I'm a Christian, and I absolutely detest American "thoughts and prayers"-ism. It's done so much damage to America (or abroad) and not just passively let evil deeds to keep happening, it also created and justified many of those deeds. Especially on gun violence, it's downright vile and the 2nd amendment "interpretation" (more like ignoring 100% of the context and 80% of the text before & after "right to bear arms").

This toxic combo of "thoughts & prayers" and "rights to bear arms".... is this "American Exceptionalism"? It happens to no other countries, and I don't see many of their government are less "democratic" or "free," nor its citizens have less rights.

The passivity of whole "thoughts and prayers" is NOT what Jesus said, nor what Jesus wants its followers do. If people read the NT, then they'll know Jesus is more of a SJW progressive/activist than what half of the US - the right leaning people - say Jesus is.

Oh, the all-too-easy "my heart breaks for..." whatever tragedy a politician/faith leaders heard and then DON'T do anything that they can help bring legislation to minimize said tragedy? Just as bad and hypocritical.

What gives a "law abiding" citizen the right to bare mass killing machine guns? Or owning hundreds and thousands of ammo in a home? For self-defense? Is that necessary? Really it's just a twisted sense of entitlement/freedom or some kind of nihilistic fetish. You know, I have the crazy "Borat" idea that if I'm an American (I'm Canadian, so I don't have the "right" to do anything directly), I'd troll the far-right Republican cultists using my Christian "credential" to demand my right to bear ANY arms... like anything from bombs, grenades to tanks, fighter jets and nuclear missiles as a private collection as long as I can afford it (Hooray, Capitalism!). It's my freaking "God"-given right! Carry the selective 2nd amendment reading to the extreme to see how ridiculous the status quo already is! ... But the thing is, I'm not sure anymore if there already IS a critical mass of far-right crazies that really believe what I said make total sense.

Situational awareness of some potatoes. More worried about getting a reason to have pulled her over to care enough about a fucking train hitting the police vehicle she's in. To serve...the establishment...and protect...the status quo...

Oh please. It wasn't from a lack of effort, it was 100% due to republicans wanting nothing to do with fixing health care and refusing to discuss it at all beyond screaming about how bad it would be...because Obama suggested it. They spent years trying to offer compromise solutions, all ignored. The only way to move forward was to ignore the group that wouldn't accept ANYTHING suggested and wouldn't make any suggestions themselves. Eventually they came to their senses, tailored it for the senators that might vote for something, and went forward. You call it ramming it through, I call it circumventing the roadblock of republicans who would never under any circumstance vote for any Obama plan. This was essentially the Republican plan from decades earlier that they said was hyper liberal.

Fixing it properly would be moving to single payer, which no republican would vote for and red state democrats would be committing political suicide. They fixed (broke) it just enough to get those red state dems to vote for it.

It's pretty disingenuous to claim they just slapped it together quickly as a slap at republicans. They took years and had to move forward with imperfect compromised progress instead of disastrous status quo.

Now, rather than trying to fix it, Republicans have spent 10 years trying to just kill it, leaving the higher insurance and higher bills but removing all assistance and pre existing conditions safeguards.

Another point – to facilitate a discussion, I think we all assume that hard work is intrinsically beneficial. It is sort of a control we have to accept to engage with the valid idea of this video.

However, all hard work is not necessarily good for society or how we define success for us individually. For me, a good example is how I went about dating and eventually finding a lasting relationship that I’m happy with. I really did work hard on myself and my communication skills, but if you took a snapshot of wherever I was over the course of probably 15 years, I think much of my hard work might have been counter-productive. But then, look at it from the “success” point, and the hard work had a clear line, giving me the experience/education I needed to get to where I am.

And then, who is to say that in another ten years my ideas of success won’t evolve revealing that this current moment is another step towards a different goal?

Forgive me if this seems like a non-sequitur, but hand-waving “God has a plan” undercuts thinking about any of this clearly. At best, it cannot matter. If you cannot know the plan god has for you, and puny mortal minds cannot possibly figure it out, then what does it matter? Taken to worse extremes, it leads to the misunderstanding the video seeks to counter. “Since god planned it, it must be okay” is a half-step away from “I earned all of this with my hard work alone”. And, inserting god in there is even more insidious because you are replacing the idea of hard work with divine intention, or at least tacking it on so that it undercuts any argument against the status quo.

Apologies, didn't mean to misrepresent you. We've debated things before and you seemed to lean to no cop is a good cop because there are so many bad ones guilt be association and failure to clean things up makes them all bad. You'd also said up thread to fire all active officers.

I'll cease trying to word how you feel on it, I just wanted to demonstrate by counter example that not everybody means 'reform' when they say "defund". At a minimum , the degree of 'reform' varies from change some laws and regulations to fire them and start over from scratch.

My comment of being ruled by our 'betters' was meant as a sarcastic dig on them and their abject failure in letting things rot this far and doing nothing.

Finally, my comment on public opinion on solutions being non-uniform was mostly to emphasize that as just normal, and the current status quo is just so unacceptable that it is unifying people from varied points of view to stand up against it. The most important point being that declaring, see nothing will satisfy the mob because they can't agree what to do is a twisted deception and the truth is people want things to be better than they are, and there is as you pointed out tonnes of common sense ways to go about that,

I know many Americans have a tendency to put cops on a pedestal, politicians and media outlets talk about how "dangerous" policing is and how they have to do a tough job under constant threat of violence while completely ignoring that part of the threat of violence comes because of police misbehaviour. It's also not a very dangerous job. Statistically, being a gardener is more dangerous than being a cop. You don't see gardeners stabbing random black shrubs with shovels and quoting the dangers of their profession to justify it do you?

Most of the problem of out-of-control policing is because they're held up as holy warriors, haloed in glittering samite, when they're just people, and many of them are BAD people.

The whole hero cop myth just needs to die, but it won't because Americans, by and large, are cowards. Afraid of the shadows, afraid of black men, afraid of foreigners, muslims, anything or anybody "different". You think you NEED cops to be tough, rugged heroes to save you from the things that go bump in the night. You NEED cops to be brutal and without remorse, killing at the slightest provocation because they're "just doing their jobs". Otherwise every street corner would have a mugger ready to rob you blind.

Truth is, the vast majority of Americans have been the victim of a crime. They probably didn't even know it, and you can be sure the cops never investigated. Wage theft in America amounts to far more than all other criminal activity combined. It's intentional and ongoing. Until the Walton family is in chains the cops will never truly be in your corner. They are a tool of people like the Waltons. Their job is not to protect you, it's to protect the status quo. If protecting you helps maintain that status quo, then that's what they'll do. If not.... well, ask Willie McCoy about that.

I haven't heard, and I'd really like to know...

Has Trump instigated any new mass murdering?
Like, I'm not counting from military actions from troops already in-theatre. Non-status quo.

I mean, has he gone "Hey, lets bomb the shit out of Syrians. They're like the Mexicans of Eastern Europe, aren't they? No? Oh ok, nuke Turkey."

I mean, even Obama escalated actions and robo-killed hundreds (thousands?).

I mean, for all the sleaze and stupidity, has he done anything "war criminal"-ish?

New low? This is now the status quo. There is a constant attempt to silence the press and whitewash the news to promote a positive image of this shit show.
I'm fairly conservative , especially fiscally. I want immigration reform to happen. I do believe that international trade needs/needed to be renegotiated. But what this administration has caused me to realize is that the misogynistic, racist, fear mongering, anti-science, anti-free speech administration that we have in place isn't worth having; despite whatever gains we may make from it.
But the rush of democrats to make themselves the polar opposites of the republicans isn't doing them any favors either.

I've gotta say that putting a Conservative majority on the Supreme Court has to rank as the least concerning thing Trump can really do. I mean, can you really imagine any president who wouldn't, given the chance, get their party a majority there? That's about as Status Quo as it gets.

Furthermore, choosing what hill to die on is important over abortion as well. You gotta be very careful not to imply that support for a pro-life opinion is the worst thing Trump has done yet...

You've got lots of bi-partisan horrible things to pin on Trump, you don't need to alienate more and more people every time Trump does something the left hates...

100% agree. I don't know how you miss the point of a movement ** started in response to police killings of black people **.

The phrase "black lives matter" is a refutation of the status quo where they clearly DON'T MATTER (at least not to certain police officers).

@newtboy

I do think the 'arab world' has legitimate complaints

Gonna stop you there, I never said anything about validity or number of complaints or grievances anyone had. In a better world things like that would matter, in a military conflict though they don't change the outcome.

I see no chance for a single state (where non Jews are sub-citizens with no vote or power) or an Israeli designed two state...

You misunderstand me. I said nothing about the chances of those outcomes working for Palestinians or even being better for them. I stated that whether we like it or not, Israel has more than the required military might to do so and whichever moment they decide the cost of implementing one of those options is better than the status quo they are gonna do it. Do you really see 'no chance' of that happening?

I don't think propaganda is that important to them that they actually prefer their allies suffering to reasonable resolutions, but I don't think that any reasonable resolutions are being offered or even discussed.

Then on this we vehemently disagree. Israel wasn't the only one that expanded their borders in the war in 1948. The Arab Palestinians allies snatched up parcels of land as well. They haven't even considered ceding that land back to facilitate a Palestinian state. In fact, Israel's very existence is pretty widely accepted as being due to the fact that each neighbouring Arab state went to war with the intent of securing sections of Palestine fro themselves and thus each fought independently giving Israel a chance to survive facing off against each of them rather than facing a united coalition in a co-ordinated strike. That they all mobilized their forces and sent them in the second they could to try and get the most land allowed Israel to fight them, with the exception of Jordan whom Israel cut a deal with by agreeing to not fight for the land Jordan wanted so jordan just silently took that part of Palestine for themselves.

In short, the neighbouring Arab states are not true allies to Arab Palestinians.

I think I see things more jadedly than you do.

Here's what I see of the situation. On a nation state level, nobody cares about the Palestinians. The Palestinians only influence on the chess board is their suffering. All of their 'allies' like Syria, Egypt and Iran don't care about the Palestinians for anything more than making sure that they suffer, the greater and the more public that suffering the better propaganda it makes. Israel and it's allies only care about the Palestinians in so far as that same suffering makes them look bad and sways public opinion as well. The threat from the Palestinians is a police and humanitarian matter, not a military one.

So everybody with boots on the ground doesn't care about the Palestinians. The Israeli side will take what they want as long as public opinion isn't too onerous on it. The Arab nations will actively arm, encite and push the Palestinians from peace to violence at ever turn because it ensures they serve their 'purpose' of public suffering better.

I count exactly zero hope for a two state solution reached between Palestinian and Israeli's as equals. A future of the region where the Palestinian people are afforded a better future either in a province of Israel, or their own state created under terms dictated to it by Israel I see as at least an existent possibility. I honestly believe seeking something more is simply not a possibility because NOBODY wants it. The Israeli's don't, the Palestinians allies don't, even the Palestinians themselves don't.

You seem to think maybe the parties can be made to change their minds on that, but it runs contrary to their self interests.

Israel gains nothing by backing down and negotiating as equals for a two state solution.

Palestine's 'allies' actually lose out greatly in any resolution to the status quo because it currently ties down Israel and makes for great propaganda. They'd lose that and gain nothing in return but less suffering for the Palestinians whom they don't care about.

Palestinians themselves might be persuaded to change their minds, but the only ones swaying their public opinion are their 'allies' with a vested interested in making sure they continue to fight forever for all of Palestine and not settle for two states. Additionally, for all intents and purposes their opinions don't matter anyways because they lack the power to make a meaningful difference.

None of the above is my opinion on how I would like things to be, nor how I think they should be, but rather how I see it actually looking. Nation state actions can usually be stripped down to narrow self interest and naught else. The exceptions are failures of the state representation, like say a dictator choosing their personal interest over a national one, or a buffoon blundering off into idiotic random actions...

I'm not at all convinced of that (Clinton's political career being over).

It would be the sane response. And yet, clearly the DNC (and US politics in general) aren't reined in by trivialities like sanity. I think that unless the fickle public gets really riled up over this, the DNC would swing just as hard for Clinton or some other corporate-friendly type over anybody like Sanders or Warren in 2020.

Sanders being an Independent in the Senate was held against him hard by party bigwigs. Somewhat understandably. That being said, Sanders' brand of "Independent" was/is a fantastic guide to what the Democrat party should be working to become.

Politics is all bullshit, all the time. As a result, a huge percentage of voters are quite disenfranchised and don't really see any candidate as being on their side. Sanders turned that on its head. And old, rather-eccentric, Jewish dude got people excited (me too!). Massive gold-plated opportunity, with giant fucking neon signs pointing at it saying "pounce on this NOW", and the DNC took a big shit on it instead because they can't fathom a world without being 99.9% funded by massive corporations in return for congressmen, vetoes, and judges being bought and paid for.

I think that's what the guy is talking about with regards to "taking over the party". The "Justice Democrats" thing is about progressive candidates funded by actual goddamn people instead of laundered corporate money. I'm not real optimistic about their chances of really shaking up the status quo, but by god I sure hope they do.

thanks, but i'm satisfied with the status quo.