This brightened my day so much it would be selfish not to share

Olympia, Washington BLM encounter truck driving non-hyphenated American.

(language warning)

Share
up
5 users have voted.

Comments

Anja Geitz's picture

You do manage to find a lot different angles to grind that ax of yours.

up
6 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz

is a very important angle, don't you think? I mean, the BLM people saying, "we didn't know you were black," also says, to me, we didn't know you are black and have a different perspective from ours.

Matt Taibbi wrote about the shaming of a journalist who interviewed an African American man in Oakland, CA, who wondered why the death of one man at the hands of the police made national news while the deaths of his 2 nephews at the hands of street gangs made no news.

I think there are more ways to examine oppression than just the one being insisted upon by BLM.

up
5 users have voted.
Anja Geitz's picture

@Linda Wood

There are a lot of "important" things to get emotionally invested in. Pick your poison, I guess.

up
2 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz

that a BLM demonstrator would lash out at the physical appearance of a truck with the assumption that the truck driver was racist is important.

It's an example of the blindsided perception that one and only one view now must supplant all others, even if we occasionaly have to say, oh, sorry, I didn't know you were black, or, oh, sorry I didn't know the small business I arsoned was owned by your African American family, oh, sorry, the car that I burned to the ground was your only home containing all your belongings and you're black and now even more homeless. Sorry.

It's an example of flaws in the thinking, not to mention the actions, of BLM supporters, I think.

up
8 users have voted.
Anja Geitz's picture

@Linda Wood

Not whether this was “newsworthy”. And if you have been following this posters activities here, you’ll begin to see a pattern that deserves examination. But heh, if you want to keep tapping that button he so enjoys providing us, have at it.

up
4 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz

that I have not been following closely enough to know about a pattern. But I did find the truck driver's video to be worth discussing. I did understand from your comment that the poster's essay was part of a larger context and that I was out of the loop.

up
3 users have voted.

@Anja Geitz

My point was more directed at the objectives of this poster...if you have been following this posters activities here, you’ll begin to see a pattern that deserves examination.

And so Anja - what, after your examination, do you conclude that those objectives *are*?

"Intellect is not wisdom." ~ Thomas Sowell

up
2 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@Linda Wood

Matt Taibbi wrote about the shaming of a journalist who interviewed an African American man in Oakland, CA, who wondered why the death of one man at the hands of the police made national news while the deaths of his 2 nephews at the hands of street gangs made no news.

When people talk about cops killing blacks they ask why aren't people as upset when a black person kills another black person such as what happens in Chicago's poor minority neighborhoods. The difference between the 2 types of killings is that most often cops get away with killing people while cops can charge people for killing other people. It's not that people don't care about the weekend massacres in Chicago. There are laws on the books for dealing with that while cops are covered under immunity given them by the Supreme Court.

Just think if we lifted people out of generational poverty as well as their living in areas that are environmentally shitting on them the crime rates in those neighborhoods would go down. This is a no brainer, but keeping people in poverty keeps them focused on just surviving life instead of living it fully. This is what Trump meant when he called Baltimore a shit hole country while John Lewis had been in congress for decades yet this is never addressed. Many congress members have districts that have utter destitute poverty levels with high crimes that has gone unaddressed for generations.

up
12 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

I disagree about some of what you say here. Definitely the immunity of police is a travestry. And I have no doubt some police forces embody all the racist power and abuse shown in the Minneapolis murder.

But I think many African Americans have questioned for decades not just police brutality and abuse of power, but failure to enforce the law in communities where drive-by shootings, robberies, homicides, drug dealing and child prostitution occur unimpeded. So I think increasing attention should be paid to the failure to provide public safety.

Also, cities like Oakland have extreme wealth, as well as middle class neighborhoods, right next to extreme poverty and open-air street crime. We have to ask, why is it so possible to protect wealthy people and so seemingly impossible to protect poor people? I think you and I would agree on some of those reasons, but I think federal involvement in the drug trade might be one of them.

up
11 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@Linda Wood

But I think many African Americans have questioned for decades not just police brutality and abuse of power, but failure to enforce the law in communities where drive-by shootings, robberies, homicides, drug dealing and child prostitution occur unimpeded. So I think increasing attention should be paid to the failure to provide public safety.

This is what I meant by saying that generational poverty and the social issues that come with it must be addressed by the government and individual states. Budget cuts come from the issues that should be getting huge increases instead. How many people are invisible to the government and the rest of us that don’t see them?

Plus cops prey on their neighborhoods for petty crimes that just keep people from getting ahead. And they arrest the little fish while turning a blind eye to the bigger fish that deal drugs.

Good comment, Linda

up
10 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@Linda Wood That's never been the job of the police, just the excuse they use. Do you not wonder why the CIA was routing drugs to poor black neighborhoods in the 80's? Creating the crack epidemic and destroying black culture? Did you not wonder why an investigator traced the weapons being sold to the Crips an Bloods who were created by the same CIA operation back to U.S. Military dumps in Hanford, Wa.?
Do you not wonder why the music industry went out of its way to destroy Motown and sensationalize the worst of rap culture during that same time period?

If a street gang kills two white people, thank the racist forces behind the CIA. If the police kill a black man, thank those EXACT. SAME. FORCES.

up
5 users have voted.

@Battle of Blair Mountain

the motives and function of local police with the agenda and actions of the Deep State.

While all too many people do become police for the benefits and for the power trip, I doubt that accounts for what motivates most of them - many, if not a large majority are sincere about wanting to "protect and serve". Like Portland police officer Jakhary Jackson (see video)

In any case, if you defund local police and have prosecutors (thanks to George Soros and clueless voters) who decline to prosecute violent crime who do you think is more likely to end up in control of neighborhoods? Unarmed social workers? Or friendly folks like these?

Or maybe federalized AI controlled robocops would be an improvement? Elon Musk can probably sell you some and guarantee that they won't go berserk and shoot up the neighborhood any more often than Tesla Roadsters crash...

Here's a hero cop for you - Michael Ruppert, who turned down an offer to work for the CIA to become an LAPD cop and then resigned and devoted his life to uncovering corruption when he came across evidence of military or intelligence agency involvement in drug trafficking.

up
1 user has voted.

@snoopydawg

(edited to add Thomas Sowell quote)

to a considerable extent the devastated condition of many inner city neighborhoods as they have been running most major cities for decades and been represented in congress by long-serving Democrat incumbents.

We need to get serious about empowering people instead of perpetuating dependency.

"The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state." ~ Thomas Sowell

As you and Linda say, petty enforcement and harassment are real issues, but the low rate of successful prosecution of serious violent crime does not, as I understand it, stem just from police indifference but also from the fact that they receive little or no support from the community in investigations - mostly out of fear of retribution by the gangs that actually control the areas.

Living in those areas must be akin to living in contested areas of Vietnam - the Americans or South Vietnamese would come by day but the Viet Cong controlled the night and either side would punish or kill those thought to be collaborating with the enemy...

Speaking of Baltimore - here is Kim Klasik - running against Kweisi Mfume for Elijah Cummings old seat there. She spoke during the RNC but if you were watching on CNN you missed it as they cut to commercial when she came on.

She lost big time to Mfume in the special election to fill Cummings seat after his death (something like 25 to 75) - it will be interesting to see how/whether those numbers move this time around.

up
2 users have voted.

@Blue Republic that Dems are just as responsible:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SEGHvLElxc]

up
1 user has voted.

I think it's very important.

up
5 users have voted.

@Linda Wood
exactly that you're referring to, Linda.

But, on the off chance it includes me somehow - you are welcome and thanks to you, Snoop and others for contributing to the discussion - good points raised.

- BR

up
4 users have voted.
edg's picture

Since I don't have speakers on my computer, I don't know what the man in the video said. Since this essay is only a single sentence, I remain unenlightened. But thanks for contributing. We need more people to do so.

up
5 users have voted.
CS in AZ's picture

@edg

It's a 50-second rant in which he verbally attacks (with many f-words) the "violent Black Lives Matter fucks" who were *standing on the sidewalk* shouting at cars, and called him a "racist hillbilly motherfucker" as he drove by and then called his truck a "little dick truck" because it's "a 2015 Ford F-250, 6/7 power stroke, lifted on 40s; the thing's BAD."

(Editorial note: Do NOT insult this man's truck or especially his dick! Everyone knows that extra big, bad-ass trucks pumped up with a bunch of aftermarket enhancements are driven by calm, self-confident men with no need to compensate for anything, because they have BIG dicks, and just happen to also like BIG trucks. Get over it!)

So then he says he put his huge truck into park and got out to yell back (show them he's black), and they tried to take it back by saying they didn't know he was black. Then he (evidently) got back into his huge truck and filmed a rant in which he really tells off those mutherfuckers, bigly! Many more f-words are used to repetitively describe them, oh and he ends with calling them *pussies* because, unlike him, they are shouting at people from a sidewalk, rather than into a camera from inside a huge truck. (This irony made me giggle a bit.)

Nothing particularly interesting or meaningful from my perspective. I have driven past a great many groups of people shouting from the sidewalk and street corners; usually they are holding MAGA and TRUMP signs and shouting about how he's god or something. Sometimes they call women and doctors murderers for being pro-choice or providing abortion services. Sometimes apparently they just want to wash my car. Smile

I just drive on by. Free speech on the sidewalks and all that. I never find it necessary to get out of my car and scream at them, nor to post a video rant against them on the intertubes. Takes all kinds, I guess.

Good to see you Edg, have a great day!

up
16 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@CS in AZ

Thanks for breaking this down for us. Brilliant editorial!

Smile

up
5 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@CS in AZ Epic take down lol

up
4 users have voted.

Who kills more people, street gangs or cops?
I don't have the numbers, but 12 or 13,000 Ameeican men are "gun homicides" every year, while the police "only" kill a little more than a thousand. The answer is extremely likely, but it says something that not only do I not have the exact answer, but that I could ask the question without it being absurd.

up
6 users have voted.

On to Biden since 1973

snoopydawg's picture

@doh1304

I agree.

up
2 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@doh1304

is street gangs kill more.

Blacks, not that they are the only ones with street gangs, are disproportionately perpetrators and victims of homicide - most often with guns. It's pretty much a no-brainer to conclude that the bulk of these are gang disputes and domestic violence.

I'd suggest a trip through the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports - they are incomplete/imperfect but provide a wealth of information just the same.

For 2018, for example, out of 16,000 homicides (excludes homicides classed as "justifiable" - most killings by police seem to be there) the race of 4821 offenders is listed as unknown, the number of white offenders as 4884 and black/AA offenders as 6318.

Pretty significant disparity there considering the white population is over four and a half times as large as the AA population (197 versus 42 million) yet committing fewer homicides.

Black people are killed by police at a higher rate per capita than whites/Asians/Hispanics but, it is not completely clear to what extent that is due to racism or to young black men in particular having dramatically higher numbers of encounters with police.

For example, the 31 y/o perpetrator in this incident - which could have been fatal - and who was arrested for the attack, had over 100 previous arrests.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/expanded-offense

up
2 users have voted.
edg's picture

@Blue Republic

...the per capita disparity between Black and White disappears. Poor and Lower Middle Class people of all colors commit more murders than Middle Class and above people of all colors.

up
6 users have voted.
travelerxxx's picture

@edg

Deleted.

up
5 users have voted.

@travelerxxx

Income is closely associated with family structure and stability - people raised in two-parent households have a huge advantage in that regard over those raised in single parent households

Growing up with both parents increases your
odds of becoming highly educated, which in turn leads to higher odds of being married as
an adult. Both the added education and marriage result in higher income levels. Indeed,
men and women who were raised with both parents present and then go on to marry
enjoy an especially high income as adults. Men and women who are currently married
and were raised in an intact family enjoy an annual “family premium” in their household
income that exceeds that of their unmarried peers who were raised in nonintact families
by at least $42,000.

source

While the trend toward single-parent families has increased in general, the decline in marriage and two-parent households has been dramatically greater for black Americans who, from the 1890's to 1960 (for men) and 1970 (for women) had consistently *higher* rates of marriage than whites.

Black (in particular) conservatives blame liberal/progressive anti-family policies for the destruction and it certainly seems fair to question the credibility of those who harp on income inequality yet show little interest in promoting stable families - the lack of which is clearly a major driver *of* inequality.

Useful info at blackdemographics.com

"The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state."

~ Thomas Sowell

up
1 user has voted.
travelerxxx's picture

@Blue Republic

Deleted. Mama told me not to come.

up
0 users have voted.