(06-11-2020, 08:49 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote: (06-11-2020, 08:47 AM)TJBender Wrote: I don't really give two [BLEEP]. I don't really give two [BLEEP] about COPS or Live PD either. I've watched both, both are mildly entertaining mindless entertainment and were on my "hotel room" list. You know, that list of shows like Forensic Files and Storage Wars that you don't even remember exist unless you're staying at a hotel and land on one while channel surfing. TV is business, and you do love businesses that aren't told what to do by government. If some high-paid suit at A&E or Paramount Network (again, did not know that was a thing) decides that a show is of more use to them dead than alive, they'll cancel it. It's called a free market. You should look into it sometime.
Soon they will get to something you care about. You will pound your chest here but complain privately as they strip away the fabric of your being.
You think I'm not aware of that? I know this might come as a shock to you, but I genuinely hate some of the terminology and attitude coming from the far left. I'm persona non grata to a chunk of my community, including one group that I actually cared about being a part of, because I tried to explain to someone locally why Bank of the Northern Hemisphere would not let her husband (who doesn't have an account there) cash a $4k check drawn by a different bank, and why there's a [BLEEP] sheet of glass between tellers and a 6'2" 250-lb man who's vocally unhappy and wants $4,000 from them. Her response? "That's racism, and you're racist for defending it," and a few other drones joined in to condemn me and apologize to her for institutional racism. Even though, you know, a cashing a $4k check from another bank for a non-account holder is like bending over and asking for another.
Second incident: there was a black man here who had been posting on Facebook about kids in the parking lot behind him doing drugs--which he had no proof of aside from cars parked there. He posted later with pictures of their faces and said they were hiring prostitutes to come to his house and harass him. If you were those kids, what would you do in that situation? I know what I'd do: exactly what they did. Go to his home, knock on his door and ask him what the [BLEEP]. But this man took things a little differently. He came to the door with a gun. So while the two unarmed kids, both white boys, stood there for 10 minutes telling him to come outside and talk to them--admittedly not the way I would have handled it at that point--he was standing in the window waving a gun and waiting for the cops to show up. The community got wind of it, suddenly he was the victim of racist violence, and the two kids' college applications are now shot as a result. Best part of all? The old guy had a camera recording on his porch and released the video, every second of it, to a local paper. Not one word or action out of those kids mouths was racist in the least. No one made mention of skin color, used any derogatory language, just two idiot kids acting tough. And anyone who dared to point out that no racism was ever displayed by those two boys was put on blast, including the boys' attorney who rightfully pointed out that the old man had escalated things himself, both on Facebook and when he answered the door with a gun.
Side note: [BLEEP] Facebook community pages.
I'm not just 100% blanket approval of everything. I have problems with the term "white privilege", and I have a problem with being told that I'm a racist because...because I was born white? No. That's not how this works. I'm not accountable for what my ancestors may or may not have done 200 years ago. I'm not guilty of their sins. I don't owe reparations to anyone. And for what it's worth, while I fully support contracting departments, demilitarizing police and retraining them to be, you know, police and not soldiers, I supported those things years ago before it was a race thing. I think disbanding police departments is a terrible idea.
The difference between you and me, it would seem, is that I recognize that even though I'm not personally responsible for their suffering and refuse to be made responsible for it, I don't look for ways to pretend that suffering didn't take place, or that police brutality isn't real, or that Antifa actually exists (it doesn't) and is organizing everything. I don't go out of my way to defend three (h-word, apparently)s who now very clearly have been shown to have hit a man with their truck then shot him repeatedly because he was running down the street. I don't call a 75-year-old man who got his skull cracked in by a police a terrorist, nor do I defend police for shoving him backwards onto concrete or make any effort to defend disgusting conduct by them. I know that the historical atrocities happened, I know that they've been glossed over in the past, and I'm glad they're finally out there and in your face to the point that they're being addressed. And I will never be in favor of any monument or flag honoring a traitor.
We're not too unalike, you and I. The difference, if I can call it like I see it, is that I think others have a right to be heard and will acknowledge them when they're right. You seem to believe that the only people with rights are those who agree with you. That's where we differ. If a network suit decides that a show is worth more off the air than it is on, cool. If NASCAR thinks that it can draw more dollars in by not allowing people to honor racists and traitors at their sporting events, cool. If the President of the United States of America wants to fire tear gas at peaceful protesters so he can have his picture taken, not cool. That's it. That's my position, and it really hasn't changed. The number of [BLEEP] I give has, that's all.
