why is it my threads (more than some others) frequently derail into a pedantic argument and the original point is normally lost by the 2nd page?
Only at a protest, but I am very curious to see how the alleged 2nd Amendment supporters handle this, cuz it seems like the vast majority of pro-gun people today also happen to be racist at the same time. Not just citizens, but also politicians, and cowboy policemen.
Cuz they say things like "why do you hate Americans".Why do you hate Americans?
I have to confess I have never seen a single person argue that the entirety of the black/white gap is due to racism. What I have seen people argue is that a gap that large is very unlikely absent ANY racism.
I haven’t seen any of what you describe here either. I don’t know of a single, solitary person who would deny a link between higher crime and more police.
I’m sure they exist on Twitter somewhere but it’s in no way indicative of the national dialogue.
I’m sorry, but this is a very poor argument.
No serious person thinks police actions are the sole result of racism and so it makes your argument kind of ridiculous. I don’t know how to respond to it because it’s not tethered to any reality I have experienced, and I’ve been right in the middle of a few protests here in Brooklyn.
Thinking like that and electing Democrats, people get what they get.
I think your argument is specious. It is essentially saying that because no one uses the word "solely" that this is not, in practical effect, what they are arguing. There are certain conservative posters here who will occasionally say they don't like Trump, but spend all their time bashing the left. Sure, they never said that the left was the sole source of all our ills. Apparently they just forgot to ever bother criticizing the right. Must have been a brain fart. According to your logic, we should take them at their word when they claim to be unbiased critics of both sides because, after all, they never said there were literally no problems on the right.
So let me re-frame what I said and see if it suits you more. Liberals aren't literally saying that these disparities in police violence between the US and other countries, and police presence in minority neighborhoods were solely due to racism. They are just unwilling or uninterested in discussing any other causes. Unwilling because they are biased by antipathy toward police, and also their fear of saying anything which seems at odds with a race-based narrative.
I once again strongly disagree that by not mentioning other controls it is implied that they don’t exist. In my line of work poverty affects basically every analysis I try to do. We rarely mention it when discussing whatever IV/DVs we are looking at though because everyone already knows it. Anyone who tried to say by not talking about it we were implying it was not an issue would get a room full of eye rolls.Tell me, why do people bring up the high per capita police killings here and not mention gun control in spite of our lack of it undoubtedly being the single largest factor? Who has even made this point besides me? And how much of a response have I ever gotten when I've made the point? (psst: zero) Also, we had a thread containing extensive discussion of the disparity in drug busts between whites and blacks, yet no one but me mentioned that a major factor in this is likely due to community differences in how drugs are trafficked?
My point went unanswered in that thread. The question is, why? The point is pretty obvious that when you ignore other factors and instead discuss only one, the implication is that there aren't any other factors. You are implying this by what you do NOT want to discuss, not by making a general statement that there is only one cause.
Easy, I’ll play the Presidents part. I’m good at role playing deplorable’s
“They’re armed thugs destroying monuments and burning cars”
“Weak Mayor has Police afraid to do anything”
I agree with everything you said. However, the same as how the military has different branches and functions, we need to do the same for police. We’ve trained police to handle an armed populace, and approach every encounter as an armed scenario, and then blame them when it desensitizes them and creates a pattern of violence. It’s also ironic that there is mistrust and animosity towards police, but also an expectation of a swift response from police once the criminal shootings begin.This really isn't a difficult concept to grasp.
Everyone accepts that violent crime as a whole is a problem. That's a given. But there is something fundamentally, horribly wrong when the police, the people who are supposed to be the ones keeping that crime in check, are murdering unarmed and in some cases innocent people in what appears to be a pattern of systemic racism.
You know the expression "better to let ten guilty people escape than have an innocent person suffer?" That applies here as well. Street violence is a tragedy; it's a greater tragedy when violence is perpetuated by authorities abusing their power.
You want to curb animosity toward police? Stop them from murdering unarmed black people. Train them to deescalate rather than resorting to violence. Prevent police unions from protecting murderous and otherwise corrupt cops. Ensure that an officer fired for serious violations is blacklisted at all police departments across the country. I don't know why you're trying to pin the blame for distrust of the police on the public rather than... you know, the police who engender that distrust.
Well saidI am more inclined toward Starbuck's liberal view of this than your conservative view. Police violence does not arise in a vacuum. Treating it solely as a matter of "personal responsibility" is the equivalent of a conservative arguing that crime in black neighborhoods is entirely the personal responsibility of the criminals and no one else. Hence, we need to apprehend and punish criminals more. Hence, we need more police, and more militarized police. That is what an argument based solely on "personal responsibility" leads to.
Liberals have been arguing for years that there is a socio-economic context to crime and that its root causes need addressing. His argument in relation to police violence is parallel.
Bear in mind that the WaPo statistics on police killings show that over 80% of these killings involve a suspect armed with a firearm. These are the vast majority of killings which are largely ignored by the media. When we compare the 1000 police killings per year here with Europe, we see a huge per capita disparity and this leads liberals to conclude...that our police are just more racist and more bloodthirsty. Sort of like saying that blacks commit more violent crime because blacks are just more inclined to do so, which is what conservatives think.
Liberals are, strangely enough, ignoring the fact that European police are just not very likely to encounter suspects armed with guns, because apparently gun control is suddenly less important than just being angry with police.
Gun control, perhaps. And many other factors. We have a popular culture which glorifies violence, and most especially violence done by the "good guys" which are usually portrayed as law enforcement. And we have a gangsta rap culture which glorifies violence by street gangs. And we have lots of socio-economic factors which affect crimes in these neighborhoods. These issues are complex and all have to be viewed in context if we are to get a grip on rational solutions.
Police reform is important but it is only one piece of the puzzle. He's right that police violence cannot be viewed as wholly separate from violent crime in general.
I don’t know what to say other than that this is entirely divorced from the reality of the discourse as I know it. Liberals have always spoken about other things that affect crime rates like poverty, history of prior incarceration, etc.
So I guess all I can say is your description of the discourse is false and so your criticism of it is false as well. There is a greater focus on the racism in the system right now but to say people are unwilling to discuss the rest is simply untrue.
I once again strongly disagree that by not mentioning other controls it is implied that they don’t exist. In my line of work poverty affects basically every analysis I try to do. We rarely mention it when discussing whatever IV/DVs we are looking at though because everyone already knows it. Anyone who tried to say by not talking about it we were implying it was not an issue would get a room full of eye rolls.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve raised the general point that gun access leads to greater violence, gun violence in particular. No one has said that there aren’t other things that affect arrest rates, but again, that’s because the discussion isn’t about control variables, it’s about the IV/DV under discussion. If you want to make an argument that 100% of the disparity is due to non-race related reasons I’m open to hearing it, but I think you will fail badly.
It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that it’s unclear as to why it’s relevant.
Google does not share your dim view of the intersection between liberals, gun control, and police form.Then we have what we call in the law, a "dispute of fact." We recently had a thread started on the topic of "1000 police killings per year" in the US and how it is so much worse than in other countries. Care to guess how much discussion that thread contained about what, according to WaPo's research, is responsible for over 80% of these killings? It is utterly absurd to discuss "1000 killings per year" and talk about racism and bloodthirstiness of police without mentioning guns. Of course they don't want to talk about it, because pointing out that over 80% were due to rampant gun ownership and circulation makes the cops seems less racist and bloodthirsty. That is not a narrative which plays well right now on the left.
Liberals will talk about guns and gun control, but never in the context of police shootings. And conservatives, of course, never want to talk about guns being the problem. So we have a blackout on both fronts.
This is true not only on P&N, but in the media. I've read dozens of editorials about police violence. I've only read one which mentioned the critical issue of guns. These issues are complex, but the complexity is being ignored, meaning implicitly denied, because people are more interested in pushing a certain narrative about police.
Google does not share your dim view of the intersection between liberals, gun control, and police form.
This simple search will show you multiple articles in major publications from the present and going back years making exactly the point that you claim liberals recoil from making.
gun control and police reform - Google Search
www.google.com
You finally got it right. It’s true whether President Trump says it or not.
The moderates need to wake up, take charge, and start solving problems.Then we have what we call in the law, a "dispute of fact." We recently had a thread started on the topic of "1000 police killings per year" in the US and how it is so much worse than in other countries. Care to guess how much discussion that thread contained about what, according to WaPo's research, is responsible for over 80% of these killings? It is utterly absurd to discuss "1000 killings per year" and talk about racism and bloodthirstiness of police without mentioning guns. Of course they don't want to talk about it, because pointing out that over 80% were due to rampant gun ownership and circulation makes the cops seems less racist and bloodthirsty. That is not a narrative which plays well right now on the left.
Liberals will talk about guns and gun control, but never in the context of police shootings. And conservatives, of course, never want to talk about guns being the problem. So we have a blackout on both fronts.
This is true not only on P&N, but in the media. I've read dozens of editorials about police violence. I've only read one which mentioned the critical issue of guns. These issues are complex, but the complexity is being ignored, meaning implicitly denied, because people are more interested in pushing a certain narrative about police.
Probably because it’s more effective as click bait. Similarly without looking I bet Forbes has some articles up about shocking new IPhone 12 developments that are not in fact, shocking.Yes, I said I read one editorial which addressed the issue. The vast majority do not. And you should consider why the first article that pops up has this headline:
The Overlooked Role of Guns in the Police-Reform Debate
Why is it being described as "overlooked" if I am in fact wrong? It's described that way because it is, in fact, largely being overlooked.
Probably because it’s more effective as click bait. Similarly without looking I bet Forbes has some articles up about shocking new IPhone 12 developments that are not in fact, shocking.
We don’t need the Atlantic to adjudicate if you are right or wrong, we can use our own eyes and reason. After a cursory search I showed you a significant number of articles on the topic from major publications. This is a direct refutation of your argument. If this were some orphan editorial or a topic that liberals were terrified to broach you wouldn’t see that. You said liberals don’t want to talk about it - well, clearly they do, and they are.
Okay Boomer, there are Blacks & Browns all around you waiting to do something horrible.
No it's not a direct refutation, because you are using anecdotal evidence. It's like me saying, look, I can google search and find 30 websites which espouse that the earth is flat. Therefore this must be a common view.
I am using my own eyes. I am a voracious reader of news media, reading 90% of the editorials of WaPo, NYT, and CNN on a daily basis, and I also frequent this discussion board on a daily basis. And I see the issue of police killings being discussed a lot, particularly these days. Only rarely do I see issues other than race and a police culture of violence being discussed as causal factors. This emphasis on certain causes while other causes are more often ignored is not a coincidence. Just like it isn't a coincidence that mainstream national media almost never discusses police killings of white people even though they are actually more frequent.
Okay BoomerThere you go again, throwing around the race card. Nothing I posted has anything to do with ethnic bigotry. I’ve already exposed the inherent and insulting race-baiting you and your poop throwing buddies engage in here in another thread so I won’t repeat all that here.
Why do you hate Americans?
Given that there is clearly no empirical evaluation of the frequency of articles intersecting gun control and police reform anecdotal evidence is all we have.
Yes we only have anecdotal evidence, but not all anecdotal evidence is equal value. My anecdotal evidence is that I extensively read news media every day, for years on end, and this view is not one I have commonly encountered. The problem with google search evidence is that American media writes millions words a day in the form of thousands of articles. And a huge percentage of those articles are now online and searchable. Hence, you can find a relatively long list of articles espousing pretty much any arguably reasonable viewpoint.
This is moving the goalposts. If you want to say that the media and people are biased towards more sensationalistic article topics I would agree with you (and have said as much many times in the past). That’s not your original argument though.But your emphasis on how many articles you can find expressing the view is also overlooking something else that is important. It's the number of articles written about police violence which talk about racism and a culture of violence among police but mention nothing about guns. I think it is ludicrous to ever discuss it without even mentioning what is causing 80%+ of the killings. If I were to use my time to look around, how many links do you suppose I could find showing exactly that?
And none of that is even addressing liberal places in social media, such as right here on P&N, where it is consistently never brought up, and when one poster brings it up, there is literally no reply whatsoever.
To claim there is no bias at work here is absurd.
You are 100% right in this and your first post. Don’t let the leftofascists here at anandtech bully you. They appear at heart to be worms and their mouths connect to the strings being pulled by MSNBC. And they run in a small pack of blathering anti-American, antifa loving, racebaiters. Challenge their nonsense as you have and they turn into chimps flinging pooh.
Yep, unfortunately the politicians of every democrat run city in America is abandoning its police and the purge is taking their place. Barricades in Atlanta manned by anarchists terrorizing citizens and now shooting and killing children as they drive by. CHOP/CHAZ during the summer of love, same. Chicago as you point out, every weekend, same.
And these same cities have had Democrat leadership for many generations. Yet still as segregated as ever. Endemic poverty. Extremely high rates of single motherhood/paternal abandonment. Busted schools. Food deserts, paycheck loan places, dollar stores, blight, abandoned homes, etc, etc. is this what we want America as a whole to be like? If it is, vote Biden.
If you don’t, then don’t fall for the misdirection of the left, BLM, and the rioters and looters. They haven’t and won’t fix the above. My heart is with the people who live in those communities, especially the children, treated as photo ops by the Democrats, when they are paid attention to at all.
Of course black lives matter! I’m waiting, probably in vain, for the leftist, liberals, progressives and democrats to give some indication they actually believe it too!
Okay Boomer