Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by purr1n, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    CK didn’t lose shit. 49ers were going to cut him and any 9ers fan knew that defenses had already figured him out and that he lacked the field vision to be a NFL QB. NFL settled, gave him millions. Nike millions more. The dude’s a celebrity and is doing what he really wants to do, raising social awareness, but making millions. Not exactly seeing the great sacrifices here in terms of career or comfort. He’s convinced the 40% of the population that were going to be for him anyway, but pushed away the 25% that were undecided. I’ll put the number at 35% for people who would never be behind him no matter what.

    My wife stood vigil for the 8:46 with a flashlight outside the other night. #defundpolice will end up losing her. These law and order type things are important for white suburban housewives. I suggested to her the opposite; we fund the police more so we can fire these fuckups without worrying about recruiting with high standards. There’s every indication that these police fuckups are identifiable via their disciplinary records.

    It’s like that racism episode in Kung Fu where David Carradine’s character said something to the effect that there are always going to be people who are against you, but then there are people who don’t know or haven’t made up their minds. So there’s no point to be an angry Chinaman, better off being a magnanimous Chinaman. There’s a pragmatism to winning causes.

    CK could easily get Dale Earnhardt or Drew Brees on his side. Just talk to them to arrange a media event where he actually stands for the flag to shock the shit out of everyone. But he’s too stubborn, too egotistical. It’s compromise and reaching across the aisle, that’s what builds bridges. The problem is that it takes true courage to do these things.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
  2. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Defunding police is not a serious proposal in any way - it's an (understandable on a certain level) emotional outburst. We expect too much from our police. Most people can not do it. To get an idea of what it's like to spend your entire working day/week/life trying to control and contain the underclass, habitually criminal, and mentally ill of society a person could spend some time with them. Police often have civilian interface programs like "ride along" and the like. Or you could volunteer to do some social work - see what social workers deal with every day. Or, you could spend some time in medicine, maybe volunteering at your local ER for a while. This is not to say that doing these things would necessarily break through naivete and idealism, but it might.

    So much of this moral indignation by otherwise safe, fat, dumb, and well adjusted bourgeois middle class is as deep as a puddle of water. It will prove as lasting as well...

    edit: in many if not most places now, if you want to understand the underclass/criminal/mentally ill and what its like to deal with them everyday you can become a teacher/worker/volunteer and work in an all too average public school...
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
  3. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Any time you have protests, you are going to get itchy finger police firing beanbags, trying to run people over, clubbing skulls. Many officers have been injured too. Heck, didn’t some ruffian stab a NY officer in the neck, take his gun, and shoot two other NY officers?

    Heck, many years ago when Jerry Brown, the moonbeam liberal Jerry Brown, was Oakland Mayor, he gave to order to fire on a bunch of protestors at the docks. f**k, rubber bullets do a lot of damage.

    Riot rules are in effect once the third bottle is thrown from the crowd, immediately when an officer bleeds, or if an order to disperse in 90 seconds isn’t followed in 70. All it takes is one fuckup in the crowd. Once riot rules are in effect, you have no recourse. The police are simply following procedure and doing what they are trained to do for crowd control.

    The only protests which are safe are those that go from Trader Joe’s across fro the Calabasas Commons (ritzy outdoor shopping area with celeb sightings) to Calabasas City Hall, like 500ft away.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
  4. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    If policing is reduced, the state will lose the ability to protect its own people unless the military takes control. If people feel that unsafe they will form posses like the old west. If that doesn't work, you start getting crazy shit like semi-feudal warbands whose job it is to use violence.
     
  5. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    That's exactly right. Someone will step in very quickly as a "security" force. How about the Community Safety Department as a part of Blackwater USA? And that will be the best case scenario. Because Mexican cartels just cannot wait to provide security services for US citizens.
     
  6. haywood

    haywood Friend

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    That’s basically already happened in Chicago (this was the first link to turn up on ddg), the police are at least theoretically constrained by rules, the Latin Kings, not so much.

     
  7. Boops

    Boops Friend

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    I love it when Psalm comes in with the historical perspective. I get what you're saying but George Floyd, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, etc., etc., etc. would suggest that the state is not doing a good job of protecting its own people and is in fact responsible for their deaths.

    Lol if you don't think that CK's career was negatively impacted by his protesting. He took a stand (knee) basically alone and was vilified for it by much of the country and the President and blackballed by the league. Yes he is not hurting financially now, but nothing about where he finds himself was guaranteed or predictable when he started.

    I don't know. What is courageous about going along with the status quo? That's the opposite of courage. It would take true courage for Dale and Drew to take a knee.

    Activists and community leaders have been asking for accountability, scrutiny, deescalation training, demilitarization, etc. for many years. We still have itchy fingered police clubbing people, shooting people, gassing people, beating people, murdering people on film. I don't know much about the changes in LA policing you're talking about, but it doesn't seem to me that this is a problem that can be reformed away or solved with "more but better" police. They have had lots of opportunity to change, but it's all still happening. What is left for people but to demand that their tax dollars be allocated to institutions that are more responsive to the people they are supposed to serve and protect?

    I'm not sure what you're saying. I'm not denying that a cop's job is difficult. They do seem to be the only one of these professions that you've mentioned that kill, beat, violate people on the regular.
     
  8. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    No, the state is actually doing a pretty good job protecting its own people, and yes, sometimes is responsible for their deaths. When you have an institution, any institution that is authorized to use a deadly force, sometimes it will be used maliciously, against innocent people.
     
  9. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    One solution often bandied about by those who support police abolition is community monitoring or whatever the name is; basically volunteering individuals to act in the stead of protective services. This presumes incorruptiblility, fortitude, and actual skill.

    I find this notion optimistic to a fault and reeking of privilege.

    Another argument often bandied about is that abolition does not necessarily entail the complete absence of a "better" police force in the future, which then makes me wonder how many people crying for abolition are actually aware of this nuance. I could easily be stupid, but why not make the distinction between extensive reform and burning the thing down wholesale in this case? Okay, so police forces started out as enabling of slavery— is that genuinely reflective of how they are now?

    I agree that diverting funds to other groups e.g. social workers, psychologists (cough), and EMTs instead of relying solely on police to address a wide array of issues makes sense, but it's also hard to ignore how the bulk of abolitionist sentiment appears deeply rooted in harmful personal experiences or experiences by people close to them. Yes, stereotypes are often rooted in fact and that's not a notion pleasing to many, but as @YMO and @Stuff Jones point out this could blind people to addressing the reasons why people turn to crime and violence to begin with.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
  10. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive. LAPD has a lot of its up and downs, but it’s changed for the better. Google search these terms: community policing not grandfathers LAPD npr la times. IMO, the most serious problem is poor response times and police not giving a crap - which is a result of too small of a force - this from personal experience having to call them in when I’m in LA proper. FYI: most people usually stand idly by assuming someone else has already called the police when something happens.

    If we want to make it a zero sum game, we can always take the money our from high-speed rail and homeless shelter projects. Billions unaccounted for there. $20B for the rail. A $1.2B bond in 2016 to house 10k homeless. Another 0.25% tax hike. Not much has happened. It’s sort of a mystery. Do homeless lives matter? I don’t know. The high-speed rail was a dumb idea. Distances are too far and not enough in between SoCal and the Bay Area, plus some very serious geographical challenges. If it were built, it the main beneficiaries would probably be drug mules (for the routes up north to the Pacific NW and the mountain states). I knew a Mexican lady with young kids that did this, along with a borrowed citizenship card from another person. It was cool. She needed to survive and feed her kids and I could care less what people in Denver (a common destination for her) smoked.

    The way to make communities better is to bring in investment and uplift the fortunes of everyone. Jerry Brown did a great job there when he was Oakland Mayor. He leaned on his contacts to invest in Oakland. Revamped major public spaces like Jack London Square and downtown. Brought in a lot of people from the wealthy cities, Danville, San Ramon, to open business offices there. People were so sick of crap that he was able to pass laws to make himself King of Oakland to make these changes. Made areas safe and nice so young people would move there. His approach was as if he was waging a war. That dude was a tough mofo those days, but Oakland needed it. It was weird because he was ex-Governor Moonbeam, and supposed to all Buddhist and shit. I thought he would be all new-age and soft. Turns out he was more like the Zen master that whacked the shit out of you. After his reign, I didn’t hear the "Cokeland" moniker much anymore.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
  11. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    The more you talk about defunding the police, the more you are hurting yourself politically if you are in an area that votes either way.

    Personally, people focus too much on the Federal Executive branch for leadership (the "President") when these matters are handled at the local/state level. If you hate how things are run at you local town/city/county, you vote those guys out locally if you can. President Trump or a President Biden can't fix shit, this is a 10th Amendment issue. This is also why we Americans are dumb.

    I picked up my GF when she protested in Downtown Jacksonville today. Saw signs of defunding the police and stuff like that.

    However, this is what a good solid of the local population really think about these protests. When I used to go to some of the OAFAS meetings locally, let just say they were mostly in their 60s, grew up in a different area, and mostly not the most respected bunch towards those who aren't white. No use brother to argue, their mind is made up. That's the point.
     
  12. crenca

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    Right. That's their job unlike the others mentioned. That's not a pickle in their holster, nor is that long tool in their squad car a solemi. Reforms are one thing, but abolition? Who you gonna call when your wicked neighbor threatens you and your own? It won't be Ghostbusters, but like others have said there will others willing to step in - for a price. As the Mexicans and just about all of Latin America have learned, the price for giving up on civil society is very high because the characters that step in make our police look very very benign, and they are 99.99% of the time. Mexico is not ruled by an elected government, not at the local level - they're ruled and policed by de facto war lords.

    In any case, this is all rhetorical because defunding of police is not a serious proposal, nor is some kind of revolution/riot/looting/agitation "protest" going to get the justice and reform that is legitamately needed - on the contrary, it's going to make it harder. It's 1968 all over again, except it's not in that our society is more frayed in some ways - but better off in other ways.

    Some believe that our culture (aka "western civilization") has already collapsed, that we are in a kind of long slow death. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre put it this way:

    "...protest is now almost entirely that negative phenomenon which characteristically occurs as a reaction to the alleged invasion of someone’s rights in the name of someone else’s utility. The self-assertive shrillness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure that protesters can never win an argument; the indignant selfrighteousness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure equally that the protesters can never lose an argument either..." (From "After Virtue", published in 1981)

    This "incommersurability" is a fancy word that means we no longer share enough common assumptions about our reality, world, and society to be a society. This is the deep contradiction in "multi-culturalism" - there is no culture that is "multi" and lasting in history. We don't agree on the very basics as to what it means to live, and how to do it.

    I don't know, guys like MacIntyre have a way of seeing things most of us don't want to admit, like how even protest is just shrill nothingness so often now, but might be too glass half empty, at least I hope so. If we really are at a Weimar America moment, well then the Brown Shirts are right around the corner. Whether they are right or left, or just plain criminal/war lord, the outcome for most will be the same...
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
  13. Stuff Jones

    Stuff Jones Friend

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    Community programs vs police funding should be a false choice. The military loses more money between couch pillows than many departments get in their entire annual budgets (just google "military waste" to be overwhelmed by the numbers). Tighten that up and you have billions to transfer to local community development or education programs.
     
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2020
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    They are also one of those professions that get beaten, stabbed, spit on, pissed on, shot, summarily executed while eating donuts in the squad car, mobbed, and too quickly judged (truncated footage).

    There’s the question of whether those programs work or if the money will be effectively spent or not used for something else (common in California). There is stuff out that that really works - the SBA or Small Business Administration - the loans. I saw it being used effectively when I was in small banking. The SBA program lessened the risks of the banks to they could loan more to minorities and disadvantaged groups. I worked for a bank in the super nice hoods, so I was surprised at the number of SBA loans. But it’s a win-win.

    TBH, I think reparations are a better idea than programs. I am dead serious. The Japanese who were sent to concentration camps got them. However, nothing beats private investment - because someone’s ass is on the line. With government, no one’s ass is on the line.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
  15. Stuff Jones

    Stuff Jones Friend

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    Funny, I'm just watching this right now.



    Reparations should have been paid immediately after slavery to those who had been enslaved. I think reparations now 150 years later is a bad idea for a bunch of reasons not least of which is that it would polarize the country even further.

    If you think programs targeted at poor communities are too wasteful, then give cash transfers to all families making under say 50k, regardless of race.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2020
  16. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Aren’t they almost the same thing? Except that money for programs gets diverted to other budget items or misused by bureaucrats, friends of politicians, job training companies, new ventures for the express purpose of taking money from the programs, etc. Seems better off and more honest to give cash directly to the people.

    It’s said that we would have been out of the Great Recession quicker if cash was doled out instead of the infrastructure program. I saw a lot of repair work on backroads in California that didn’t need repair.
     
  17. Boops

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    I will call @JK47 and ask him to recommend a handgun with good stopping power.

    Thanks for the article. Interesting history of the different approaches. Sounds like they've made genuine progress.
     
  18. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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  19. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    No such thing ;) Well, there is if your a monster and can actually handle a 44 mag and the like. It's a BWC sort of situation...
     
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Yeah. It’s certainly possible. There are a few books on this and I’ve always been fascinated on better policing. The 1992 riots shook Californians deeply. A neighbor is an LAPD lieutenant, and my chatty wife likes to ask him all sort of questions I wouldn’t dare ask about police misbehavior. LOL. He is pretty chill about it and admits to the challenges. He’s the lieutenant, so he’s had to tell his guys to knock it off. It’s challenging for him, but this best stories are how the department has changed over the decades. I guess in the 90s, the cops would just drive up to suspicious looking people (black people) and beat them. This was before his time, and he makes it clear that he had heard it secondhand. Obviously the LAPD still has some serious problems, the changes in leadership through the years, usual police being too rough, etc.

    A high-school friend ended up working in civil rights in the Justice department. This was my fault. This friend was a victim of a racist San Jose Police officer who "hated gooks". Another friend and I set him up for stealing library books as a practical joke. When we approached the officer to explain*, he did not believe us and said we were covering for our friend. He then went off on his racist ching-ching gook call up you parents in whatever the f**k you speak deal. It was total bullshit. San Jose had changed a lot in the past decade (80s) to include a sizeable Vietnamese immigrant community, so my guess is that this cop was weirded out by this. This event was the impetus (in addition to our honors high-school history teachers who were boomers overly obsessed with the Reconstruction after the Civil War that we spent 60% of the year studying this and the Jim Crow era**) for him becoming a civil rights prosecutor.


    *The super odd thing was the nature of the books which were intentionally selected to make it look like a joke. We stuffed a ton of gun books in his backpack which was full of his music books and music sheets. Cop did not investigate or consider. He was convinced of our friend’s guilt.

    **In hindsight, I’m surprised they didn’t advocate branding General Lee a traitor and removal of all Confederate statues in Charleston, Despite their obvious bias, they even let us decide whether it was States‘ Rights or slavery. Then again, there was no cancel culture or Twitter back then.

    P.S. I feel bad for future generations because of Twitter and Instagram. Every random Porker gets opinion now and it’s usually the more stupid ones that have more followers. My wife reposted a story on FB, saying she was "sad", where a black physician told her story of being accosted of parking in a doctor’s parking space. Another person replied that my wife shouldn’t be posting such things but should instead of be focusing about peace and kindness. WTF? Anyway, I said to her to keep away from posting that kind stuff on social media because some of her friends are ardent Trump supporters. Actually many of her friends, especially those who live outside of California.
     
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2020

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