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To take a less emotional counterpoint :

a) Internal attacks like this, when considering the massive population of people (1/3rd of a billion), are extremely rare. Lightning strikes compete very well with these in terms of lethality. So what exactly do you do? Turn the country inside out (do things legislatively/executively that affect everyone) because there's a chance that 1 in 300 million people will once every year or two do something like this?

Also) Southern generals fought over secession. Today, the civil war is taught as being largely over slavery - but that's heavily revisionist, since at the time of the civil war the war's implications on slavery weren't even mentioned outside of black newspapers. White people were fighting over who gets to run the south, the south, or the much richer and better politically connected north.

To illustrate, the emancipation proclamation only freed slaves in the states participating in the cesession, not elsewhere. The remainder were freed after the civil war. Reason dictates that it was done primarily to cause disruption in the rebelling south, and not for any particular racial sympathy. (Here's a map for those interested. States marked in blue got to keep their slaves : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emancipation_Proclamation.PNG).

In general, throughout human history, the defeated are usually historically revised to appear as bad as possible, so there are no questions about whether the right thing was done, and no sympathies linger for the defeated. So the south being turned into a ~1~dimensional~evil~enslaving~caricature~ of history is rather normal. Although, critical thinking people should probably know better than to fall for ancient propaganda.

-scheherazade

holy fuck this is succinct.

Every bit of it.

Let me quote the Vice President of the Confederate States, March 21st, 1861:

"The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."

(...)

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

That's white supremacy. That's white supremacy and then some.

Read: "Let me talk outta my ass cause i'm not black and I couldn't care less either way."

You're exactly the indigenous apologist asshole type Stewart is referring to.

People that try to minimize everything into a level playing field..

When clearly there's a ruling class that own the field, all the players and still tilt the board in their favor.

As the only brown person on this site..

Seriously fuck off, dude.

Clearly is this a terrible incident.

But to say that this is a ruling class thing -- I just don't get it.

Terrorist attacks are really rare too. The US government seems happy to 'turn the country inside out' to be seen to be catching and preventing them.

This is a copy paste from WIkipedia, but it is fairly accurate.

Overall, the Northern population was growing much more quickly than the Southern population, which made it increasingly difficult for the South to continue to influence the national government. By the time of the 1860 election, the heavily agricultural southern states as a group had fewer Electoral College votes than the rapidly industrializing northern states. Lincoln was able to win the 1860 Presidential election without even being on the ballot in ten Southern states. Southerners felt a loss of federal concern for Southern pro-slavery political demands, and their continued domination of the Federal government was threatened. This political calculus provided a very real basis for Southerners' worry about the relative political decline of their region due to the North growing much faster in terms of population and industrial output.

***************
There were other factors, such as various tariffs and the fact that there was a large push to forbid new states to permit slavery, which would further limit the voting power of the South.

Well, I think 9/11 was probably the watershed moment there.

And lets be real, there are other reasons the US has interest in the Middle East beyond just stopping terrorism.

I love the Stewart formula. Make people laugh enough and they'll sit and listen to your sincere thoughts on anything, EVEN when you completely remove the comic veil. Not that I am at all criticising him or suggesting it is a deliberate ploy, I'm just glad somebody can say things so eloquently to an audience without it sounding like a lecture.

Actually, I was taught (in a good private school in Texas) that secession happened because the North taxed the hell out of agricultural products (the South's only real income) and not the industrial products of the North. This was, allegedly, in large part due to slavery and attempts to tax it away. The North/FED didn't try to free slaves until the war was on, and as mentioned, only freed the Southern slaves until after the war.
What this means is that, while slavery was integral to many of the reasons for the civil war starting, it was far from the only reason. Slavery was actually already diminishing at that time in the south, and was likely to disappear fairly quickly without the war if things stayed the same.
If you are looking for a catch all 'reason' for the civil war starting, it was perceived draconian political unfairness.

Terrorist attacks are more multifaceted.

First, they are an opportunity to generate work for the defense industry.

Second, they are usually for a reason. Often some angst over our own actions in foreign countries. For example, the news says AQ is a bunch of crazies that hate freedom, however AQs demands prior to 9/11 were to get our military out of the holyland. While that's not an offense that deserves blowing up buildings, it is definitely not the same as some banal excuse like hating freedom.

Thirdly, they are often perpetrated by some persons/groups that we had a hand in creating. We install the mujahedin in Afghanistan, knowing full well what they'll do to women, and then use their treatment of women as one excuse to later invade. Saddam worked for us, was egged on to fight Iran, was egged on to suppress insurgents (the 'own people he gassed'), and we later used his actions as one excuse to invade.

At the time, the mujaheddin was useful for fighting Russia as a proxy. At the time, Saddam was useful for perpetuating a war where we sold arms to both sides. Afterwards, they were useful for scaremongering so we could perpetuate war when otherwise things got too quiet and folks would ask about why we're spending big $$$ on defense.. (In the mean time hand-waving the much more direct 9/11 Saudi connection).

... Plus if on the off chance things do 'settle down' in areas we invade, that creates new markets for US companies to peddle their wares. You can reopen the Khyber pass for western land trade with Asia, you can build an oil pipeline, and you can prevent a euro based oil exchange from opening in the middle east. All things that benefit our industry.

So in practice, as far as big industry is concerned, there's a utility in 'fighting terrorism' (and perpetuating terrorism) that just doesn't exist with internal shootings. As such, unless another 'evil empire' shows up, the terrorism cow is gonna get milked for the foreseeable future.

Sure, there's a rhetoric about preventing terrorism, but our actions do nothing to that effect. It's just a statement that's useful in manufacturing consent.

There's a particular irony, though. That is, that while such behavior is 'not very nice' (to put it mildly), it does however provide for our security by keeping our armed forces exercised, prepared, and up to date - such that if a real threat were to emerge, our military would be ready at that time. While that seems unlikely, when you look back in history at previous major conflicts, most were precipitated rather quickly, on the order of months (it takes many years to design and build equipment for a military, and the first ~half a year of any major war has been fought with what was on hand). So in a round-about, rather evolutionary way, perpetuating threats actually does make us safer as a whole.

To clarify the word 'evolutionary' : Take 10 microbes. All 10 have no militant nature. None are made for combat. It only takes 1 to mutate and become belligerent in order to erase all the others from existence. If some others also mutate to be combative, they will survive. The non combative are lost, their reproductive lines cut off. As there's always a chance to mutate to anything at any time, eventually, there is a combative mutation. So, all life on earth has a militant nature at some layer of abstraction - those that exist are those that successfully resisted some force (or parried the force to its benefit. Like plants that use a plant eater's dung to fertilize the seeds of the eaten fruit).

The relationship holds true at a biological level, interpersonal, societal, national, and international level. Societies that allow the kind of educational and military development that leads to victory, are those that have dominated the planet socially and economically. For example, Europe's centuries of infighting made it resistant to invasions from the Mongols, Caliphates, etc, and ultimately led to the age of colonialism. For the strengths built with infighting, are later leveraged for expansion. As such, the use of "terrorism" to perpetuate conflict, is ultimately an exercise in developing strength that can later be leveraged.

Our national policy is largely developed in think tanks, and those organizations are planning lifetimes ahead. So these kinds of considerations are very relevant.

TL/DR : Yes, agreed, the terrorism thing is B.S. on many levels.

-scheherazade

This was also not the only man involved, and not the only concern that applied. This quote is his, not that of half a nation.

While I agree that the south had racist and white supremacist behaviors, I simply point out that the north was little better.

Both were plenty racist, and both cared a lot more about their money/power than they did about slaves. Rich white people in charge today don't give 2 shits about poor black people, I find it very unlikely that the rich white people in charge way back then cared any more.

Let me illustrate the 'champion of liberty' spin with an unrelated example :
Take the ww2 pacific theater for example. Japan teaches WW2 as a war to free Asia from western colonialism. U.S. teaches WW2 (pacific) as a war to free Asia from imperial expansion and oppression by Japan. Both are telling the truth, and both are full of crap. For neither was altruistic in their motivations, but both spin themselves as champions of liberty. For you will always have people on your side if you tell them you are standing up for liberty. (A concept well illustrated in The Prince - one of the earlier 'game theory' (from before it was called that) studies of governance.)

On a side note,

Keep in mind that slaves from Africa were usually purchased from black slavers.

And just a few generations ago, my own great grandparent's era, they and their peers were white peasant property of local white counts.

Things are not really all that 'black and white' (no pun intended).

-scheherazade

Well put

Somewhere in the middle lies the truth.

The fact that he is somewhat advocating torture and spending trillions to stop the black oppression, which is unfortunately what he is saying, is odd...

More accurately, somewhere between and including those two endpoints, lies the truth.

There are several Confederate States whose Declarations of Succession and/or Constitutions explicitly state that they were primarily in response to the need to enshrine slavery as an economic way of life. I think it's pretty clear that "the middle" implies a false equivalency between the claims.

My comment was a response to @scheherazade and the whole "The Civil War wasn't about Slavery" argument.

Which again, is just another white/ruling-class privilege talking point to diffuse the crux of the issue.

Black people still aren't treated with respect. 150 after the "abolition of slavery".

So of course you don't understand, Bobknight.

You refuse to accept anything that doesn't mesh with the "reality" in your head.


Explain to me why an armed gunmen who's just murder 9 people gets captured alive..

But any unarmed black man who looks at an officer funny gets shot to death before they knew what happened.

Police don't treat anyone with respect, unless it's someone above them in the government food chain.

Also, respect is a non issue. Expecting anything more than 'being ignored' by those around you is expecting too much. No one is obligated to respect you. They just shouldn't mess with you.

I've been approached at gunpoint, and I've been give a rundown of made up charges, does that make me black?

I also have coworkers and friends that have gone to court for made up charges - because a cop felt like grimacing.

The idea that inappropriate police behavior is a 'black problem' is at best short sighted.

That said, I agree that it's obvious that blacks on average get a bigger F U from cops than whites do.

(Ironically, statistics show that black cops also fuck with blacks more than they fuck with whites - which indicates that there are also cultural issues at play.)



I don't know why the kid wasn't shot.

Maybe the cop saw a scrawny white kid and simply didn't feel intimidated.

Maybe the cop really wanted to shoot the kid, but his department was keenly aware of the recent police brutality issues on TV and gave everyone headed to the scene a stern talking to about how if they make <whatever town it was> into the next city with protests, they'll all be looking for new jobs and will be charged with crimes.

I don't know, I wasn't there.

-scheherazade

Exactly! Cops (or anyone really) see a scrawny white kid and think..

"He probably isn't dangerous"

Cops see an unarmed black teen and they immediately see them as a threat or a criminal.



Stop! Asserting that:

- the Civil War wasn't about Slavery..

- that white people are treated just as poorly as black people (sometimes)..

- that the ONLY DIFFERENCE between cops arresting a MASS fucking MURDERER WITHOUT INCIDENCE..

And murdering 12 year old Tamir Rice for wielding a BB-GUN!

Is that Rice pointed a "realistic-looking" gun at cops.


It's belittling, demeaning, insulting, disingenuous, and delusional to suggest that People of Color are treated by the same standards.

THIS is what White-Privilege provides you with.
A "get out of instantly being gunned-down" card..


So it's INFURIATING to have some cockfaced asshole like You or Lantern or Bobknight tell me..

that anything other than ingrained INSTITUTIONAL RACISM is responsible for the way People of Color are brutalized, jailed & murdered regularly, causally and on a daily basis.


Like I said before. Fuck off with that..
"Well, cops are mean to ME TOO!!" bullshit.

Stop diminishing the fundamental mistreatment of non-whites in America.

It's disgusting. It's sickening.
And it's perpetuated by willfully ignorant rhetoric like yours.

Now do you get why the "Angry Black Person" Stereotype exists?

Now do you get why a bunch of teens would riot & destroy their own community?

Stop trying to nullify, neutralize, invalidate the institutional oppression of People of Color!!

Non-whites will NEVER be treated with such kid gloves.

We see it OVER and OVER and OVER again. Daily. Weekly. Monthly.

People of Color are treated less than human, constantly.

Since the founding of the country!

The American Empire was build upon the suffering & oppression of Indigenous Peoples, Kidnapped Africans, Kidnapped Chinese.

White Privilege is the resultant REAL Institution of all that oppression and suffering.

Denying White Privilege is denying People of Color their humanity.

Denying ANY human their humanity makes you inhumane.

So FUCKING STOP IT!!

Thanks for clarity, I agree with what you said.

Most black people are not treated with respect today. This is changing as blacks enter the mainstream.

I think that this will end in a few more generations. We need to have the Al Sharptons and the whites that were born in a time when which was still being promoted pass away.


Black people still get the short end of the stick with respect to the law. Sure this is not fair.


Society through media demonizes black youth to the point all people are afraid of young black males. When a cop rolls up they have this preconceived bias, fair or not it is there. How can this be changed?


As far as the white kid being captured alive statement. Just lucky I guess. But then again look where he is going. He will be wishing they shot him for years to come. The brothers will kill him, it might take a few years to get him but they will.

We are all blinded by our conceived " reality" based on life experiences. Yours are different than mine. It does not make either of us better than the other, just different.

Good, so we can agree on the one possible reason for him not being shot could have been racial bias (scrawny white kid). Cool.




As for the rest:

"
- the Civil War wasn't about Slavery..
"

Propaganda is real. Believing everything you're told by a government authority who has the power to control information, and who has a vested interest in drumming up nationalism, is naive. Particularly when that authority's actions so often throughout the history of events in question have not matched their words.

I would only ask you this :
How many of your neighbors today (of any race) do you think would willingly die _for you_, a stranger to them, for _any_ reason?
How many white people do you think would have died _for you_ back then? (I use "for you" because you earlier indicated that you are black, so the question is meant to be answered not rhetorically, but actually from your perspective)
Does it make sense that the civil war was out of the goodness of white people's hearts, or does it make more sense that white people had a score to settle with one another?
Do you really think that primary schools are telling the absolute unbiased truth about the civil war (particularly given that the north got to dictate the curriculum after victory)?

My point here has nothing to do with any opinions of black people. It is squarely to do with distrust of government as an institution combined with government's history of white washing is own actions after the fact. Don't conflate the two.




"
- that white people are treated just as poorly as black people (sometimes)..

[...]

Like I said before. Fuck off with that..
"Well, cops are mean to ME TOO!!" bullshit.
"

Why would I not assert that [*some*] white individuals are [at times] treated just as poorly [or poorer] as [*some*] black [individuals]? (to be stated precisely).

Your command that I not mention harms done to whites makes it sound like you don't think those harms are worth mentioning. Maybe because you think they are not real or meaningful?

There are plenty of police brutality videos on this site depicting injury and murder of white people at the hands of police.

Do dead white people get to come back to life, because they aren't black, and so their gun shot wounds obviously aren't as bad?

Or those that went to jail for 'assaulting a police officer' after a cop beat the crap out of them, do they get to rewind their lives and get their squandered time [and reputation/job] back, because they aren't black?

Like I said, I agree that black people get fucked with more than white people - but I don't deny the suffering of anyone, and I certainly wouldn't go as far as to assume that 'it's all about me'.

In essence, being targeted more often, is not the same as being the only target.

The general problem I see with LE (that affects everyone), is the government's (police are the executive branch) lack of obedience to the 14th amendment, giving themselves privilege to harm the state (in a republic, citizens are the state) whenever their agents personally whim so.

That's a separate issue from LE officers more often using their privilege on blacks than on whites - which as I stated, is also real issue in and of itself.

Fixing this disregard for the 14th amendment would encompass everyone, so 'we're all in it together' in this regard.





"
- that the ONLY DIFFERENCE between cops arresting a MASS fucking MURDERER WITHOUT INCIDENCE..

And murdering 12 year old Tamir Rice for wielding a BB-GUN!

Is that Rice pointed a "realistic-looking" gun at cops.
"

I never even mentioned anything about this.

Was that the difference? Was it actually that Rice pointed a real looking fake gun at a cop, while this recent white kid didn't?
(I don't actually know)

If that really is the difference, then I guess I can see why the one pointing a gun at the cop would get shot by a cop.
...
Although, I suspect that the black kid never pointed a gun at anyone, and the cop lied about it, and the cop just shot the kid 'just in case' (because that's what cops do when they feel even remotely in danger, because they're trained to be paranoid and afraid of everything, and to place their own safety first and foremost). And I suspect that cops would have liked to do the same in this recent case, but their departments are probably afraid of drawing more negative attention to the police.
But, that's just my suspicion. I wasn't there.




In this recent case, what was the connection between the white kid and the church he attacked? Was it random, or did he pick it for a reason? (actually asking, not some veiled statement)

-scheherazade

Those are very wise words. But many of us go through life uncovering the blind spots by opening ourselves to new ideas and situations. Our opinions change as we uncover more.

I don't consider it a bad thing to have those kinds of blind spots, but i reserve a special kind of contempt for people who resist the opportunity to increase their field of vision. It's hard for some people to acknowledge that they might have got something which they're very passionate about slightly or completely wrong.

@scheherazade - "Ironically, statistics show that black cops also fuck with blacks more than they fuck with whites - which indicates that there are also cultural issues at play."

If what you say is true, it suggests that the system by which police are trained and taught how to behave is behind the problem. So unless you mean the culture of the police force, my first indication from that statistic is that they're being taught to do it that way.

If all the kids from a particular school got their times tables wrong in the same way, you wouldn't say it was due to the culture of their families would you? You'd check the maths teacher.

It would certainly be a formative experience that they share in common.

Could be training, where the list of suspicious attributes (such as what clothes someone wears) are more likely to be worn by a particular culture (and since culture broadly tracks race, it would also then have a racial bias).

Could be that they are taught self reinforcing statistics. Something like : Blacks are more often convicted of crimes. So then the police more often expect blacks to be up to crimes, so they watch them more carefully - which in turn leads to more caught crimes in that population than in populations not watched so closely - which reinforces the statistic and repeats the cycle.

Could also be a social bias where the kinds of black people who go into the police force are more likely to have life experience that biased them against their own people. Some function or demographics, and location, etc.

Could also be pop culture bias. 'Black pop media culture' spent the last decade+ going on and on about 'gangsa this and gangsta that', etc. Since I haven't seen many 'gangsta cops' (lol), I wouldn't be surprised if the black cop population was culturally biased against the people that dress to mimic said media (which would more often be black people than white people)

In any case, I can theorize all I want, but not knowing the truth, it's all just guesswork.

-scheherazade

the idea that the civil war wasnt about slavery is right wing ignorant bullshit,,,your blindly repeating astoundingly ignorant right wing talking points,,your willfull ignorance is the most destructive force in america.

Which is why no one should be bringing evidence from their high school textbook to this debate. However, there are thousands of serious academics who have studied the war in detail, and are quite intelligent enough to tell government propaganda from reliable sources.

The irony of course is that many "I don't trust the government" takes on the civil war, instead put their trust in the public statements of the Confederate government. In reality, the confederates had as much incentive as any other government to lie about their motives. Moreso in fact, since they saw European recognition as central to their survival, and the English disgust with slavery was the primary obstacle to that.

I'm actually very liberal. So much so that I consider Democrats too conservative.

When the right wingers talk about 'the civil war not being about slavery', that's part of the rhetoric that 'the south was not racist'.

I'm not making that statement.





I am saying that :

- Both the south /and/ the north were racist.

- Neither cared about the fate of black people.

- The war started over secession (to which slavery was only a contributing factor, among many much more important [to the people in authority] factors).

- After the war was on, the north used the subject of slavery to their benefit.
A) Freeing slaves in only the rebelling states, in order to incite slave revolts and use that to military advantage. (if the northern authority wins, then the emancipation becomes southern law. If the confederate authority wins, then the emancipation is meaningless. So confederate slaves were given a personal incentive to help the northern authority win)
B) Paint the south internationally as 1 dimensional caricatures of evil (war propaganda), to cut off the south's supply of foreign made arms (because they didn't make their own).

- After the war was over, most of the slave owning states had been emancipated, and the north had claimed to be champions of liberty, so in order to save face they had to emancipate slaves in the remainder of the south (plus it was no skin off of their back, so it was easy to do).

(The southern states that had been allowed to keep their slaves could not then protest their emancipation, for they were few and weak - and would get no help from the other southern states that they themselves hadn't helped during the civil war (resentment/reciprocity)).

- When writing schoolbooks at that time, the rhetoric/propaganda was repeated, and generations of people grew up repeating it, perpetuating it for future generations (like religion).

-scheherazade

I don't trust either side's statements. All government statements are tainted with whatever is the popular rhetoric of the time, meaning that historical accounts of those statements are also tainted.

Officials make statements with far too many factors to consider.
Drumming up popular support for a cause, one's own popularity with the electorate, misleading rivals about one's intentions, etc.

In the end, what matters is what they actually do (what, how, when, in what order, to whom, etc), because that shines a light on what they most likely intended, but never came out and said.



It's like a fishmonger with too many fish.
His desire is to sell them all before they go bad, and make as much money as possible.

He could say to people :
"I have too many fish, please buy some before they go bad"

Or he could say :
"I am running out of fish, there is a shortage, my apologies"

The first statement may bring in a few people, but they will ask for a deal. None will feel particularly urged to buy.

The second statement will make people worry about a scarce resource. More people will show up than usual, and none will be expecting a good price.

So, it's in the fishmonger's interest to lie in order to get people to make a decision on their own that happens to be the decision that the fishmonger wants them to make : gotta go get some fish asap.



Similarly, the government has its own intentions. It could come out and say what it wants, but it's much easier to tell the people things that will make the people ask for what the government wants.
(Plus, if things go bad, the government can say "Hey, we were only giving you democratic representation... you asked for it, not us".)

So in effect, taking any government statement as truth, without considering the future implications of believing and acting on that statement, is leaving one's self open to manipulation.

One of the issues I see with many historical studies, is that they tend to parrot official statements as if they were the actual opinions/thoughts of the officials making them - when it's far more likely that the officials were making those statements in a false and calculated manner.

-scheherazade

7 years, 7 mass shootings, 7 distraught speeches has been added as a related post - related requested by notarobot on that post.

*dead

Apparently, Jon Stewart is all about racial justice when it's good for his brand, but he couldn't give a shit when he can do something about it in his very own business.

Fuck this unfunny clown.

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