Progressives Gone Wild

[Nick Danger]

Time for a simple IQ test:

1. Are these two statements logically equivalent (yes/no)?
(a) A black person is more likely to be convicted of a crime than the rest of the population.
(b) A crime if more likely to be committed by a black person than the rest of the population.

2. African-Americans account for one-third of violent and property crimes in US and 12% of the population. How many times more likely is it that a random African- American will commit a crime than the rest of the population?

3. African-Americans account for 1% of the population of Utah. Would it make sense for the Utah police to focus their crime investigations predominantly on African-Americans?

At last a coherent argument from a lefty on this board. One that ignores the simple argument of proportion that easily rebuts it, but coherent.

Obviously where you are makes all the difference, Flighty. Around here, it’s true, very few blacks live here. Don’t know if it’s the heat, the Mormons, the location, or just the overwhelming whiteness of the place, but blacks stay away in droves.

Tell you what they do like this place for though - victimizing people. Before Utah passed a law against printing someone’s mugshot before they’re convicted, our local news was lousy with black faces from LA, Vegas, and other crime-ridden cities west of here. They come here for the easy pickings but often leave in the passenger seat of an extradition van, our cops don’t fuck around.

And hey, sometimes it’s Mexicans. But most often it’s young black males with gang affiliations. We have some homegrown white crime too - the usual blend of white-collar theft, domestic violence, and drunken antics. But if it’s a good old-fashioned robbery, burglary, rape, or murder, literally half the time it’s a young black gangsta who doesn’t live here, selling drugs or running prostitutes out of a cheap motel room.

Again Flighty, all I can tell you is, you have to live here to understand the extent of the crime problem rooted in black hip-hop culture.

[broncofan]

At last a coherent argument from a lefty on this board. One that ignores the simple argument of proportion that easily rebuts it, but coherent.

In the exam question 1, a and b are not logically equivalent. Tell us why.

Race is a terrible proxy for investigating crime when compared to most facts.

Consider that you have a minority group where each individual is statistically 3x more likely than the average member of the population to have committed a crime. Now weigh this against the statistical increase in likelihood that someone committed a particular crime based on any piece of evidence. If it's a murder and you're canvassing the neighborhood, how much more likely is a person with blood on their shirt to have committed the crime than a random member of said minority group? Or a person who is seen having left the particular house in question? Or a person who knew the murdered victim and was heard threatening them a week prior?

In the last example, this evidence by itself would not get you anywhere near a burden of proof to convict someone. And yet, they are probably more than a 1000x more likely to have committed the murder than a random member of the overrepresented minority group. Let's say you find car owners are more than 3x as likely to commit a crime. Does that mean you discount non car owners? Does it mean there is much evidence against a random car owner? No and no.

[broncofan]

You might think if a minority group is overrepresented by a certain factor then the average member of that group warrants attention in proportion to that factor. But the average member of the public, whether in that group or not, is very unlikely to have committed any particular crime. Even the weakest piece of particular evidence swallows any difference in rates of commission between groups.

[Nick Danger]

Race is a terrible proxy for investigating crime when compared to most facts.

Okay, Columbo, what you're basically talking about there is TV crime, where there's a detective following a chain of clues, maybe got some pictures on a peg-board, rifling through a stack of gun-store receipts or a box full of hotel registries or something. Most crime isn't that complicated. Most crime, it was the Jesus-bearded guy living in the U-Haul behind Walmart who swore vengeance at you for stealing his mother's kidney and is now wearing your shoes and texting your friends on your cellphone asking them to mail gift cards to a post office box to save you from mob vengeance over horse-racing debts. Or the guy with the claw-marks on his face who matches the DNA profile from under your fingernails. Or the guy who outright posted the entire crime on Facebook.

Maybe you guys live in more diverse places than me, hell, it's almost certain you do. But I mean seriously, in the real world, around here, you see a young black guy dressed like a hoodlum, he's got no real reason to be here, he's looking for a crime of opportunity. We have some young black people around here, mostly students at the local university, but they don't have any problems, they dress for and participate in polite society and nobody thinks twice about the fact they're black. They don't become suspects for crimes based on being black, if anything they are treated with social deference because it's appreciated that they are integrated with the predominant culture. But that black kid no one's ever seen before with the saggy jeans and the facial tattoo staying at the weekly motel? Yeah, maybe worth checking out on that car-jacking, I don't know.

If I said, "The statistics are wrong and I'm wrong," would that be a satisfactory conclusion to this argument for you? What is the correct answer, Bronco, to ignore the tremendous portion of crime coming from the black segment of the population?

[filghy2]

Right-wing extremists have been responsible for most terrorist attacks and plots in the US in recent times. Since 9/11 they have killed more Americans than have Islamic extremists, and far more than left-wing extremists.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...omestic-terror
https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...errorism-data/
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escala...-united-states

We know that such people are likely to fit a certain profile; expressing certain racial views, sporting confederate insignia, wearing militia gear etc. People fitting this profile are far more likely to be involved in violent white supremacists activity than others. If racial profiling is logical then why shouldn't the same logic be applied to this group; eg pull them over for searches if they 'look the type'?

[Nick Danger]

Right-wing extremists have been responsible for most terrorist attacks and plots in the US in recent times. Since 9/11 they have killed more Americans than have Islamic extremists, and far more than left-wing extremists.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...omestic-terror
https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...errorism-data/
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escala...-united-states

We know that such people are likely to fit a certain profile; expressing certain racial views, sporting confederate insignia, wearing militia gear etc. People fitting this profile are far more likely to be involved in violent white supremacists activity than others. If racial profiling is logical then why shouldn't the same logic be applied to this group; eg pull them over for searches if they 'look the type'?

From the conservative perspective, there's no such thing as "far right terrorism." I doubt you understand the full extent of the media-driven divide in this country now. A large percentage of conservatives do not consider liberals to be their fellow citizens with differing political views. They view THEM as terrorists. Terrorists who established their own independent sovereign nation within the city limits of Portland Oregon, tore down cities all over the country for months on end, murdered innocent motorists for merely trying to pass through their illegal street barricades, burned courthouses, tore down statues of men who fought to FREE THE SLAVES because they're essentially too fucking stupid to know the difference, attacked police officers all over the nation, and generally made it known that the rule of law no longer applied to them. They were supported in these efforts by the liberal media and liberal politicians. So you know, are they our brethren now? Nope. Is this our country, or theirs? Ours.

Most cops are conservatives. Thank God. It's because they've seen up-close and personal the results of liberal policies, the poverty and the resulting criminal sub-culture. So yeah, they might see a group of well-armed good ol' boys and just pass 'em right by - probably related to one or two of them on the mother's side. Guess that's a factor liberals didn't take into account when they decided to go the street violence route to success.

[broncofan]

From the conservative perspective, there's no such thing as "far right terrorism."

From the conservative perspective there's no such thing as fact-checking, far right terrorism, racism, detective work (should be renamed black guy with a face tattoo detecting), epidemiology, and immunology. Anything else?

[Nick Danger]

From the conservative perspective there's no such thing as fact-checking, far right terrorism, racism, detective work (should be renamed black guy with a face tattoo detecting), epidemiology, and immunology. Anything else?

Meh, it's a simple matter of fact vs fiction, Bronco. Am I a racist because the media tells me I'm a racist? Am I actually a racist? Or am I maybe not a racist at all? I consider every angle.

I wasn't aware of the full extent of the liberal media's race-baiting until the Atlanta massage parlor murders. The narrative quickly became anti-Asian racism. Then the shooter came out and actually said he was an incel who hates sex workers. But the media absolutely refused to let go of the anti-Asian narrative, even when the truth - that the killer was some kind of quasi-religious sex deviant - became widely known. The truth is irrelevant if it contradicts the narrative.

[broncofan]

Nick, have you ever wondered whether you want people to call you racist because it fuels your grievance based politics? I occasionally meet people on the left who will insist on narratives that are false for ideological reasons but it's far from the majority of us and far from the mainstream. But there seems to be a drive by people on the right to keep pushing the envelope so that you can claim you're being persecuted by cancel culture. Let me illustrate how non-existent cancel culture is.

Mel Gibson has denied the Holocaust in multiple interviews, propagated all sorts of crazy theories about Jews infiltrating the Vatican, ranted about Jews while driving drunk, called Winona Ryder an "oven dodger", used the n word in a rant, admitted to punching his wife in the face while she was holding her child, made really grotesque homophobic comments, and he made a Christmas movie last year. The thing about people ranting and raving about cancel culture and political correctness is that they give the impression that they don't believe anything is bigoted or that people can be genuinely disgusted by bad behavior.

I've seen some unreasonable people on the left (out of 50% of the population there will be some embarrassing moments), but it has overtaken your entire movement. You can't even get rid of overt Islamophobia from your congressmen and women. I'm not entirely certain you guys don't see Islamophobia as justified or normal. Look at MTG and that Boebert idiot?

[broncofan]

Meh, it's a simple matter of fact vs fiction, Bronco. Am I a racist because the media tells me I'm a racist? Am I actually a racist? Or am I maybe not a racist at all? I consider every angle.

I wasn't aware of the full extent of the liberal media's race-baiting until the Atlanta massage parlor murders. The narrative quickly became anti-Asian racism. Then the shooter came out and actually said he was an incel who hates sex workers. But the media absolutely refused to let go of the anti-Asian narrative, even when the truth - that the killer was some kind of quasi-religious sex deviant - became widely known. The truth is irrelevant if it contradicts the narrative.

You say the "shooter came out and actually said he was an incel who hates sex workers." You do realize people don't take the word of murderers when it comes to their motivations. Something is a confession when it's against penal interest. If it benefits the defendant then it's received more skeptically.

But let's say the opinion pieces had it wrong. Or that it was a case of mixed motive and it's difficult to disentangle the murderer's motivation and it wasn't a bias crime. How did this affect you? You really are defending the honor and integrity of someone who murdered a bunch of innocent people over his own sexual hangups?

There have been a lot of anti-asian hate crimes in the last year. I've seen video of a number of them and they're ugly. I can't imagine being so worked up that the media speculated about a murderer's motive that I lost sight of the fact that people are being assaulted left and right because they're Asian.