Always in need of an enemy, communists, terrorists, Taliban, Bin Laden, Saddam, Russians etc...and if any of their own speak out and start ruffling feathers then snuff them out...JFK, MLK, Bobby Kennedy.
25% of world's incarcerated, including forced labour camps.
A private central bank, federal reserve, never been audited and can print money as it sees fit.
They do some cool stuff though, Movies, TV shows, music, art, technology etc....and if you are minded to make as much money as you can, without any limitations on wealth accumulation, it is the place to go.
It is a great country in so many ways, and a desperate one in many others.
All is not well when the only two runners from President are Trump and Biden. Whoever wins, it is a sad, sad indictment on the mental well being of US citizens.
They may have too few but we probably have too many.
Yea, crazy stuff. And it dates from the 1950's, not the 1860's. It's a child of that Cold War fear, just like the religious Nationalism that has polarised the country so much. The good news is that an increasing number of young AMericans describe themselves as atheists, thank God.
Yep, nothing unites a family like a wolf at the door. It's all very Orwellian. I wouldn't include JFK on your list as he was as guilty as anyone of stoking the fires of fear. When you listen to his speeches about America's enemies it sounds surprisingly like Trump. Bobby was, in my opinion, a far greater and better man.
Yep, better schools would be cheaper.
That's not really been a problem. Imagine if they were at the whim of the President.
And they gave the world the first real democracy.
The Swiss would give them a good run for their money there, and a few others closer to home. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Very true although I'd hate to live there.
A bucket of cold sick would make a better President than Trump. Biden is washed out but he's a better option that Hillary and any of them are a better option than Sanders.
Ceist Beag
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Thanks for the tip on the 13th Purple, watched it there last night. That clip near the end where they played Trump during his previous election rallies over old shots of violence against black people was quite chilling.
I was reading up on the 13th and why it was written as it was and it is clear that Lincoln was a ardent racist. In a speech in Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed blacks having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites.
He shared the views held by Thomas Jefferson that slaves should be sent to Africa and South America to colonise those regions (Liberia, founded by the American Colonization Society in 1821, was this policy in practice) as the USA was, and should remain, the dominion of white protestant people.
He still held that view in 1862 when the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was written during the Civil War. The final Proclamation didn't contain such ideas but it also didn't apply to slave owning states which had remained on the Union side, nor to Confederate areas which were already under Union control. It was a way of further weakening the South and getting some 200,000 black men, mainly cannon fodder, into the Northern army. It was a military decision rather than an ideological one.
The first American leader to truly see Black people as equal in every way Robert Kennedy who then convinced his brother of the merits of that view.
John Adams - 2nd President. Represented slaves in court bids for freedom, one of the few founding fathers to never own a slave.
True, but he did speak against the bill to emancipate slaves in massachusetts in 1777 and was against allowing black soldiers to serve in the Revolutionary Army. therefore while he held a strong personal view that slavery was wrong that view did not inform his actions in public office.
His wife was a vocal abolitionist and if they were around today she's probably be the higher profile politician. His son, John Quincy Adams, was a vocal abolitionist in his political life but did any of them truly see black people as equal?
It was a question of timing. He spoke on both issues while looking to maintain unity during the independence push. I guess he saw the bigger, more immediate issue was to maintain the coalition against the UK. He argued that the legislation should be put on ice for the moment - he never argued that it was wrong.
Hard to know if someone views others as their equal - do I think my neighbour is my equal? But he certainly argued that slavery was morally wrong and argued that black people should have the same rights. Not quite the same I guess. But it was him who wrote the Declaration of Rights clauses that caused slavery to be abolished in Mass 3 years later
All true.
I was flicking through one night and Jimmy Fallon had the leader of the NACCP on (this was just after Fallon's apology for blackfacing) and another African American guy whose name escapes me. I didn't see all of the interview but one of them made an interesting point when he asked, "how many of you white people have a black friend?, I don't mean people you know from work or people you know from sport but a genuine black friend"?
Until American gets to that state, and I'd include Hispanic's in that scenario as well, it's hard to see things changing.
Until American gets to that state, and I'd include Hispanic's in that scenario as well, it's hard to see things changing.
True, but the same thing could be asked of a black audience about white people.
How many people posting here have a gay friend? Do you have to have one to think that gay people should not be discriminated against?