Really… Joe Biden can’t even say ‘that defunding the Police is bad’ without the press denouncing him?
As a white left leaning progressive I’ve been pushed to get my news from right-wing conservative programs for some utterance of what’s really going on. When I read the ABC Australian news, BBC or the NYT, I am constantly told I am part of a inherently guilty oppressive white regime majority.
I was a kid who grew up listening and admiring Bob Dylan but now I have no other place to turn for logic and truth than those expressed from conservative sources. The Press, Multinationals are all telling me how to think and that I’m part of this systemic racist problem.
I wrote about it before here ad nauseam – the danger of post modernist and anti meta-narrative thinking and the event at Evergreen College which this post is attributed and appears microscopic is actually forbearing about the macroscopic world we find ourselves. In a nutshell, the excesses of Social Media has caused a vacuum of effective moderate Leadership.
Really, God help us all …from an agnostic Christian.
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
Hi Matt. Yeah, that’s the problem with mainstream media, whether progressive or conservative. Both sides are going to say whatever their viewership wants to hear and the truth hovers….in between…..
I knew the minute the media kept hammering people on the “racism” issue that there was going to be burn out on the topic, because even though it’s extremely important, as we can see from worldwide support, it’s not effective to just keep pointing a finger at folks, especially since this is a brand-new idea entering many people’s consciousness these days.
No one wants to hear that something is “their fault” when they feel very separated and disconnected from it personally and don’t understand where the anger is coming from. And unfortunately the hammering from the media will probably retard the genuine, necessary enlightenment needed for everyone to move forward.
Like what Brett Weinstein just finished saying live in his podcast, what I believe we are beginning to see is the Dystopian vision as forewarned in Orwell’s ‘1984’ coming into fruition. The Science magazine has just published #ShutDownSTEM to strike for this movement. The New York times has just fired high ranking employees who didn’t toe the line. Bari Weiss has been talking about this. People have to stand up and be on the right side of history and frankly not enough are doing it, probably because the ones that are doing it are being cast out. The ones who are begrudgingly appeasing to this post modernist movement are just making the problem bigger for those next in line who will feel compelled to join the mob. Brett and his wife Heather just spent the last hour breaking down very carefully how exactly we are facing one the scariest moments in living history and more specifically about what I wrote here ‘Once Evergreen College and now the Western World’.
I hope this message finds you well Stacey. Thanks so much for posting.
I will not let someone make me feel guilty or put meaning behind my words and thoughts like the media tries to do. If I don’t believe X then I’m a racist…bullshit…I can make up my mind very well from the facts…although yes the facts are hard to get now with political correctness and the media catering to their core on both sides.
BTW Matt how have you been?
So nice to hear from you Max. You’re right, the facts are very hard to get right now. As I was just writing to Stacey about what Brett Weinstein and his wife Heather have just finished presenting, which is exactly what this post was dedicated ‘Once Evergreen College and now the Western World’. You know you are starting to see the hallmarks of George Orwell’s dystopian vision in ‘1984’ come to fruition when they start tearing down statues, the science magazine publishes ‘ShutDownSTEM’ and Police being shunned away. We are in deep trouble man.
Otherwise I’m doing well max. I’m sorry I haven’t been tuning into your posts or any posts for that matter. I’ve been busy doing other things. Also, I hope this post finds you and your family well. Thanks so much for posting.
I’m just glad you are alright Matt…I haven’t heard from you in a while.
We sure as hell didn’t need this on top of what we are already getting from the covid mess.
I couldn’t agree more, but obviously the pandemic was the catalyst for this overreaction. We have lived in such good times, that people feel that due to this once in a 100 year Pandemic, that they need something to blame their anxiety on. It’s bullshit.
Well, many people have NOT lived in such good times, so that’s also what’s happening. Many people feel that life has already been dystopian for a long time already. But if a certain majority of the world felt that “life is good” then what the others felt didn’t really matter.
The problem is, of course, is the unrelenting badgering and blaming. That will get us nowhere and people will burn out. All in all, I feel overwhelmed and anxious. I hope all this energy goes to some good in the end……..
That’s where we are in disagreement. People have globally (until the COVID) never lived in better times. There are too many statistics about how the poverty level has dropped to go into it. The circumstances that Millennial and younger generation find themselves in the modern market economy in western countries is another matter. Something tells me this outlandish reaction about Floyd’s death is just a catalyst for young people to go helter skelter in the wake of the anxiety surrounding the Pandemic and their situation. Personally, I don’t understand what more evidence you need to show this uprising is ill-natured and anarchic in its method and execution than what has already been presented here and especially by my most recent post about Brett and Heather’s podcast. All arguments aside Amiga..thanks so much for posting and I hope you are well.
It’s not just Floyd’s death, Matt. Floyd’s death was the last straw, combined with all the stress of the lockdown, lost jobs, and general anxiety. I wrote like a six-page response to you about what’s been going on in the US but it’s like you don’t believe me. Black people are murdered constantly by the police and other people who generally escape consequences. This has been going on for years and years, and only because of phones are the general populace catching up to the cold, hard reality of it. And the world-wide response shines a harsh spotlight on racism, how far-reaching it is and the myriad lives everywhere that it touches. I’m not really sure how you can say the response is outlandish when it hinges on hundreds of years of the same behavior. Don’t be confused that it’s about Floyd. It’s about hundreds of Floyds, thousands.
Anyway, take care of yourself.
Hey you!
They are not murdered constantly by the Police. Hundreds of Floyd’s, thousands. What? As I stated before, ‘there is a tendency to resort to alarm-ism or sensationalism by way of using bad analogies, innuendos and sweeping generalizations, which don’t reflect reality. You’ll find me reluctant to engage in ideological misrepresentations’.
Please Stacey, I implore you to listen to Sam Harris’ latest podcast ‘Can We Pull Back from the Brink’ where he states the actual facts/numbers surrounding the police homicide rates and the media /public hysteria associated with this. Less people were murdered by the Police in LA last year (2019) than in the previous 30 years. 50% of people killed by the Police are white and 20% are African American yet African Americans are guilty of committing 50% of the violent crime. But Harris goes much deeper into it looking at individual cases and means by which they were killed. Really, it’s the most important community announcement I have heard in a long while, because it is based on FACT and EVIDENCE something sorely missing in mainstream media and the community at large.
If you’re opinion remains unchanged after seeing this podcast, then I’m afraid you are just going to have to continue feeling embittered, angry, and sad about this. But I can’t do anything else to assist than present you with portals to the TRUTH, which the mainstream media (and many social media circles) don’t. They just want you to push an ideological agenda, create tribalism and make you feel there is another side which is EVIL and you are IRREPRESSIBLY GOOD.
I wish everybody in America would listen to this episode…
So when you say 50% of black people commit the most violent crimes, what does that mean exactly? 50% of people killed by police are white and 20% are black….so the blacks are *lucky* they’re not getting caught more? Blacks only make up 13% of the population here, so 20% of them getting killed isn’t great odds. And how does this explain all of the people who have NOT committed violent crimes who end up dead at the hands of the police? Are you even aware of the stories? I don’t think you are.
This includes white people too, whose stories we don’t see even remotely enough, also getting murdered by police when a spoon is mistaken for a gun, etcetera. My husband and I watch both conservative and liberal news and take both with a grain of salt. But if one thing is clear, it’s clear that there’s a conscious or unconscious bias against blacks. And if it’s a common practice, an old joke about police, actually, to leave drop guns next to bodies (so they can pretend they had a reason to murder someone) or, like the cop caught on video chasing an unarmed black guy who was simply late with his alimony payment and then shooting him in the back and leaving his taser on the ground next to the dead man as if to say he had a “weapon”….if it’s a common practice to lie about what they’re doing, how can we believe anything they say, including reports and statistics? Do those numbers and statistics make sense to you because you possibly have a certain perception of what life is like here in America, or what black people are like, that may be completely wrong?
Let’s just say the police are the first problem. They do need to be defunded. They do need to be cleaned out. Cops that shove a 75-year-old white man over and leave him bleeding from his ears on the sidewalk need to be fired and get jobs at Denny’s as cooks. Cops that tase two college students and then rip them out of their car while they’re just trying to get home need to be fired and get jobs as janitors at the high school. Cops that bust a door down at the wrong address without announcing themselves and just start shooting, killing a woman who’s sleeping in bed, need to be fired and go work at Disneyland as guards.
It worked in Camden, New Jersey. They defunded the department and started over and have community-based policing now. Crime and homicides have plummeted, along with complaints about excessive force. When an officer is walking on the street and knows your name and there’s mutual respect, things change.
The funny thing is, I thought we were having a discussion about this. But I find myself telling you about things that I know about because I live here, and you’ve pretty much rejected everything I’ve said like I’m living in fairy dreamland or something. It’s like you telling me something about life in Columbia and me having the balls to say you’re deluded. I had no idea you felt a need to “help me.” I appreciate it, Matt, but I didn’t ask you to help me not to feel sad. I will continue to feel sad, because I live in this country and I know about its hypocrisies. My entire family, including me, have been subjected to racism. My father is a doctor and was called the N-word by police once. My brother was walking home from school with his books and was stopped and frisked by the police for absolutely no reason. But we’re the lucky ones who have had educations and support systems and resources to “keep us out of trouble.” So we didn’t end up in that 50% of violent crime statistic (which, as you may or may not know, is mostly perpetuated on other blacks, unfortunately; blacks don’t generally decide to blow white joggers away just because; we leave that to the folks in the South, where it’s still a tradition to murder blacks and have the sheriff cover for them for months afterwards).
I shudder to think that many of the “non-lethal” racist situations my father and brother found themselves in years ago might not have ended without incident if they happened now, in today’s climate.
So thanks for your concern about my sadness, but fortunately, I’m not the only one who’s sad, as you can see from the reaction of the world. People are sick of the same thing I’m sick of. It’s time to be sad and angry, although you don’t seem to be. You have stats for everything, even how good life is for people. I know people with Master’s degrees who are making less than $20 an hour. I know people working two and three jobs to pay off student loans. Pretty much nobody younger than me will ever be able to afford a house. The fact that you think this whole thing is an “overreaction” to George Floyd’s death reveals a lack of understanding, or desire to understand, this country’s dark past, the deep roots of systemic racism, how that burdens, works against, and destroys people, and the terrifying fascist control corporations have over all of us which is slowly pouring dirt over ¾ of the population as they try fruitlessly to climb out of an ever-expanding, endless hole. I’m not sure what world you’re living in, but it’s not the same one I’m living in or that anyone I know is living in.
So 1. Defund the police; start over. Train them to connect with people and also not to reach for their gun as a knee-jerk reaction and/or shoot to maim.
2. Put more money into communities instead of the millions and millions into militarizing the police.
3. With mutual respect and consideration between police and the community and good vibes and pheromones being created and also resources flowing into neighborhoods and businesses and opportunities blooming where before there was next to nothing and no hope…maybe that 50% violent crime stat will also begin to shrink down to nothing just like crime and complaints of police brutality in Camden, NJ.
That’s when I will agree that life is maybe not “good” for everyone, but at least better, with the possibility of improvement. And sorry, I just can’t sit through another one of those podcasts.
It’s unfortunate you didn’t listen to that Harris podcast which cites those figures I relayed to you and supports the arguments presented by a plethora of other well-credentialed, but disenchanted public figures I have previously mentioned in our conversation. You were asking, what do I mean exactly? I just stated facts as they were presented. Take from it what you want. I’m sure you are correct, that there are examples of people who haven’t committed violent crimes (black and white) and been killed by the Police.
Unlike you, I believe defunding the Police is exactly what you don’t want to do. Who will replace them and what seriously bad people and gangs will take advantage of the vacuum left when Police are turned away or abolished by their local constituents? They are already underfunded and receive insufficient training with weapons in particular. My argument would be they need more funding; more on the job training and oversight. Your citing about the effectiveness of defunding the department in Camden in New Jersey sounds intriguing and I will look into it. I agree it is invaluable (ideal) that Police have a strong community presence in terms of their interactions with individuals in a given place – mutual trust/respect if you like.
I don’t believe there is a ‘systemic’ conscious or unconscious bias against blacks in the Police force. Once again the Harris podcast goes to great lengths by presenting facts and evidence to demonstrate there isn’t this bias. On the contrary. White police are less likely to kill blacks than black cops are based on the figures. Please listen to the podcast keeping in mind Harris is an ‘boot’s and all’ lefty from way back. You say it’s ‘common practice’ (an old joke) that cops leave guns next to bodies etc, perhaps that has occurred, but common really? You do indeed have a low opinion of the Police. Stacey, you haven’t presented any facts or evidence to support your sweeping generalisations and emotive rhetoric. You have presented some off the cuff horrific incidents including the run-in with your brother, but that in no way can provide a fair and reasonable representation of the effectiveness of an entire ‘institution’ who have 10 million interactions with civilians in a given year where gun ownership is highly prevalent in the general population.
I haven’t rejected everything you have said Stacey. I didn’t say you were deluded, but I did implore that you listen to the facts and evidence ie the truth mysteriously evading the hysteria which has been taking the western world by the ‘short and curlys’. I am free to weigh in on the debate / issue because if you haven’t noticed these protests and BLM movement which stemmed initially from the US has moved onto the UK and my home country Australia. I’m not telling you about life in the US, but I am relaying the facts and evidence I have received from various sources about Police killings, and they don’t align with your message nor the message in mainstream media and corporations. You told me you were sad in an earlier message when you heard about George Floyd’s senseless killing which is why I referenced it in my previous message. Were you sad also about all the senseless killings of white persons that noone knows the names of and well-exceed black deaths?
I’m afraid Stacey, you CANNOT undo the past. Racism still occurs yes, is it ‘systemic’ in your police force? All facts and evidence point to a resounding ‘No’!
Enjoy your day Stacey!