Why "All Lives Matters" is wrong

[sophie]

The most degenerate people I have ever lived among were definitely predominantly white college students

I'll drink to that.

 

[Lexicus]

Ok I feel obligated to mention that I sort of stole that line from Van Jones, but it is definitely true to my experience.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I was telling you how I'd feel about being lumped in with a violent criminal, if Martin was white I wouldn't appreciate being lumped in with him either.

If Martin was white, you wouldn't be getting "lumped in" with him. That's the point. If the burglary suspects were white, Martin wouldn't be getting "lumped in" with them... that's the point. If the burglary suspects were white you wouldn't have people saying that white guys are suspicious... that's the point. If the 3 burglary suspects were white you wouldn't have people saying that all the suspects are white... that's the point.

I was trying to show race doesn't matter

yes I realize this... that precisely identifies the problem with your perspective and neatly explains where this flawed argument you keep trying to make is coming from.

Surely you must realize how ridiculous this sounds. How could you possibly know how you'd feel if you were black and therefore had a totally different life experience? .

The "well if I was black I would X" refrain comes from a skepticism that black people have an experience that is different. It comes from a skepticism of the existence of racial bias, prejudice, etc., or a feeling that the effects are overblown/overstated by liberals,minorities, the lamestream media etc. It comes from the erroneous belief that race doesn't matter. What a person is essentially saying when they say "well if I was black I would" is "Since the whole institutional prejudice thing is fake news/liberal propaganda, there isn't any basis for black people to see things differently than me. So the perspective I have, is exactly the same as what I would have regardless of my race."

When in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Saying "well if I was black I would X" is similar in many ways to saying "if I was a doctor I would prescribe this" or "if I was an engineer I would build the building this way"... no you wouldn't necessarily... because if you were that, you would have some actual experience and knowledge commensurate with that identity and you would be making an informed, rather than uninformed decision.

 

[Lexicus]

If Martin was white, you wouldn't be getting "lumped in" with him. That's the point. If the burglary suspects were white, Martin wouldn't be getting "lumped in with them... that's the point. If the burglary suspects were white you wouldn't have people saying that white guys are suspicious... that's the point. If the 3 burglary suspects were white you wouldn't have people saying that all the suspects are white... that's the point.

This is a good point, and imo it's one of the most insidious aspects of white privilege, that white people are almost always treated as individuals while people of color are almost always treated as members of a group first, even by well-meaning folks.

 

[Sommerswerd]

This is a good point, and imo it's one of the most insidious aspects of white privilege, that white people are almost always treated as individuals while people of color are almost always treated as members of a group first, even by well-meaning folks.

If the burglary suspects were white, you wouldn't have people joining the neighborhood watch to put down this "rash of burglaries" with deadly force. You'd have people chalking it up to "meh its probably just kids getting into mischief, trying to score booze or drugs... no biggie"

 

[Lexicus]

Lest we forget:

 

[Broken_Erika]

That is so wrong.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That is so wrong.

And yet so unsurprising.

 

[Bamspeedy]

1. Eight burglaries in 15 months? You consider that "a rash of burglaries"? That's not even 1 burglary a month. That's barely one burglary every 2 months. In what world can you describe that as "a rash of burglaries"? By way of contrast, I just looked up the neighborhood I grew up in, where my brother lives now (suburban) and there were 2 burglaries, 3 robberies and 5 thefts from property reported in the last month alone. I looked up the neighborhood where my brother lived last year before he moved back home (urban) and I stopped counting when I got to 9 burglaries/thefts in a week. I looked at my baby sister's neighborhood (urban) and stopped after seeing 4 shootings, 3 burglaries and 3 thefts from property for one day. So to the extent that you were regarding 8 burglaries in 15 months to be some significant amount that justifies armed neighborhood watch roaming around patrolling for blacks... your perceptions are unreasonable and unjustified... and little more than a flimsy excuse to obscure your prejudices. You want to claim there is some kind of crime "crisis" ie "rash of burglaries" when in fact, there is nothing of the sort... and the reason you want to claim that there is a crisis situation is to justify the prejudice/suspicion of blacks that you already feel.

Not that I disagree with what else is being argued, but....

This was a gated community, surely they should have fewer burglaries than other areas.

(study shows gated communites have fewer burglaries, but increase in other crimes such as domestic abuse)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130320115113.htm

One burglary every 2 months, is the same rate that Zimmerman called police, yet the number of burglaries are 'extremely rare' and the number of times he called police is 'excessive'. How many live in this gated community? I know it's 260 townhouses, but because of the recession, 40 of them were empty and half of the occupied ones being rented, but I can't find any population totals other than 50% white, 20% black, 20% hispanic.

My town of 3500 had 8 burglaries a year. I wouldn't consider that a rash of burglaries because it is probably what we normally get (if it goes to 16, the headlines will say "Burglaries have DOUBLED!). If this gated community is much smaller, it could be considered a 'rash of burglaries', and that's not counting attempted burglaries.
It's all a matter of perspective, and when an alarming burglary such as a break in when a mother is at home with her baby (which happened a few months earlier) it sticks in people's minds. A more fair comparison is how many does that community get in a normal 15 month period?

He originally got the gun because of a loose pit bull in the neighborhood, so I wouldn't say he was looking to shoot somebody, otherwise he would have had drawn his gun out earlier.

 

[Gori the Grey]

That is so wrong.

It's especially bad because they actually had to violate English idiom in order to exonerate the white looters. You don't find something from.

 

[Berzerker]

I'd be curious to hear more about this, if you have the inclination.

Sure... Democrats supported slavery, Democrats replaced slavery with Jim Crow, and Democrats replaced Jim Crow with a drug war... The result has been more dead people, the mass incarceration of young black men and a violent culture driven by black market street justice, the same kind of culture for which "The Roaring Twenties" became infamous. When was the last time booze suppliers were having shootouts over market share? When we had a war on booze almost a century ago.

I dont want to jack the thread to discuss the drug war, but it is at the heart of so many problems BLM and many other groups want addressed. As an opponent of the drug war I belong to one of those groups. Its too bad I cant count blacks among my allies, but they're Democrats. This wound is largely self-inflicted and the collateral damage includes millions of innocent victims of all colors...

Bull. The current socio-economic landscape of America was established by Reagan. No Democrat since has been able to overcome the holding actions of Reagan acolytes. Any slight inroads they have made have been subsequently undone by more Reagan acolytes.

Reagan's line of promises sounded great, at the time, and I bought it. But how anyone can look at the fact that we've been following it for almost forty years and it hasn't worked at all like he said that it would and not figure out that he lied is totally beyond me.

This problem preceded Reagan... But since you mentioned him, we got a war on crack because Celtics recruit Len Bias died from a cocaine induced heart attack. Tip O'Neill was the speaker of the house and he represented the Celtics... I mean, Boston... He was a Democrat and he was in control of a House dominated by Democrats for decades.

As a result penalties for adults caught 'trafficking' were dramatically increased leading to the long term mass incarceration of (black) men and mass recruitment of minors into the drug trade to avoid the harsher penalties. Juvenile crime rates skyrocketed even as adult crime rates gradually declined. Shall we discuss the Clinton's record on jailing black folk? The reason homicide rates are finally approaching pre-drug war levels is because so many younger men have been jailed or killed (or never born).

Have you been to a black neighborhood? I admit I haven't been to every black neighborhood in the country, but the ones I have been to, even the ones where people sell drugs openly, are not war zones at all. I would venture to say that the stereotype you speak of comes mainly from people perpetuating it who for the most part have never set foot in a place where black people actually live but feel comfortable judging what goes on there.

I spent most of my youth in San Francisco, everybody had a neighborhood and we road our bikes (and mass transit) all over that city. My HS was so integrated they sent the handicapped there. Pretty humbling to share the hallways with people in wheel chairs, braces, and whatever hunk of metal we can design to prop somebody up. By "warzone" I mean not just more violence among the people but between them and the police. Its a drug war, the people are suspects and the cops grow more trigger happy with every day and every year on the front line.

Surely you must realize how ridiculous this sounds. How could you possibly know how you'd feel if you were black and therefore had a totally different life experience?

I wasn't claiming to know life thru a black man's eyes... A neighborhood watch volunteer was attacked by a violent criminal for asking him why he was in the neighborhood. My sense of right and wrong wouldn't change with my skin color, that was my point. I'd ask why it should change. Should I ignore those facts because 'the man' harassed me when I was young? He did and I'm white. Thats what the man does, its the scared straight idea of law enforcement. Of course some cops are just jerks and get off on messing with people. By all accounts Zimmerman was racially mixed and had black family and friends. Making him pay the price for white racism is just... ahem... I better not say.

President Obama felt compelled to place a hypothetical son of his in Trayvon Martin's shoes, so I don't think anyone can say, "If I was black I'd think Trayvon got what he deserved!" You might feel that way, it's not like one's race dictates their opinion on this case. But you might also feel quite differently if you didn't have the life experience of a white person.

Blacks elect Democrats, Democrats wage a drug war, people go to jail for drugs or end up dead. Millions of Americans had that experience because drug users were stereotyped by Democrats. A drug user dies or kills someone, so we put drug users in jail. Imagine if we did that to other groups. I know about stereotyping, I know stereotyping is how we got a drug war and I know blacks overwhelmingly voted for the Democrats.

 

[Berzerker]

Thanks for the link. However, the article you linked squarely contradicts your position and neatly illustrates mine. 1. Eight burglaries in 15 months? You consider that "a rash of burglaries"? That's not even 1 burglary a month. That's barely one burglary every 2 months. In what world can you describe that as "a rash of burglaries"?

A world with fewer burglaries? It was a minimum of 8 in 14 months with one just 3 weeks before the shooting. There were enough for the homeowners association to get a neighborhood watch program going and I imagine that deterred some burglaries. Was that done because the robbery rate was steady or declining? The media reports indicate an increasing burglary rate. From the link:

Frank Taaffe's account paints a picture of a neighborhood watch volunteer making rounds in a community suffering a spate of burglaries when he ran across what he thought was a suspicious figure walking the streets.

From another link:

By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes was experiencing a rash of burglaries and break-ins. Previously a family-friendly, first-time homeowner community, it was devastated by the recession that hit the Florida housing market, and transient renters began to occupy some of the 263 town houses in the complex. Vandalism and occasional drug activity were reported, and home values plunged. One resident who bought his home in 2006 for $250,000 said it was worth $80,000 today.

At least eight burglaries were reported within Twin Lakes in the 14 months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, according to the Sanford Police Department. Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood. In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to police as young black men.

Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.

"Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?" the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. "There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said. "That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-florida-shooting-zimmerman-idUSBRE83O18H20120425

Spate, rash, the elephant in the room... Take your pick, I'm fine with Reuters... It's too bad she's afraid to speak openly, I'd like to hear from more of the neighbors but I imagine they're reluctant to become possible targets too.

By way of contrast, I just looked up the neighborhood I grew up in, where my brother lives now (suburban) and there were 2 burglaries, 3 robberies and 5 thefts from property reported in the last month alone. I looked up the neighborhood where my brother lived last year before he moved back home (urban) and I stopped counting when I got to 9 burglaries/thefts in a week. I looked at my baby sister's neighborhood (urban) and stopped after seeing 4 shootings, 3 burglaries and 3 thefts from property for one day. So to the extent that you were regarding 8 burglaries in 15 months to be some significant amount that justifies armed neighborhood watch roaming around patrolling for blacks... your perceptions are unreasonable and unjustified... and little more than a flimsy excuse to obscure your prejudices. You want to claim there is some kind of crime "crisis" ie "rash of burglaries" when in fact, there is nothing of the sort... and the reason you want to claim that there is a crisis situation is to justify the prejudice/suspicion of blacks that you already feel.

Why would the crime rate in Sommersworld matter to the people in Zimmerman's neighborhood? By your logic no community can ever suffer a rash of burglaries if some other community has more crime. And why are you blaming me for the word 'rash'? That was how the media was describing the situation. Complain to them, write a letter to the editor about why its racial prejudice to say a rash of burglaries occurred.

2. Plus only 3 of the 8 (extremely rare, as already explained above) burglaries actually had black suspects. However, notice that Zimmerman's friend claims that all the suspects are black, when the article clearly states that only 3 out of the 8 suspects were actually black. And Zimmerman's friend (and you) claim that not only were they black but black males and not just black males but young black males, when the facts are that most of the burglaries actually had no suspects. How does "no suspect" become "young black male"? Racial prejudice, that's how.

The idea that the remaining majority of unidentified suspects are black is spun completely from whole cloth... well, actually spun from racial prejudice. "Young black males" is the default scapegoat for all crime and it seems perfectly normal to people to think that if a black guy commits a crime, then we can conclude that all the crime is being committed by blacks. This perfectly illustrates what I was talking about. Because of racial prejudice folks like you blame young black males for things even when there is no evidence. Its your default position, and it feels completely normal and justified to you. But its not.

If you can identify other suspects, call the police down there. Until then, the only suspects they have were young black males. I dont recall saying young black males were suspects in the robberies without suspects, that doesn't even make sense so if you can quote me I'd like to see it myself.

So in summation. You are wrong that there were many burglaries going on. There weren't. So there was no justification whatsoever for the heightened sense of alarm. You are also wrong that all the burglaries had black male suspects. In fact most of the burglaries did not have black suspects. So you are wrong on both counts and your house of cards for justifying Zimmerman has been blown away by the first paragraph of the article you cited to support your position.

Weren't you accusing me of "speaking" for the black man and now you're telling the people down there how they should feel about the crime in their neighborhood? And I didn't say all the burglaries had black suspects, some of the burglaries had no suspects. I said the suspects were young black males and thats true. The absence of suspects who were not young black males makes it true.

I grew up in a black neighborhood. It wasn't a "war zone". I have also attended school located in black neighborhoods that looked like warzones, because of the neglected, economically depressed condition of the buildings, but they were not remotely like actual warzones or at least, not like I'd imagine a war zone to be like if I had ever served in an actual war zone. That whole "warzone" mythology is part-and parcel of the "black people are violent criminals" stereotype. It makes perfect sense to people who harbor prejudice against black people and think of black people as "scary" and "dangerous" that black neighborhoods would be scary and dangerous as well. It's an easy mental leap from "black people are violent criminals" to "black neighborhoods are overrun with violent crime"... and that's all that is going on here, just standard racial prejudice.

Were the Democrats waging a drug war in your neighborhood? "War zone" is a metaphorical reference to the drug war and the violence it induces. So how many black men have done time for drugs? A million? Five million? They are POWs in the drug war, a drug war pushed by Democrats. Do you vote for Democrats? Know any other black people who vote for Democrats?

http://newjimcrow.com/

There's your racial prejudice... And blacks have been supporting it for decades. Not me...

 

[Sommerswerd]

A world with fewer burglaries? It was a minimum of 8 in 14 months with one just 3 weeks before the shooting. There were enough for the homeowners association to get a neighborhood watch program going and I imagine that deterred some burglaries. Was that done because the robbery rate was steady or declining? The media reports indicate an increasing burglary rate. From the link:

So now its 8 in 14 months instead of 8 in 15 months? That doesn't remotely impact my point that the burglaries were rare, and don't justify Zimmerman's response. Your claim that it "was enough" is just circular reasoning. I say that the burglaries were relatively low, and thus didn't justify Zimmerman's clear intent to use deadly force. Your response is to say "it was enough" because they formed a neighborhood watch, and Zimmerman was justified cause he was in the neighborhood watch. But its all just circular reasoning, because the formation of the watch and more specifically his decision to join was just his racial prejudice, manifested as an overreaction to the non-existent burglary crisis.

"You imagine" their efforts deterred some burglaries? Of course you do. Because you are emotionally and ideologically committed to the idea that Zimmerman was justified. But your imaginings are not evidence of anything, except your own subjective biases. "Was that done because the robbery rate was steady or declining?" you ask?... First of all, we are talking about burglary not robbery, but rather than do what you always try to do to me, I'll just assume you mean robbery in the colloquial sense ("they robbed my house", ie burglary) . So putting that aside, a rule of thumb for media headlines is that when they are posed in the form of a question, the answer is usually no. So no, the neighborhood watch wasn't formed "because the "robbery" rate was steady or declining." As I explained previously, it was formed as a manifestation of irrational racial prejudice, and in Zimmerman's case in particular, using the relatively low incidents of burglary to irrationally justify his pre-existing racially prejudiced attitudes.

Now turning attention to the quote from the link.... "Frank Taaffe's account paints a picture of a neighborhood watch volunteer making rounds in a community suffering a spate of burglaries when he ran across what he thought was a suspicious figure walking the streets"... is literally the same thing as saying. "George Zimmerman's friend spun the story in Zimmerman's favor." Look again. Frank Taaffe is Zimmerman's friend that is referred to in the first sentence of the article... that's not a "media report indicating increasing burglary rate" as you characterized it. It's just Zimmerman's buddy spinning the story to support his friend, which is hardly persuasive evidence of anything, right? I mean I don't think you did that on purpose... I think you probably just missed that and instead saw what you wanted to see, right?

And why are you blaming me for the word 'rash'?

Huh? You used the phase "rash of burglaries"... Anyway the word is irrelevant, which is why I asked you to define it. what matters is not the word itself, but what you meant by it, which you've answered and I've debunked. I don't want to derail into something irrelevant, like arguing about the word "rash". The point is that you had the erroneous impression that there were a lot of burglaries and that this in turn justified Zimmerman's actions. You were wrong. Even by your new 8 in 14 month metric. Burglaries were rare and Zimmerman's response was not remotely justified. That is the meat and potatoes of the issue.

As for your second link which says "Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood. In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to police as young black men." Notice that this is NOT what the police department says. The police say 8 reports in 14 months. (Or 8 in 15 months, depending on which fake news site you believe ). So who were these "dozens of reports" reported to? Dey mama an'em? It's just gossip, and hyperbole, largely fueled by pre-existing racial prejudice. The fact that residents are saying "Oh there's been DOZENS! HUNDREDS! THOUSANDS OF BURGLARIES!! AND ALL BY BLACK MEN!!" is not evidence, its not credible, its just the telephone game. One lady says she saw a black kid, and another says "he must have been the one who did it" and so on... until the legend has mushroomed into "I heard there was a group of black gang members riding around casing houses". The whole process is not unusual at all, it very predictable. As I've already said, that's the predictable pattern, a couple black guys commit a crime in the neighborhood and everyone starts the rumor mill, and suddenly we've got people claiming that their neighbor said that there's been hundreds of black guys casing the neighborhood, and so on.

 

[Bamspeedy]

'Repeated calls about black people' is another exaggeration.

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/201...police-show-about-his-view-of-black-men-.html

6 calls about black people. First was a child alone on the street, so we won't count that one.
Two calls; on Aug 3 he (and others) actually saw the suspects in the home invasion, but the burglars were gone by the time the police came. Same thing happened three days later on Aug 6.
Oct 1, two men loitering in their car outside the gates at 1 AM.
Feb 2, Teen is seen by Zimmerman casing a house. This teen is arrested four days later and evidence connects him to the home invasion.
Feb 26. Trayvon Martin.

That is two questionable calls (Oct 1 and Trayvon). And the Oct 1 call may or may not be unless he's seen white people 'loitering in the their cars outside the gates at 1 AM' and didn't think it was suspicious, or if he has differing definitions of 'loitering' depending on a person's race, which only the Trayvon call could be used as a possible basis for that argument.

As for your second link which says "Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood. In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to police as young black men." Notice that this is NOT what the police department says. The police say 8 reports in 14 months.

Does the police report only account 'burglaries' (actual break ins), or burglaries AND attempted burglaries. One of his neighbors says she was calling in reports every WEEK.

 

[Lexicus]

and Democrats replaced Jim Crow with a drug war

I guess according to Berzerker Richard Nixon is a Democrat now. Weird.

Its too bad I cant count blacks among my allies,

Yeah, imagine black people being turned off by your murderous racism. It's shocking I tell you.

I mean seriously are you paying attention to anything? Whatever happened in the past (and it's certainly true that Johnson, a Democrat, began the policy approach that turned into the drug war under Nixon), today it's the Democrats who want to roll back the drug war and the Republicans who won't hear of it. The current Republican attorney general, for example, has said that people who smoke weed are bad people, and has indicated that he wants to rigorously enforce federal law with respect to marijuana, going so far as to issue an order to review federal funds going to local law enforcement agencies that don't enforce federal law.

This problem preceded Reagan... But since you mentioned him, we got a war on crack because Celtics recruit Len Bias died from a cocaine induced heart attack. Tip O'Neill was the speaker of the house and he represented the Celtics... I mean, Boston... He was a Democrat and he was in control of a House dominated by Democrats for decades.

As a result penalties for adults caught 'trafficking' were dramatically increased leading to the long term mass incarceration of (black) men and mass recruitment of minors into the drug trade to avoid the harsher penalties. Juvenile crime rates skyrocketed even as adult crime rates gradually declined. Shall we discuss the Clinton's record on jailing black folk? The reason homicide rates are finally approaching pre-drug war levels is because so many younger men have been jailed or killed (or never born).

This is all accurate...and Democrats deserve their share of blame for this crap...but for you to pretend that Republicans are blameless is just preposterous. Republicans are, in my considered opinion, more to blame than Democrats are. Republicans are the ones who manipulated hysteria about crime to make white supremacy an issue of political mobilization. John Ehrlichman has already admitted this:
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

A neighborhood watch volunteer was attacked by a violent criminal for asking him why he was in the neighborhood.

According to Zimmerman's self-serving testimony, anyway. Given Zimmerman's history of violence I find it far more likely that he physically attacked Martin and then pulled out his gun when he realized he'd bitten off more than he could chew.

 

[Ryika]

According to Zimmerman's self-serving testimony, anyway. Given Zimmerman's history of violence I find it far more likely that he physically attacked Martin and then pulled out his gun when he realized he'd bitten off more than he could chew.

No signs of violence against Martin were found during his autopsy/autopsies though, so an actual attack by Zimmerman is very, very unlikely. He might still have grabbed him to keep him in place or something, but that once again, while not okay in itself, does not justify an attack, and it does not mean that Zimmerman did not act in self defense.

 

[Lexicus]

No signs of violence against Martin were found during his autopsy/autopsies though, so an actual attack by Zimmerman is very, very unlikely. He might still have grabbed him to keep him in place or something, but that once again, while not okay in itself, does not justify an attack, and it does not mean that Zimmerman did not act in self defense.

By any logic that says Zimmerman shooting Martin was self-defense, Martin beating the crap out of the strange man who stalked and accosted him is self-defense. Indeed, the case for the latter is far better than the case for the former. Getting beaten up is one thing...getting shot is quite another.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Sure... Democrats supported slavery, Democrats replaced slavery with Jim Crow, and Democrats replaced Jim Crow with a drug war...

Yeah, if you go back to the 19th Century the Democrats were the party of the white supremacists. I'm not sure how useful it is in conversations about contemporary politics to hold the parties today to events that go back that far, except to illustrate that (a) things can and do change over time, and (b) nobody has totally clean hands. Incidentally, there were two candidates from the Democratic Party in the 1860 general election, one representing the "Northern Democratic Party" and one representing the "Southern Democratic Party" (neither were abolitionists, iirc). I think the Southern Democratic candidate was in Jefferson Davis' cabinet a couple of years later. Similarly, I think the Louisiana law that was the point of contention in Plessy v. Ferguson was a Democratic bill opposed by a Republican. Over in yonder thread about Confederate memorials, the monument recently taken down in New Orleans was erected in the late 19th Century by an out-and-proud white supremacist terrorist organization, and they supported the Democratic Party.

As to the drug war, I'm with you that it's been an unmitigated disaster, and the Democrats certainly get some of the blame. The Republicans are just as much to blame, and I don't know how far back today's independents go (e.g. the Green Party and the Libertarian Party). I would trace the beginnings of the modern "war on drugs" not to Prohibition, but to the Controlled Substances Act (1970), which established the "schedule" of drugs we know so well today and led to the creation of the DEA. Nixon signed that one, not Reagan, but it was unquestionably a bipartisan effort, 342-7 in the House and 54-0 in the Senate according to Wikipedia. Congress hasn't been so unanimous about what day of the week it is lately. Again, I don't know how many people here voted in the elections of '68-'70, and I don't know how many alternative parties or candidates there were at the time.

 

[Ryika]

By any logic that says Zimmerman shooting Martin was self-defense, Martin beating the crap out of the strange man who stalked and accosted him is self-defense. Indeed, the case for the latter is far better than the case for the former. Getting beaten up is one thing...getting shot is quite another.

No, it's not self-defense to throw somebody to the ground and punch them in the face when all they've been doing is stalk you. Again, you bring in this element of "Zimmerman got physical!", and if that were the case then yeah, I would agree that incapacitating him with your fists could be seen as self-defense, but there's just no evidence for that. What we know is that he did not get physical to a level that left any evidence on Martin.

At best he could have grabbed him (for which we still don't have any evidence either) in which case it's really a borderline-case in my opinion. It's easy to see that Martin could have thought he's in immediate danger of receiving violence and if he had punched Zimmerman and knocked him out that way, he might have had the chance to give his side on why he thinks it was self-defense, and I might have agreed with it. Hell, I do still still agree that Martin probably felt threatened, which is why he reacted the way he did, but that does not justify his reaction. Just "feeling" like you are in danger does not justify self-defense, aside from some very rare cases.

Doesn't matter either way though, because that's not where the story ends. Him becoming violent towards Zimmerman caused Zimmerman to shoot him, and it's very clear that he was in a situation where he thought he had to defend himself. After all, Martin was on top of him, beating him in the face. The only situation where that could not be self-defense would be if Martin hat initiated the violence with the clear goal of harming Martin, which simply is not the case, independent from whether Martin thought it was such a situation or not. Because again, unlike Zimmerman, Martin's body still didn't show any signs of having been on the receiving end of violence.

As for the...

Getting beaten up is one thing...getting shot is quite another.

...part... that literally doesn't matter. If you're attacked and in direct danger of having bodily harm done to you, then you're allowed to take whatever counter-measures are reasonable for the goal to eliminate that threat. Shooting somebody while they're on top of you and punching you in the face is a perfectly appropriate response.

 

[Lexicus]

No, it's not self-defense to throw somebody to the ground and punch them in the face when all they've been doing is stalk you.

Shooting somebody while they're on top of you and punching you in the face is a perfectly appropriate response.

Just highlighting the absurdity here. Note that in the scenario I consider acceptable someone might get bloodied but they don't die, whereas in the scenario you deem acceptable a minor bleeds out on the pavement.

...part... that literally doesn't matter.

Of course it does. The difference between getting shot and getting beaten up is quite consequential.

The only situation where that could not be self-defense would be if Martin hat initiated the violence with the clear goal of harming Martin, which simply is not the case.

But of course, that is the case, because we know that Zimmerman initiated the entire situation by profiling Martin and then stalking him. You may think the domestic abuser who had been previously arrested for getting physical with a cop had intentions pure as the driven snow when he started following Martin around carrying a loaded handgun, but those of us who aren't murderous racists clearly see otherwise.

Moderator Action: Name-calling and personal attacks are not allowed. FP