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Comments
Did every one of these officers get punched? No. Far from it.
The protests are about a repeated pattern of excessive force occurring across a variety of circumstances.
You can exclude some subset of cases because "oh the officer got punched; well, that shooting is justified" but that doesn't excuse everything else.
Is every single officer-involved shooting of a black person a worthy thing to protest over? Probably not. (In fact I haven't even attended any of these protests myself.) But, that does not make the problem of excessive force disappear.
And more fundamentally, that doesn't make the problem of the police being fearful of the people they are supposed to serve and protect and the people being fearful of the police that are supposed to serve and protect them disappear.
The portrayal that you've been complaining about is simply that a thing that's been happening is finally getting more exposure rather than being left ignored.
No, that's not what I said. For some reason you think "I can explain how they got the idea" equates to "I judge this as morally acceptable". If you can't separate the two in your head -- if for you it always comes down to making a moral judgement -- then perhaps we have identified a bigger problem.
I'm basically not saying anything about any particular BLM organization because I'm cutting past all that crap and looking at the core of the issue which is police brutality.
If you've noticed you've been the one to complain about various leaders/celebs/etc. and how they act/say/portray/give an image to/etc. the issue, while I'm actually trying to talk about the issue and the on-the-ground conditions.
Also, you've argued before that multiple reports documenting how incarceration, arrest, etc. rates are disproportionately high for black people can be explained away by noting that those happen to be high-crime areas.
Well that goes to a more fundamental question, how did those areas come into being in the first place? There are a combination of non-racial economic factors (such as but not limited to how it's harder to borrow money without being shafted, if you're poor) and racial factors (such as but not limited to redlining) that contributed to this. I would like it if there weren't a pesky racial dimension to this, and we could just talk about economic policy, but unfortunately there is a pesky racial dimension, and I have to acknowledge that.
Regardless, I know you hated it when I used the term "economic inclusiveness", because of associations with "critical race theory" or whatever, even though I just came up with the term on my own without consulting any of that nonsense. But, still, I'm gonna use it, because fundamentally, it's better for municipal leaders to actually care to make all the parts of their cities economically viable, and that means doing the appropriate work to "include" the poorer parts of town in planning and economic activity. If those parts of town are neglected, well, that's how you get shithole slums with high crime rates.
And the people who have fewer economic means end up there. And if there ain't enough jobs for them, bad stuff happens. (This applies regardless of race, actually.)
Meanwhile, COVID-19 continues to screw everyone over. Though, not surprisingly, poor folks more than rich folks (aside from a tiny and ironic bit of fortune involving poor people getting the same amount per person of coronavirus relief payments as rich people).
(*ding*)
(Oooh, it's my popcorn!)
(*munch*)
I have read what you had to say, and I thoroughly disagree with about 85% of it, but I will leave it there.
Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. He is certainly not a white supremacist. Neither is the Patriot Prayer guy who got shot in Portland.
(I had like three paragraphs here but I cut them because I'm trying to stop this).
Okay actual world-changing news; Shinzo Abe resigned as Prime Minister of Japan, and the story reminded me that before current events Japan and South Korea were in their worst spat ever.
In fact, the spat remains ongoing, and for some reason it involved cutting up Bleach merchandise:
All I could think was: "Man this is going to make this man's 22 year old NEET son very unhappy."
Anyhow, my opinions on him aren't (and shouldn't be) relevant to the legal process that he should have to go through to answer for his actions.
Aside from this coming about at a time when we were trying to de-escalate, I don't think this was particularly great bait.
I am an Ideas Man, and GMH is a self-described policies man, therefore I approached this with the ideas it was connected to (in the media, other cases in the same span of time), and GMH went with the ultimate prudence thing he's advocating for re:the things we've just discussed.
If you'd said "so what do you guys think about that kid's 2nd A rights/possible violations in what proved to be a volatile setting" or, similarly, "what do you guys think about Patriot Prayer and company's actions re:the caravan through Portland" that miiiiight have started something. Might...
I'm not sure why I'm trying to get you guys to make us go Super Saiyan III Nerd Mode again but there's some free advice.
Oh I'll add something I recently heard in a LEGO cartoon; Friends are just unambitious enemies.
Actually, it was more like "whatever you guys, here you go if this is what you want".
But that'd be particularly Machiavellian.
I mean, it is pretty deep in there between lots of pictures though.
every 44s race comes up I feel the strange need to point out Barack Obama is mixed raceI don't think we'll really ever achieve true equality if everybody isn't allowed to use the n word for jokes. I used to think about this a lot when I was younger, but I hadn't thought about it in years till today.
It's kind of this extremely ingrained cultural thing that is based in a lot of history, but so were literally all the other words.
Funnily enough, it was another Atlantic piece that brought this up; how basically the "offensive words" had been eliminated (f word, c word, etc) and so the only ones left were stuff like the n word. As I was reading it, I thought they were making the case for getting over the (admittedly big) history, finally, but I should have known better (they were arguing for how these modern taboos make people more progressive somehow).
As well, me, I'd rather nobody ever say the f word or similar (even the d word is a bit much for me and I always self-censor if it comes up in songs), but until I figure out a means of mind-controlling you all into polite speech at all times (GMH), I'll just have to live with swearing in general.
I was thinking that like, wow I'm so cool that I don't care about words, but I have a giant achilles heel; sexual language. I never want to hear it in polite (or even pseudo-polite) conversation, ever, gay or straight (or... bisexual, I guess?). Intimate language should be kept to the bedroom.
TL;DR in a story that broke on Sept. 10, the Treasury department has been found to be withholding payments that fund treatments for 9/11 first responders, including but not limited to firefighters.
(Snopes looked into this and confirmed the reporting: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fdny-health-fund/ )
Treasury later apologized, after Rep. Peter King (R-NY-02, who represents southern Long Island just east of the City proper) pestered them about it, and claims that it was due to the quirks of how the payments are administered to the Fire Department of New York.
Still, though, the deeds aren't properly matching the rhetoric.
And the following silliness, while not policy-related, just underlines the shallowness of the performative nature of these sorts displays:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/14/trump-ad-asks-people-to-support-the-troops-but-it-uses-a-picture-of-russian-jets-414883
You know, it seems to me the chief reasons folks are bashing it is that it's a proxy for bashing their political enemies. If not for that, the film would not have a third of the attention it got, feels like.
It's like, there is a not insignificant faction of the righties who just desperately want to believe everyone they don't like is a paedophile and/or that it's a Jewish conspiracy, and they latch on to the film as a pretext.
The part about paedophiles is nothing new - you know, somebody already came up with "pizzagate" - but it seems that over the last few years it's not enough to say you are opposed to somebody's politics, you just have to believe they're literally Satan. Or a Satanic cult, one figures. And since we live in the times when not enough people believe in literally Satan, and a Satanist cult is no longer hip these days after the Satanic hysteria of the Eighties and Nineties was ridiculed to nothingness, then a paedophile ring is the closest approximation left to these sorts of people.
I don't really see anything comparable on the left. Obviously, lefties are going to claim teh ebul capatilists are ebul and all that stuff. But, even though I have seen lefties saying stuff that, for example, rich people are inherently evil, this never quite seems to go to the psychotic levels of self-righteous rage the righties whip themselves into.
Also, while even the Old Scratch in his own twisted, horny, guitar-playing person is no longer hip, apparently Jews are like black. Always in vogue.
Apparently the U.S. Postal Service was at one point preparing to distribute masks to every American household. That plan was shelved in favor of a different distribution plan.
This is among many other gory behind-the-scenes details of the condition of the Postal Service in recent months but before Trump's controversial new Postmaster General took office, details newly revealed in a set of documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (a law whose purpose is to allow citizens to request government documents by giving a legal/procedural mechanism for doing so).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/09/17/usps-trump-coronavirus-amazon-foia/
Also, yet another story has come to light of the Trump administration cheating taxpayer money by staying at his own properties and overcharging -- sometimes for empty rooms.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-spending-bedminster/2020/09/17/9e11e1c2-f6a0-11ea-be57-d00bb9bc632d_story.html
@lrdgck Somehow you managed to ninja me while I was preparing this post, heh.
As for this Cuties film, this is entirely new to me; I had to check Wikipedia to get a basic idea of what was happening. The only "Cuties" with a capital C I knew before this were a product line of seedless California mandarin oranges and a character from 100% Orange Juice, lol. So I probably won't have much to say about it, heh.
Edit: And the Jewish conspiracies, can't forget about the Jewish conspiracies.
Also remember that the satanic conspiracy theory had an element of pedophilia to it, which as I understand remained for a while as the hysteria "securalized" from religious nuttery to ordinary nuttery.
When I think of an average conspiracy theorist, whether it's a crazy guy with undiagnosed beginnings of schizophrenia and a basement full of red string linking random newspaper cutouts, or a stupid stay-at-home mom posting on Facebook about autistic vaccines and 5G genocide, I tend to assign to them a sort of vaguely right-wing worldview. Sure, they might suck social welfare and public healthcare funds like there's no tomorrow and go to a church twice a year tops and make up every other excuse about how in their specific case pre-marital shagging is actually fine, but they will have the outlook associated with what passes for the right side of the spectrum rather than the left.
What passes seems to be key, there's an old saying we don't have a right, we only have the Godly left and the Godless left.
So, yeah, this might just be a matter of where I live. Leftie conspiracy theorism I know pretty much solely from Anglophonic internet (not that I know much of non-Anglophonic, save for, you know). Although I know a very nice, very Polish-left-liberal conspiracy theory that postulates the foreign brands of washing products sold in Poland are deliberately made weaker by their benevolent German producers so that the stupid polacks won't overdose them. Apart from that, it's not really conspiracy theorism, merely panicky or paranoid assumption that the dangerous right-wing groups are even more dangerous than they appear.
I think the anti-vaxxing position fits within the "nature-ist" narrative of some folks associated with the left, the kind who might also complain about the horrors of genetically modified foods on a spiritual rather than scientific basis. Meanwhile, such a position also dovetails with "personal liberty" nutcasery on the right.
A lot of things just don't fit well into the usual left/right battle lines, and this is one of them. (Needless to say, not all the people on either the right or left are anti-vaxx.)
(Also, "left" and "right" can mean wildly different things depending on the country.)
Uh I should address the anti-vaxxer thing I guess. Aside from Kamala Harris being her usual self and deciding "to go anti-vax" to own Trump*, there are prominent left-wing anti-vaxxers. Most Hollywood actors who are anti-vax are left-wing.
I see anti-vaxxers as a neutral element because there are a lot of gurus and crystal maniacs in the New Agey sects and modern self-care heroines that are unabashedly left wing.
*please don't come after me GMH we both know she was just playing political theater
I suspect that if I try to reply to everything in this thread, I'd blow through several posts, so I'll just talk about Cuties.
Basically, the main argument against this movie is that it claims to be against the sexualization of children, which it achieves by sexualizing a bunch of 11-13 year old girls.
Also keep in mind that this recent argument seems to be a response to initial marketing. Not just the poster (anybody who argues that "it's just the poster" still after seeing what's actually in the movie is being dishonest), but also every description before anybody complained (most notably the one that went out to Sundance). It was basically written like it had been copyedited by whatever NAMBLA for Girls is called.
To start with, the movie does end with the protagonist realizing that what she's doing is gross and mainly just acting out against her parents Ultraorthodox Islamism, so she quits and starts acting more normal.
I haven't seen it so I don't know how she solves the issue that prompted all of this in the first place (her dad taking a second wife), or if even if she saves her friends.
This sexualization of the child actresses that is, frankly shocking and extremely worrisome, was done with the consent of their parents, and the clear moral compasses of the director (a French, possibly ex-Muslim lady?), the stage director, and practically everybody else on the staff.
This included all the camera people, who shot the movie in male gaze that movies about adult women in similar situations barely get. There was also the choreographer, who well... taught 11-13 year olds hyper-sexual moves, and the costume designer, who "updated" what seem to be Dallas Texas Cheerleader uniforms for, well, pre-teens.
This whole thing has also brought back an issue with a popular American TV show called Dance Moms, which birthed the careers of starlet-wannabes such as the Ziegler sisters and Nia Sioux. However, despite the comparisons, during my (limited because this stuff is gross) research I find that Dance Moms has more issues with costumes than racy routines.
It could not have been done with the consent of the girls themselves, because they can't possibly understand what they're doing, as they are children. Personally, I find that the whole thing was extremely distasteful and exploitative, and that the director and Netflix probably owe those girls a whole bunch of civil suit/arbitration money and the best therapists on the planet.
The plot of the film would have merit if it weren't for the fact that it chose to go about things in the most debasing way possible.
Also, funny thing, the movie won a major award at Sundance, which was co-founded by a man who was charged with assaulting two minors of a similar age (albeit literally the year before this happened).
I mean, that's the stuff conspiracy theories are made of.
Similarly, I remember that a lot of the first on-screen portrayals of homosexuality were meant to result in either tragedy or you just disliking the homosexual character.
For example, in the movie Clue, Mr. Blue only reveals that he is actually straight in the ending where he's an FBI hero. Otherwise, he's a terrified oaf who is -according to the movie- right to be terrified as he's a deviant homosexual coward.
This movie (now, after backlash) claims it's metanarrative is about how wrong it is to sexualize children. But here's a good example of why that doesn't work in this context;
However, the even more meta-metanarrative being brough forward by it's supporters (especially the guys from the New Yorker and Telegraph*) is that it's okay to get 11 year olds to be as sexual as possible without major nudity (the movie has minor nunity and severely implied major nudity) if you're doing it for a good cause.
As I said, fifty years ago, it was fine to portray homosexual men on screen as long as they died tragically (ie a good cause). Now, it's just okay, in fact, according to the left, it's absolutely vital that you do so or else lil Jimmy will off himself.
I'm not implying that any of this was done on purpose, and that this is some sort of plan, but the road to a lot of gross places is paved with believing you're right.
For example, I think the director believes she was doing vital work in exposing what is going on with children nowadays, something Rod Dreher seems to agree with, but I think she hurt a lot of actual people in doing so. Those people being any society's most vulnerable; children.
*Again, this is an issue that involves being concerned about little girls. Prominent(ish) Democrat Tulsi Gabbard also came out against the film, and so did a lot of mothers on the left. The New Yorker in fact had to delete their original tweet about the film (but not the article it linked to). There's also the extremely venomous black identity activists, who see this as some sort of smear job (as they see everything).
To clear up things from the link; it appears that the Wikipedia page for the producer is fake (well, it was a real Wikipedia page for a few days, but it was done as a hit job), as Cuties appears to be in some part based on a short he and the director had previously made (but with twerking).
Of course, like any issue, this can be used as a cudgel on the other side, but the truth of the matter is I'm really concerned for the girls who played the main characters. Also for the apparently 700 girls they had audition for the main roles, another thing that was flagged as strange, because normally even a major production will only have 400 flags and 250-300 callbacks. This was just an indie movie.
EDIT: Oh actually thanks gacek, this really gave me an opportunity to get all my feelings about the project out there.
(Well, the sources that led me to write up that post also wrote at length about how and who among the folks involved in this film was a Jew. Your post is remarkably Jew-free, in comparison.)
I guess I'll just stay at the point where the problem with the film is just that it apparently presents its message poorly if people are too disgusted to get it. I remember a film - perhaps even a Lifetime film - about a teenage girl who is drawn into camwhoring, and one reviewer's opinion I remember to this day was that the stuff the girl was forced to do was too tame to really send a message. Seems like Cuties have the opposite problem. It won all these awards for something, I guess, and I don't feel like going as far as to claim all of the judges are paedos, but still. Movies are not just for critics alone. At the least, it's less likely to be shown to children than The Passion of the Christ.
Also, this Babylon Bee website is some sort of new Breitbart? Sort of The Onion-themed Breitbart. It does look a lot like this.
This sounds like one of those big things where they skip the fact that it's a movie made by a (ex? I really don't know) Muslim lady about a Muslim girl about quite Muslim issues to some degree.
Wait no now it makes complete sense why the response was anti-jew.
Are you sure this isn't that Lifetime movie starring Emily Osment where she was supposed to be addicted to drugs and tried to kill herself but she couldn't even get the child-cap off a bottle of pills?
Since we're talking about this; there's another drug themed Lifetime movie starring Bella Thorne, Israel Broussard, Ross Butler and Daniella Bobbadilla (basically the best cast ever) that really went over the top with how wonderful doing drugs looked (all set to Crywolf music).
I think, in that case (if it's a whole other movie you're discussing), it's definitely playing to the audience. Nobody sits down to watch Lifetime to watch 16 year old camgirls for real or anything.
So did Parasite.