iNow

Additionally, he's repeating the long-debunked, but classic racist position known as the bootstrapping myth: https://money.howstuffworks.com/bootstrap-myth-climbing-economic-ladder-takes-more-hard-work.htm

Nope Nope Nope again Well, I would NEVER have guessed that... you don't say! You're at least consistent in your wrong assertions Nope... yet again

You're welcome to think whatever you want. My "fixation" is on the fact that these trends are deep rooted, well established, and persistent. We are all citizens equally protected, yet those protections are not equally applied. Whether it's in policing, experience with the justice system and imprisonment, education and dilapidated schools, red lined districts preventing home-ownership and creation of wealth, access to fresh foods, being spoke to as "less than" in daily interactions or viewed with suspicion for doing perfectly normal things like bird watching... The "racial part" of what's happening is the important part right now, and suggesting that it's not is unfortunately indicative of little more than your own white privilege. White guy guns down a church full of people praying or a school full of children? Gently walked out by authorities and respectfully given due process of the law. White guys arrive to a state capitols and start waving semi-automatic rifles around in the governors mansion or saying the only good democrat is a dead democrat? They're called very fine people and allowed to remain there to share their message of protest without intervention from the police. But when a black guy sells some loose cigarettes on the street for a buck a pop, or 12 year old boy squirting water out of a squirt gun at a park, or man uses an allegedly forged $20 bill at a convenience store? Dead from police. A white guy using a forged $20 bill at a store has a fun story he tells at parties for the next few years. A black guy using a forged $20 bill at a store has a headstone and an orphaned family. What's not healthy is the american system of quote unquote justice and the way so many americans can't seem to see how drastically different their experience is from their neighbors, but if you wish to instead focus on me for rightly highlighting these facts and hoping to perhaps inspire some modicum of support for change and improvements, well... then that's your prerogative and you're fee to do so. Studies have also shown that the police departments which purpose more retired equipment from the military for use in local towns tend to have higher rates of death by cop and restrictions to constitutionally protected freedoms in their areas. It's the "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" situation

I knew you'd be willing to be an ally on this, so thanks. More than anything, we just need to ensure we actually DO move forward. It seems so often these conversations just die on the vine and we find ourselves in the exact same places again in just a few short weeks when it happens next time.

Well, since we're now just pulling numbers out of our ass, I'll tell you you're wrong, and that the number is actually less than 0.5%. See! Amazing how we can make any argument when we make up numbers.

You need me to cut your meat and tie your shoelaces for you, too?

Your understanding isn’t accurate. You should fix that. Please, quantify this. For “too many?” How many? I’ll accept and order if magnitude estimate. Becomes “too often?” How often? One in five? In ten? A hundred? A million? Knowing you won’t be able answer my entirely reasonable request in an even remotely satisfactory way, perhaps we can simply agree there is a problem affecting Americans of specific ethnicities in an asymmetric way and that we should be allies in making things better, even if better often falls short of perfect.

Gish gallop much?

If you go to the doctor with a broken arm, and the doctor says, “but all bones matter,” you’d say, “yeah doc, of course that’s true, but this is the one that’s broken right now and it’s the whole reason I’m here, so perhaps we can please attempt to mend this one now?” Your own source clearly states those whites were mostly armed and in violent opposition to the police, but that: Also, it was only the first 5 months of the year, and the year was 5 years ago. One really has to engage in some serious mental gymnastics and tortured logic to think your point is remotely valid. You’re either ignorant or lying or both, and none is helpful.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/

Between 2013 and 2019, in 99% of police killings no charges were ever brought against the officers involved. I’d say this is about more than just this one slap in the face with 3rd degree murder charges. Decades (centuries) of no accountability coupled with decades of systemic differences in treatment in policing, in schooling, in housing, in opportunity... coupled with months of asymmetric deaths among blacks due to covid and months of disproportionate job losses... That poor camel has been carrying a whole lot of straw for far too long

I’m sure there’s validity in this point, but the issue has become so toxic that our guns aren’t going away any time soon. As soon as we decided that deaths of kindergartners was okay at Sandy Hook elementary school, we basically ceded the conversation. I’d say a bigger problem than guns is the culture within police departments themselves. It’s more like a gang. When one cops speaks up about bad behavior or overly aggressive acts of a colleague, they’re attacked and put at risk as punishment. Their calls for backup and help go unanswered bc they didn’t remain quiet or protect their “brother.” They’re a rat. It’s clearly worse in some places more than others, but in addition to our abundance of guns in the US, the police focus on and strategy of always dominating any situation (Trump mentioned the word “dominate” in his call with governors today for a reason... he knows it’s catnip for his base and for a sizable percentage of the police force), the culture of “no snitches allowed” in police depts is a major part of the reason that the same people protesting about this exact same problem of cops killing blacks 60 years ago find themselves once again out protesting today. Edit: Forgot to mention the clauses police unions have put into their contracts which make it nearly impossible to fire them or take them off the beat

Sadly, I’m much safer than so many of my family, friends, and neighbors. https://www.vox.com/2020/5/31/21276004/4-charts-anger-police-killing-george-floyd-protests

It’s amazing how quickly their position switched from “recommending that people wear masks when they’re out in public is tyranny!” instead to “the government can shoot dead anyone who is out on the street at night and they can do so for any reason.”

And yet for a consistent 40-45% of the US voting populace, that's a feature, not a bug.

Thankfully, we have a president willing to step in between the anger and angst and de-escalate tensions. Oh, wait...

Police in Louisville, Kentucky opened fired on peaceful protesters last night and killed a demonstrator. On Saturday, Louisville police violently escalated protests and shot a teenage girl in the face with a rubber bullet, captured in a photo that went viral. The Louisville PD is also responsible for the murder of Breonna Taylor, a young nurse who was a beloved member of the community. Louisville PD raided her house in the middle of the night and executed her in a hail of gunfire. Not a single officer has been arrested.

What about religiosity?

A pretty interesting PhD thesis in the years ahead would be to compare infection and death rates by party affiliation and/or news source

Sadly, yes

https://abcn.ws/3go1xMy

We're all mad here...

Before the 2016 election... before we fell into this bizarro world parallel universe when everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win the election... all of the "informed" commentators said Trump would be building his own network to present material farther to the right than Fox News. That was his plan... get attention and notoriety in the election campaign, then use that to refocus attention on to their new propaganda network and drive ratings. Throughout his presidency, small media outlets have been building up to compete with Fox and he regularly interacts with them to bolster their visibility and reach. My guess is he will still proceed this way and create the network when his presidency is over, whenever that may be, and that what he's doing now is laying the ground work to by badmouthing Fox so they can enter the market as a legitimate competitor and steal their viewers.

I think he’s trying to move press attention away from his failed response to the pandemic. From the link above: