(09-26-2017, 01:11 AM)jj82284 Wrote:

(09-25-2017, 10:33 PM)Bullseye Wrote: What makes them Anti American?

They haven't renounced their citizenship like the Confederates. 

They haven't taken up arms against the country like the Confederates.

They haven't killed thousands of Americans like the Confederates.

And, unless you believe equality in law enforcement is inconsistent with American ideals, they haven't advocated for anything Anti American like the Confederates.

Yet self righteous conservatives like yourself revere the Confederates while having the gall to wrap yourselves in the American flag to castigate the players.

  If the players succeed in their protests, the "worst" that happens is that more criminal suspects of color will actually make it to trial instead of being shot by police and those acting like police under dubious rationales.  If the Confederates succeeded, the American flag would have at least thirteen fewer stars and the country would be a fraction of its current size and strength, and the anti American ideals they blatantly admitted to would have prevailed.  Yet conservatives, from Trump on down, jump on the proverbial grenades to protect icons of the Confederacy from removal or criticism.

It has NOTHING to do with Anti-American thoughts or deeds on the part of the players.


It has everything to do with more pernicious motives of the conservatives that bash the players.

1.  The debate about confederate symbols is about opposition to editing history, not reverence for the confederacy or sedition.  Moreover a large number of confederate monuments were erected in celebration of the actions taken by the confederates in the post war era to foster unity among parts of the country that had literally been at war with each other.  

2.  And equality of law enforcement is an American ideal.  Within the arena of ideas if one is going to propose that there is widespread systemic racism then there should be some factual statistical basis for that argument.  Instead, in this discussion not only is evidence not presented, it's not even asked for.  The reality of the situation shows that both black and white people are shot in direct proportion to their interactions with police.  Their interactions with police are in direct proportion to the amount of crimes reported.  The major premise that in some way America has an unspoken institutional conspiracy to deprive people of color of basic due process doesn't pass any level of real scrutiny.  Instead we cherry pick one or two cases, write a bumper sticker and kneel to the ground.  

3.  Most importantly the idea of players who control roughly 4 billion dollars of annual revenue having to PROTEST for anything is laughable at best.  This isn't the Jim Crow south where blacks were denied the right to vote and had a DP suppressed by legitimate external impediments to upward mobility.  These players should be the economic and political epicenters of their community.  If they want to advance a certain candidate for Mayor, police chief, DA, public defender or any of the like then they are more than capable of doing so.  In fact if they themselves decided to pursue a career in politics then they have the name ID to make that happen.  Either way, there is no reason that we should be looking at a symbolic proxy from a bunch of college educated millionares that are free to pursue any real course of action that they see fit.

4.  But real action would require real solutions.  Real solutions would require a real examination of the facts that don't support the narrative advanced by the MSM or pop culture.  In Ferguson you had black witnesses coming before a Grand Jury testifying that the whole HANDS UP DON'T SHOOT narrative was a lie.  You had the initial witnesses recant their testimony.  You had concurrent forensic examination lead by the DOJ (Headed by Eric Holder, appointed by Barrack Obama) that confirmed this.  But when the DA who the people of Ferguson THEMSELVES ELECTED presented the FACTS OF THE CASE where were Tavon Austin and the other Rams players who protested Michael Brown's shooting to stop the looters from destroying part of a city?  In Baltimore again, you had a Black President, a black Attorney General, a Black Mayor, a Black (fine as all get out) District attorney and three black officers perpetrating institutional racism?  In the city of Milwaukee you had a BLACK OFFICER have to shoot a suspect that he knew from school.  INSTITUTIONAL RACISM!  In Dallas you had a madman open fire and kill 5 police officers in a department that was lead by a black Sheriff.  These are all instances where not only was a baseless accusation made, but national coverage went along with massive violence and even death!

5.  When you get outside the echo chamber you realize how silly this is.  Just because some drug dealer doesn't want to go to Jail and decides to try and duke it out with 5-0 doesn't mean that the country as a whole is actively trying to disenfranchise people of color.

(Numbering and emphasis added.  Answers given will correspond accordingly with the numbered paragraphs.)

1.  With all due respect, that is male bovine excrement.  I have been involved with a fight over a vestige of the Confederacy in an actual controversy (the renaming of the school formerly named after that bigoted [BLEEP]-stain known as Nathan Bedford Forrest-confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan).  Most of the debates we had over the issue involved Confederate apologists desperately trying to rehab the reputation of that man.  They painted romanticized notions of this "great leader of men" who was known to have "held enlightened racial views for his time," who founded the KKK as a benevolent organization, only to leave in disillusionment when people from outside took the Klan in a direction he didn't want.  Even cursory thought shows that narrative doesn't pass the straight face test.  If he were well known for "enlightened racial views," why would the organization he founded attract virulent racists?  If he were this "great leader of men" why couldn't he control the direction of the very group he founded?  As for the Confederate statues being a "peace offering" of sorts to foster unity?  There is the brink of insanity and then there is the abyss.  Confederate statues being a unifying factor for people at war, to say nothing of the vast numbers of African Americans oppressed by Confederate policy, is a concept dredged up from deep within the abyss.

2.  A protest, especially one where players either silently kneel during the national anthem is not an avenue to present evidence.  That said, even direct video evidence showing disparate treatment/impact is minimized/ignored by those of you on the right.  When the video from South Carolina showed the man fleeing and not threatening the officer, the officer shooting him, then going back to plant the weapon on him, there were many on the right still saying the officer was justified.  We hear the familiar refrain from those on the right that compliance is the key to surviving police encounters.  Yet we see video evidence showing 12 year old Tamir Rice had no chance to comply in the roughly two seconds it took for the police car to arrive, the officer exiting the car and shooting the boy.  Once again, the right piled on the 12 year old boy, who was armed with a BB gun in an open carry state.  We see video evidence showing the man in Minnesota (Castille ?), who was legally permitted to carry a weapon, who informed the officer he had the weapon on him, went for his wallet as the officer instructed him, and he still got shot.  Yet you have those of you on the right yammering about how he should have complied.  We see video evidence of the Miami man with the autistic patient next to him, lying on the ground with hands up, complying with the police mandate.  The officer shot him, and later said he didn't know why he shot, and that he was actually aiming for the autistic man.  Nary a shrug from the conservatives about the constitution.  We also have video evidence of an overwhelmingly white Bundy militia with guns drawn and aimed at federal law enforcement (the epitome of a non compliant imminent threat), the cops did not shoot, and the right hailed them as heroes.  We also have evidence of Dylan Roof being taken alive after killing nine blacks.  He was treated to Burger King by the cops.  The overwhelming evidence suggests police have carte blanche to do whatever to blacks and it is applauded by conservatives when they take it beyond the force necessary.

3.  So again, because they are wealthy, they somehow forfeit their rights to protest?  That flies in the face of every dynamic in this country where the wealthy have the right to influence policy. There is no "millionaire's exception" to the first amendment. Their status as millionaires doesn't make them immune from the things they are protesting about (see:  Bennett, Michael).  Yes, they do have the financial means and name recognition to run for public office if they so choose.  But why restrict/mandate how they use their fame and fortune?  None of you righties told Glen Beck he couldn't have his march on Washington because he was wealthy.  Why restrict this particular group of wealthy people?

4.  Sadly, blacks are capable of perpetuating anti-black racism just as whites.  That's the very nature of institutional racism.

5.  No, a black drug dealer that scraps with the police and loses does not equate, standing alone, to an entire system aligned against blacks.  However, this scenario does not happen in a vacuum.  We have documented history of police malfeasance against African Americans long before the recent controversies, including the Jim Crow period you cited above.  But here's the thing.  Conservatives yammer on about how ours is the best system in the world (and, for the record, I agree).  So why not let the system work?  Why so fast to applaud police action that precludes the best system in the world from processing black defendants instead of depriving them of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on the spot?

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