COVID-19: Unwinding the Lockdown and Long Term Epidemic

[Jason]

Well I dunno what would qualify as "real" in your book (to me that just sounds like a pseudo bar) but BLM has already caused changes that would never have happened if recent events hadn't unfolded the way they have. Garcetti clawed back 150mil from the LAPD (8% of their budget) and redirected it to programs aimed at helping at-risk youth among others. Police are being phased out of public schools across the country. These are just the headlines I've seen in the last couple when I wasn't even looking for them. The movement seems to have grown almost as exponentially as Covid in the last few weeks, and I doubt it's going anywhere anytime soon either. Cop is probably the second most undesirable job in America today now, after ER doctor.

BLM uses images of victims because it is victims of excessive police force that are its focus. Why would it be appropriate to dissect deceased victims? Whatever the crimes of any of the victims, capital punishment was not the just penalty for any of them.

A worldwide movement and one American city reallocates 8% of their money to at risk youths? Consider me impressed. That's some real revolutionary Thomas Paine shit right there. I bet a well organized localized activist could of have done that on their own. And my point was its inappropriate to dissect deceased victims and someone needs to step out from behind the posters and conjure up the balls to deliver a speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial and articulate what they want instead of coloring BLM on the streets. The movement went away before, and it will go away again. It will exhaust itself in its own block parties. As I said, I agree with some of the issues, to some extent. But this is a mob. Not a movement. And its the most ill conceived thing I have ever seen in my life. It is purposely without confession or constitution because it has none. Where is their civil rights bill? Makinge a completely necessary profession undesirable. Good luck when the private militias fill the vacuum. Is there systemic racism? Duh. Has there been progress. Duh. How about we reflect on both and how there is blame to go around. Oh, that's right. We can't have that discussion. We can't contest the hypothesis. We must simply kneel to it's obvious truth.

Slavery had Frederick Douglas. The Holocaust had Elie Weisel. The Civil right movement had MLK, Jr. Apartheid had Mandela. They articulated the agenda. Wrote about the issues. Led those who wanted to be involved for the cause. BLM? A large scale tantrum. And people get tired of listening to people throwing tantrums. Even if they may be right on certain points. I mean that's just Common Sense.

[Peanut]

I don't think movements today need to operate like movements of the past to be successful. They may even need to operate differently. No way on earth would a local activist's efforts have forced Garcetti's hand. Apparently other mayors were pissed at him because 'they felt they had to do something now.' Going against or putting police unions on notice is a huge deal. It is their lack of accountability for incidents of police violence that are at the core of the problem imo. Kicking police out of schools is a specific platform that I wasn't even aware of before it was realized. That's because I'm not well informed and I'm not part of the conversations with administrations that are going on. Of course many people are already tired of BLM. But it has moved from the fringe to become an establishment movement. Personally I find Jamie Dimon kneeling kind of cringe-inducing, but woke capitalism is about responding to its customer base.

Anyway we obviously see things differently.

[Jason]

(@) Peanut

Well, breaking out four year old "I can't breath" t-shirts doesn't seem to me to bode well for the future success of the movement.

Although I haven't read it, Thomas Pikkety's new book "Capitalism and Ideology" raises the possibility (as have others) that BLM is misinterpreting what is really a class war for a race war. "Get your knee of my neck" is just the flip side of the "Build That Wall" coin. So while everyone is in the streets protesting dirty cops , The Bezos/Zuckerberg gang is busy extending their respective techno-oligarchies to even greater power i.e. Silicon Valley = infrastructure. My stock feed seems to support the possibility.

[7Wannabe5]

Kicking the police, or police like entities, out of the schools is bound to result in kicking 14 year old kids with violent tendencies out of the schools too. I am 100% in favor of sending kids to counseling rather than any sort of detention, but there has to be somebody who can first break up the fight when one kid is slamming another kid,s head into the lockers. It’s way too much to expect to find boat loads of humans who can teach Algebra 2 and accomplish that task too.

[Jason]

The left doing the police like the right did Mexicans/Muslims. Defunding is the four year in the making reductionist counter-punch to travel bans.

[jacob]

@Augustus - Jeez, dude! I said no such thing. Go ahead and read it again: viewtopic.php?p=217374#p217374 Have you wondered whether your strong historical interest in violent takeovers and Asian genocides might be affecting how you view the world or current events in general? That this particular lens might lead to exaggerated extrapolations and more fear than is warranted? I'm not saying that social collapse is not a possibility, but being possible is very different from being probable or remotely likely. Seeing murder everywhere at this point seems to be more indicative of the lens the world is viewed through than the world itself.

[nomadscientist]

The post is nihilist; it equally endorses Trumpian military coup as simply part of conflict domain. The settlement of conflict is a physical process and not a spiritual or moral matter. The only question is who can win.

The left does not have defined goals, but exists as a force. The left seems to adopt more and more extreme goals as its lesser goals are satisfied. That is because, like bicycle, the movement falls over if there is not a new demand. People go home and go to sleep. So if any one (of millions) issues new demand, the movement is kept going. So, new demand is always issued.

The right does not exist as a force. Trump is not in a position for a coup. The right is mostly people who agree with left morals, but would prefer to go home and go to sleep. Problem is whether the mob lets them, whether we get a situation where the mob terrorises itself into remaining in the field.

[jacob]

@Augustus - It seems to be that you're arguing from a conventional law and order perspective; that if something is against the law, it is wrong by definition. My position makes no sense/leads to the wrong conclusion if you presume that I'm arguing from the same perspective. I am not. If law is considered to be an agreed upon social contract (the way I think about it in practice) rather than an immutable list of edicts, then breaking the law becomes ethical insofar the law no longer follows the social contract. For example, if the agreed upon social contract says that people have equal rights and yet in practice they do not, then breaking the law is not unethical because the law itself (the way it's implemented) is unethical. (I'm saying under Clausewitz that the system of law is up for discussion in a matter of degree. Mostly people just complain to each other but they do occasionally rebel directly against the law if they consider it unjust. E.g. The Boston Tea Party was against the law but was it also unjust?)

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_ ... evelopment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification is an example to help understand the different perspectives. Jury nullification would not make sense from a conventional perspective, whereas it makes eminent sense as a remedy to an unjust law from a post-conventional perspective. Abject displays of disorder is simply a more extreme way of making the law more just. Of course creating chaos or protesting does not accomplish this directly. However, the goal is that more people will care more about fixing injustice if the alternative is constant street protests. So far it seems to be working/making a difference.

Of course in these protests/riots, we have all kinds including people who break shit because they can get away with it (pre-conventional ethics). These should not be confused morally and much effort is put into not letting bad apples spoil the bunch. Also important to bear in mind that while most people are de facto conventional in their ethics---the same distribution might not hold for those who show up to protest.

[Campitor]

...Garcetti clawed back 150mil from the LAPD (8% of their budget) and redirected it to programs aimed at helping at-risk youth among others. Police are being phased out of public schools across the country...

I wholeheartedly agree that under no circumstances should police abuse or execute victims that are detained and under control. Pulling a gun should be the last resort.

However, redirecting police budgetary resources is a mistake. The police need more training which requires funding. If every police officer was required to undergo BJJ or grappling training every <insert frequency to gain and retrain mastery>, had to pass a yearly physical fitness test, and received frequent handgun and deescalation training, we'd probably be seeing a lot less shooting deaths.

Currently police grappling tactics are extremely pitiful. The Wendy's shooting should never have happened.

• 1st mistake was the officers tried restraining the individual while he was standing with no forward obstruction; Rayshard Brooks should have been facing a wall or the vehicle.
• 2nd mistake was the grasping method used to secure the left arm for cuffing - leg placement was lacking which allowed the suspect to pivot easily. His legs should have been spread wider and someone should have had a hand on the suspects rear waist band - shift the waist and the arrestee loses center of balance.
• 3rd mistake - assisting officer was poorly positioned to help on the arrest.
• 4th mistake, when the fight went to the ground, the officer above the suspect had an opportunity to shift the suspect or control him via a choke hold (yes it would have been appropriate at this juncture) - ground game was lacking.

All the naysayers, please spare the "the heat of the moment" arguments. This is what training is supposed to overcome - muscle memory and superior deescalation tactics are automatically employed. To shoot or not to shoot isn't dependent on "best judgement" calls in the heat of the moment. And since police are allowed to get fat and slow, often they lack the physical strength or stamina to employ less lethal means of arrest - you can't exactly control a suspect if he has the superior stamina and strength.

The only consistent training police get right now is in regards to shooting at center mass. Let's give the police the training they need and reform them at the same time - neither will occur with less money.

[ZAFCorrection]

Unquestioning support (or at least inclination towards giving the benefit of the doubt) for police is a good example of the arbitrary bundling of political positions. Support for large, unionized government organizations with little accountability or performance standards for their employees does not sound like an aspect of conservatism, but yet there it is.

[Campitor]

...if the agreed upon social contract says that people must have equal rights and yet in practice they do not, then breaking the law is not unethical because the law itself (the way it's implemented) is unethical. (I'm saying under Clausewitz that the system of law is up for discussion in a matter of degree. People occasionally rebel against the law if they consider it unjust. E.g. The Boston Tea Party was against the law but was it also unjust?)

@jacob

The Declaration of Independence agrees with you.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

But in my own personal opinion, I don't think the current movement will last. I don't see how a movement predicated on hating White people or using race as a means of rating someone's virtue will succeed when 60% of the population is white (70% if you include white Hispanics). The numbers are not on their side at this moment in time. And burning down minority owned business isn't a big plus either. It would make more sense if they were burning down non-minority towns but this wouldn't sit well with the politicians who depend on the white majority's vote.

And it's hard to support BLM or <insert peaceful protest co-opted by violent protesters here> when Aunt Ginny was beaten with a bat while her business burned. Everyone loves CHAZ and CHAZ like revolutions until their neighborhoods are targeted. This is the problem of letting the tyranny of the mob rule - eventually they start to guillotine the innocent and their own.

And this is also the problem of letting politicians who have absolutely no skin in the game make the rules. The worst they may suffer is a loss of an election. It's easy to pass legislation or proclaim support for destructive expressions of protest when they live in gated communities and are protected by armed private and/or government security.

[IlliniDave]

Unquestioning support (or at least inclination towards giving the benefit of the doubt) for police is a good example of the arbitrary bundling of political positions. Support for large, unionized government organizations with little accountability or performance standards for their employees does not sound like an aspect of conservatism, but yet there it is.

I live in an ocean of conservative people. I've never heard one express unquestioning support for police. Even the LEO who lives next door to me. But they will give them the benefit of the doubt until the dust settles and all evidence is appropriately weighed and examined (that relic presumption of innocence that the US once held uniformly that now seems to be considered a sinister conservative political agenda). I have not heard a single voice condone anything about what happened in Minneapolis. The closest was a few people who suggested homicide charges should not be brought until after the autopsy report was in to confirm cause of death was homicide. They were lawyers. The recent Atlanta incident is, by all accounts from people with some subject matter expertise, much less of a cut-and-dried situation, and that the county prosecutor may have been premature in bringing charges and thinly veiled public allegations of racial hate crimes prior to the GBI and other relevant agencies conducting investigations. But who knows, he may be aware of things outside experts are not aware of yet.

There are problems among police departments across the country. From what I can tell conservatives tend to support serious reform or elimination of police unions, expanded training, and hand-in-hand with doing something about the unions, giving authorities within and above the police more latitude to dismiss officers who exhibit problematic behavior. As it happens most of the departments that are attracting negative attention at this time are in locations controlled by Democrat officials where there is no conservative voice. That is not to say blue areas have a monopoly on bad cops or substandard departments. Red areas typically are policing a dramatically different landscape. I don't entirely disagree with the conservative take on effective potential first steps. I'm more sympathetic to unions in general, but they do need to acknowledge that along with looking out for the good of their members, they must do so in a framework with an overarching constraint that their first duty is to the welfare of the community. It would appear that is sometimes missing.

Edit: forgot to add that not lost on this taxpayer is the irony of a certain cohort's reaction that the president, his supporters, and conservatives in general were virtually treasonous for being critical of the FBI and IC just a few months ago while the same cohort now want to do way with or severely curb law enforcement because it is "corrupted to the root".

[ZAFCorrection]

I haven't polled my ocean of conservative people recently, except for seeing a few Blue Lives Matter posts on facebook, but historically they have generally taken an unnuanced pro-police attitude. I wouldn't be surprised if this attitude were changing, but if it is, it is a pretty recent phenomenon. I'm also gonna say unequivocally that I've never heard any of my conservatives talk about the police department with the same critiques that often get leveled at the public school system, despite them being basically identical in terms of the aforementioned attributes.

[Campitor]

Unquestioning support (or at least inclination towards giving the benefit of the doubt) for police is a good example of the arbitrary bundling of political positions. Support for large, unionized government organizations with little accountability or performance standards for their employees does not sound like an aspect of conservatism, but yet there it is.

I agree with you 100%. I'm a conservative and I don't support any government agencies being unionized - especially the police. If a union strikes in private business, the customers can decide if they want to support the union via boycott or support the business via continued patronage.

However if the police go on strike, there is no private police force I can turn to that can protect me from the violent mob unless I can afford to hire a paramilitary group to defend me, my family, neighbors, and property. And neither can I forgo the government services and agencies that are the target of police protests. I can't stop paying my taxes nor can I get goods and services elsewhere that only government can provide like construction permits or passports.

No one has a choice in regards to how accountable government agencies can be or the performance standards they must adhere to. Elected officials have abdicated their responsibilities to unelected bureaucrats who can't be removed because of political favoritism, regulations, and patronage. This is why government must be kept small to limit its abuse. Any government that grows too big eventually becomes despotic. You can't even get legally married unless you procure a document from the state. And even if you live together without getting married, the state still has the right to declare you a married couple under common law despite any objection to the contrary. This is all you need to know about government tyranny - you can't define your relationship - only the government can do that.

The US has been boiling this frog in the water of overreach for quite a while. That people don't see it is astonishing. But this is why we have all this BLM and focused racial tension - it keeps the sheeple fighting each other instead of focusing on big government and its abuses. While I think we're a long way off from needing a revolution, I think the time to put the government on notice that the ice is getting pretty thin. Too paraphrase Dave Chapelle: "we're going to take a breathe on this one but the next one it's all "rat-a-tat-tat tat-tat-tat". You can only kill so many civilians (black or white), justify it in open court, and not expect political upheaval and/or violence.

What happened to Floyd and the man in the linked video below should never have happened. An agent of the state did that. Instead of trying to disarm citizens we actually should be trying to disarm the police. I'm sure the cops would act differently if they only had batons. But lets not kid ourselves - the criminals would act differently too if the cops were disarmed. As long as we have violent criminals we're going to need cops who can rise to that challenge. Every 911 call, every government policy, every statute comes with an implied use of force to procure compliance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8

[Campitor]

I haven't polled my ocean of conservative people recently, except for seeing a few Blue Lives Matter posts on facebook, but historically they have generally taken an unnuanced pro-police attitude. I wouldn't be surprised if this attitude were changing, but if it is, it is a pretty recent phenomenon. I'm also gonna say unequivocally that I've never heard any of my conservatives talk about the police department with the same critiques that often get leveled at the public school system, despite them being basically identical in terms of the aforementioned attributes.

I would suggest that the pool of conservatives you hang with are but a thin slice of the conservative pie. In my circle of conservative friends, they have all been very critical of police abuse. I'm conservative and I hate police abuse and I'm vocal about it. But when a shooting is justified, I don't try to paint it as some racially motivated animus. Wrong is wrong and right is right. The litmus test will never be about color or ethnicity in my book - that road leads to re-education camps, burning crosses, and gas chambers.

[ZAFCorrection]

I'm pretty confident we are probably talking about the same kind of conservatives after reading your post. The more sophisticated argument is to break down the issue in to one-off incidents that can be judged piecemeal and thus resolved without any fundamental scrutiny of the system itself. If the interlocutor has agreed with and proposed remedies for each grievance, it is churlish to then ask about any broader changes.

Public schools: burn it all down.
Police: this dude over here is racist; that dude over there wasn't; maybe that police department over there could use a bit more sensitivity training.

The same trick is used by liberals. Granularity to maximum for shit you want to go away; fundamental principles for things you care about.

[Mister Imperceptible]

For Sam Harris fans, he addresses some of the uncomfortable aspects of the present situation, more focused on the demonstrations than the virus.

"... and there is no question about it, the conversation itself has become dangerous."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmgxtcbc4iU

I finally got around to listening to this, and the statistics he lays out regarding regarding murder, and race on race violence are pretty damning to the current claims being made by BLM.

He also seems to be inconsistent with how he says it is impossible to have civil discourse these days but has no problem launching into hyperbole about Trump. People with severe TDS continue to confuse symptom as origin of disease. Apparently there were no troubling signs of authoritarianism prior to 2016. Also failing to see how giving the middle finger to BLM incites them to burn shit, playing right into Trump’s hands. The Van Jones hyperventilation about people with my skin color having a virus probably captured this better than anything. The Clown Genius is a master manipulator, yes, a burgeoning threat to become dictator, no.

[IlliniDave]

... historically they have generally taken an unnuanced pro-police attitude. I wouldn't be surprised if this attitude were changing, but if it is, it is a pretty recent phenomenon. I'm also gonna say unequivocally that I've never heard any of my conservatives talk about the police department with the same critiques that often get leveled at the public school system, despite them being basically identical in terms of the aforementioned attributes.

ZAFCorrection, not sure what aforementioned attributes you are referring to. From my decidedly unscientific observation criticism of some public school systems is pretty universal, although there may be some nuances. The red-purple city I live in now is very similar in size to the blue-purple city I grew up in. The biggest difference I see is that the more conservative-leaning folks I encounter around here tend to have more complaints about the curriculum (often that it is presented though a very left-leaning lens) and the degree of academic rigor in the schools, while the more liberal-leaning folks I still have contact with back home seem to complain more about funding levels and the chaotic atmosphere (lack of orderliness and discipline, presence of drugs and violence and such). Among my large collection of cousins, all of them staunchly blue, all who had families left the city to move to the neighboring farm towns (which since the early 90s have served as a surrogate for suburbs) in search of better school systems. On both sides the observations reflect the behavior of ordinary people grinding through life and not the elite class playing on collective emotions while grappling for power.

It's hard to argue other than school systems in a large number of our largest cities are falling short of the mark. People do differ on what they attribute problems to and what they feel might make effective remedies. I suspect the same is ultimately true of law enforcement agencies. I haven't noticed the same shift you noted regarding conservative-leaning people recently abandoning a long-held blind loyalty to police, aside maybe from folks in my grandparent's generation, virtually all of whom were Democratic-voting conservatives by today's standards.

I don't put a lot of stock in meme wars, and I muzzle habitual meme-ers on my FB feed. So I haven't seen any of the blue lives stuff. No doubt it's there though.

[IlliniDave]

He also seems to be inconsistent with how he says it is impossible to have civil discourse these days but has no problem launching into hyperbole about Trump.

Yes, I notice the same from Bret Weinstein and his wife, Dr Heather Heying, on their Darkhorse podcast. I enjoy listening to them nevertheless, more so than Harris in general. They do more than give lip service about looking at and weighing "what the science says". Except maybe as pertains to Trump. I also agree in that it is very hard for me to see any credible indication DT is a fascist dictator in the making. DT pushes back against the establishment class, which maybe some people conflate with "all that is good and noble about this country" so they draw parallels to the more notorious historic enemies of the US. If you look at who is really trying to consolidate power, paints a somewhat different picture.

There are some systemic problems in this country that do seem to be growing worse. In the heat of the present moment there is a lot of misattribution imo. Sadly I fear some of the misattribution is orchestrated through cold calculation rather than being 100% genuine visceral public outcry.

[thrifty++]

But in my own personal opinion, I don't think the current movement will last. I don't see how a movement predicated on hating White people or using race as a means of rating someone's virtue will succeed when 60% of the population is white (70% if you include white Hispanics). The numbers are not on their side at this moment in time. And burning down minority owned business isn't a big plus either. It would make more sense if they were burning down non-minority towns but this wouldn't sit well with the politicians who depend on the white majority's vote.

I agree. I think being hostile towards the majority is never bound to go down well. I think it probably usually backfires and makes minorities seem more of a threat. I think it might make more sense to target source groups that are causing problems rather than trash whole cities.