Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

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

  1. The Life

    The Life Facebook Friend

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    The idea that arrest rates (For violent crimes, which is what is relevant for this conversation) don’t correlate largely with crime rates don’t track.
    “Overpolicing” does not induce otherwise rational human beings who would never murder, rape, or rob someone to spontaneously do so (unless the argument is that police departments are making up complaints of violent crimes out of thin air in order to juice arrest rates. Knowing anything about police departments, the opposite, like classifying a robbery as lost property, is far more likely to happen).

    Even if one argues that officers in these communities suck and arrest the wrong people for these reported crimes, the likely scenario isn’t that they are arresting black males when the victims described the suspect as an Asian female, they are likely just arresting the wrong black male (or the wrong Asian female as the case may be). If anything, police departments in poor black neighborhoods* suck at their actual job of preventing and solving crimes and “clear” reported crimes at a lower rate than departments in other neighborhoods, meaning that arrest rates might actually understate the crime rates in these communities.

    *Speaking as a black male who resides in one of the poorest such communities in America
     
  2. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    The government is far less likely to kill you than the other. Criminals and invaders would kill you to take your stuff if they could. They already do not care that it is your stuff. Communists want to kill their own people and take their stuff. Why do you think people supported Roman emperors who nailed people to trees, medieval kings who pulled people’s guts out with a hook before chopping them in four, Mongols who would kill every man, woman, and child in the next town over if they tried to steal your town’s stuff, and South American dictators who threw people off of planes?
     
  3. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    This is the first time I look at the US, where I spent at least 5 months a year and think WTF is going on there?
    The killing in George Floyd was an obvious murder, it maybe not started that way but at some point it turned into intentional killing. So why the local DA office waited until Minneapolis was burning to arrest the police officer?

    What is going on right now has very little to do with George Floyd murder. It is a chilling display of how detached is the American ruling class, Republicans and Democrats, are from the ordinary people.
    The governors and mayors across the country, Democrats and Republicans, are abandoning their cities and citizens to the mob. Is anyone still under any illusion that the state can provide protection against violence?
    While American cities start looking like Ciudad Juarez from "Sicario" full bunch of f'ing idiots are still trying to score political points. Give it a couple more weeks and it will not be about restoring low and order, it will be about restoring civilization and good luck with that. If the purpose of the riots was to destroy the state, it looks like it has been already done.

    And in November people will vote for anyone who will promise to stand between them and the mob.
     
  4. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Well, yes and no in my opinion. Things are not actually quite Juarez bad, as America's underlying "civil society" (an abstract, but not just an abstract) is more robust on a basic level. Fact is for the vast majority of the population, this CHAOS is just something that pushes their emotional buttons when they turn on the TV. In other words, their business and their children are still just as safe, fat, dumb, and happy as they always were.

    Not to say this won't have political consequences, and if history is anything to go by (and it often is), the so called "conservatives" in this country will benefit. How much is anyone's guess...
     
  5. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    Yes, Washington DC has a massively underreported crime rate for example. There are not enough police on patrol. They do not arrest many suspects who obviously committed the petty crime. The crimes will not even be written up. This keeps the official crime rate down. They seem to have a quota of jail cells that they are allowed to fill every night. Political correctness prevents the police from arresting petty criminals.

    The city is far better than in the past but still has no go zones. DC is still better than other American cities too. Police won’t even come out for shoplifters in San Francisco. Parts of the suburbs where MS-13 dominate are worse than most bad neighborhoods in DC itself. Liberals in the suburbs will use tenant laws to prevent them from being evicted from tenements they use for child sex trafficking and shit. Those are people are deserve to have the tattoos burned off their faces and brains blown out of their skulls yet the whiny Washington Post still bitches when El Salvador chains them up in prison.
     
  6. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    They are not libertarians. I would know, I'm a registered libertarian party member. They are the standard southern conservatives who heavily hate on anything with a "D" next to their name. They also more/less follow the standard GOP talking points, including some who believe if a women "kills" a baby that they should be arrested. When no one is around them or when the drinks flow, you should hear some of their racism against blacks. Can't say I'm a fan of it, but being around with a lot of them over the years that's how most of them are. Majority of them aren't interested in making the police better for minorities. They do hold the belief that the police must be strong, and make sure no riff-raff goes into their side of town. They also have guns in their trucks/cars for protection (which is stupid, we have people who don't lock up their cars while their loaded gun is in their vehicle, roll eyes). Not everyone here is like that, but the majority that I met over the years in Jax are like that. This make sense, Northeast FL has always been a heavily Conservative part of FL (and Segregationist back when George Wallace was running for president in 68 in his own political party, he won Duval County).

    Culture plays a major part that goes down by generations.

    This. "Conservatives" will benefit, it will depends on how much.
     
  7. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    I have a friend whose day job is to kick in doors for a certain Federal agency down on the border (I live 50 miles north of Juarez). The person at the point of his sword is the guy who cuts off the heads of children because their parents dumped a drug shipment, or got caught, etc. These guys are smart in that they are only over on our side of the border for limited time, because we kick in their doors and shoot them. They kidnap over here, smuggle across the border, and cut off heads in Juarez where they don't get their doors kicked in.

    Most of America are too safe, dumb, fat, and happy to really "get" any of this, so they are able to have a certain distance from it, and think idealistically about it...
     
  8. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Right, they are "don't tread on me" libertarians in truth - government/culture exists to maximize their individualistic freedom, prosperity, and desires. They may throw a bone to others (such as the unborn) but they don't actually do anything about it (besides an empty symbolic act here or there). Ask them to make a real sacrifice that affects them personally (like a minor inconvenience for the good of others such as wearing a mask) and they cry "Freedom! My Rights! Oppression!". Heck, the left in this country is sometimes the more real conservative faction, in that they have no problem telling you that you have to observe this or that moral stricture (often couched in terms of "equality"), and that the government is there to compel (by force of law, fines, jail, gun) you to do it...
     
  9. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Highly disagree with the bolded. These same friends do quote the bible as a reason to take other people's freedom away (the concept of choice, trying to only push bible study in our public school system but not the Quran or other Holy Books - which was happening in FL, still have some who's trying to restrict same-sex marriages).

    Please don't call them Libertarians, because they are not. Libertarians want to expand freedoms. My friends who happen to be Southern Conservatives do not want to expand certain freedoms on the worry that it might be immoral based on the teachings of the bible. You have to understand, I live in the bible belt and we still have a good segment of the population here who will not respect you if you do not believe in a higher authority. That's how our culture is here.
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2020
  10. Hands

    Hands Overzealous Auto Flusher - Measurbator

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    Don't worry, guys. Now that Valorant is officially launching today, and not with limited beta access either, the people will have a reason to go back and remain inside for a long, long time.
     
  11. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    We will have to agree to disagree. I was born in small town Oklahoma (culturally the south, with a bit of western plains color), and lived most of my life in the south - Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. I have lived in New Mexico (what I would call the "hispanic" and, at least on the surface, "Catholic" west) for the last dozen years of my life however.

    When speaking of ideology, culture, religion, etc. you have to remember no one is the ideal "libertarian", or "conservative", or "bible belt Christian". Flannery O'Conner said the South, as opposed to the rest of the country, was still "Christ haunted" - there was and is (though it is dying) an expectation of a "bible based" worldview/culture there and that is the daily currency of political and cultural talk. All that is rapidly changing however.

    You can stay at the surface, or you can get underneath it. Pressure and "crisis" tends to uncover what people really believe, though if you're willing you can look at how they live (rather than what they say) to figure out what they really believe. So your "bible believing" GOP friends talk a good game around biblical anthropology (abortion, same sex, etc.), but they don't actually do anything about it - and they and their children have abortions at the same rate as everyone else. Also, when "uncle Bob" comes out of the closet, divorces his wife and kids, and marries his "true love" they figure out a way justify it all and go to the wedding (this actually happened in my family). Ask them to temporarily close their business, or put on a mask, and their real libertarian feelings/way of life comes out into the open for all to see...
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2020
  12. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    1. They don’t have a more biblical worldview than any other Christians. They pick and choose from an often contradictory book what they want to based on the spirit of their time and place and what they know and think they know. It’s no different than medieval people cherry picking the Bible. You can’t really refute their cherry picked examples. They “read” into it what they wanted to. A lot of the basic theological and eschatological points of Christianity would’ve been far clearer and more apparent in late Roman and medieval times than they are in the Deep South. There was no mass pop culture religious-themed art to distort it. Stuff like anthropomorphizing God the Father just didn’t happen because he was strictly not anthropomorphic in the book and what he looked like was considered unknowable by mortals. That’s just one thing they understood at a much deeper level than a modern bible thumper making a diorama of a 30 something Jesus and his elderly Father hanging out in heaven watching Noah herd dinosaurs on earth.
     
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  13. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Well looks like another curfew today. (ADD: Santa Monica 2pm, Beverly Hills 1pm, West Hollywood 4pm, LOLZ)

    See, this is exactly why I said those organizing or supporting the protests better put responsibility on themselves and their fellow protesters to stop bad behavior - in very public way. I wasn't being a dick. I was simply pointing out the pragmatic reasons and consequences of not doing so.

    Now kiss the right to assemble and petition the government goodbye (at least during the good parts of the day/night). This is why people don't deserve nice things. If they can't handle the responsibility, they don't deserve shit.

    If this was my deal, and it isn't, I'd be organizing a protest into the night despite of the curfew. Sit my ass peacefully in the street with hundreds of others - civil obedience - and make the government look bad for breaking up a peaceful assembly.
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2020
  14. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    I'm not going to opine too much, but something I've noticed during the current pandemic issues is this: there's a lot of liberty-laziness going on around. When I say liberty-laziness I mean at times there seems to be a lack of respect for the entire corpus of actions that surround the simple concept of "pursuit of happiness". At times it seems like some who embrace a cursory understanding of "liberty" view their "pursuit of happiness" as "pursuit of desire". Happiness and desire are two vastly different things. Though, unfortunately at times like these, the ability to make a distinction between satisfying a desire and creating one's happiness can have large differences in the potential deleterious effects on fellow Americans.

    Edit: I just want to add, in some base sense, I think we all (Americans) aspire to some version of a truly Libertarian society, but I am happy to welcome other opinions.
     
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  15. wormcycle

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    The problem is what they want to force you to observe.
    The left in the US is conservative in the same sense as there were conservative and progressive fractions in the Chinese Communist Party politbureau. Conservatives wanted to use live munition in tanks right on Tiananman Square, the progressives only if the protesters got to the Forbidden City. Conservatives won.
    To stick to your analogy now conservatives in the US finished burning Minneapolis, NYC is in progress.
    I did see today an interview with few of the rioters. " We have to burn everything to the ground and rebuild it without racism". Does It sound like Pol Pot's plan for Cambodia?. In any case they seemed to figure out pretty well how to burn it, I have limited confidence in their rebuilding skills.


    [​IMG]
     
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  16. crenca

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    @yotacowboy I would agree with you - liberty (over against an "ism") is a virtue and good to be gained and held onto. The fungibility of terms is a problem in a conversation like this. Liberty assumes however a context - of governmental control (to defend it and provide for it), of a citizenry that has some sense of its value, and the inherent discipline/responsibility (as @purr1n puts it) to not turn it into a mere pursuit of desire (good word), even when those desires are worthy goods like justice. It's the whole means/ends relationship thing.

    I agree with you @wormcycle, the deep threat to liberty properly understood comes from the left in our society, not the right. As a real conservative, I don't have a political party (too few of us) - yet I vote for the libertarians more often than not because the at least don't hate me, where as the moralistic busybodies on the left hate me and they don't even try to hide it - they think their hate is justified.

    I can't really speak to a strong analogy between our culture and what is happening in China. I suspect the difference cultureally outweigh the similarities...
     
  17. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    2. ? ;)

    But, about bible-bashing... I don't have much time for Christianity, personally, but I do respect the fact that people suffered and died for the right for anyone who could read to be able to read the bible in their own language. But sometimes I wish they hadn't.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2020
  18. Taverius

    Taverius Smells like sausages

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    It's not like the one they read here in Latin - Church bells every hour all over the country, but if someone only think about mujaheddin calling that's a no-no, which is just strange to my atheist ass, what's the difference? - isn't doctored to a made-up hell and back.
     
  19. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    So I'm in the local newspaper today "Florida Times-Union" with a quick reader piece. I recommend read this article first before you read my quick opinion piece below. As I stated before, when voters starts to care that is when change will happen. So far that hasn't been the case after any big riot event. So I'm not thinking we will get any real change after the riots.

    [​IMG]
     
  20. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Congragulations @YMO in getting printed! I agree with you, the bourgeois middle class in the suburbs are not out (personally, with their votes, etc.) to "fix" the "poorer black communities". It's as you say, they want the police to control, contain, and protect them from the criminal societal/familial breakdown within those communities. I got to ask, what were you hoping for? It's not like all these people in both communities love their neighbor, and are willing to give the coat off their backs, or are otherwise be real followers of Jesus (or pick your gentle God/Gods). How would money, programs, and the technocrats even begin to fix this? The "Great Society" is a bust, because people are what they are. I agree, there is no imminent change for the "heart of darkness" - nothing will really change after this riot just as nothing has really changed after all the riots that came before...

    p.s. Ever read about the career and work of Daniel Patrick Moynihan?
     

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