Miami is remembering George Floyd

[fotografr]

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5 hours ago, james.liam said:

You do agree with the chaos if you put a hierarchy where chaos is acceptable  if someone doesn’t get their ill-defined notion of Justice.
 

 

As for solutions? The first step in seeking a solution is Identifying and defining the problem at hand. I’m a physician by training and don’t leap to a remedy before I get a grip on the multi-faceted nature of any malady. Or create greater issues with a poorly-considered “balm”.   

"Ill-defined notion of Justice?" I guess you're saying you think that includes charging the police officer who killed George Floyd with murder? I don't see that as ill-defined. I see it as necessary and entirely appropriate.

Yes, I do agree with the chaos if it's the only way to achieve results. Sometimes people need to be shown how bad things can get before they see the need for reform. Change is already happening around the country. Past incidents of a similar nature have resulted in demonstrations only in 50 to 60 major cities in the US. Currently, there have been significant demonstrations in more than 350 US cities. This has already led to policy changes in several police departments, including Minneapolis, and it is spreading rapidly. The collateral damage to businesses is unfortunate, but I disagree with you that it's going to be permanent. Funding websites have collected hundreds of thousands to help business owners repair and restock and are still going strong. In our city, business owners who had windows smashed out have invited artists to paint constructive messages on the plywood used to cover them. They aren't condemning--they're showing their concern for the injustice facing the black community. That's going on throughout our downtown. Feel free to see for yourself with the link below:

https://brentnicastrophotography.smugmug.com/Art-Over-Plywood/

Did your training to become a physician teach you to just give up and walk away when when your patient wasn't responding to therapies?  I'd certainly hope you were you taught to try increasingly aggressive treatments. That's exactly what's gone on with these riots and demonstrations. Other tactics haven't worked, so they have had to become increasingly extreme and aggressive.

You referenced previously how far black Americans have come in terms of opportunities in this country. Today our local paper featured photos and comments from several people who attended a huge celebration yesterday on what would have been Breonna Taylor's 27th birthday. I'm sure you recall she's the one who was killed by Louisville police two months ago while in her own bed when they broke into the wrong apartment to execute a search warrant.  If you think black Americans have come such a long way since the Civil Rights Act was signed was signed in 1964, read what one black kid in my town thinks about that in the caption below. It might give you an idea why things have boiled over now. 

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Edited June 6, 2020 by fotografr

[james.liam]

Read more carefully. I said that there are demands beyond bringing the cop perps to justice or tighter controls on police behavior, like disbanding or defunding police departments altogether. The price is escalating with every day. That’s the definition of “ill-defined”. 
 

...and please don’t derive conclusions where none were implied. Don’t try and convince me that unspeakable things were done by cops and glossed over. These are facts not up for debate. 

You’re arguing with yourself because dramatic changes are needed and needed now. Creating disorder and the breakdown of society, the logical conclusion of what some are demanding, will only birth an even more dysfunctional, Balkanized society. 
 

 

Edited June 6, 2020 by james.liam

[IkarusJohn]

I can never really understand how societies come to accept conflict as normal or acceptable.  In my own relatively peaceful country, we’ve had a civil war, almost as bloody and at about the same time as the US civil war, we’ve had labour unrest (the 1951 waterfront dispute, with police brutality and the use of the army), Vietnam War protests in the 60s, the Sprinbok Tour protests of 1981, antinuclear protests and homo-sexual law reform.  At times, the police have been used as a “law and order” tool.  But we’re not at war with each other as a community.

James referred to Maori claims and disputes somewhere above, but since the time of Te Kooti and the Hau Haus, we haven’t had bloodshed as part of that dispute.  As a community, often with really passionate disagreement, we’ve tried to resolve tribal disputes over the lates 50 years or so.  Even the loudest and most irrational of voices have been listened to.

I genuinely do not understand how a community can accept the use of force, primarily aimed at a sector of the community, as normality.

A significant sector of the community at worst is on the rampage, and if you look at the photos at the start of this thread, a larger number is relatively peacefully protesting.  Surely the best approach is to listen to that rage and protest?  If the protest morphs into wider issues, isn’t it possible they might have a point?

Or, you just unleash the police in the name of law and order, and you oppress those with a grievance.  Is there a big different between the civil rights protest of the 1960s and what is happening today?

[FrancoisF]

Beautiful set Louis. I like very much the #2, the man with straw hat and "TRAIN" Tshirt. The light in his face is something special!

[fotografr]

51 minutes ago, james.liam said:

Creating disorder and the breakdown of society, the logical conclusion of what some are demanding, will only birth an even more dysfunctional, Balkanized society. 
 

 

You are dead wrong about this. We are starting out with a dysfunctional society. You'd have to have been living in an insulated bubble somewhere to not know that. We will come out of this stronger, better and more cohesive as a society.

And please don't advise me to read your comments more carefully after accusing me of being blase about collateral damage to businesses. Practice what you preach.

[james.liam]

You haven’t a clue where I grew up or where I live and I don’t feel the need to justify myself. And yes, you Project rather than read what someone says. The only thing we can agree upon is that profound change is imperitive.
 
You do appear to have a need to rage at someone or something so I’ll leave you to your rage, your rocks and your fiery projectiles. If you fancy this is what you need to do, or how a better nation can be forged by destroying it, I’m not here to talk you out of it. 
 
Vaya con Diós. 
 

Edited June 6, 2020 by james.liam

[fotografr]

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3 hours ago, james.liam said:

You haven’t a clue where I grew up or where I live and I don’t feel the need to justify myself. And yes, you Project rather than read what someone says. The only thing we can agree upon is that profound change is imperitive.
 
You do appear to have a need to rage at someone or something so I’ll leave you to your rage, your rocks and your fiery projectiles. If you fancy this is what you need to do, or how a better nation can be forged by destroying it, I’m not here to talk you out of it. 
 
Vaya con Diós. 
 

You have no idea what you're talking about. At no time have I ever been any part of throwing rocks, destroying property or raging in the streets. You accuse me of not reading your posts carefully, then proceed to accuse me of activity I have never been part of. What i said was that i understood the rage and that I accepted it since it's apparently what is necessary to get the attention of a society in need of change. I did not ever say or imply that I was in a party to it.

If you're going to "debate" by attacking my character with fictitious assertions and outright lies, there is no point in continuing this.

Edited June 7, 2020 by fotografr

[james.liam]

I'm not sure what there is to debate. You will find no disagreement from me on the causes of the tragedies or the urgency for change, especially when it comes to mass incarceration of segments of the population for petty reasons or impunity of police abuse and the criminal indifference by government officials toward this institutional corruption. 

Some like me, believe that the power of the Mob undermines society and results in greater polarization, disaffection, death, suffering and animus. And once the Mob takes hold, nothing but blood and vengeance satisfies it.

Others, as I gather you are disposed to believe, contend that the outrages are so severe and long-standing, the progressive so halting that acts of destruction and assaults on the very foundations of society are regrettable but understandable and even beneficial under the circumstances and should be judged differently. An African-American Federal Protection agent, Patrick Underwood, was murdered execution-style in Oakland, CA as the chaos took hold. Perhaps, as is my suspicion, by a white anarchist or AntiFa type. Who knows. No one seems to care. Unlike the canonized George Floyd, he did not have a criminal record, did not allegedly pass counterfeit currency nor walked about with methamphetamine in his bloodstream. None of these circumstantial facts in Mr Floyd's case in any way excuses, rationalizes or otherwise diminishes Mr Floyd's horrible murder at the hands of a depraved uniformed agent of the Government. But Mr Underwood is dead, his family mourns and no outrage or even passing mention by the press is heard. Add this murder and that of many other innocents to your tally of Hate victims.

The Mob is never placated. Nothing satisfies it, no number of concessions are ever enough and eventually they do not care about the concessions as they sense their own independent power growing as the power of government is seen receding out of fear  Like the proverbial genie let out of the bottle, it will not voluntarily return to those confines. I recommend that you consider the work of 19th century French psychologist Gustave le Bon on the topic. Very timely and insightful. 

Edited June 7, 2020 by james.liam

[giannis]

5 hours ago, james.liam said:

Some like me, believe that the power of the Mob undermines society

The power of the mob is the definition of democracy, quite literally (demos=mob, cracy=power - from cratos - in Greek). I don't think democracy undermines society, the importance of the "power of the mob", with all its manifestations (like protests), is so important to modern, democratic societies, that it's even constitutionally protected.

5 hours ago, james.liam said:

And once the Mob takes hold, nothing but blood and vengeance satisfies it.

The Mob is never placated. Nothing satisfies it, no number of concessions are ever enough

I don't believe this is the case. The mob is a symptom to an ailment, not the root of it. The mob is society's defence mechanism, to warn us that there is a wound that is festering and needs to be taken care of immediately. It acts as a warning, a defence mechanism and a check on power. You mentioned you're a physician. Allow me then this analogy: the mob is the pain you feel from an injury. It's never pleasant, but it's there to warn you something is wrong in your body and you should look into it. If you don't treat the pain as a warning/symptom, but you think pain itself is the issue and try to silence it, the wound will fester and the whole body rots and dies. It's all about treating the root of the problem and not the symptom, just like in medicine.

I also don't believe that "the mob is never placated". Otherwise we'd be living in a constant state of chaos, day after day, and not have major protests every couple decades or longer. The mob is placated, and many times they have clear demands. It's another issue if the powers that be (status quo, politicians, corporate world, etc.) don't *want* to placate it by making concessions. The mob has achieved many great things throughout history, and was placated after they achieved them. Things like toppling tyrannical governments, achieving workers' rights (May 1st affair in Chicago), achieving civil rights, stopping wars (vietnam protests), etc., the list is endless.

Many of the deaths could have been avoided, if the powers that be listened to the mob's demands, which by all accounts are considered very rational today and are even accepted as human rights. But they didn't. They were too comfortable in the status quo, the power and wealth it afforded them, and they wouldn't let go without a fight. In a utopian world, they'd listen to reason, be empathetic, and grand those things without needless bloodshedding. History has shown though, time after time, that the powerful and comfortables ones don't care about reason, they care about their power and wealth and they're willing to shed as much blood as they have to, to keep it.

People arguing for "peaceful" protests seem to mean something like this: let the protesters protest, Monday to Friday, between 19:00 and 21:00 (excluding rush hour), holding signs quietly, and then they walk home. It seems to me, their perfect "peaceful protest" is the one they can most easily ignore. Which kinda defeats the point. Plus there's been countless of such protests with no results whatsoever, which proves my point. Again, in a Utopian world, that's all it would take. Some countries like Switzerland it works similar to this, by offering multiple referenda throughout the year for many policies, where everybody's voice is heard without the need for protests. But in US and many other countries, unfortunately this doesn't work, voices are not heard when they simply ask to be heard. They are forced to *demand* to be heard and to scream so loud that you can't ignore them anymore, until they're actually heard.

Am I implying that if a mob gets all their current demands met, they'll never protest ever again? Of course not. But that is human, always trying to improve your situation (within reason) and striving for more. It's the same reason why a rich person doesn't stop working and tries to get richer, the same person that a professional that landed a good job still strives for a promotion, the  same reason why scientists after a great discovery still keep researching for more, the same reason why after you get your first car after a couple years you start lusting after a better one. Hoping and striving for more is inherently human, and the reason why society is what it is today compared to a couple thousand years ago, technologically and socially.

 

Edited June 7, 2020 by giannis
typos

[jaapv]

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