U.S Presidential Election | PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
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U.S Presidential Election

AngryAnt

Tiger Legend
Nov 25, 2004
27,017
14,791
Who knows, in court we might find out that the killers of Floyd were racist , hated blacks and wanted to be filmed killing a black man for all the world to see, I guess it's possible. Otherwise BLM both exploited Floyd's death in a very cynical manner and in doing so duped us all.

Yes I guess it's possible that it was a one-off, the guy who killed him was just trying to protect him from hurting himself and institutionalised approaches to policing race in the US and other parts of the world are all hunky-dory.
 
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Djevv

Tiger Champion
Feb 11, 2005
3,091
252
NT
www.youtube.com
They were there because Trump told them for two months that the election was stolen, and then encouraged them to march on Capitol Hill "and let's see what happens". "Stop the Steal" was the slogan that I recall.

"We the People must take to the US Capitol lawn and steps and tell Congress #DoNotCertify," StopTheSteal declared online.

"Congress cannot certify this fraudulent Electoral College," they said.


Sure, gun rights, antivax etc were there but the express purpose of the demo was to prevent Congress from certifying the votes.

Yep this is why I think Trumps rhetoric is ultimately responsible for the violent outcome. But it is not wrong to protest the outcome of an election like the Dems did for months after Trump won. So long as it is peaceful.
 
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Djevv

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Feb 11, 2005
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I am not going to get into a long discussion on this but you continue to post as if BLM is an organisation when it is a movement and a cause. There is an organisation called the Black Lives Matter global coalition which sometimes calls itself Black Lives Matter but no organisation represents the movement and no organisation actually coordinates actions.
So I don’t know what website you are looking at but BLM is not a Marxist organisation but it could have elements within it who espouse Marxism.
The origination of Black Lives Matter was a hashtag going back 7 or so years ago after the acquittal of the policeman involved in the death of Trayvon Martin.
It’s origins also talk about the narrative Black Lives Matter Too which is about countering this false narrative that somehow by saying Black Lives Matter it weakens the statement that all lives matter.

My original point in referencing the BLM rallies from 2020 was simply to point out that if you add a radical element to a peaceful protest (or counter protesters) you often get a violent outcome. That’s my belief about what happened at the Capitol building last week. I have no beef with black lives mattering whatsoever.

This website: https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/ claims it is an organisation. The controversial manifesto I referred to has been deleted according to this article: https://www.iwf.org/2020/09/22/a-bl...-disrupting-the-black-nuclear-family-is-gone/
 
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AngryAnt

Tiger Legend
Nov 25, 2004
27,017
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Yep this is why I think Trumps rhetoric is ultimately responsible for the violent outcome. But it is not wrong to protest the outcome of an election like the Dems did for months after Trump won. So long as it is peaceful.

Peaceful protest is fine, agree.
 

eZyT

Tiger Legend
Jun 28, 2019
21,429
25,751
Woke african americans like the creators of BLM live down those one way rabbit holes I mentioned in an earlier post. Exactly the voices I don't want to hear from due to their toxic dogma. The non woke african americans are far more interesting. Coleman Hughes, Glen Loury for example. Here's a piece by John McWhorter.

I respectfully withdraw from the conversation.

To be woke is a good thing.

All the best
 
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mrposhman

Tiger Legend
Oct 6, 2013
17,843
21,168
Sounds like you’ve spent some time in the States. Lucky you! There’s clearly a quality of life divide between african americans and white americans but how much of this divide do you think is due to contemporary government policies say since the civil rights movement and how much do you think is due to the lingering after effects of slavery/Jim Crow? And how much is due to African american cultural ways if such a thing can be said to exist?

And if I can test your patience to the brink, (hahaha) exactly how are minorities held back there and is it fundamentally different from here in Oz where class is generally inherited anyway? For example the chinese here are a minority but they thrive and so will their future generations ... in the states I believe they also do really well. So well infact that racial quotas apparently discriminate against oriental asians when entering higher educational institutions - too many diligent and smart chinese or 'asian' students.
West Indians another minority in the states apparently do very well for themselves. Sorry to lay so much on you but we're just jaw boning anyway... so not serious.

It does stem back to slavery broadly where black communities were housed away from white communities and largely in most cities those divides are still there, there has been very little that has been done which has resulted in significant integration. There are essentially black areas of the city (generally downtown ghetto areas) and then there are white areas. Its totally different to what you see in Australia, where 1 neighbour could be black, another chinese etc for example.

The main issue IMO is education. Education generally leads to multiple things, better qualifications, better jobs, higher disposal income etc. The problem is that education funding appears to be designed to continue to favour rich white areas, and conversely penalise those that live in poor areas, as roughly 50% of the funding of schools comes from local government property taxes, clearly the higher the value of properties in an area, the higher the taxes raised and the more money invested into schools.

The attached report shows the differences between black and white students (and several other ethnicities too including Asian who do very well much like in Australia). One of the keys of this though is the level of kids in poverty (31% of black children live in poverty, only 10% of Asian and white children). Massive difference and one of the key components of improved education, is funding for schools, but also more parents being financially stable. Its not uncommon in the US for people to have 2 or 3 jobs. I haven't seen the stats but I think its likely that those with more than 1 job in the US would be far higher than in Australia.


By continuing their funding method for schools (which is very different in Australia) they continue to under resource poor community schools and invest more in richer school areas. In Australia the Schooling Resource Standard is designed to maintain education standards across the board regardless of economic propserity of the area where the school is located, so we get a much more consistent teaching standard throughout Australia. Its not uncommon in the US for poorer schools to ignore certain subjects as they simply cannot fund that department so kids essentially go without.

Lowering the funding gap for schools in the US should be a priority focus but it will take a big swing in philosophy but the current method essentially condemns poorer communities to poorer education standards and it is therefore very difficult to break out of this cycle and hence why very little has occurred to change areas from being dominated by 1 race.

A lot of the BLM movement is focused around police brutality and I do see both sides to these stories. There have clearly been cases where police have overstepped the mark and this has resulted in loss of life, but due to poverty levels, gang culture and the availability of guns, its an incredibly difficult place to police. There are significantly higher proportions of black americans killed by firearms than any other ethnicity, and its not even close. See below. Its also consistent across almost every state in the US but highest in those that we've probably heard on the news, Illinois (Chicago), Indiana (Indianapolis), Michigan (Detroit), Missouri (St Louis) to name just a few. The higher level of gun crime in these areas, will almost certainly increase the jumpiness of cops, but thats not to deny there is likely racism that has some impact, but when you have more chance of being shot by a black american than a white american then of course you would be heavier handed when that occurs. It feels alien to us in Australia to hear of police killing people as it happens so infrequently, but the same goes the other way, there are very few killings of police which again cannot be said for the US. Look at the headline news that was made when those 4 cops were killed last year in Melbourne when the truck hit them on the West Gate Freeway. Headline news for days, outpouring of grief, unfortunately killings of and by police in the US seem to happen daily leading to the population essentially becoming indoctrinated to these occurrences, its basically daily life, similar to the way they now see school shootings. There have been clear distinctions drawn up of deaths by police by race which shows an inherrent trend towards more black deaths, but its not widely distributed to show those police shootings in line with gun crime in those areas, it will almost certainly show a similar trend, indicating that the biggest issue is not necessarily underlying police racism but the income standards across race divides (ie. poverty levels which lead people to become desperate and leads to other sources of income and growth in petty crime, gang culture etc).

I find one way to look at the "lawlessness" of some parts of the US, is that when visiting places in the US, you are advised not to go to certain areas of cities as they are very dangerous for outsiders and particularly foreigners, these tend to be those poorer black areas. I was told a story by a family member, they were in LA (most people that go to LA don't actually visit LA, the tourist areas are part of the greater LA area, but LA itself is very dangerous) and were heading to the airport. They missed their stop and all of a sudden they could see that almost everyone on the train was black and they were eyeballing them. They decided to get off at the next stop and get the train back the other way and were followed by a man. He stopped them and they were told they shouldn't be there (at this point worrying a lot about their safety) but the man waited with them to protect them until the next train came. A great story of compassion from that man, but also highlighting the danger they were in purely because they missed their stop and went to an area that they shouldn't be in.

 
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Sintiger

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Aug 11, 2010
18,199
17,593
Camberwell
My original point in referencing the BLM rallies from 2020 was simply to point out that if you add a radical element to a peaceful protest (or counter protesters) you often get a violent outcome. That’s my belief about what happened at the Capitol building last week. I have no beef with black lives mattering whatsoever.

This website: https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/ claims it is an organisation. The controversial manifesto I referred to has been deleted according to this article: https://www.iwf.org/2020/09/22/a-bl...-disrupting-the-black-nuclear-family-is-gone/
Fine but I was replying specifically to this post by you where you state BLM is marxist.

“BLM (check it’s website) is Marxist and is therefore revolutionary. Hence the violence.”
 

Brodders17

Tiger Legend
Mar 21, 2008
17,658
11,692
To be woke is a good thing.
I guess it depends whether you use the meaning as originally intended by communities in the US or whether you use the meaning as appropriated by (typically) whites seeking to dimish black disadvantage.
 

Panthera Tigris

Tiger Champion
Apr 27, 2010
3,705
1,729
Woke african americans like the creators of BLM live down those one way rabbit holes I mentioned in an earlier post. Exactly the voices I don't want to hear from due to their toxic dogma. The non woke african americans are far more interesting. Coleman Hughes, Glen Loury for example. Here's a piece by John McWhorter.
Yes, Coleman Hughes is an interesting young fella to listen to. Very intelligently articulate and nuanced in the way he presents his views. Which is very refreshing compared to much of the dogmatic noise surrounding him. I quite like listening to him.

He doesn't deny that there are racial elements and contexts to the challenges blacks in the US face. But he doesn't see race as absolute as BLM activists and supporters see it. To him, it is far more nuanced. He sees class as a much bigger contributing factor in the disparity between rich and poor in the US. And by focusing so heavily on the racial element it harms greatly any chance of building a united movement of solidarity across the working and poor classes. It turns the various tribal groups of poor people against each other fighting for the last scraps on the table. Basically, it plays into the hands of those very few extremely wealthy and/or politically powerful at the top of the tree, that seek to divide and conquer as a tool to hold onto their position.

The wealthy plantation class in the southern states knew this back in the 18th and 19th centuries. They feared greatly that the huge (desperately poor) white underclass would join with the black slaves as a united movement of poor, powerless people and over run their rule. This was one motivating factor for the ruling class developing a strict legal framework of segregation to avoid integration between poor whites and blacks. And in a cruel twist of irony, a lot of this so called post-modern phenomenon of social justice has the same divide and conquer effect.

This is why I view with great suspicion a lot of the liberal corporate class, celebrity class and high ranking bureaucrats going so fanatically down the social justice rabbit hole. There is the pretense that they are doing it for altruistic reasons, or maybe they have deluded themselves into a view that they are. When in actual fact there is a not insignificant narcissistic motivation towards emotional and moral validation as opposed to anything actually practical for the greater good. Essentially it's the old 'look over there' fake pass tactic. They have disproportionate wealth and/or political power that they don't want to relinquish, so are willing to throw one group of poorer, less powerful people under the bus as a scape goat, which keeps in place a system to perpetuate their power.

And don't get me wrong, Trump does the exactly the same thing. He is a man of no principles. He simply spotted a disillusioned group, stoked up the flames of their discontent - told them exactly what they wanted to hear (whether he could achieve any of the rhetoric in actual practical terms or not) as a divide and conquer tactic. But the liberal establishment I spoke of above handed him this disillusionment on a plate. They actually contributed greatly to a climate where a totally unsuitable candidate like Trump could be elected. They are in complete denial or totally blind to it.
 
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glantone

dog at the footy, punt rd end
Jun 5, 2007
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It does stem back to slavery broadly where black communities were housed away from white communities and largely in most cities those divides are still there, there has been very little that has been done which has resulted in significant integration. There are essentially black areas of the city (generally downtown ghetto areas) and then there are white areas. Its totally different to what you see in Australia, where 1 neighbour could be black, another chinese etc for example.

The main issue IMO is education. Education generally leads to multiple things, better qualifications, better jobs, higher disposal income etc. The problem is that education funding appears to be designed to continue to favour rich white areas, and conversely penalise those that live in poor areas, as roughly 50% of the funding of schools comes from local government property taxes, clearly the higher the value of properties in an area, the higher the taxes raised and the more money invested into schools.

The attached report shows the differences between black and white students (and several other ethnicities too including Asian who do very well much like in Australia). One of the keys of this though is the level of kids in poverty (31% of black children live in poverty, only 10% of Asian and white children). Massive difference and one of the key components of improved education, is funding for schools, but also more parents being financially stable. Its not uncommon in the US for people to have 2 or 3 jobs. I haven't seen the stats but I think its likely that those with more than 1 job in the US would be far higher than in Australia.


By continuing their funding method for schools (which is very different in Australia) they continue to under resource poor community schools and invest more in richer school areas. In Australia the Schooling Resource Standard is designed to maintain education standards across the board regardless of economic propserity of the area where the school is located, so we get a much more consistent teaching standard throughout Australia. Its not uncommon in the US for poorer schools to ignore certain subjects as they simply cannot fund that department so kids essentially go without.

Lowering the funding gap for schools in the US should be a priority focus but it will take a big swing in philosophy but the current method essentially condemns poorer communities to poorer education standards and it is therefore very difficult to break out of this cycle and hence why very little has occurred to change areas from being dominated by 1 race.

A lot of the BLM movement is focused around police brutality and I do see both sides to these stories. There have clearly been cases where police have overstepped the mark and this has resulted in loss of life, but due to poverty levels, gang culture and the availability of guns, its an incredibly difficult place to police. There are significantly higher proportions of black americans killed by firearms than any other ethnicity, and its not even close. See below. Its also consistent across almost every state in the US but highest in those that we've probably heard on the news, Illinois (Chicago), Indiana (Indianapolis), Michigan (Detroit), Missouri (St Louis) to name just a few. The higher level of gun crime in these areas, will almost certainly increase the jumpiness of cops, but thats not to deny there is likely racism that has some impact, but when you have more chance of being shot by a black american than a white american then of course you would be heavier handed when that occurs. It feels alien to us in Australia to hear of police killing people as it happens so infrequently, but the same goes the other way, there are very few killings of police which again cannot be said for the US. Look at the headline news that was made when those 4 cops were killed last year in Melbourne when the truck hit them on the West Gate Freeway. Headline news for days, outpouring of grief, unfortunately killings of and by police in the US seem to happen daily leading to the population essentially becoming indoctrinated to these occurrences, its basically daily life, similar to the way they now see school shootings. There have been clear distinctions drawn up of deaths by police by race which shows an inherrent trend towards more black deaths, but its not widely distributed to show those police shootings in line with gun crime in those areas, it will almost certainly show a similar trend, indicating that the biggest issue is not necessarily underlying police racism but the income standards across race divides (ie. poverty levels which lead people to become desperate and leads to other sources of income and growth in petty crime, gang culture etc).

I find one way to look at the "lawlessness" of some parts of the US, is that when visiting places in the US, you are advised not to go to certain areas of cities as they are very dangerous for outsiders and particularly foreigners, these tend to be those poorer black areas. I was told a story by a family member, they were in LA (most people that go to LA don't actually visit LA, the tourist areas are part of the greater LA area, but LA itself is very dangerous) and were heading to the airport. They missed their stop and all of a sudden they could see that almost everyone on the train was black and they were eyeballing them. They decided to get off at the next stop and get the train back the other way and were followed by a man. He stopped them and they were told they shouldn't be there (at this point worrying a lot about their safety) but the man waited with them to protect them until the next train came. A great story of compassion from that man, but also highlighting the danger they were in purely because they missed their stop and went to an area that they shouldn't be in.


Fantastic response! Really great!! Thank you so much.
And guess it only follows that the high crime rate among many african american communities leads to high levels of imprisonment which leaves a lot of fatherless families forever struggling economically and without a good male role model for kids to follow. Depressing as hell.
You might be right, ..... education.
 
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glantone

dog at the footy, punt rd end
Jun 5, 2007
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Yes, Coleman Hughes is an interesting young fella to listen to. Very intelligently articulate and nuanced in the way he presents his views. Which is very refreshing compared to much of the dogmatic noise surrounding him. I quite like listening to him.

He doesn't deny that there are racial elements and contexts to the challenges blacks in the US face. But he doesn't see race as absolute as BLM activists and supporters see it. To him, it is far more nuanced. He sees class as a much bigger contributing factor in the disparity between rich and poor in the US. And by focusing so heavily on the racial element it harms greatly any chance of building a united movement of solidarity across the working and poor classes. It turns the various tribal groups of poor people against each other fighting for the last scraps on the table. Basically, it plays into the hands of those very few extremely wealthy and/or politically powerful at the top of the tree, that seek to divide and conquer as a tool to hold onto their position.

The wealthy plantation class in the southern states knew this back in the 18th and 19th centuries. They feared greatly that the huge (desperately poor) white underclass would join with the black slaves as a united movement of poor people and over run their rule. This was one motivating factor for the ruling class developing a strict legal framework of segregation to avoid integration between poor whites and blacks. And in a cruel twist of irony, a lot of this so called post-modern phenomenon of social justice has the same divide and conquer effect.

This is why I view with great suspicion a lot of the liberal corporate class, celebrity class and high ranking bureaucrats going so fanatically down the social justice rabbit hole. There is the pretense that they are doing it for altruistic reasons, or maybe they have deluded themselves into a view that they are. When in actual fact there is a not insignificant narcissistic motivation towards emotional and moral validation as opposed to anything actually practical for the greater good. Essentially it's the old 'look over there' fake pass tactic. They have disproportionate wealth and/or political power that they don't want to relinquish, so are willing to throw one group of poorer, less powerful people under the bus as a scape goat, which keeps in place a system to perpetuate their power.

And don't get me wrong, Trump does the exactly the same thing. He is a man of no principles. He simply spotted a disillusioned group, stoked up the flames of their discontent - told them exactly what they wanted to hear (whether he could achieve any of the rhetoric in actual practical terms or not) as a divide and conquer tactic. But the liberal establishment I spoke of above handed him this disillusionment on a plate. They actually contributed greatly to a climate where a total unsuitable candidate like Trump could be elected. They are in complete denial or totally blind to it.

Yeah, could not agree more with everything you just posted! Really good insightful post!
Sam Harris once made the comment that perhaps the only way a lot of celebrities and rich liberals can feel good about themselves and sleep at night is to be as woke as AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)....hahaha..
 

glantone

dog at the footy, punt rd end
Jun 5, 2007
1,386
433
I respectfully withdraw from the conversation.

To be woke is a good thing.

All the best

No need. Your posts are really thoughtful. And I totally agree with much of what you say. Who could argue against being aware of and acting on social injustices? Like anything as ideas develop they need to be constantly challenged and vigorously for them to maintain integrity. Wokeness is no different. It has to endure critical thinking.
The woke left will tell everyone that it's a woman's right to wear a burqa if she so chooses. And of course it is. They will say it's cultural or religious. And that people who wear a burqa are from a minority community. But they won't tell everyone that the burqa is the flag of one of the most hateful, misogynistic, backward ultra conservative fascist philosophies still on the planet and as such promotes subjugation and dehumanisation of women.
That would be viewed through the woke lens as bigoted or racist ignorance when it is infact just a representation of fact.
 
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Baloo

Delisted Free Agent
Nov 8, 2005
44,113
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No need. Your posts are really thoughtful. And I totally agree with much of what you say. Who could argue against being aware of and acting on social injustices? Like anything as ideas develop they need to be constantly challenged and vigorously for them to maintain integrity. Wokeness is no different. It has to endure critical thinking.
The woke left will tell everyone that it's a woman's right to wear a burqa if she so chooses. And of course it is. They will say it's cultural or religious. And that people who wear a burqa are from a minority community. But they won't tell everyone that the burqa is the flag of one of the most hateful, misogynistic, backward ultra conservative fascist philosophies still on the planet and as such promotes subjugation and dehumanisation of women.
That would be viewed through the woke lens as bigoted or racist ignorance when it is infact just a representation of fact.

Yet the Burqa is not a Muslim requirement per se, it's cultural.
 

Brodders17

Tiger Legend
Mar 21, 2008
17,658
11,692
This thread appears to have gone off its rightful path, a debate about the success or otherwise of Trump's presidency. though i can understand why our Trump supporters may not want that debate to continue.
 
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Coburgtiger

Tiger Champion
May 7, 2012
4,955
6,939
No need. Your posts are really thoughtful. And I totally agree with much of what you say. Who could argue against being aware of and acting on social injustices? Like anything as ideas develop they need to be constantly challenged and vigorously for them to maintain integrity. Wokeness is no different. It has to endure critical thinking.
The woke left will tell everyone that it's a woman's right to wear a burqa if she so chooses. And of course it is. They will say it's cultural or religious. And that people who wear a burqa are from a minority community. But they won't tell everyone that the burqa is the flag of one of the most hateful, misogynistic, backward ultra conservative fascist philosophies still on the planet and as such promotes subjugation and dehumanisation of women.
That would be viewed through the woke lens as bigoted or racist ignorance when it is infact just a representation of fact.
What are you on about?

That's got absolutely nothing to do with being 'woke'.

Pretty much every flag, dress, symbol, religion or culture has been used in some hateful, violent, bigoted or racist way.

The aim is to not be those things.
 
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eZyT

Tiger Legend
Jun 28, 2019
21,429
25,751
No need. Your posts are really thoughtful. And I totally agree with much of what you say. Who could argue against being aware of and acting on social injustices? Like anything as ideas develop they need to be constantly challenged and vigorously for them to maintain integrity. Wokeness is no different. It has to endure critical thinking.
The woke left will tell everyone that it's a woman's right to wear a burqa if she so chooses. And of course it is. They will say it's cultural or religious. And that people who wear a burqa are from a minority community. But they won't tell everyone that the burqa is the flag of one of the most hateful, misogynistic, backward ultra conservative fascist philosophies still on the planet and as such promotes subjugation and dehumanisation of women.
That would be viewed through the woke lens as bigoted or racist ignorance when it is infact just a representation of fact.

I understand what you are saying, but disagree.

The original meaning of 'woke' is to move into a level of sophisticated and nuanced understanding of oppression

So they would understand what a burka was better than anyone.

You are still slipping into the right wing appropriation of the term 'woke', which is a version of the PC-police-gone-mad derision.

The far right have a really long history of appropriating, misconstruing and weaponising peaceful, intellectual, cultural symbols and terms.

Swastika, eureka flag, norse mythical stuff.

Donald trump has been sued by heaps of artists including tom petty, rolling stones, neil young, for misappropriating their music.

Its kind of surprising he didnt play NWA at his Jan 6 rally.
 
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