So, when the police are dressed like combat troops, it's not a fashion faux pas, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of who they are. Forget the armored vehicles with the gun turrets, forget the faceless, helmeted, anonymous Robocops, and just listen to how these "policemen" talk. Look at the video as they're arresting the New York Times and Huffington Post reporters. Watch the St Louis County deputy ordering everyone to leave, and then adding: "This is not up for discussion."
Really? You're a constable. You may be carrying on like the military commander of an occupying army faced with a rabble of revolting natives, but in the end you're a constable.
August 17, 2014
Mark Steyn on the militarization of the police.
Here. Excerpt:
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 233 of 233Chef Mojo,
"Actually Crack, your history is not your own. The definitive text of AfroAm Studies was written by a white Jewish male."
How'd you know I get all my most trusted info from anonymous assholes online droog avatars?
So perceptive,...
Harold,
"Ignorance, and you agreed, breeds respect for American Indians."
That's white's ignorance - of Indians.
"Familiarity, not ignorance, breeds contempt."
That's white's ignorance, again - but of their own racism and how it plays into that of their ancestors.
It has nothing to do with Indians, themselves, who - on the face of it - are lovely people,...
WHITE PEOPLE:
They can have the values, and even commit the acts, of Nazis and other monsters from history, but - if they're sitting in a nice house as they do so - they think their parents did a fine job others should emulate.
It's as twisted as an old Vincent Prince movie,...
"Blacks took slaves, but to protect them from whites. I'm not looking to sue the world - I don't know Africa - just my country, for what it's done to me, and mine."
Weird, but blacks enslaved other blacks and sold them to white people. The white people freed them later....
Anyway, nothing was done to you, personally, by America. Slavery was abolished long before you were born. Grow up and stop whining.
"It really is a shame - whites have been such shits, for so long, everyone's practically an expert in white behavior - but whites. They're, like, the only ones who are clueless to why everyone's growing to hate them, and wants their culture replaced in America."
Without white culture, crack will be back living in a cave, praying he does not die from starvation and that his black master does not whip him to death.
Isn't it right, crack?
crack...
Zzzzzzzzzz...
Same old raciest stuff.
You are just crying about America when we are 10x better than the rest of the world.
Sure there are some white racist, black ones to. So what?
Whites don't owe you a living crack. They never did.
They didn't invent slavery, but you seem to focus your life on it.
My pappy told me that 90 percent of your problems you create by yourself, nine percent is just shit happening, nobody's fault, and only one percent, if that, is cause someone does not like you.
So crack, spend your time on that 90 percent and as Ann Landers would say..
"quit your bitchin."
I love crack, for his ability to say amazingly stupid stuff with a straight face....
His ability to be illogical is amusing, and Explains why he is looking into conspiracies to explain his own personal failures....
One simple example...
"Yes, barbarity can be found everywhere else, but we are supposed to be something else - that's one area where whites fail on honesty:
You can't attack Obama, for saying we're not exceptional, and then use that very argument - that we act like everyone else - to defend yourself - when A) America's crimes need no defense because they are a fact we have to deal with and B) YOU aren't "America," and YOU won't"
If slavery is purely American problem, then why does he hate all white people? If slavery was normal everywhere in the world, then why does he attribute it to white supremacy? If his issues is with American claim for specialness, then again, why does he keep hating white people? Every nation feels it is special, so why does crqck hate specifically white people? Plenty of black nations feel very special about themselves, while having the history of civil rights much worse than America, and yet, crack hates white people of the whole world. Why? It's not logical.
America with all it's problems have given crack much more opportunity than any other country. Had. Rack been born in a non-white country, he would be starving now. Isn't it enough for him to understand that white people at his best friends, and without us he would be dead? It's worth mentioning, right?
"Aborigines are not African descended. The high crime pronblem exists among recent voluntary African descended immigrants to Australia. Aborigines to a large extent live on land set aside for them much like native American reservations."
Actually, they are African descended. That the aborigines live on reservations does not mean they are not treated badly, in fact it's an aspect of their ill treatment. (Just as the American Indians being placed in reservations is less an example of American largesse than it is of their being placed in open air prisons.)
I wouldn't be surprised if more recent African immigrants are similarly discriminated against, but I don't know and won't argue the point at this time.
"Actually, they are African descended. That the aborigines live on reservations does not mean they are not treated badly, in fact it's an aspect of their ill treatment. (Just as the American Indians being placed in reservations is less an example of American largesse than it is of their being placed in open air prisons.)"
Sigh. Can aborigines and American Indians leave the reservations? If yes, then your claim is ludicrous.
Cracks islamist allies remain quite busy in africa kidnapping and enslaving african boys and girls:
http://news.yahoo.com/boko-haram-abduct-dozens-boys-northeast-nigeria-witnesses-092937279.html;_ylt=AwrBJR.6zfBTs2AArPHQtDMD
Not to worry.
Crack knows his place and he is not about to upset his islamist friends with any "unsettling" talk about muslim enslavement of blacks.
Which has only been going on for millenia.
BTW, use of the work "millenia" is racist.
This one time I was drunk and stopped to have a conversation with a guy bumming quarters to buy another 40. Up walked The Crack Emcee.
And that guy looked at me and said "It's not worth it" and walked away from what had been a productive corner for begging.
I'm not saying.
I'm just saying.
Robert Cook:
Quick! Name a group of people not descended from African ancestry.
Go!
No seriously, go!
Come on. It's now the time to go.
Crack
What, exactly, is your purpose with your numerous postings and do you think you have made any headway?
A couple of quick notes.
Joe Arpaeo was used as an example of a conservative who supports police militarization. Which, of course he is. But it is also unfair. He is a Korean War vet, who is still working when Vietnam vets are retiring in large numbers, and is the Sheriff in the 4th most populous county in the country, and runs maybe the 3rd largest jail system. He has thousands of officers working for him. Plus, his jurisdiction is close to ground zero in the immigration crisis. Maybe 1/4 of the inmates arraigned for felonies mornings in courts there need an interpreter. With multiple F2, F3, and F4 felonies being alleged. Parts of his county are pretty violent. A lot of drugs, much of it meth. No surprise the head LEO for this county is in favor of militarized LEOs.
As for Crack's comments about the Martin family - what do you expect? Their thug of a son won a Darwin Award for playing the knockdown game with an armed victim. And they were blaming the victim of that assault. If they had accepted fault for allowing their son to get to that point, instead of attacking his victim, along with society, they wouldn't have had such pushback. But attack they did, and they, along with the execrable Crump started the debate.
Finally - have been following this for years, and I would suggested libertarians, and not liberals, have been at the lonely forefront of campaigning against the politization of law enforcement, at least since Waco, and maybe even Ruby Ridge. We are talking late George HW Bush or at least Clinton/Reno time frames.
Here's an interesting, little known fact: The Emancipation Proclamation didn't cover Indian Reservations. The slaves there were not freed until the 1880's......More interesting facts: Santa Ana didn't invite the Anglos into Texas because of his affection for his white neighbors to the north. He invited them to Texas because the land was actually owned by the Commanches. The Commanches discouraged illegal immigration to their lands by torturing the children of illegal aliens to death before their parents' eyes. Santa Ana wanted the Anglos to do his wet work.
Let me add what I pointed out last night, and that was my worry that much of the Black community has abrogated what most of us consider civil society. A death of one of theirs, or even at the hands of one (e.g. OJ Simpson), is justification for riot, assault, arson, and even murder, no matter how egregious the actions of the Black (male) at the center of the controversy. Here, it appears the the giant teddy bear who died at police hands used his size to commit a violent robbery, overpowering a storekeeper probably half his size (all for $50 in cigars) just a few minutes earlier. Unarmed? Guy was apparently 6'4", and almost 300 lbs, and had just used his size in the commission of a crime to body slam the employee in the store. Bullet wounds are (so far) consistent with him charging the cop (at least the two fatal head wounds). Imagine being charged by someone that big.
Still, why does so much of the Black community essentially condone the wholesale rioting, looting, assaults, arson, etc? Yes. it does generate intimidation, which got the OJ trial moved, and George Zimmerman tried. But only in places with large Black populations. For the rest of the country, it just reduces the amount of respect given to the Black community for condoning this behavior.
Once you have been in the lecture hall a few times with the dimwit instructor you know you will not have to attend again until the exam. There are only two or three points he is making over and over and those points are ones you knew long before you entered the lecture hall for the first time. The dim instructor has discovered the topic only recently and has read little and not at all deeply. He is emotional but not logical, he is right but he is redundant. He is taking a serious and important subject and reducing it to slogans. And he shouts. You can get an A in this course without coming back. It is one of those "studies" courses they say are so lame and they are right. The dim lecturer often says that things are coming to light, but these are things that any educated person has known. Until he read an article in the Atlantic he had not uttered a single sentence about red-lining. In his entire life. Until a kid was killed just over a year ago he was in a different lecture hall lecturing about a different topic on which he had read little. His tenuous authority is an accident of birth and his attitude has sprouted fully formed from personal failure.
Oh, and the lecturer is no more representative of his race than are the people on the street in Missouri. Do you think the black people of the majority black city are on the street shouting and giving the finger to the cops? Do you think those idiots are all that live in this majority black community? Do you think the majority of the black people in the majority black city are looting the stores,? You, like the lecturer, are wrong.
The majority of the black people in the majority black city are at home, horrified at the death of a young man and horrified at what is happening in the street of their majority black city.
Ferguson is 2/3 black.
Yet it has a white police force and a white government?
Are blacks suppressed from voting? (I doubt it)
Are blacks suppressed from running for office? (I doubt it)
Are blacks, mostly, satisfied with the way their town is governed and policed?
I don't know about that last. They might not be but if this is the case why do they not do something about it?
Or perhaps the majority of blacks are satisfied with current govt and police?
Maybe someone has some other possibilities?
John Henry
"Sigh. Can aborigines and American Indians leave the reservations?"
Yes, they may. However, many do not, (and why not?), and many in either population are hobbled by poverty, addiction, and other pathologies.
Why is this? Is it because blacks, Australian aborigines, and American Indians are just naturally lazy and/or defective and/or inclined toward criminal and other anti-social behaviors and/or simply lack the smarts and initiative to succeed along with everyone else?
Or may it be because each of these populations has been subject to a panoply of brutalities and oppression--(including, variously, slavery, genocidal extermination, violent eviction from their lands and forced resettlement elsewhere, and continuing discrimination subsequently)--by the greater (white) societies surrounding them? And that these past offenses against them and continuing discrimination and denigration prevent their full participation in their respective present day societies and thereby access to the fruits of full access?
I'm just asking questions, not making assertions. I don't even assume there is just one answer or simple answers to these questions. What do you think? However, it seems unlikely to me that these particular populations--each subject to similar past traumatizing brutality and each plagued today by similar difficulties--also just happen to be naturally slothful, criminal, and otherwise self-destructive, that there is no cause-and-effect relationship between their respective histories and their respective present-day difficulties.
"Robert Cook:
"Quick! Name a group of people not descended from African ancestry.
"Go!"
There are no people on earth not descended from African ancestry. We are all one race.
That said, the physical differences among us mark some of us out for different treatment from others of us by others of us.
Chastened. Chastened is the word you are looking for. And, it was not my intention to either chasten or chastise anyone but simply address logical inconsistencies. Speaking of which, all the examples you gave were examples of military not police actions.
Synonyms of chastised: scold, upbraid, berate, reprimand, reprove, rebuke, admonish, chide, censure, lambaste, castigate, lecture, give someone a piece of one's mind, give someone a tongue-lashing, take to task, rake/haul over the coals, tell off, dress down, bawl out, blow up at, give someone an earful, give someone a roasting, come down on someone like a ton of bricks, slap someone's wrist, rap over the knuckles, give someone hell, give someone what for, chew out, ream out, zing; archaic chasten; rare reprehend
"the staff were chastised for arriving late"
More AReasonMan bullshit. Don't put words in my mouth, poltroon.
And as usual you reply with an irrelevency. Get a new moniker ARM, self-approbation, particularly so ill-deserved is unseemly.
Oh...and I don't suggest that whites are uniquely racist against other ethnic groups; racism is a common trait among all societies, and (seems obvious to me) derives from the natural suspicion and fear of (seen even in animals in the wild) of those unknown to us, an adaptive trait to protect us against predation by others.
Quaestor said...
And as usual you reply with an irrelevancy
This is somewhat ironic given that your entire post is irrelevant to the point you originally tried to make.
Hey crack..
BLACK PEOPLE:
They can have the values, and even commit the acts, of Ida Amin and Mugabe and other monsters from history (and do now in Africa), but - if they're sitting in a house as they do so now - they think their parents did a fine job others should emulate.
But unlike whites, blacks like crack blame their life not on their own actions but on the actions of others.
It's so much easier and might even get a few dollars in their tin cups.
Yet blacks like Condoleezza Rice, who's ancestors worked as sharecroppers for a time after emancipation, and grew up in segregated Alabama, rose up and became something.
And that is how you rise up in society crack, not by playing the victimology card. All the Democrats will do for you is keep you on the dole, and poverty.
Don't believe me? Look at all the welfare for decades you have gotten. Has it really helped?
Stand up crack and get your life going.
Robert Cook,
"The physical differences among us mark some of us out for different treatment from others of us by others of us."
American notions of race are the product of racism, not the other way around. We know this because we can see the formation of "race" in American law and policy, and also see how formations differ across time and space. So what is "black" in the United States is not "black" in Brazil. More significantly the relevance and import of "blackness" is not constant across American history. Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom helped me a lot on this. At the start of the book the English are allying with the rebellious Cimarrons against the hated and demonic Spanish. By the end of the book the great-grandchildren of the English are convinced that blacks are a singular blight upon the Earth. The change is not mysterious. Morgan traces the nexus of law, policy, and financial interest to show how current notions of "blackness" and "whiteness" were formed.
It is important to remember that American racism is a thing that was done, and a world where American racism is beaten back is not a world of "racial diversity" but a world without such terminology. Perhaps we can never actually get to that world. Perhaps we are just too far gone. But we should never forget that this world was "made." Whiteness and blackness are not a fact of providence, but of policy—of slave codes, black codes, Jim Crow, redlining, GI Bills, housing covenants, New Deals, and mass incarcerations.
I did not understand it at the time, but this way of thinking pushed me toward reparations. In the popular mind, reparations is seen as a "race-based" scheme, i.e., giving money to people solely because they are black or have direct African ancestry. But if you understand racism as the headwaters of the problem, as injury, as plunder you can reorient and focus not on the ancestry but on the injury.
Notice how we talk - some understanding and others completely ignorant.
It shouldn't be that way,...
My heuristic (which I think boils down to the same thing, via common roots in Peel) is "if a cop is doing something that [bracketing the wisdom of the law in question] Sam Vimes* wouldn't approve of, he's doing his job wrong".
But of course, I suspect almost all the cops in question don't know who Sam Vimes is; if they did, I suspect they might do their jobs better.
Especially the Chiefs of Police.
(* Chief of Police in Ankh Morpork in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books.
Which are, naturally, really far more about the real world.)
AReasonableMan said:
"I think a bigger problem was the hysterical over-reaction on the right to any police death as being a sign of the end of civilization. Somehow killing a trained armed cop who is paid to take risks became a worse crime than killing an unarmed citizen. This inversion of priorities lies at the heart of the increasing use of force against citizens."
I'm with you. The gangs aren't too worried about militarization, nor about deaths of innocents, much less police. Add thanklessness to the mix and less people will be willing to take on law enforcement. *Then* it will be civilians who will have to militarize themselves for protection.
GI Joe shops will be raking in the dough.
"Notice how we talk - some understanding and others completely ignorant.
"It shouldn't be that way,..."
No, it shouldn't be. But it is too easy to defend one's ingrained beliefs and biases than to consider whether one has been wrong all along. This is a tendency common to all of us: some become aware of it and many don't.
Kelly,
"The Boston bombing was when I first noticed this as an issue. All that fire power and military gear and who found the bomber?? An average citizen that had been told not to leave the house, but did so anyway to check on his beloved boat. "
That's not surprising. What part of the national-security apparatus functioned well on 9/11? The unorganized militia!
Rusty,
"Not to mention the refuse from the London goals."
Oh, great; now they're sending us soccer hooligans!
"After they couldn't ship us over, whites started breeding us."
Crack, you complete and utter fool: 150 years down the road, what could I (a descendant of someone who risked his life to end slavery, and the rest of that generation who came from overseas and never had the slightest connection to slave ownership in the US) possibly owe to someone who's the great-great-great-grandchild of those who were defrauded by other people none of whom I am related to?
Paul,
"But tanks and SWAT won't stop no Mumbai attack as they will be in the cops armory, not at the point of attack."
Exactly!
The only effective response to a distributed threat is a distributed defense.
Cookie @ 4:18 PM:
Would you just stop it, please?
I makes me soooo uncomfortable to agree with you 100% (and I'm sure you feel the same!)
;-)
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