Althouse asks Glenn Loury "if he thinks it was a mistake to select the George Zimmerman case to be a racial cause célèbre." They discuss Glenn Loury's contribution to that "selection".
The Althouse comments are moderately open for that post. Comments at CH are not moderated.
I tried to embed a "pithy minute" clip of the conversation here, but I couldn't.
For the "pithy minute" and for the whole conversation between professors, Althouse and Glenn Loury, please click here.
198 comments:
The only race-related thing I will watch tonight is Soul Plane, which is now playing on the BET channel.
Methadras,...
Abuse of power.
Ding!
I don't even know who Glenn Loury is.
They discuss Glenn Loury's contribution to that "selection".
I highly doubt he had much to do with how Zimmerman was railroaded.
I think they might both lack perspective about how much he had to do with it.
Glenn gets it exactly right. The threat of being called a racist trumps all other crimes.
... Causes weak prosecutors and media a-holes to lie, cheat, smear, and edit the tape.
Zimmerman was tried by liars and race hustlers. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have done more to destroy the "community" than any white Hispanic ever could.
NBC should be sued out of existence.
Annie's head bounces way too much for me to watch her on those blogginheads. It's more like bobbleheads. Even Dramamine wouldn't help.
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the world for my part in Nagasaki, maybe even Hiroshima.
I gotta go google it. It's possible I wasn't even born when that happened.
But just in case I am all that and a bag of chips--let me just get that out there.
Meth, I was with you right up to mongoloids, at which point credibility fails.
Certainly, Zimmerman and the entire tragic episode was exploited by race hustlers and media idiots/cons. This does not justify the type of rank enmity which you have blessed us with this evening.
There were no winners that night in Florida.
AprilApple,
Zimmerman was tried by liars and race hustlers.
And yet he walked free.
Some of you ought to check yourselves.
Not because you're racists but because you're stupid,...
This is the type of exclamation (to which you are certainly entitled) which allows for charges of racism and widespread discrimination.
Althouse thinks it is bloggable to ask Loury, a black man, what he thinks about yesterday's news -race hustling in the Zimmerman case.
Perhaps Loury should feel insulted - does Althouse ever ask his opinion on non-race issues?
does Althouse ever ask his opinion on non-race issues?
They've had conversations on other issues, other than race.
Crack--
Do you think Zimmerman was treated fairly by the press?
I'll repeat the comment I made over there, since who knows what passes moderation:
While it is true that "the vast majority" of young black men have no criminal history, Trayvon Martin did. If he was "profiled", he was profiled accurately. A stopped clock is right twice a day.
madawaskan,
Crack--
Do you think Zimmerman was treated fairly by the press?
C'mon, dude, you know me by now - not a chance. Everything but the trial was a joke and I knew it from Day One.
I feel bad for George Zimmerman.
He's further evidence, to me, of the awful unfairness allowed within this country's borders,...
C'mon, dude, you know me by now - not a chance.
*******
Okay--hell that is what I thought--but I had to ask.
Sorry but what happened in the court of public opinion caused me to lose interest in the trial--I have no idea what happened in that arena.
I do know that the way our legal system works you can prove a man guilty but you cannot prove that he is innocent most of the time.
And unlike some Constitutional law professors I do not give the Courts my full blind faith that they are always correct like its some religion.
The most ironic thing is that GZ states on the tape that Marin "looks like he's high on drugs on something"
and was afraid he was casing houses.
And then the autopsy revels Martin was probably high Mary Jane, and then we learn he had a burglary tool and some women's jewelry that belonged "to a friend".
Then to top it all, we learn Martin was a member of "fight club" and may have punched out a bus driver.
Judas priest, the whole thing has blown up in the liberals face.
I feel sorry for you Crack. There are 40 million black folk in this country, and whenever some African American a-hole does something, you're expected, AS A BLACK MAN, to somehow to HAVE AN OPINION.
That's quite a load on anyone's shoulders.
Judas priest, the whole thing has blown up in the liberals face.
Not really. The original media narrative has been discredited, sure, but most people don't know that and most of the news media is sticking with it.
Zimmerman's life is ruined, and the people who ruined it will never pay for that. Such is life.
I feel sorry for you Crack.
I doubt that.
That's quite a load on anyone's shoulders.
I wont speak for Crack, but, I don't believe Crack has to shoulder any "load" he doesn't choose to shoulder.
Judging by this thread some seem to think Crack is REPRESENTING THE BLACK RACE.
Not me.
"I doubt that."
Don't know why a defense of "Crack" is taken as an attack. But then I can't change people's perceptions.
You can only write what you write.
rcocean,
I feel sorry for you Crack. There are 40 million black folk in this country, and whenever some African American a-hole does something, you're expected, AS A BLACK MAN, to somehow to HAVE AN OPINION.
That's quite a load on anyone's shoulders.
If I care to carry it. Most times I don't but, as a conservative, few want to hear from me anyway because A) I'll probably usurp their expectations since I've got my own ideas, which few seem to like, or B) they don't think, as a conservative, I'll have the usual collection of friends and family, from pimps to politicians, to speak accurately on the black experience.
It's just a sick circus, to me, shared by blacks and whites (and hispanics and asians and,...)
I'm an American - no hyphen - waiting for everybody else to catch up,...
Don't know why a defense of "Crack" is taken as an attack.
A defense is usually unambiguous. If a defense is ambiguous, then it could construed as a poor defense.
I'm an American - no hyphen
My own sentiment exactly.
My navigation through the pros and cons of political discourse are centered on the idea of the American Experiment.
Maybe a centered navigation is not the right way of saying it but it's too late now.
I hope you all understand what I'm trying to say.
There are 40 million black folk in this country, and whenever some African American a-hole does something, you're expected, AS A BLACK MAN, to somehow to HAVE AN OPINION.
And there are X number million women 'folk' in this country and whenever anyone speaks about "women's issues" or a "war on women" or any of the other popular issues that supposedly affect women.....we are all lumped together like tapioca pudding or something. Women voters are indistinguishable from each other and have the same concerns.... it seems to be the popular opinion, and IF we do go off of the reservation like a Palin or other conservative women and have an opinion that is contrary to the feminist doctrine...we are booted from the figurative women's club.
We all have some burdens to bear.
Until we are all allowed to be individuals we are never going to be free to think for ourselves. Crack be himself and not a perceived spokesperson on behalf of all black people. (I have never thought of Crack as a representative of anything but himself.) Zimmerman allowed to be himself and not a Hispanic or "White" Hispanic or some other made up pigeonholed classification.
Crack be himself
Sho 'nuff!
ampersand,
That's fucking insane,...
Crack Sez:
And yet he walked free.
He's not free. He is a hated man by a lot of people, and fears for his life. His parents live in fear from death threats.
I don't see a single thing Zimmerman did a man in a free society of responsible individuals should not have done. People say he made bad decisions, I don't see it.
The media, politicians, and race hustlers used this man to come down on him with the big barrels of the state. The federal government, both the FBI and the justice department, actively sought to make a case and try him again, ignoring the constitution on regarding double jeapardy, but couldn't make the case.
Meanwhile, the entire narrative of Black people being unsafe because of Whites is ludicrous. Look at the FBI stats to get a sense of this. Blacks are their own worse enemy as a whole. Around any demographic, people are safer around a random white, Asian, Hispanic than around a random black, by probability. And that's odd, because in general intra-racial crime is the worst.
Then the press, and how they screwed it up. They attacked Zimmerman. They used their splice and dice text to make the man look racist. And now it turns out there was no racial profiling involved whatsoever. And you won't hear that Zimmerman is part black, on his mothers side (she has some Peruvian black in her past).
So now the Media has destroyed the life of an innocent man, they try to turn that destruction now into the same old race discussion that we've been having forever. The same old tired solutions that aren't working.
It's time for a new approach.
Actually, I should amend that. FBI doesn't split out Hispanics from whites, and so it's a bit confusing, so I'm not totally certain about that. One has to look at indirections, department of justice, etc., to get a sense of Hispanic crime.
"A defense is usually unambiguous. If a defense is ambiguous, then it could construed as a poor defense."
Lem throws a stone from his glass house of his ambiguity - designed by Salvador Dali.
Clear, strong prose meet Mr. Lem. You haven't met before.
Loury still thought that Zimmerman was profiling Martin.
He also seems to think that non-black boys never get the stink-eye. He's going to have a "hard time believing" anything else.
But you know what I think? I think we'd get a lot farther if people like Loury stopped pretending to know what it's like to be a white man. *Men* are treated like presumptive criminals often... white men *too*. Young men, often, of all colors, are suspected of being up to something.
Dante,
Most of what you say I agree with, except yes, GZ is free. He may not be safe - which isn't right - but he is free. And then there's this:
The entire narrative of Black people being unsafe because of Whites is ludicrous.
That depends on how long a lens you're using. You see yourself as an individual, but most blacks see us as actors in a historical drama, and - seen from that perspective - most blacks would laugh in your face for even suggesting such a thing.
I don't know if it's true, but it's said, if we could drain the Atlantic Ocean, there'd be a trail of bones from America to West Africa. Now, it may strike you as bizarre, but even with the inordinate dysfunction of slavery disrupting blood ties, American blacks have formed an extraordinary bond with those millions of unknown and forgotten relatives. It's personal. So, if you're going to claim anyone's safe around whites, you might want to add those blacks to your tally of those who have been harmed before thinking black fears are unwarranted. Because that's what you're dealing with.
It may not be fair, but - sometimes - it's unavoidable,...
Because it's always... not "this would be less likely if Martin was white" but "this would not have ever happened if Martin was white."
And maybe Loury only got his ticket for riding his bike on the sidewalk because the cop wanted to hassle a black man in particular, but cops hassle white men too, and make them take their tickets down to the courthouse too.
I also suspect that Loury thinks that white men who get stopped for riding their bikes in the wrong place or speeding don't grovel. Abjectly. Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir. I'll never ever do that again, sir. I suspect that he'd have a "hard time believing" that.
Synova,
I just wish we'd hear a better class of thinkers, regardless of color,...
Synova,
Because it's always... not "this would be less likely if Martin was white" but "this would not have ever happened if Martin was white."
Right. And I never get a sense any of these people - Ann, Loury, whoever - are part of this country, rather than just commenting on it. Like Americans are a separate species and they can't relate. They never say anything useful (which is why I can't bother listening anymore) .
They also never leave the stage (Gee, who decided Ann's opinions are so valuable? And to who? I see she enjoys giving them out - look at that pie-faced grin - but what do they do, but entertain,...her?)
This is why generations always have to be tumbled,...
Glenn gets it exactly right. The threat of being called a racist trumps all other crimes.
Used to. More whites just don't give a shit after this Zimmerman crap, and five years or more of being called a racist for not thinking Barack Hussein Obama is smarter than Einstein, wiser than Solomon, and more perfect than Jesus. Just don't give a shit anymore.
That depends on how long a lens you're using. You see yourself as an individual, but most blacks see us as actors in a historical drama, and - seen from that perspective - most blacks would laugh in your face for even suggesting such a thing.
I don't know if it's true, but it's said, if we could drain the Atlantic Ocean, there'd be a trail of bones from America to West Africa. Now, it may strike you as bizarre, but even with the inordinate dysfunction of slavery disrupting blood ties, American blacks have formed an extraordinary bond with those millions of unknown and forgotten relatives. It's personal. So, if you're going to claim anyone's safe around whites, you might want to add those blacks to your tally of those who have been harmed before thinking black fears are unwarranted. Because that's what you're dealing with.
It may not be fair, but - sometimes - it's unavoidable,...
That's really put very well, Crack. And something that needs saying every now and then. Most of America watched and was moved by things like The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and Roots back in the 1970s, now a very long time ago. Hearts were touched and minds were opened a bit more. Now, though, it seems it's mostly rancor on both sides of the racial divide. What an opportunity Obama had to do good. Sad as all hell, really, that he actually did more to poison the atmosphere.
Because it's always... not "this would be less likely if Martin was white" but "this would not have ever happened if Martin was white."
What makes that even more obnoxious is that a black man was acquitted for shooting an unarmed white teenager in self-defense the same week.
The throngs of white people who took to the streets to demand his execution must just not have made the news. :)
Right. And I never get a sense any of these people - Ann, Loury, whoever - are part of this country, rather than just commenting on it. Like Americans are a separate species and they can't relate. They never say anything useful (which is why I can't bother listening anymore) .
I've never heard that notion more clearly expressed. I'd add:
They finally got you, ____, she sucked all that Midwestern charm right out of you. Look, she's got you scared to death. You're going to pass, because you're the kind the "law" school wants.
Lem I think you have done a great job here encouraging various new voices to blog and share some great ideas. Chip Ahoy has been a revelation. Does that dude ever sleep?
I caught up with most of the posts from today and they were both wide ranging and interesting. I hope to hear more stuff from all of the contributors in the coming weeks and months ahead. You have started something that could be really special.
Thank you all for your efforts.
That depends on how long a lens you're using. You see yourself as an individual, but most blacks see us as actors in a historical drama, and - seen from that perspective - most blacks would laugh in your face for even suggesting such a thing.
That has to change, then. I could use the same narrative because at some point in our history my ancestors were serfs, and there are strong indications in this country of inter-generational wealth transfers, dynasties, the use of the government to keep the wealthy wealthy, etc. But I'm not going to have a chip on my shoulder, I'm not going to prevent myself from doing what's right for my family and the people I care about, because of ancient history.
And by ancient, I mean history that is no longer relevant.
The cool thing about this country is a lot of people, a lot of white people, where willing to stand up for the injustices. Many lost their lives. The modern day narrative seems to have nothing to do with that. It seems intent on holding up one group of people because of their skin color, for the injustices of the few. And hurting themselves along the way.
But, that's my opinion. It's time to move on. The current approach is not healthy, is not good for blacks, is not good for the economy, and frankly, it's a waste of human life. That's what I think.
Thank you Trooper.
The posts have been fantastic.
I don't have the words to thank them properly.
All the posts have been great.
I still have to rip you for not talking about George Scott.
I mean if Steve Balboni croaked I would be all over that.
Or was that before your time?
Maybe you were still a street urchin in the slums of the Dominican running numbers for that albino numbers queen that you worshiped from afar.
Crack has a big black hog.
Inga? Hello?
Time is a wasting girl.
That hog isn't getting any youngr.
tits.
And Crack any dick pics would be greatly appreciated.
Lydia,
It's mostly rancor on both sides of the racial divide. What an opportunity Obama had to do good. Sad as all hell, really, that he actually did more to poison the atmosphere.
He wasn't qualified for anything but rancor. That's what community organizers do - get people pissed, rub salt in the wounds, etc.
I made my views known years ago [check the date,...]
didn't see him play.
I'm just learning of it now that I looked it up.
I had heard of him though.
btw. two back to back walk off wins. the last one overcoming a 7 to 2 deficit.
Now, it may strike you as bizarre, but even with the inordinate dysfunction of slavery disrupting blood ties, American blacks have formed an extraordinary bond with those millions of unknown and forgotten relatives. It's personal.
Stuff that happened ten or twenty generations ago isn't "personal" in any useful sense of the word. Who doesn't have ancestors who suffered through atrocities during that kind of time-frame?
More - No More Conversations About Race.
Dante,
That has to change, then.
I agree, but to some extent, it can't.
I'm not going to prevent myself from doing what's right for my family and the people I care about, because of ancient history.
And that's why it can't - it's not always ancient history. This ain't a old country. And, to some extent, it is who we are. If you know what to look for, you can bump into our history every day. What you do with it is up to you.
I'd prefer we get real about the legacy we inherited. Everybody stop freaking out over "nigger" or whatnot (a word everybody's heard because it's as old as this nation) tripping on slavery (no matter where your family fit in it) and trying to find a "boogie man" around every corner (a german creation - no blacks intended or involved) keeping us racially hyped. There's simply more to us than this nonsense. Much more. But we're stuck on stupid.
And I mean STUCK,...
Revenant,
MLK's killing wasn't ten or twenty generations ago. I watched his funeral live, with a man wearing the over-alls that were the uniform of the movement, almost willing his grief to fill a bucket with his tears. I told you - it's a historical drama. In this young country. We can't hide from our past but we can determine what's important and what's not. We're not even doing that. Just rubbing sores raw and at random.
It's some of the silliest shit I've ever encountered,...
More new info about Benghazi. More than 30 CIA types on the ground that night, including 7 wounded. Choom was prepared to leave almost 40 Americans to die.
This ain't goin' away.
madawaskan said...
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the world for my part in Nagasaki, maybe even Hiroshima.
Don't.
There's a book out, "Hell To Pay", that has a lot of newly declassified info about the planning and intel for the invasion of Japan. The reasons for dropping the bombs were well-thought out, compelling, and overwhelming.
PS Another President Asterisk story. Volokh wonders if Choom broke the law to get re-elected.
To ask the question is to answer it.
Zimmerman should convert to Islam. Then he becomes untouchable in this country.
Zimmerman was tried in the court of media bias and narrative seeking. All to help stir up racial hatred.
NBC doctored the 911 recordings to do this.
The fact that the trial, which was built on that very false media narrative, didn't go the way the race hustlers and Obama wanted, doesn't mean the media trial did not happen.
Oh be joyful!
Back in 2009, there was this case in upstate New York, where a black man with a gun license who, in the course of protecting his neighborhood, shot a white punk. The 16-year-old seemingly white kid was breaking into a car with an accomplice. Roderick Scott, a black guy living across the street, called 911 and tried to hold the offending youths at gunpoint until the police arrived. One of the youthful offenders managed to run away. The other charged at Scott, who shot him.
I think an important moral of this and the Zimmerman story is not to attempt a barehanded attack on someone with a gun.
Unlike the murder charges against Zimmerman, Scott was more sensibly charged with manslaughter. There was at least a case to be made for manslaughter of some degree in both instances.
Scott was ultimately found not guilty. The dead kid's family and friends were upset. The Federal Government seems not to have been interested in bringing civil rights charges, and it seems safe to say no one has ever heard of this case, unless you are among the unlucky few who live in the vicinity of Rochester, NY.
Revenant ... Thou shalt not mention the Roderick Scott case. Although it occured in 2009, it was cited in 2013 by bloggers. Cannot be mentioned ... Does not fit the narrative.
Bad Park You.
TTBurnett ... dang you beat me to the tape by 2 minutes.
Bad Park Me.
Not because you're racists but because you're stupid,...
Oh goody. That sounds just like something Annie would say.
You don't agree with me? You're stupid. You don't know why I'm calling you stupid? It's because you're even stupider.
Yeah thanks Crack.
Why not just tell us why you think we're stupid. Then we can either change our way of thinking--or decide you're actually the stupid one.
Fucking hell.
I feel sorry for you Crack. There are 40 million black folk in this country, and whenever some African American a-hole does something, you're expected, AS A BLACK MAN, to somehow to HAVE AN OPINION.
Wait...Crack is a black man? Shit. This changes everything.
Airdog: Such is life.
One correction to the Scott story: Scott said on the witness stand that he thought his girlfriend had called 911. He was sleeping on the couch because of a quarrel with said girlfriend, so he was able to see and hear the three punks (not two, sorry) breaking into the car. The girlfriend was awakened by all this, and seemingly called 911.
Another moral to the story is not to get in the doghouse with your significant other to the extent of finding yourself on the couch.
Has anyone else here ever been stopped for DWW and DWD....e.g., Driving While White and Driving Well Dressed?
I have, in Detroit at 0300 hours. It was a legitimate stop, too...I appeared out of place and the police officers, both black, did their job to find out what the story was ... e.g., I came direct from work in the federal building to help a friend with his bar in the Cass Corridor and wound up closing the place for the night at 0230 hours. *Crackas* like me in business suits aren't usually up to any good at 0300 hours in the ghetto. My CAC card helped validate my story.
TTBurnett said...
Another moral to the story is not to get in the doghouse with your significant other to the extent of finding yourself on the couch.
In my first marriage if I was in a sufficient state of "doghouse" to need the couch, it was advisable to just leave and find a motel. First wife was a great girl, kind and generous, but v-e-r-y dangerous when angry...one did not close one's eyes when she was angry, not anywhere within reach anyway. Next morning she's always be fine.
Other wrinkles to the Scott story:
Scott had a gun license in New York state. This wasn't Florida, with its lax gun laws, etc.
Scott was found not guilty, again in New York, by claiming self-defense, just like Zimmerman. This wasn't Florida, with its terrible Stand Your Ground law, etc.
So-called "stand your ground" was bandied about for a while in the Zimmerman case, but the actual legal defense was on the basis of self-defense. "Stand Your Ground" makes for a much better Presidential speech than the legal intricacies of self-defense, which is much better suited to bore law students than arouse the public.
This is unfortunate, but I learned a long time ago, that if you just avoid blacks, you can't go wrong. It's always -- if you're not a racist, then you're stupid, or whatever.
The stand your ground law isn't terrible. Not having a duty to retreat isn't a bad thing.
And it was bandied about because originally SYG was going to be used. O'Mara decided he could win it solely on self defense (rightly so) but he also decided there was no way he was going to win an SYG hearing with Judge Nelson (or, given the circumstances, with any judge in FL).
I'm not sure what you consider lax gun laws. If you believe Florida's are lax, than states like New Hampshire must really be the wild wild west to you.
Then again, I believe you're a resident of MA, where there's a license and 7 day wait for school children to construct pea shooters out of pens.
NBC doctored the 911 recordings to do this.
So did ABC.
It's funny that every time Sharpton opens his mouth about it NBC has to put in a crawl or a mention at the end of the segment/show that GZ is suing NBC.
How does the blogging heads thing work? Complicated?
Having an occasional Lem Heads feature here would be awesome, if it was something easily done. Imagine a side-by-side convo between, well, nearly any two people who post and comment here.
Imagine a side-by-side convo between, well, nearly any two people who post and comment here.
betamax3000 and Pastafarin!
I have one of those "mullet" dresses that Althouse linked to this morning. I should say a skirt. It's very sheer and I think the short front and the long back is kind of sexy.
*shrug*
(Yes, I am still reading even though I'd sworn off. Old habits die hard.)
@Haz
Awesome idea!
I'd do it. And I'd try to keep my head still. But chicks are fidgety.
NBC doctored the 911 recordings to do this.
So did ABC.
All for the glory of the faux and the democrat agenda.
This AM MSN news labeled /headlined a story about Monica Lewinski -as "sexy!".
Not that our fake hack media are in the tank or anything....
Icepick said...
Imagine a side-by-side convo between, well, nearly any two people who post and comment here.
Chip Ahoy and Chip Ahoy. Done entirely in sign language, with Chip Ahoy in the background translating for us.
A democrat politician could get caught raping a child-- and Yahoo and MSN would label it as "sexy!".
CEO: There is often a component of irony in what I write. The use of "etc." is a dead give-away.
One of the media memes was how terrible Florida's gun laws are, not to mention the even worse SYG law. My point is that even in New York, which is, after all, a "real" state and not some Southern hellhole (*irony alert*), it was possible for someone to claim self-defense and be acquitted in very similar circumstances to Zimmerman.
Now, to be perfectly sincere, I think both Zimmerman and Scott were terrible tragedies that needn't have happened. You've got two dead kids, punks as they may have been. Neither got the chance to grow out of punkdom, but were killed at an age when teenage boys, in particular, are likely to not quite have all their marbles. I know this as the parent of teenage boys. And even though they are really good kids, it still gives me more than a twinge to think of what might have happened if things had gone wrong, as they horribly did in both these cases.
It's odd, but every adult member of both sexes and both sides of my family of my parents' generation, with the exception of my mother, were in law enforcement. They included a big city police captain, a highway patrolman, a game warden, several probation officers, and detectives who worked for various Federal and State agencies. They were all over the place politically, from a lesbian Marxist to a Pat Buchanan-lover in his old age. But the one thing they all agreed on is that there are too many idiots with guns. And they meant licensed idiots.
I think both Zimmerman and Scott qualify. Zimmerman went out looking for trouble, and he found it. And even if he felt he needed a gun for self-defense, he ought not to have had a live round in the chamber and the safety off. On that basis, he should have been charged with reckless manslaughter, maybe pled out to reckless endangerment. It would be interesting to hear from a lawyer about this. But instead of something that might have gotten him a year or two in jail and a long term of probation, the case was manufactured into a cause célèbre. It may have given the President a speech topic, but it did nothing for justice.
Scott was an equal tragedy. Scott, seeing punks breaking into neighborhood cars, should have called 911 and locked his doors. He might have taken video from his window of said punks to use a later evidence. But he ought to have let the cops do the punk-nabbing. It's almost never a good idea to go waving a pistol at miscreants (or anyone else) at 3 AM. Result: Dead kid. Legally justified, but the kid's still dead. I don't know what kind of stereo they were after, but neighborhood heroics with a 9mm (or was it a 7.65?) were probably more expensive than a replacement.
Now, I'm a great believer in an original intent interpretation of the Constitution. I also think the 2nd Amendment means what it says: People have a right to arm themselves.
That said, everyone has an obligation to avoid killing people with those arms except in the most extreme circumstances. The issue in both the Zimmerman and Scott cases were grey areas that proved both tragic and necessary to resolve in court.
As I say, there were two idiots with guns here. And the legal system determined they both used them legally. But the result was two dead kids and a disgusting political and media shitstorm. None of this should ever have happened. I understand the train of events and causes and consequences, but none of that makes any of this right. And I have no good answers and no facile political snark, and nothing to say, really, except it's all a horrible shame.
Crack: Now, it may strike you as bizarre, but even with the inordinate dysfunction of slavery disrupting blood ties, American blacks have formed an extraordinary bond with those millions of unknown and forgotten relatives. It's personal.
Revenant: Stuff that happened ten or twenty generations ago isn't "personal" in any useful sense of the word. Who doesn't have ancestors who suffered through atrocities during that kind of time-frame?
Not to minimize the Black slavery experience at all, but if we want to go back to those long ago mistreated forgotten relatives......everyone can have a story.
The Irish Slave Trade
"During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers."
Now, you don't see a bunch of Irish rioting against the British and justifying it based on historical mistreatment.... or having a dysfunctional sub culture........oh wait.....
DBQ: You haven't spent enough time in Boston.
For no other reason than this is my favorite Dropkick Murphy's song.....and having played in many music gigs in Irish bars in the SF area and in Ireland in my misspent youth....this is so familiar to me
It makes me laugh every time.
"Oh wait.."
LOL!!
The Crack Emcee said...
Methadras,...
Yes?
TT Burnett's 11am post on the Zimmerman case was well worth reading. I don't know if I agree with him, but I admire the effort to be fair. I really think the Emmett Till figure in the Trayvon Martin case was George Zimmerman.....Unmoderated comments have the spontaneity of conversation. There's both good and bad to that but the good far outweighs the bad.
Black people are entitled to their grudges, and I don't begrudge them some of their resentment. However, if you think a white person is unfairly profiling you as a potentially violent criminal, then punching him in the nose is an ineffective way of dispelling that prejudice.
roger said...
Meth, I was with you right up to mongoloids, at which point credibility fails.
Certainly, Zimmerman and the entire tragic episode was exploited by race hustlers and media idiots/cons. This does not justify the type of rank enmity which you have blessed us with this evening.
There were no winners that night in Florida.
So you didn't lose me when I said retarded first? I guess mongoloid has fallen out of fashion perhaps? You are right, there are no winners, but I look at what I see and what is out there for all to see and that is, is a guy, who saw someone in a hoodie trolling through his neighborhood, followed him, and when calling 911 was told to go back to his vehicle, which he did, then was attacked because that hoodie wearing person, backtracked, hid in a bush, laid in wait or the guy who followed to confront him and then punch him to the ground, then proceeded with a ground and pound and told him that he was going to kill him. That's what was fought in court, that's what he was acquitted on. The entire narrative leading up to that point and after has been nothing but a maudlin and teeth gnashing display.
Why? Well because the lies that were told and believed by these people crashed to the ground and they had no way to piece them together. Why? Because the evidence told them that they believed a lie, that the jury saw the evidence and came to that same conclusion and yet they still believe the lie. They believe the lie so much that their were riots in other places in the country Sanford, Florida.
How much more are you willing to give the benefit of the doubt to because people and in this case a lot of black people can't come to grips with reality on this. They know who they are, we know who they are. The usual race baiting suspects show up, make their pleas based on those lies, stoke the fires, and away it goes with a life of it's own. Now tell me why people in general should tolerate this idiocy?
Good stuff, Wills.
Over my 60 years, I've seen and experienced resentment. I learned the hard way that it is the most negative of energies. When you resent a person or people you hate them and want to poison them. However, you end up drinking the poison yourself.
I agree mostly with Tim too, up until the "idiots with guns" part and the part about what Zimmerman should have been convicted of. I DO think this was a tragedy and a mistake all around. Forgive me Tim, but it's too easy in hindsight to say that Zimmerman should never have been allowed to carry and in fact, it may have saved his life. We don't know.
What I do know is that I am tired of wary of the idea that virtually every big mistake a person makes should cost them somehow legally. In this case, the cost to Zimmerman was almost immeasurable. That's partly because I'd imagine taking a life like this would weigh on most people's hearts for the rest of their lives anyway, and he's got the hatred of -- I don't know - millions of people(?) on his shoulders now too. Heavy. Tragic.
I think the big loser in the Martin case was the media. I watched Ms. Jeantel's testimony and then the media's reporting on that testimony. It was extremely bizarre. Ms. Jeantel had a past history of lying under oath and gave a deposition in the presence of the grieving mother. There is no way that she would knowingly say something harmful about Trayvon Martin. The media accepted that woman's word as gospel. They wanted to send Zimmerman to jail for the rest of his life on the basis of her testimony. It was extremely agitating to watch this happen......I don't mean to pile on Ms. Jeantel, but I think some of her educational deficits might more realistically be attributed to the fact that she spent more time in nail salons than in libraries than to the failure of her schools....There was stark contrast between the harsh criticism directed at George Zimmerman's gun bearing and the praise directed at Ms. Jeantel's "authenticity". Watching the coverage was intensely aggravating.
Me overedited. Again.
And that's why it can't - it's not always ancient history. This ain't a old country. And, to some extent, it is who we are. If you know what to look for, you can bump into our history every day. What you do with it is up to you.
My white life was forever changed when I spent three years, along with three other whites, in inner city schools. One of a few hated white males by the group (though not by some very cool individuals). I've seen the evil of group think, and will never be able to be a part of one on account of it, unless you include the group of Atheist Conservatives (I have one friend like this). There is even more to it than that. I suppose I'm saying I understand what racism feels like. It's not the single person. It's the hatred by many.
I don't like black anger. But what I like even less is the media and politicians making it seem like the good parts of our system are not working, and are not fair. It is simply destructive. And I really hate the leftists, who destroyed the black family with the "Man in the House" rule, continue to fan racial division for their own purposes. They do not want justice. They do not want unity. They want aggrieved blacks angry at a very good system.
And naturally, I hate what happened to Zimmerman. Singled out by evil people, because of a tragedy. You say he is free, I say he is not. Now he will suffer the hatred of millions, and always have to look over his shoulder.
TTBurnett wrote:
"Zimmerman went out looking for trouble, and he found it. And even if he felt he needed a gun for self-defense, he ought not to have had a live round in the chamber and the safety off."
TT,
The first sentence quoted is debatable. The second is uninformed. It discredits an otherwise interesting comment.
William said...
I think the big loser in the Martin case was the media. I watched Ms. Jeantel's testimony and then the media's reporting on that testimony. It was extremely bizarre. Ms. Jeantel had a past history of lying under oath and gave a deposition in the presence of the grieving mother. There is no way that she would knowingly say something harmful about Trayvon Martin. The media accepted that woman's word as gospel. They wanted to send Zimmerman to jail for the rest of his life on the basis of her testimony. It was extremely agitating to watch this happen......I don't mean to pile on Ms. Jeantel, but I think some of her educational deficits might more realistically be attributed to the fact that she spent more time in nail salons than in libraries than to the failure of her schools....There was stark contrast between the harsh criticism directed at George Zimmerman's gun bearing and the praise directed at Ms. Jeantel's "authenticity". Watching the coverage was intensely aggravating.
August 2, 2013 at 12:10 PM
It was made worse by Piers Morgan bringing her onto his show with an audience to rehabilitate her image and failed. She's a liar and an idiot and she proved it again. A rank example of the devastation that leftism has taken on two successive generations of our populace and primarily on blacks and black culture. If you dig deep enough, you will see leftism at the core of what is wrong whether you like it or not.
Michael Haz said...
How does the blogging heads thing work? Complicated?
Having an occasional Lem Heads feature here would be awesome, if it was something easily done. Imagine a side-by-side convo between, well, nearly any two people who post and comment here.
Lem Heads. lulz. Actually it would end up being called Lemon Heads or Lem On Heads or Lem-on Heads.
TTBurnett said...
And even if [Zimmerman] felt he needed a gun for self-defense, he ought not to have had a live round in the chamber and the safety off. On that basis, he should have been charged with reckless manslaughter...
That would make sense if the gun went off accidentally. However, everyone agrees that the gun was fired on purpose. If Zimmerman had a right to use lethal force to defend himself in that situation, then what sense does it make to say that it should have been harder/slower for him to do so? Best case, Martin is still dead. Worst case, the time it takes to disengage the safety/chamber a round gives Martin a chance to take control of the gun, then Zimmerman is dead.
Zimmerman went out looking for trouble, and he found it. And even if he felt he needed a gun for self-defense, he ought not to have had a live round in the chamber and the safety off
According to Zimmerman, he wasn't looking for trouble. At best he was trying to find out what a suspicious person was doing, especially after the home invasion of his neighbor who had a nine year old daughter cowering in her closet while it happened.
The safety was on. The safety of that gun is a long trigger pull.
I'm sorry I misunderstood the operation of the safety on Zimmerman's handgun. But the fact remains that, in some jurisdictions (emphasis *some*) legally carrying an automatic handgun with a live round in the chamber is prima facie grounds for a charge of reckless endangerment. I don't know the details of Florida law, but I've heard of several cases of "idiots with guns," as my father would say, who got charged because of the accidental discharge of their weapons. In one case, it was a colleague of my father's who was carrying a small 7.65 Sauer, I believe, for personal protection when it went off in his pocket, giving him a nasty leg wound. He ended up losing his job and pleading out to some endangerment misdemeanor. It's been along time, so the details are a little fuzzy.
People will argue forever about Zimmerman's actions and how much danger he really was in. It's true that if he needed to chamber a round, the delay might have allowed Martin to get the gun. OTOH, the whole situation got out of control in a way that would not have happened with a trained police officer. At least that's my sense of it, prejudiced as I am toward the police in most instances.
In both these cases you have amateurs with professional firepower. And in both cases the amateurs made really dumb and fatal mistakes. Hence "idiots with guns."
I'll also say one more unremarkable thing about Zimmerman—unremarkable in that I've read lawyers making the same point—and that is he should have been *charged* with reckless manslaughter, not that he should have been convicted. In the normal course of things in most jurisdictions and involving an obscure situation, such a charge might have been pleaded out to a lesser offense. He might have gone to trial, like Scott, and gotten completely off. But that is the "normal" operation of the legal justice system, which was completely upended in Zimmerman's case, and from which no one, I think, can take much solace.
Zimmerman was seriously overcharged for base political reasons. He might not have been charged at all in Florida, as many have said. In other jurisdictions, he might have faced charges that more accurately fit the circumstances. But, as it was, charging him with Murder of one degree or another and making it out the Crime of the Century was a politically motivated, sickening piece of media strategy that proves there are not only idiots with guns, but idiots in the media and idiots among politicians, some of whom hold very high offices, indeed.
So... I realize that I only got to the third sentence but... automatic handgun?
And certainly a person can carry a round chambered or not, unless it's a revolver and then it's sort of chambered automatically, but how do you "chamber a round" if you don't have two hands?
What total idiot would rely on having two hands free in an emergency?
And as my gun safety instructor said... guns don't go off "accidentally". A semi-auto can't go off at all unless the trigger is pulled. Guns only go off when you don't want them to through negligence... and pulling the trigger. Keep your finger out of the trigger guard!
OH! "Trained police officer" lady shot an unarmed homeless man in Santa Ana... I won't even say she was wrong to do so as even an unarmed person is dangerous and can close distance between you unbelievably fast and I wasn't there, but clearly the "whole situation got out of control."
blacks can't take it and don't get it, cause frankly many of them are too fucking stupid to get it.
The only group in the country who were forced not to learn - by the same group who will now hold black ignorance up for ridicule - it's just too classic. Yes, I completely understand why you think blacks should find it easy to work with you. You're a peach.
And stupid. I mentioned this before and I'll say it again:
Do any of you - especially "grievance" types like Methadras who think they're being so post-racial by not giving a damn - do you guys ever think of us as a country? Have concern for us, as a country? Or is it all about getting "Choom", political one-upmanship of one kind or another, and race-based mental masturbation? I see no difference between that and Al Sharpton's gig.
I accept there's nothing I can do about the silly skin-color-obsessed way Americans - white and black - insist on viewing the world. I don't share it and, as far as I'm concerned, most views that don't are effectively pushed aside - by sheer force of numbers - for more of the circus.
I think we, as a people, have a little more nuance than I think most are letting on, is all.
That's all I can say.
The stupidity of race - and the overwhelming life and death results of belief in it - stupefy me,...
TTBurnett said...
And in both cases the amateurs made really dumb and fatal mistakes...
What dumb and fatal mistake did Zimmerman make?
Just read through the thread. Why do people always want to play the "both sides were wrong" game?
GZ wasn't "looking for trouble" he was doing his neighborhood watchman duty, trying to keep an eye on a suspicious young man. When the confrontation started he was just waiting for the police to come.
Martin then attacked him and started banging his head on the cement. Fearing for his life, he shot him.
I don't see how GZ did ANYTHING wrong. Of course, he could have let Martin continue to batter his head on the cement and hope he didn't get brain damage. But he wasn't taking that chance, and neither would I.
BTW, lots of people get shot once and survive. Martin was unlucky that just one bullet killed him.
TTBurnett said...
I'll also say one more unremarkable thing about Zimmerman—unremarkable in that I've read lawyers making the same point—and that is he should have been *charged* with reckless manslaughter, not that he should have been convicted.
Do you believe that he was guilty of reckless manslaughter? If so, on what basis?
If not, then it is remarkable to suggest that anyone should be charged with a crime that they have not committed.
Do any of you - especially "grievance" types like Methadras who think they're being so post-racial by not giving a damn - do you guys ever think of us as a country? Have concern for us, as a country? Or is it all about getting "Choom", political one-upmanship of one kind or another, and race-based mental masturbation? I see no difference between that and Al Sharpton's gig.
*********
Crack--how do we fix that?
Sorry, Synova. I mean a semi-automatic handgun. I'm writing this in a hurry.
Yes, revolvers have, by definition, a round under the hammer. That's why there's a safety.
And, a semi-automatic handgun, such as the 7.65mm Sauer that shot my father's colleague in the leg, CAN go off when it's loose in a pocket with other crap that entangled the trigger. That particular accident would not have happened if the safety had in fact been on and there wasn't a round in the chamber. Another instance of an idiot with a gun.
As far a Zimmerman goes, I think there's a plausible but bare case to be made for a manslaughter charge, just as there was for Scott in New York. I'm not the only one to say this. but everyone's mileage may vary, and I'm sure this will be argued forever. I don't have time just now to write any more, so I'll leave you all to hash out the details.
I kicked a black Muslim out of my house because he started going through my cabinets looking for pork products.
My white high school "friend" who became a cop, was always a wife-beating psychopath, and upon graduation volunteered to patrol my neighborhood because it beat sitting on his couch throwing knives into the wall over the kid's crib.
The white guy, serving in our military, after a decade working as a Neo-Nazi enforcer.
16 of my 20 black best friends are dead, most by a gunshot to the head.
I know an illegal immigrant I'd be willing to endorse for citizenship. Only one, but I'd go to the mat for him. White employers openly and cruelly take advantage of his status. They know he's more talented than they are and defer to him on the job. Most of them know he's smarter than they are. They all know he's a better man than they are. They duly punish him for that. That's one that's hard for me to take right now.
I told you about the Mormon who thinks the Atlantic slave trade is still in full effect, didn't I?
Psychics on every corner.
I hug myself a lot.
George Zimmerman is an innocent man, wrongfully prosecuted and persecuted.
That's all you gotta say or know now.
legally carrying an automatic handgun with a live round in the chamber is prima facie grounds for a charge of reckless endangerment.
Automatic handguns are very difficult to legally carry.
Zimmerman had a semi-automatic, and the safety operated on each round.
"do you guys ever think of us as a country? Have concern for us, as a country?"
I do. Which is why some of this stuff upsets me so much. No one is allowed to be post-racial.
One thing I hadn't mentioned about Loury's conversation with Althouse was how, when she mentioned that people thought that the Martin/Zimmerman thing would have been completely ignored if Zimmerman hadn't been initially reported as "white", that Loury actually seemed to get upset.
I do understand how he might "have trouble believing" that a white teenager slouching around in the dark rain in a hoody would have drawn the attention of the neighborhood watch... he's *wrong* about that, but I see how he believes this is true.
But Loury can't imagine that I and any number of others believe with similar utter faith that had Zimmerman's last name been Zamanillo not a single one of us would have heard of Trayvon Martin's death at all. The local NBC station would have reported the shooting, but that's where it would have stayed.
Althouse brought it up and Loury got annoyed and changed the subject.
That Zimmerman is "white" is such an important part of the story-telling that the media invented the "white hispanic" from whole cloth and Toure (I think it was) recently went so far as to insist that mixed race families from Peru didn't count as Hispanic at all.
Because it's got to be about how white people oppress black people. But don't suggest, as Althouse did, that it was *important* for a lot of people for Zimmerman to be white, because we might actually figure out something true.
That's bad for the country and it's bad for any hope of anything getting better in the future.
This is an open thread, right? So...where and when do I get to buy a paid of those Google Glasses like Sergey Brin announced, and were worn by a reporter at a Nancy Pelosi presser?
Crack:
Do any of you - especially "grievance" types like Methadras who think they're being so post-racial by not giving a damn - do you guys ever think of us as a country?
I give a damn. I hate what is happening to good people, who are suffering because a bunch of leftists in the media and politicians want to demagogue an issue. The feminists who came up with the "Man in the House" rule and destroyed the black family. And there are very few people, like Bill Cosby, who are willing to point it out.
Let me give you an example. SF cops decided to go to a high crime area, and pull people over for simple vehicle violations. The purpose was to get people who had warrants. Huge success. Lots of violent criminals pulled off the streets.
Then the media gets involved. "How do you feel about being profiled?" And the good people they interviewed said "Yeah, I don't like it." Another example of racism. They could have said "You know, your grandson is going to be safer, the old lady who lives by herself down the street is going to be safer," but instead it's about profiling, making blacks feel less than human. Is it so hard to explain to people it is better to be free from fear?
It's easy to hear the race hustlers moan and complain about things like this, and at one point in disgust I thought "Jeez, that's MY money they are using to protect BLACK neighborhoods, and they think I'm (society) racist for doing it!" Fortunately, my friend pointed out how childish that viewpoint was.
These are the kinds of viewpoints that must be fixed. I went to inner city schools, but got a college degree. So I don't agree its the schools. I think it's the culture, which is a disaster zone, and was created by leftists.
paid = pair [preview would be my friend]
Also...why don't "links' show up in text as blue letters or something...instead of just black like the rest and only blue if you happen to cursor over them?
Sorry, had to bitch about something today...my new PC is working unexpectedly well.
They all know he's a better man than they are. They duly punish him for that. That's one that's hard for me to take right now.
********
Initiation--that process has always happened legal or illegal immigrant.
Ya it sucks.
So you know by previous discussions.
Christie might be throwing himself on the grenade.
Got that figured out?
George Zimmerman is an innocent man, wrongfully prosecuted and persecuted.
That's all you gotta say or know now.
Not in my view. All you have to say or know is the politicians used it for political purposes, and were willing to string up an innocent white/hispanic/Peruvian black man for their purposes.
The Media was willing to use deceit to make this man look like a racist, when the evidence he is far from it. And they did it to promote racial division. And now that they realize their failure, they are doing nothing to heal what they did. Instead, they have changed the dialogue to cover their asses.
That's what people need to know about Zimmerman. That, and he is a decent human being.
People will argue forever about Zimmerman's actions
Yes, (a) even after the facts before the trial showed that he should not even have been charged, (b) even after the trial included not only no evidence to support any criminal charge, but substantial evidence of his innocence, (c) even though someone admits that he's not a lawyer and would like a lawyer's view, (d) even though countless numbers of lawyers say that Zimmerman never should have been charged, (e) even though that someone admits that he does not know the law, (f) even though he admits that he does not even know the full extent of the facts, still such people will continue to argue because they really do not care about the truth of the matter, but because they have some preconceived notion and agenda that they want to push.
You argue forever about things that have long been conclusive because you choose to refuse to accept the reality of the situation.
I don't think he survives it though.
The stuff that professors wax lyrical about in class--
"proportional representation!" "The ______ do it!"
Eh, no.
This thing could fracture up worse than the Balkans ever had nightmares of.
But Loury can't imagine that I and any number of others believe with similar utter faith that had Zimmerman's last name been Zamanillo not a single one of us would have heard of Trayvon Martin's death at all. The local NBC station would have reported the shooting, but that's where it would have stayed.
Exactly correct. Had Zimmerman been Jorge Gonzalez, it would have been a ho-hum story for the media. Dime a dozen. Nothing to see here.....move along reaction. Happens every day in LA or Oakland. No biggie. But....have a German sounding last name, all Hell breaks lose.
madawaskan,
Have concern for us, as a country?
Crack--how do we fix that?
I don't know. I do it naturally. But then, except for my country, I'm basically rootless.
I think it's weird when I'm not welcome in a C&W bar or some minority confides that I, too, "know how THEY are." That's normal to everyone else.
White guys wear baseball caps backward with over-sized basketball shorts. Rap groups from the South get in trouble for PROUDLY bearing the Confederate flag. One of the best rappers in the world is a white guy. Our top physicist is black.
I've been used by white peers to "get back" at their parents. I've been used by black peers to take advantage of whites. After that, what have I learned?
White liberals tell me their apocalyptic nightmares, because I'm black, and white conservatives turn Tea Party gatherings into the evangelical equivalent of a pagan witch's coven.
And Santeria practitioners think I'm a great soul.
Last year, I was hanging out with some great white hunter types, drinking beers, eating good, laughing, when somebody says he didn't want to watch the "Niggerball" that was on the TV. He searched the dial and found a Richard Pryor movie because, apparently, everybody loves Richard Pryor.
Like an Althouse poll, I don't know where my view of our country fits in the little boxes I'm supposed to check.
"And, a semi-automatic handgun, such as the 7.65mm Sauer that shot my father's colleague in the leg, CAN go off when it's loose in a pocket with other crap that entangled the trigger. That particular accident would not have happened if..." he hadn't shoved it in his pocket with other crap.
Not accidental... negligent.
There's some famous videos lurking around the internet of trained police officers with holsters managing to negligently discharge their service pistols into their foot or nearly into their partner's head...
A gun is a dangerous tool and like any other dangerous tool people do stupid things and hurt themselves.
Still, we let people get into cars and we let them run drill presses and tractors with PTOs. I grew up in farming country... you'd think all the old farmers started out life on pirate ships there were so many hooks around. I have a cousin who died of a farm accident and another who just got his thumb pulled off. Neighbor got gored by a bull, his son died in a silo, a classmate had a bale fall on him and broke his neck, the other neighbor had every stitch of clothing peeled from his body by a grain auger.
Of course everyone had guns too, but the only gun deaths I can think of was one kid who shot his father because he'd promised to do it if his dad hit his mom one more time, and one fellow who managed to commit suicide with a long-gun... there was a lot of talk afterward of how a person could manage to do that.
Anyhow... I got distracted. My point is that yes, guns are dangerous tools, but so are a great many other tools that people use and misuse every single day.
And you can't make a case for negligent *anything* on the basis that someone else might be an idiot. If I back out of the garage and run over my kid, it doesn't make someone *else* driving a car who didn't run over anyone negligent because they backed out of a garage.
My pistol doesn't have a safety. Many don't anymore. Some of the "safety" measures (such as not firing if the magazine is removed) seem to me like they make guns more dangerous because they provide an illusion of safety... they create more things that can go wrong. You think you set the safety but you pushed it the wrong way (people put cars in drive instead of reverse all the time) or you're used to a gun that won't fire with the magazine removed so you simply assume the one in your hand won't fire even if you don't clear the chamber.
The bottom line is that if you follow the rules you'll never make those mistakes of assuming that the gun is safe and being wrong... assume the gun is always loaded, never point it at anything that you're not willing to utterly destroy, keep your finger out of the trigger guard.
Crack--how do we fix that?
Are you asking his opinion or are you assuming he knows just cuz he's a black guy?
Because honestly, his line about it seems just as bad as the ones he's taken issue with here in this thread.
Like an Althouse poll, I don't know where my view of our country fits in the little boxes I'm supposed to check.
****************
Oh that.
Holy crap did Fen see through that and send it off.
I'll repost because maybe we all could use a laugh.
If Fen was Althouse doing a poll:
Fen said...
How awesome is Fen?
A) I think he is totally awesome
B) I think he is mildly awesome
C) I envy his awesomeness
D) I do NOT think he is awesome, but thats b/c I have penis envy.
And, a semi-automatic handgun, such as the 7.65mm Sauer that shot my father's colleague in the leg, CAN go off when it's loose in a pocket with other crap that entangled the trigger. That particular accident would not have happened if the safety had in fact been on and there wasn't a round in the chamber. Another instance of an idiot with a gun.
As far a Zimmerman goes, I think there's a plausible but bare case to be made for a manslaughter charge, just as there was for Scott in New York. I'm not the only one to say this. but everyone's mileage may vary, and I'm sure this will be argued forever. I don't have time just now to write any more, so I'll leave you all to hash out the details.
No. semi-auto's have safeties and are designed they way they are for a reason.
For example, about the safest way to carry a 1911 style pistol is cocked and locked. Even though it's cocked, there are still two safety mechanisms.
The pistol Zimmerman used had a spectacularly long and heavy trigger pull. It would never go off in someone's pocket.
Basic firearm operation shouldn't be such a mystery in this country.
CEO-MMP
Are you asking his opinion
*************
That--asking his opinion because it looks like he has given it a lot of thought.
Because honestly, his line about it seems just as bad as the ones he's taken issue with here in this thread.
****************
I guess I have to go take another look at that.
I think both Zimmerman and Scott qualify. Zimmerman went out looking for trouble, and he found it. And even if he felt he needed a gun for self-defense, he ought not to have had a live round in the chamber and the safety off. On that basis, he should have been charged with reckless manslaughter, maybe pled out to reckless endangerment. It would be interesting to hear from a lawyer about this. But instead of something that might have gotten him a year or two in jail and a long term of probation, the case was manufactured into a cause célèbre. It may have given the President a speech topic, but it did nothing for justice.
No.
Flatly no. You could not be more spectacularly wrong.
Firstly, GZ was advised by the cops to get and carry a gun. Secondly, he was advised by all concerned (including a Federal Officer) to get a double action semi auto pistol. The Kel-Tec he was carrying is double action only. It does carry a live round under the hammer, but to fire it you need to pull the trigger all the way back. There's a fairly long travel distance, and a fairly sturdy amount of weight (it's about 5 pounds, more or less).
The .45 I carry is a single action semi auto. I carry it cocked and locked. There are two safety devices between not-boom and boom.
Do you know why many people opt for such weapons? Because when you need it, shit happens fast. There's no time to grab your gun, jack the slide and hope you can get a shot off.
Confrontations take seconds, not minutes.
CEO
Okay I see your problem with it.
I don't think Methadras equals Al Sharpton if that is what you are getting at.
CEO-MMP said...
Are you asking [Crack's] opinion or are you assuming he knows just cuz he's a black guy?
If you want an opinion, Crack's a good person to ask. He has lots of them, and he's not afraid to share.
I respect that, even if I don't always agree with the opinion.
CEO-MMP,
Basic firearm operation shouldn't be such a mystery in this country.
Neither should basic American history.
And after living in France, I still get shocked at how ignorant our country is on them - including the media.
Listening to most of this talk, including the Zimmerman stuff, is worthless. All it's good for is tightening your butt cheeks while displaying arcane knowledge of one kind or another. More nerdy or geeky than patriotic.
"his line about it seems just as bad as the ones he's taken issue with here in this thread."
Oh yeah, saying people are stupid is just the same as singling out blacks alone for the charge. Like white shit don't stink.
You're stupid.
TTBurnett said...
Zimmerman was seriously overcharged for base political reasons. He might not have been charged at all in Florida, as many have said. In other jurisdictions, he might have faced charges that more accurately fit the circumstances. But, as it was, charging him with Murder of one degree or another and making it out the Crime of the Century was a politically motivated, sickening piece of media strategy that proves there are not only idiots with guns, but idiots in the media and idiots among politicians, some of whom hold very high offices, indeed.
Which is a wonder why Angela Corey isn't being frog marched at this moment for her culpability in that special prosectorial overreach? She knew what the evidence held and one of her IT guys leaked it all as proof that it was all justified, but oh no, can't let black grievances get in the way of making a further mockery of justifiable self-defense. I mean, when Alan Dershowitz says you should be disbarred, well you clearly fucked up. Again, this is why I have a growing disgust for the justice system because it is neither just nor fair, nor objective or even pretends to be. I do not ever want to find myself on the side Zimmerman has found himself on because again, once the state gets its meat-hooks into you, then it's over.
If this case never made national media attention, no one would care and you wouldn't see Jesse Jackson, Sharpton, or Urkle himself inject themselves into it. Not enough camera time.
I've got no idea about a Kel-Tec but I thought that most double action trigger pulls were near 8 pounds and subsequent single action trigger pulls back to 4 or 5-ish.
"Our top physicist is black."
You're talking about Morgan Freeman, right. I agree. Morgan rocks.
The thing about black people being stupid is, based on our history, I have to factor in a few things sometimes, before I'm too harsh in my judgement. Like America in world affairs, blacks (but all of us really) were kinda thrust into this opposing racial viewpoint thing so I can't always blame them for holding to it. Young country, some of it is valid.
When whites are stupid, sometimes, it can be a bit more difficult to understand. I mean, come on, Valley Girls? There's no excuse. I can explain why black guys wear their pants low more credibly.
"Stupid is as stupid does" and, as far as I'm concerned, if you all share a nation - yet think there's "sides" to defend - you're already there.
If the Zimmerman trial proved anything, it's that common sense is a scarce commodity,...
The Crack Emcee said...
The only group in the country who were forced not to learn - by the same group who will now hold black ignorance up for ridicule - it's just too classic. Yes, I completely understand why you think blacks should find it easy to work with you. You're a peach.
And stupid. I mentioned this before and I'll say it again:
My only grievance is the fact that leftism is allowed to flourish unabated that created the perpetually aggrieved classes like blacks to begin with because it shackled them through public policy at tax payer expense to the tune of 15 trillion dollars or so created a whole host of generationally stupid people. Don't blame me, other than the fact that my tax dollars went into the multitudes of government programs to make this happen.
Furthermore, what's so stupid about pointing out the obvious? What, you didn't watch enough of the Zimmerman coverage before and after to formulate a big enough opinion to see that the opiate of racism being bleated by the master of puppets to the rest of the black communities before, during, and after the trial wasn't going to lead to the example we are seeing played out now? If holding up black ignorance is classic, then tell me again why blacks as a whole vote bloc democrat, er, sorry, leftist again?
Don't give me that horseshit when you know good and well what the fuck the game is going on while those race baiting bloodsucking hustlers are allowed to doom-troop there way into any race tinged controversy with their palms out looking for recompense. You are a black man, face inward and direct your rage at how the cracka's have fooled 95% of an entire class of people. Let's see how far your voice gets.
There is a time to know when to cut bait and you are basically asking for it be put on the hook.
Do any of you - especially "grievance" types like Methadras who think they're being so post-racial by not giving a damn - do you guys ever think of us as a country? Have concern for us, as a country? Or is it all about getting "Choom", political one-upmanship of one kind or another, and race-based mental masturbation? I see no difference between that and Al Sharpton's gig.
You don't see whole swaths of white people protesting about the disparity of the races do you? Oh wait, maybe if you are a supremacist or KKK, but then again, that would make you a Democrat, which would make you a leftist, which I know you are now. Frankly, I'm tired of the 'national' discussion on race. We get it. We know what it is and how to avoid it, but it appears that a whole swath of people didn't get that memo because, frankly, they want to be perpetually pissed and paranoid that whitey is gonna get them around every corner. Even though that is the complete opposite of reality. Even in the Zimmerman case.
I accept there's nothing I can do about the silly skin-color-obsessed way Americans - white and black - insist on viewing the world. I don't share it and, as far as I'm concerned, most views that don't are effectively pushed aside - by sheer force of numbers - for more of the circus.
I think we, as a people, have a little more nuance than I think most are letting on, is all.
That's all I can say.
The stupidity of race - and the overwhelming life and death results of belief in it - stupefy me,...
When you see the perpetual evil that Leftism create, race blurs into a meaningless swath of nothingness and you see the fundamental mechanism of what the root of the problem is and how it's nefarious and insidious tendrils have taken hold of minds that it plays to it's particular type of Kabuki. Don't be stuck in that mindset and I wholly and utterly reject your characterization of me as being a 'grievance' type when someone questions the validity of the bullshit multi-generational grievances that never go away no matter how much taxpayer money you throw at it.
Rabel,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
My only grievance is the fact that leftism is allowed to flourish unabated that created the perpetually aggrieved classes like blacks to begin
So do you conveniently forget they were fighting AGAINST SOMETHING when they did that?
Do you ever wonder if that slightly dickish pose you hold to isn't just a little too close in resemblance to the folks lined up in photos to keep blacks out of school?
Where does all that fit in your claim "frankly many of them are too fucking stupid to get it"? Are you too stupid not to make good natured allowances for that, if you're aware of it? That isn't ancient history but mine.
And speaking of getting it, are you the guy to give it to them? Hell, I'm not opposing you and you're still a dick, so now what?
What do I tell "my brothers" about coming together with some asshole who - just like those morons to whites - will never let 'em catch a break?
Just stupid.
"You don't see whole swaths of white people protesting about the disparity of the races do you?"
No, because as the main historical beneficiaries of racial disparities, that would be stupid. There are no "white people" to begin with, but lots of folks from different places. Russia, Germany, Italy, all over. American blacks were brought here from West Africa. To think of themselves, in some sense, as a people is understandable - though probably wrong:
I'm from Los Angeles.
But for whites to claim anything of the kind is crazy.
I think your problem is not taking our history seriously. You think it's long when, in fact, it's short. You think blacks are stupid rather than acutely aware of their surroundings (which doesn't mean they can't get things wrong sometimes) and you're part of why they feel that way.
Do you EVER consider your own views as suspect? Or are you all sweetness and light, just looking for right, and a friend?
Give me a break,...
I don't agree with TTBurnett, but I support his making an honest effort to reach a measured judgment. Whenever race gets involved, people reach for their prejudices and luxuriate in them. This is true of both whites and blacks......What really rubs me raw, however, are media people who think their moral preening is some kind of tolerance. As noted earlier, I don't think Ms. Jeantel deserves to be roasted, but neither does she deserve to celebrated. There's every reason in the world to have reservations about Ms. Jeantel and her testimony. To characterize these reservations as some kind of racism or racial myopia is just wrong. That juror who spoke critically about Ms. Jeantel was subjected to more media criticism than Ms. Jeantel was for lying under oath.
That is the thing:
Trying to get by in this country, with your head on straight and the best of intentions, can be your death knell.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
*******
And, Obama most likely cut his funding or cut the funding to something he cares deeply about. NASA.
America has always almost needed a frontier.
That has always been part of the American Experiment, and exceptionalism.
A frontier use to act as an escape valve for some of the problems discussed here, but it also was the place that allowed America to make large leaps forward for all of mankind.
We are about to get reined in like all the others and made more ordinary.
William,
I don't think Ms. Jeantel deserves to be roasted, but neither does she deserve to celebrated.
Really, as a nation, we've should've been embarrassed, chastened, and building up some resolve to get our act together.
Instead, we went for the cheap shot on somebody with no ammo of her own.
Just nutty.
There is stupid and there is education and then there is culture. You can be stupid and educated. Smart with no education. Stupid but in the culture you live in deemed to be smart and just the opposite...smart, but your culture won't accept it and you are called stupid.
I'm reading the Hangman's Daughter at the moment. Its set in the 1600's Bavaria. There are some very smart people in the book who are very uneducated....or educated only to the levels that are available at that time. The smart people and the educated are looked upon with suspicion and persecuted.
It is all about time and place. To classify an entire group of people as being 'stupid' is unfair, since there are many who are smart, but have been deprived of education or prevented from utilizing their 'smarts'. You might want to say...it is their fault for letting it happen, but it is too easy for you to say if you haven't been in that situation.
If you are punished or persecuted for being smart/acting smart, you have several options. 1. Get the hell out of the culture in some way. 2. Give in and play stupid (the easy way out) 3. Hide and persecute those who are too dumb to follow option #2 and hope no one figures out you are 'smart'. Good Will Hunting is a fine example of the choices that a smart person may need to make in these situations.
My first day of school in a white neighborhood. One kid says to another, "Do you like niggers?" The other one said, "Yeah, I think everybody should own one."
After hitting the first one over the head with my chair, that was the end of my first day of school in a white neighborhood.
Now, if I'm uneducated because I also left the black school (where reading was "acting white") does that make Methadras' jokes funny?
No. semi-auto's have safeties and are designed they way they are for a reason.
Yes, that's true. And your point is? There have been a variety of safety mechanisms used on semi-automatic pistols over the years. The double safety mentioned on the 1911 Colt .45 is a well-known example. And, indeed, carrying it "cocked and locked" is very safe. The grip safety is the main thing, however, that makes that pistol intrinsically safe. I'm always a little nervous around older double-action semi-autos, such as that Sauer, because their decocking can be unreliable, and old thumb-operated side safeties are easy to disengage and forget.
And double-action revolvers, such as my father's .38 Colt, have heavy enough trigger pulls and an internal safety that blocks the hammer unless fully cocked. Those things are very hard to inadvertently discharge.
Which brings us to Zimmerman's modern double-action Kel-Tec, which seem to be as intrinsically safe if not more so, than an old double-action revolver. I realize that confrontations develop quickly. But it seems to me an interesting LEGAL question, not a tactical one, if carrying such a pistol with a round in the chamber can be regarded as reckless, which I know it has been in some older cases. Would a double-action revolver entail recklessness as well? These are legal issues about which I've read conflicting reports, and, frankly, I don't know if there's been any real clarity in press reports about this. I'll do more research and report back.
I suspect in Florida none of this would have mattered, and the meme machine was after stand your ground laws in any event. SYG is a convenient wedge issue, while the legal arcania of self-defense and recklessness only makes eyes glaze over.
Anyway, the firearm safety world is changing, and new laws have resulted in more intrinsically safe firearms, and also, I would imagine, in a more complex legal situation with regard to reckless endangerment. Modern gun safety is tending in a direction to make recklessness a moot concept.
But also, please understand if you want to discredit me, do so on the basis of the main points I make, and not on quibbles about gun nomenclature or details of the latest mechanisms. As the child of a policeman, I grew up with guns. I've owned dozens of pistols and long guns, starting when I was 12 years old, and I used to be a hunter and fairly avid target shooter. I haven't touched a modern firearm in nearly 30 years, however, so I'm a little rusty as to the latest and greatest. I've done a certain amount of black powder shooting and reenacting in the meantime, which I enjoy greatly. But the difficulty of obtaining a gun license in Massachusetts, not to mention the general density of settlement, which freaked me out as a hunter used to places like Utah and Nevada, has made me less than enthusiastic about my old hobby.
Now, if I'm uneducated because I also left the black school (where reading was "acting white") does that make Methadras' jokes funny?
Like I said. I know a lot of dumb educated people and a lot of smart uneducated people. The smart uneducated are those who take it upon themselves to learn and grow. The dumb educated ones sat through a lot of schooling, some of it very expensive and are dumber than posts.
I was smart in school. Too bright. We moved a lot, sometimes as many as 4 or more different schools in one school year in 4 or more different States. I was always the 'new' kid in school and subject to being picked on. What I learned was to, as my mother taught me and her words...."Keep your light under a bushel. Don't be a smarty in school because THEY don't care. Be yourself and we know who you are. Those people don't matter and we are going to be moving in a few weeks anyway."
What this has to do directly with the black experience, I really can't say, but it does have to do with the false, contention that Blacks are stupid because they let the Democrats and Liberals lead them around by the nose and literally keep them enslaved or enthralled to the Liberal/Progressive movement. It has nothing to do with stupid and more with culture and education. There are many who on their own have realized the facts and 'escaped'. The reality is....that it is easier to just give in. Most people do. It hasn't anything to do with smart or stupid. It is a culture and learned behavior.
I was always the 'new' kid in school and subject to being picked on.
*******
I Know what you are talking about.
Sucks.
He I think Chip Ahoy is starting a club.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, I know. He's on TV all the time. Along with that little Japanese guy.
Is that the guy who owns the chicken company?
No wonder Crack likes him.
Those colored folk love their chicken. Just sayn'
Obviously by the way I typed that last comment I only know what is like to be the new kid.
The new smart kid, not so much.
I think your problem is not taking our history seriously. You think it's long when, in fact, it's short. You think blacks are stupid rather than acutely aware of their surroundings (which doesn't mean they can't get things wrong sometimes) and you're part of why they feel that way.
Where did this "We" come into it? Some people do bad things to other people, and through group think recruit people to their nefarious purpose. Welcome to the world. How long should the Jews hate Germany, German descendents, and much of Europe? That's historical too. How long should the Palestinians and Jews kill each other. They are, after all, brothers, and the history of that has been going on for a long time.
You can't right the historical injustice, and I reject the idea the current culture of inner city blacks is excusable due to historical reasons.
Black leaders have to accept that. They have to realize there is a fertile ground, there are ladders of opportunity, they need to help restore the black family, etc.
The end result of that may not be what leftist whites want. Perhaps a new culture forged on black unity will be created. Not a violent one, but perhaps one like the Jews and the Irish in this nation that take care of each other and outperform the country as a whole. I say that's fine.
Only, get rid of the Bullshit excuses.
Crack on why blacks vote for Democrats/leftists:
Because they at least make the sound of welcoming.
You can't even muster that,...
That reminds me of what Gov. Susana Martinez has said about the failure of Republicans to actually sit down and talk with Hispanics; something the Democrats have been doing for a long time. Major problem.
Dante,
You can't right the historical injustice, and I reject the idea the current culture of inner city blacks is excusable due to historical reasons.
You can reject anything you like, doesn't mean you're not delusional. And if you don't want to right it, don't complain when they will. It's their only lives, not yours.
BTW - all I said was include the historical record in your judgements where appropriate. Why that's so unapproachable is beyond me:
It is our history,...
It's so funny:
Spend time with black folks - get stuck defending whites.
Spend time with white folks - get stuck defending blacks.
You're all insane, I tell ya,...
The Crack Emcee said...
I kicked a black Muslim out of my house because he started going through my cabinets looking for pork products.
I'm all like, WHAT THE FUCK? I wouldn't let a black Muslim in my house, along with a white Hell's Angels motorcycle club member, along with a white skin head member with a Nazi tattoo on his face.
Don't take this personally, Crack, but you seem to have a bad judge of character.
Trooper York,
Those colored folk love their chicken. Just sayn'
I've got a cut-up watermelon in front of me right now.
Gooood watermelon,...
AllenS,
Don't take this personally, Crack, but you seem to have a bad judge of character.
Shit, I'm HERE aren't I?
Naw, he was a relative going through a rough patch.
Whattareyagonnado?
The Crack Emcee said...
So do you conveniently forget they were fighting AGAINST SOMETHING when they did that?
No, not at all. I don't conveniently forget that it was republicans, namely conservatives that were the true architects of Civil Rights along with blacks, but it was LBJ that trumped the whole thing with his War on Poverty legislation assuring that blacks would be on the plantation into infinity. Democrats, aka the left again shackling a once free people back into subjugation, not to individual slave owners, but now to the state. The beginnings of real, tangible socialism in this country and sucking the rest of kicking and screaming right along with them because we are the ones that have been funding it. So no, I don't forget that. Try harder.
Do you ever wonder if that slightly dickish pose you hold to isn't just a little too close in resemblance to the folks lined up in photos to keep blacks out of school?
Maybe in your one sided mind it might be a dickish pose and I admit freely that I have a high intolerance to people regardless of color who are fucking tools. The unfortunate thing about being a tool is that a lot of blacks don't seem to mind beign such, neither do a lot of latino's, or whites. In fact, they love it. Better to have things thought for them than to actually pretend to do actual thinking and thus heavy lifting and the actions that come with the realization that being a tool is a mistake.
Where does all that fit in your claim "frankly many of them are too fucking stupid to get it"? Are you too stupid not to make good natured allowances for that, if you're aware of it? That isn't ancient history but mine.
Excuse me while I chuckle a little bit at this characterization that being a deliberate tool of perpetually aggrieved race baiting that just happens to be black should get a good natured pass. Or should I just shake my head and say, "Oh bless their little hearts?"
And speaking of getting it, are you the guy to give it to them?
I do and I have, at least to anyone I know that spews this kind of nonsense. I've worked with people from all kinds of diverse backgrounds, fairly international settings, so I get to hear and participate in discussions from people who are outside observers looking into American culture as it stands on things like race and race politics and let me tell you, we have it easy here and they do not particularly look kindly upon certain classes of people they find to be distastful in their thinking. Not flattering at all and that's a real shame. And you know what my response to them on that is? Government made them this way, then they give me this perplexed look that I have to expound on. The looks especially from people who come from these leftists countries either have two usual reactions. Either they agree because they see it too or they are so leftward bent that their snobbery won't allow them to think that government isn't the answer, but that these brutes need government to make them more civilized. It's quite a contrast of thought.
Hell, I'm not opposing you and you're still a dick, so now what?
Oh noes, I've been called a Richard. Woe is fucking me. [sigh]
What do I tell "my brothers" about coming together with some asshole who - just like those morons to whites - will never let 'em catch a break?
Just stupid.
Tell them what I tell them, the world isn't fucking fair, it will devour you in an instant when you least expect it, stop selling your soul for the smallest amount of currency to people you think will give you shit and stand up for you, when they won't because all they care about is that you can push a button or pull a lever to keep the gravy train going. Only you can take care of yourself and your own and the sooner you realize that, the better off you will be. Stop being a fucking sucker. Capish?
Well look at this thread. Nice and long with quite a few opinions and perspectives. A few jokes here and there. Some ideas. Some casual banter.
No anger or insults. No demeaning, preening condescension.
Pretty good thread. Nice job, commenters.
Crack:
You can reject anything you like, doesn't mean you're not delusional.
Actually, I blame the current situation of the inner cities on very poor decisions by leftists. Not to the injustices of the past, aka slavery, Jim Crow, etc. Many different cultural groups had to go through that.
Here is a good article (via Instapundit) about the one-sided, "shut up while black people lecture you" nature of our "national conversation on race".
Michael Haz said...
No anger or insults. No demeaning, preening condescension.
Yes, and some strong opinions too. Some where I felt to jump in, but I discovered were concepts well answered by others, better than I could.
Noticeable is the absence of a couple folks, save one reference to an ethnic group that no one picked up on...but I nearly did because they are my friends and neighbors...however, I am learning not to take "bait" when presented.
So yeah, good thread, acrimony is not necessary. Good job Lem and the whole gang of 10.
MLK's killing wasn't ten or twenty generations ago.
I was responding to your comment about a "personal connection" to the people who died in the transatlantic slave trade.
I watched his funeral live, with a man wearing the over-alls that were the uniform of the movement, almost willing his grief to fill a bucket with his tears.
You think only black people were upset by King's assassination? That only black people watched his funeral or cried over his death?
Maybe you're the kind of person who can only feel personally affected by the death of someone the same colors as him, but don't put that on us.
I dunno about you guys-but I'm making a run to Popeyes.
Let me try again.
You can reject anything you like, doesn't mean you're not delusional. And if you don't want to right it, don't complain when they will. It's their only lives, not yours.
BTW - all I said was include the historical record in your judgements where appropriate. Why that's so unapproachable is beyond me:
It is our history,...
No, it's not "our" history. It's the history of mankind, the atrocities that have been committed. No one should excuse the bad behavior of blacks on account of historical injustices.
The environment should be fixed, no doubt. As I've mentioned, many gave their lives to do so.
As a thought experiment, would anyone say European Jews ought to be excused for raping and killing not only each other, but Germans and the descendents of Nazis? Clearly not. So why would anyone be eager to say "OK, your ancestors had a crap time of it, so your bad behavior is not your fault?" Maybe that's not what is happening, but it sure seems that way to me.
Unless there is something you can say about the situation here and now that's wrong, it doesn't matter a wit what happened in the past. You will never be able to fix it, and the country is still dynamic enough that it's what the living do that is most important.
Revenant,
Maybe you're the kind of person who can only feel personally affected by the death of someone the same colors as him, but don't put that on us.
After all I've said, for you to come back with that, what's the point of talking to you?
You're stupid, and I'm standing by that. As stupid as the blacks you find so much fault in.
I see you all for what you are and you're stupid.
This is a fight you WANT to have. It's in your bones. It's the air you breathe. Oh those horrible blacks and their ways. If only we hadn't captured them for a life of toiling for us, everything would be wonderful because, god damn it, we are. Whites no better about all things and there's never anything they miss - it's just Trayvon and blacks who misjudge the world around them.
Really, you're stupid.
Monumentally stupid. Because, really, the black thing isn't that difficult to grasp. Wronged party. The group seen as doing the wrong, in their wisdom, say there's no recourse.
What reaction would you have?
But, even better, you want to get together in groups and laugh, make jokes, belittle the wronged.
And then you wonder why they're not feeling you?
Why you'd expect them to is the question,...
Revenant,
MLK's killing wasn't ten or twenty generations ago.
I was responding to your comment about a "personal connection" to the people who died in the transatlantic slave trade.
And there's no connection between MLK and slavery?
You're delusional,...
O.K., I'm done:
I think you guys are mostly dedicated to being as bone-headed as the next guy. I see enough of that already amongst blacks.
It's the rush to the bottom, except - as always in the history of white folks - you'll feel "pure" as you go down.
Thank goodness blacks don't bother themselves with that charade.
I couldn't take it,...
I think you guys are mostly dedicated to being as bone-headed as the next guy.
Well, people tend to be pretty boneheaded. It's what people do. Once in a while, really good people rise up and inspire us boneheads.
But to me, it is boneheaded to think the current approach is going to solve anything. In fact, race relations with the current course are deemed worse than when Obama took office. So it's time to try something new.
I think all the elements are in place if only old grievances were let go, and if some black leadership would pop up and help resurrect the black family. But only Bill Cosby seems to be trying that, although he has a strong separatist attitude.
And there's no connection between MLK and slavery?
If you go far enough back in history there's a connection between everyone and everyone else. :)
A Popeyes mild chicken breast has 440 calories. A Popeyes spicy chicken breast has only 420 calories.
Why?
Thanks, Michael. And thanks to William and others, too.
It's interesting what happens when no one shows up to deliberately dig holes in the lawn.
I grew up in a housing project and for most of my adult life have lived and worked among black people. I've had some bad experiences and one really scary one, but mostly we get along ok. On balance, I have had a positive experience with black people. I've known some who were spectacularly kind and good natured, and they more than make up for those who were not so great.....My life has had its share of failures and missed connections. I don't blame Al Sharpton or the black race for any of them. I think my experience and views probably reflect those of most white people. We get along with each other much better than the Bantus do with the Watusi and the Serbs do with the Croats. Black/white relations are the fault line in American society, but, as these things go, the hostility is not that deep.
Tim, I don't think I was trying to discredit you, I was trying to argue with what you said, or what I thought you said.
Carrying a firearm with a round in the chamber doesn't open one up to legal problems, at least not now.
For clarification of this, check Mas Ayoob (he's writing now at Backwoods Home Magazine, and did a multi-part series on the Zimmerman deal--he was hired by the original attorneys as an expert, then he met with O'Mara and West after they came aboard. He was going to be an expert for them but the state took so long with the evidence it didn't work out).
CEO-MMP,
Basic firearm operation shouldn't be such a mystery in this country.
Neither should basic American history.
And after living in France, I still get shocked at how ignorant our country is on them - including the media.
Listening to most of this talk, including the Zimmerman stuff, is worthless. All it's good for is tightening your butt cheeks while displaying arcane knowledge of one kind or another. More nerdy or geeky than patriotic.
"his line about it seems just as bad as the ones he's taken issue with here in this thread."
Oh yeah, saying people are stupid is just the same as singling out blacks alone for the charge. Like white shit don't stink.
You're stupid.
Pretty sure I never singled out blacks for anything. Pretty sure I don't give a good god damn what color you or anyone else is.
Like I told the black guy the other day who was arguing in favor of segregation--'I don't blame you. I don't want to hang around most white people either'.
Thing you need to remember is there are people around here who hate everyone equally.
One of my ancestors was on the Mayflower. My family is all in on the whole Mayflower Society experience. Wall plaques and everything.
You know what's cool about that, to me?
The poor bastard was essentially a slave.
Yep. The Pilgrims brought some indentured servants along.
Shit the history books usually gloss over.
After all I've said, for you to come back with that, what's the point of talking to you? You're stupid, and I'm standing by that. As stupid as the blacks you find so much fault in.
Which "blacks" might those be? The only black person I've criticized here is you, with your notion that you have a "personal" connection to suffering neither you nor anyone you know actually experienced.
Because, really, the black thing isn't that difficult to grasp.
It isn't difficult to grasp. Convincing yourself your problems are somebody else's fault is normal human behavior.
Wronged party. The group seen as doing the wrong, in their wisdom, say there's no recourse.
The wronged parties are dead. The parties who did the wrong are dead.
You, Crack Emcee, have not been wronged. If you found a genie in a bottle tomorrow and said "Genie! I wish slavery had never ever happened!" there would be a puff of smoke, the demographics of the US would shift slightly, and you would be Crack Emcee, the Congolese Farmer Who Earns $370 Per Year and Desperately Wishes the Mexicans Weren't Hogging All the Immigration Slots for America.
Pick a random Chinese immigrant: they've had it worse than you. A random Ukranian, ditto. And so on, and so on -- and not just them, but their ancestors going back centuries. Oh, your ancestors couldn't vote and were occasionally killed by thugs? Grew up in grinding poverty slaving away for the people who owned the land? Welcome to Earth.
A Popeyes mild chicken breast has 440 calories. A Popeyes spicy chicken breast has only 420 calories. Why?
The other twenty calories left to find a glass of water.
This is really a great thread. I'm actually kind of proud to see what this group can come up with when pompous thought leaders aren't around to presume roles for everybody. Which is kind of the thematic point of this post and its comments anyway...
That being said, I didn't have anything to add except for a few quibbles around Crack vs. Rev's points later in the thread, which I don't think really devalue the whole discussion. And that is the point of historical memory. It's powerful stuff... So powerful, in fact, that it convinced a bunch of white Europeans in early America that they could overcome their quite strong differences of national origin (as Crack points out) and have the right to own people not like them. What makes Rev think that the difficult project to overcome that predisposition will come any easier to blacks? The Civil War wasn't gravy.
Pride and solidarity are important things, so it's naive to think that Americans should just, overnight, think of themselves as one people and that anyone who doesn't (esp. if they're black) is unworthy of being related to. Is that really as easy a proposition as you make it out to be, Revvie? Who were the whites that American blacks should have felt so in kinship with? The masters or segregationists' kids and grandkids? Of course the easiest whites to relate to would be the politicians who actually fought, even if just rhetorically or (as you allege) fatuously, for something more than the personal responsibility that wouldn't have by itself done much for them for a very, very long time. Just because that changed in recent memory (at least in law) doesn't mean it changed overnight. That stuff is hard to erase.
Being one country is easier said than done. And there's no point in taking pride in getting there if you don't allow yourself to acknowledge how difficult and how far upstream against the strong and otherwise normal flow of historical tribalism you had to fight to get there.
Pick a random Chinese immigrant: they've had it worse than you.
With as long and imposing and influential and imperial a history as Chinese people have had, their culture never had to value solidarity to the same degree as American blacks had to.
You sure seem to think that culture is either irrelevant or should/can be erased overnight just to accommodate the whims of a rather recent political consensus.
As a libertarian, does the law follow culture or does culture follow the law? If you want to have any "natural" basis for the laws or our political culture, it seems like you're going to have to account for social and cultural norms that sometimes (not always, but sometimes) are founded in very sound and rational traditions.
As I said above, I don't begrudge the blacks their grudges. They were honestly come by. That said, it should be noted that the conviction of George Zimmerman would not have expiated any past racial offenses but have added a fresh new one......Zimmerman was a marginal figure. Not quite white. Overweight. No friends in Hollywood or Washington. He had potential for scapegoating. The fact that he wasn't speaks well for the jurors and our criminal justice system.
You sure seem to think that culture is either irrelevant or should/can be erased overnight just to accommodate the whims of a rather recent political consensus.
If a culture is anti-social, it needs to be fixed. If you are talking about collective guilt, I don't feel any guilt for what your ancestors did, R&B.
So powerful, in fact, that it convinced a bunch of white Europeans in early America that they could overcome their quite strong differences of national origin (as Crack points out) and have the right to own people not like them.
"Historical memory" had nothing to do with the decision to acquire slaves from Africa.
African nations had existing slave markets capable of supplying large numbers of slaves. Europeans went there to get slaves for the same reason that I, if I had a sudden need for large numbers of steaks, would go to Costco instead of raising my own cattle.
Pride and solidarity are important things
Pride in something you've accomplished is important. Solidarity with people whose values you share is important. Racial pride and solidarity are idiotic and should be criticized whenever they rear their ugly heads.
so it's naive to think that Americans should just, overnight, think of themselves as one people and that anyone who doesn't (esp. if they're black) is unworthy of being related to.
First of all you have it backwards. I'm not recommending that black Americans think of themselves as part of the tribe, I'm recommending that they STOP thinking of themselves tribally.
Secondly -- do I expect it to happen overnight? Nope. Fortunately this isn't the 1960s, so the question's moot. The majority of Americans alive today weren't even born yet the last time it was legally or socially acceptable to treat black Americans as inferior to whites. The *youngest* of the segregationists are pushing 70 now, and the ones who actually held office are all dead.
So yeah, I do kinda expect people to get over it. There's nothing easier than getting over something you weren't even alive for.
Who were the whites that American blacks should have felt so in kinship with? The masters or segregationists' kids and grandkids?
I don't think that "your grandfather did evil to my grandfather" is good cause to dislike a man.
Ah, but I have middle-school students who can still tell you about the Black-and-Tans.
I got them to play "Lillibullero" last year. They had no idea, so there may be hope yet for ending old grudges.
You sure seem to think that culture is either irrelevant or should/can be erased overnight just to accommodate the whims of a rather recent political consensus.
"Recent" in the sense of "Dwight Eisenhower was recently sworn in to office as President", perhaps. :)
I think culture explains human behavior and reject the notion that it excuses it. E.g., slavery is wrong even if your culture says it isn't. Guilt is not passed down from generation to generation even if your culture says it is. And so on.
As a libertarian, does the law follow culture or does culture follow the law?
Libertarians believe laws should follow from basic principles of maximizing liberty and minimizing coercion. Of course this is a constitutional republic, so in practice what we get is "laws mostly derived from culture". :)
If you want to have any "natural" basis for the laws or our political culture, it seems like you're going to have to account for social and cultural norms that sometimes (not always, but sometimes) are founded in very sound and rational traditions.
If "account for" just means "explain the existence of" then I'm not sure what the mystery is. If a cultural norm has a sound and rational basis, I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the cultural norm exists because of the sound and rational basis.
If "account for" means "accept the legitimacy of", however, that's something else entirely. A law can be sound, rational, and evil -- the institution of slavery, for example.
I'm of Irish Catholic descent. The Irish have their share of honestly acquired grudges, but, for the most part, we pressed the reset button upon arrival in America, Australia, and Canada.....The history of Ireland in the 20th century shows just how damaging those grudges can be to the grudge holder. The Irish nationalists believed that everything ugly and evil in Ireland was a British import. After the Easter Rebellion and independence, they set about re-acquiring their pure Celtic souls. The plan was for everyone to speak Gaelic, go to Church on Sunday, and live in happy marriages on small family farms. In such a country, every one would be at peace with God and the world. It didn't work out that way....If you can only give your kid an eighth grade education, do you really want him to spend half his day learning Gaelic. That's what the Irish nationalists did. Almost one hundred years into this, only about 30 per cent of the population can speak Gaelic. That's good. Having a population that speaks only Gaelic would be a self isolating tactic. ..I've nothing against regular church attendance, but, in the 20th century at least, the Church had veto power over nearly all legislation. Divorce wasn't permitted until the nineties. Joyce and Beckett were banned until fairly late in the game. It just seems stupid to make kids learn Gaelic and forbid them from reading the great writers of their nation.....There were investors from W. Germany who wanted to build factories in Ireland in the seventies. The nationalist put the veto on this. Foreigners had no right to own any part of Ireland, and, anyway, factories had no place in the pastoral beauty of Ireland......To be sure, Irish nationalism was not so pernicious as British imperialism, but if the world had to perish twice......Anyway, in America and the other countries of the Anglosphere, those idiotic remedies for ancient wrongs were not operative. The reset button was pressed, and people went about getting ahead instead of getting even.
The history of Ireland in the 20th century shows just how damaging those grudges can be to the grudge holder.
I read Leon Uris' "Trinity." I don't think I've ever been so angry from reading a book. What I've learned since is that Great Britain's Royal Family descends from Germans. Talk about irony.
What I was trying to tell Crack, and which in a very odd moment for him, he seems unwilling to let go of the past, you have to look at where you are. Trying to add human justice to a historical system is insane, and destructive. Not only to those who perpetrated the injustice, but to the children of the victims.
Fortunately, we live in a time in which progress is so great it is possible to rise above past injustices. The Irish and Jews are the most successful cultural groups in the United States today, by wealth.
But Crack cannot see it. I would say the leftists don't either, except that I think they use racism as a tool to reshape the world to their religion.
"I read Leon Uris' "Trinity." I don't think I've ever been so angry from reading a book."
I had the same reaction, but it was to Leon's being a terrible writer and his stereotypical "Lucky Charms" Irishmen.
Sorry to thread-jack.
Well, I can't leave this at 199 comments... obviously.
I agree with those saying that dwelling in the past is destructive. It's necessary to deal with the now. It's very true that many people, perhaps even all of them, eventually can point to some injustice and oppression in their pasts.
We DO as humans stuggle with a balance between being xenophobid and xenophillic. Both tendencies alternately support survial and success.
And the thing of it is... the Irish will disappear into the population the way that a racial minority can't. So something can be said for working on the notion that those people are "not like me" when it's obvious. It's not as though I could walk downtown Philly or DC without looking out of place. So it's necessary, really, to focus on being all part of the same... the same nation, the same people.
But what the Dems do to us when they break us into groups by our gender or race... if we're female or black or Hispanic... is stop that from happening.
And it's already hard enough to do.
"..the Irish will disappear into the population the way that a racial minority can't."
Well,if the immigration polices continue than everyone will be a minority. Its already happened in California.
I couldn't resist breaking the 200 post barrier.
"I couldn't resist breaking the 200 post barrier."
:-)
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