Umair, you watched the video. In that we are brothers. I watched it as well and then about six hours of commentary. Here are my thoughts if you care to read them.
Let’s talk about “the POLICE” and police work.
I take a different approach and I come to a different place in my thoughts about what happened. You are a moralist and scold. You talk about lofty IDEAS and "moral duties".
I was once a soldier.
I have killed several other human beings in close combat. Fights to the death involving fists, teeth, and knives. I have a different understanding of "human nature".
If you are Rousseau, I am Hobbes.
And as far as your statement that
"America’s always been a country at a certain kind of war. Humans against subhumans. That is why the Nazis studied it so intently"
Umair, my life is part of America's War on those it labels as "less than". My father had me sterilized as a child in the 60's because I was labeled as "Retarded".
Because I was a “retard”, my father had me sterilized.
That wasn't a crime then. It still isn't in most of the US. I have no illusions about the mirage that is "America".
Umair, I also didn't mention the PO-LICE involved here are all BLACK. Because you are right, this is not about racism at the individual level. Nichols attackers didn't murder him because he was BLACK.
They murdered him because they were bullies with badges, authority, and weapons. They murdered him, because they could.
This has nothing to do with "Emancipation" and everything to do with "Training Day" (2001). Right down to the murderers being in a special crime unit with a militarized name.
Nichols was murdered by "Scorpions".
Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.
There's your Orwell. There's the "doublespeak" that makes concepts like truth and reality seem impossible to find in our society today. The poisonous "labeling" of evil things to make them seem appealing.
Are you against PEACE in BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS Umair?
What kind of entitled "woke liberal" argues against that?
Control the NARRATIVE, Control the OUTCOME.
You grok racism extremely well and you identify with the BLACK American experience strongly. Your weakness in understanding America always lies in your failure to understand American WHITE Culture.
Specifically the 2/3rds of American WHITE's who voted Trumpublican in 16', 18', 20', and 22'.
You don't seem to understand the political importance that TRUMP got more votes than ANY OTHER CANDIDATE IN US HISTORY. Except for BIDEN.
Biden won by only 2%. 51% to 49%.
In the midterms last year. The ones Liberals are so triumphant about, because they didn't loose as badly as expected. The overall national vote was 49% Trumpublican - 51% Democrat.
You keep warning of an American Civil War being possible. We are already in a state of Civil War.
I suspect it relates to your understanding of Stalinism and what that actually represents. You argue that.
A Stalin was inevitable in the Soviet Union precisely because the values of conformity and terror and violence had already been established, because dissent was already cracked down, because secret polices had already begun to exist.
You are viewing it from a moralistic viewpoint because you are a moralist.
I argue that "Stalinist" style rule is inevitable in any "post revolutionary" society. That it is ALWAYS the consequence and cost of REVOLUTION.
In my piece, "Random Thoughts — 10
Exhibits in an Atrocity Museum" I discuss the book.
"The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation"
Where I state,
These books changed my entire understanding of political science. What Solzhenitsyn is observing, is the nuts-and-bolts of how a “post revolution” population is broken onto obedience.
This is how you have to govern if you don’t have political legitimacy. You have to use fear and terror. This is what always happens after violent revolutions. Always.
If you think the “American Revolution” is an exception to that. It’s because we Americans have been able to sell you “American Mythology” as a replacement for actual history. Here’s a “real” analysis of the American Revolution.
Random Thoughts — 09 : The MCU is a monumental cultural artifact. Like all cultural artifacts it tells a story. (I was thinking of you when I wrote this title :-))
Where I explain that the Revolutionary War depopulated the Colonies by 30% as the American “Founding Father’s” politically cleansed out the 30% of the population who were Loyalists.
The War was an economic disaster for the Colonies
Life after a “revolution” is never better than it was before. At least in economic terms.
America’s real income per capita dropped by about 22% over the quarter century 1774–1800, a decline almost as steep as during the Great Depression between 1929 and 1933, and certainly longer.
That 22% decline. That’s actually a distortion of how bad it got. The 1790s recorded brisk growth rates after 1795.
The Revolutionary War period between 1774 and 1795 was America’s greatest income slump ever. The fall in income may have been 28% or even higher in per-capita terms.
20 years of grinding poverty is what REVOLUTION always brings Umair. Because it takes about 20 years for a new political order to gain “Legitimacy” and to stop having to rule by “brute force”.
What we are seeing and living through is the consequence of the de-legitimization of GOVERNMENT at every level in the US. It goes back to Reagan and his joke about the "scariest" words in the English language being.
"I'm from the Government and I'm here to help".
When you no longer have political legitimacy, force is where you have to go.
Additional discussion of "Legitimacy" as a political concept.
On Politics, War by Other Means — 09
This is an “en passant” Moment for Biden and the Democrats.
The Supreme Court has a legitimacy problem and it's becoming a crisis.
Consider a 5-to-4 decision from this Supreme Court settling a disputed presidential election. Would it resolve the matter and steady the nation’s politics as it did in 2000’s Bush v. Gore, or would it agitate the conflict further?
Would the US Military accept such a decision as deciding who the “legitimate president” was?
That’s not clear right now, which reveals cracks in the court’s legitimacy and a “Clear and Present Danger” to the safety and stability of the Country.
War is about getting your way.
The objective, the endgame, should always be the structuring of reality to your specifications. “Winning” means getting to live in a reality that you shape and control. Losing means having to live in a reality you don’t control where others have power over you.
How do you win a Civil War in a Democracy, when direct military conflict is not an option?
Here’s a real world example of the importance of legitimacy in US politics. Tens of millions of people had no problem voting for Mitt Romney in 2012 despite his being a Mormon. Do you think people would vote for a “Scientologist” president?
Mormonism has become accepted as a legitimate religion in America, Scientology has not. Legitimacy has consequences.
