Progressives Gone Wild

[Stavros]

MY challenge, issued to Stavros and Bronco, neither of whom have responded, and now to you, to tell me exactly what the hell racism you're talking about. Give me an example. Of systemic racism. In the USA. Just one. And then we can talk more about racism.

There is a simple reason why I do not respond to your posts. When you claimed Sandy Hook was a 'false flag' event and I was able to use factual evidence to refute the ingedients of your fantasy, you rejected the truth for a fantasy that merely reinforces your prejudice.
Why should I engage with someone who so publicly and so mercilessly gloats over the pain of bereaved parents?
In one and the same post you have claimed there is no racism in America while demonstrating that there is -but were I to point out the existence of racism in the language and imagery you have used in your own posts, you would deny it.

We see and hear this garbage every day, people in the media and politics making inflammatory remarks to get attention (or in Murdoch's case, click-paying customers), whether it is the Greene in DC or Tucker Carlson, or Piers Morgan here or Nigel Farage-Farage: it is all vapid bullshit with no substance designed to undermine the legitimacy of representative democracy, to weaken people's faith in the Truth, to grind the machinery of Government to a halt.

And for what? To appease Cry-Baby Trump? To sow the seeds of a counter-Revolution? Meanwhile the bridges are not-quite falling down; the reservoir walls are just holding; the pot-holes in the road getting larger; the school-house leaking in the rain; and debt feeding debt feeding debt that has become a taboo subject- but hey, I expect you to reject the Truth and Carry on Lying, it's what you do, with no concern for the damage it may cause.

[Nick Danger]

There is a simple reason why I do not respond to your posts. When you claimed Sandy Hook was a 'false flag' event and I was able to use factual evidence to refute the ingedients of your fantasy, you rejected the truth for a fantasy that merely reinforces your prejudice.
Why should I engage with someone who so publicly and so mercilessly gloats over the pain of bereaved parents?
In one and the same post you have claimed there is no racism in America while demonstrating that there is -but were I to point out the existence of racism in the language and imagery you have used in your own posts, you would deny it.

We see and hear this garbage every day, people in the media and politics making inflammatory remarks to get attention (or in Murdoch's case, click-paying customers), whether it is the Greene in DC or Tucker Carlson, or Piers Morgan here or Nigel Farage-Farage: it is all vapid bullshit with no substance designed to undermine the legitimacy of representative democracy, to weaken people's faith in the Truth, to grind the machinery of Government to a halt.

And for what? To appease Cry-Baby Trump? To sow the seeds of a counter-Revolution? Meanwhile the bridges are not-quite falling down; the reservoir walls are just holding; the pot-holes in the road getting larger; the school-house leaking in the rain; and debt feeding debt feeding debt that has become a taboo subject- but hey, I expect you to reject the Truth and Carry on Lying, it's what you do, with no concern for the damage it may cause.

You're delusional if you think you've ever won an argument, Stavros, let alone with me. Sandy Hook was a hoax. I made the case in this thread - http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...Room-NO-SCRUBS - and sent you running away like an 11-year-old crack dealer. I shut you down so hard that you actually refused to speak to me anymore, like a child. No surprise considering your child-like argument that the "massacre" happened - "Why would they lie?" being pretty much the full extent of it. Folding up your tent and refusing to argue anymore isn't how debates are won. I'll totally have the same debate again with you right now if you want, Stavros, that's how strongly I feel about it.

And you wouldn't know the truth if it were a 12-inch BBC pushing past your tonsils and tickling your solar plexus. I mean I get it, you read the liberal media and it tells you everything you need to hear - nothing is your fault, it's the system. It rings true because you're weak, Stavros, you can't break through your confirmation bias to the critical-thinking plateau. The truth is that everything is your fault and you'll always be a miserable bastard who loses arguments with me unless you get your shit together.

[filghy2]

And oh yeah, Flighty, on the topic of racism, I'm not really interested in hearing more of your racism accusations until you accept MY challenge, issued to both Stavros and Bronco, neither of whom have responded, and now to you, to tell me exactly what the hell racism you're talking about. Give me an example. Of systemic racism. In the USA. Just one. And then we can talk more about racism.

Here's two for starters.

1. Black Americans are over 3 times as likely as whites to be killed during a police encounter. Note that we are talking about percentages of those having a police encounter, so the explanation can't be that blacks are more likely to be doing crimes.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hs...ths-disparity/

2. Black drivers are 20% more likely to be pulled over by the police. Interestingly, the disparity is lower after dark when it is harder to tell the driver's skin colour. When stopped, they are searched 1.5 to 2 times more than white drivers.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publi...by-police.html

[Stavros]

I'll totally have the same debate again with you right now if you want, Stavros, that's how strongly I feel about it.

But you don't debate, you stake out a position and defend it, even when your assertions are shown to be false. It is not for me to make the calculation which of us has 'won' an argument, the mere fact that you subscribe to the obscene, offensive rubbish concerning Sandy Hook undermines your position but it is for others to make the judgment which of us is right, and so far, nobody has supported your views.

One small point -the reason I don't offer links to the Telegraph and The Times is due to their articles being locked behind a paywall that I am not willing to enter via subscription, and the same is true of the New York Times. I was a regular reader of the Telegraph before its bilionaire owner(s) locked me out, and have also been an occasional reader of the Spectator, watch clips from Fox News, and am also a reglar reader of anti-left, Establishment BBC here in the UK, so there are practical reasons why it is wrong to imply I only get my news and views from the Liberal media. But I doubt this will mean anything to you, as you have summed me up for your own purposes, and I am therefore just a label rather than a thinking, and sometimes critical observer of the scene I was once a small part of.

[filghy2]

If you can't see the moral of the story I don't know what to tell you. There's never going to be a time when I'm going to say people are living in poverty because the system isn't fair. The system is 100% neutral.

If the system is neutral then how come a person's economic position in the US is so strongly correlated with their parent's economic position? Why is it more so than in other developed countries that have less inequality? And why is it more so than in the past?
https://voxeu.org/article/intergenerational-mobility-us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioe..._United_States


Do you actually have any views that are not based on crude generalisations and stereotypes, that are supported by proper evidence?

[filghy2]

You're delusional if you think you've ever won an argument, Stavros, let alone with me.

Self-assessments are not worth much, dude, especially from a self-admitted egotist. Any fool can convince themselves they won an argument if they refuse to accept any objective standard of evidence. It's just a matter of thick-skinned stubbornness.

[broncofan]

But you don't debate, you stake out a position and defend it, even when your assertions are shown to be false.

There have been a few occasions where I haven't responded to something false he wrote and it wasn't even out of laziness. It was just a sense of pure futility. Something akin to the beginning stages of major depressive disorder.

[Nick Danger]

Here's two for starters.

1. Black Americans are over 3 times as likely as whites to be killed during a police encounter. Note that we are talking about percentages of those having a police encounter, so the explanation can't be that blacks are more likely to be doing crimes.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hs...ths-disparity/

2. Black drivers are 20% more likely to be pulled over by the police. Interestingly, the disparity is lower after dark when it is harder to tell the driver's skin colour. When stopped, they are searched 1.5 to 2 times more than white drivers.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publi...by-police.html

I'll tell you the #1 way to survive an encounter with the police, Flighty - don't be a criminal.

Barring that, there are still other ways. You can follow lawful orders from the officer. You can volunteer information instead of forcing him to drag it out of you. You can not reach for a weapon. You can make it clear that you have no intention of reaching for a weapon by keeping your hands in view. You can address the officer with respect instead of contempt. You can cooperate with the investigation.

There is absolutely no question that blacks have a harder time dealing with police than whites. Video of blacks behaving completely inappropriately during police encounters is all over the internet. One begins to wonder if it might not be a black cultural issue rather than a systemic racism issue when one views enough of these videos.

Regarding more black drivers being pulled over and searched, well, it seems like they're not going far enough with that at only 20% more. A random black person is in fact 8 times more likely to be a criminal than a random white person. Statistically. And I realize the popular liberal stance is that police should be handicapped by not being allowed to use statistics in their enforcement efforts. Why? Don't we all agree that less crime is a goal worth pursuing?

If there were 4 black gangster-types riding up and down my street in some hoopty, I would FULLY expect the police to fabricate some reason to pull that car over and find out what the hell they're doing there. Why, because I hate black people? Not at all. If they were 4 black men wearing business suits and driving a Volvo I'd think nothing of it. But in this case I'm 100% sure they have no legitimate reason to be on my street. Liberals would say I must ignore that logic. But logic says I must ignore those liberals.

[Nick Danger]

But you don't debate, you stake out a position and defend it, even when your assertions are shown to be false. It is not for me to make the calculation which of us has 'won' an argument, the mere fact that you subscribe to the obscene, offensive rubbish concerning Sandy Hook undermines your position but it is for others to make the judgment which of us is right, and so far, nobody has supported your views.

I don't need support for my views in this forum, Stavros, we all know exactly what the paradigm is here, liberals vs me.

I made a very cogent point-by-point argument regarding why I believe Sandy Hook was a hoax perpetrated by an insular group of gun-control fanatics, and you failed to address even one of my many points. Instead you argued something about there being two Veronicas among the victims or something of that nature - something TOTALLY IRRELEVANT TO THE MUCH MORE IMPORTANT (and ultimately undisputed) FACTS I HAD BROUGHT TO YOUR ATTENTION. Yeah, I sent you scurrying away from that argument in a hurry when you realized there was no counterargument to most of what I presented. It's okay, Stavros, nobody really wins an internet argument...I mean unless you can actually make the other person publicly proclaim that he's never speaking to you again, that's a pretty solid W by internet standards.

[Nick Danger]

If the system is neutral then how come a person's economic position in the US is so strongly correlated with their parent's economic position? Why is it more so than in other developed countries that have less inequality? And why is it more so than in the past?
https://voxeu.org/article/intergenerational-mobility-us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioe..._United_States


Do you actually have any views that are not based on crude generalisations and stereotypes, that are supported by proper evidence?

Not sure from where your questions arise, Flighty. Are you saying it's unusual that a person's station in life should be the same as his parents? I'm not gonna lie, I'm worth a little more than my dad now. But for the most part we have followed very similar paths in life - which to me seems like it should be no surprise to anyone.

You know, Flighty, I think my main motivation in life was always to prove to my father that I could be the man he was. Having accomplished that, I lost the motivation to push further up the ladder of success, I'm comfortable here, on my old man's level. It's not in me to be some jet-setting corporate overlord, I'm a small business owner just like my father was.

You can pluck any human being out of any one of those statistic blocks on that graphic and that person can be successful in the USA if he simply lives responsibly. In some families that value takes hold more than in others - in some cultures it's more prevalent than others. But there's one thing all the families at the top of the economic food chain have in common, and that's a long history of living responsibly.

There are economic classes, Flighty, what are you going to do about that? It's hard to move from class to class because the behaviors learned from your family are likely going to be the behaviors required to survive in their economic class. But social mobility in the USA can be done and is done all the time, by exceptional individuals with the motivation to do it.