Riot Day in Ferguson, Missouri

[smcder]

Yes i did lee, as far as my lifetimes general observations of looking in from the outside at other countries conflict's and social problems, ts like a leader board that each race/strain of humans, has a place on, maybe just plain empathy one human has towards another is not the correct way to assess, but it seems fine to me, ofcourse i realise we all have it still in us, but our soldiers need for more conditioning to kill.

Where do you think these animals are on the evolutionary scale.
BBC News - Pakistan Taliban: Peshawar school attack leaves 135 dead

This variance is accounted for by within group differences in genetics?

i.e. Some races/strains are born more violent?

For more on conditioning see

Lt Col Dave Grossman's book:

"Killology"



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[pixelsmith]

It's not that. African blacks are not racist against whites because they are not taught to be. American blacks are.

One of my fishing buddies is from Nigeria. We've talked a lot about this while alone on the water in the evenings.

Cultural Marxism employs the ancient Divide et Impera strategy. You can rule over people by making them fight against each other. This prevents them from uniting against your control system of taxation, and keeping their wealth and productivity for themselves.

The Oligarchs who developed Marxism in the early 20th century knew it was the most brilliant system of human farming ever developed. Proof of their wisdom is how incredibly wealthy they are today, while we struggle paycheck-to-paycheck just to eat wholesome food, and keep a roof over our heads.

Good point. Didn't think of it that way.


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[Burnt State]

Yes i did lee, as far as my lifetimes general observations of looking in from the outside at other countries conflict's and social problems, ts like a leader board that each race/strain of humans, has a place on, maybe just plain empathy one human has towards another is not the correct way to assess, but it seems fine to me, ofcourse i realise we all have it still in us, but our soldiers need for more conditioning to kill.

Where do you think these animals are on the evolutionary scale.
BBC News - Pakistan Taliban: Peshawar school attack leaves 135 dead

Yes, exploring reasons why people kill does get more to the heart of the matter. These have all been written down in history books already and I wonder if we forget that the history of hatred and killing is the same the world over. We tend to look down on murder, butchery and genocide when it occurs in less familiar regions such as the East or in Africa. But their reasons for killing are the same as ours: that complex mix of conditioning, historical hatred and power create the means and frequency for the kill.

Religious & sectarian hatreds are age old, so are ethnic hatreds and in the right circumstances you can have a genocide spill over the way it did in Germany, Serbia, Southern Ontario and Rwanda. What's fascinating is that there is usually a balance, or a set of social mores that first need toppling by someone else's imposed, organized imbalance, and then chaos ensues. All a mob needs is a voice to legitimize that what they are doing is right, is just and is lawful.

Would Iraq be the terror zone it is if not for Western involvement? Would Rwanda have happened without French colonization? Is not Serbia a direct product of WWII meddling? Southern Ontario tribes had no means to create the killing fields they did if it were not for European agitation, and the provision of the killing weapons. These disasters require the creation and magnification of scapegoats and the right environment for execution, so that people can get used to, or even enjoy killing, to even create a culture of it.

There are photo scenes of lynchings in America's very recent history where families gathered together like it was a picnic to watch the Black man castrated, hanged, burned & butchered. Families pose in front of the photos smiling with a dead body in the background. Dads would scramble around the ground to collect teeth to give to their kids as souvenirs. One could easily ask, "What kind of animals do such things?" But I think it's more important to ask what kind of kids & grandchildren were raised by those children who prized their collections of racialized hatred, their Gestapo, concentration camp like memorabilia? How many of them might be working in law enforcement I wonder, or hold positions of power in the U.S. senate, and when they see a black man selling smokes on the sidewalk does their history have something to do with why they pile on top of him in a delirious gang that knows no end until the last breath expires?

I don't see these as competitions so much as a very sad, violent, unreconciled histories.

 

[smcder]

@Burnt State - you've asked about experiences I've had that might have sensitized me to women's issues and mental health issues ...

and @manxman you've stated a couple of times that the white man is afraid of the black man ...

... so I want to give a little more information about growing up for you both, then I'll specifically address the two issues you ask about Burnt in another post.

A gentleman brought a picture in to the library where I work to have a photo copy made ... it was a newspaper clipping from my high school but about ten years before my time - probably the best basketball team the school ever fielded ... the core of this team went on to play at the small liberal arts school where my Dad taught. This brought up some memories for me.

My dad was the athletic representative for the school, he'd been an athlete himself - football, basketball and track and measured and ran the first official marathon in our state. He took an interest in the athletes during his time at the school and I remember this group of guys in particular, probably because they were around the house a lot when I was growing up. Most were African American and all were first generation college students. So my Dad worked with them in mathematics as well as academic planning, financial and career planning.

These guys taught me how to play basketball, high jump (one of them set a record with a 7 foot plus (2.13 meter) high jump) - worked with me on my running form, etc. I enjoyed being around them, they were positive and good role models for me.

So, a few things I can tell you @manxman:

The biggest guy on the team, by a wide margin, was Caucasian, he was every bit of six feet, nine inches in height (2.06 meters) and built to scale - as in, like an Ox. I can picture him standing in front of the door frame, to obscure same. I'm wondering if he ever met the man, regardless of hue, that he feared?

And, by the way ... the largest men I've ever seen have all been Caucasian - a seven footer in Germany, some guy walking down the street in Europe who had to be a meter wide - and a man in a pizza restaurant here in my state. I told my buddy, that guy is 350lbs without trying - we were trying to see what was in his hand and then realized it was a cigarette ... when he stood up he was just shy of the ceiling and I re estimated him at around 450 - in other word, about the size of another Caucasian - Andre the Giant. Only, lean.

OK, so the best ball handler on the team, by an equally wide margin, was African American and stood every bit of five feet nine inches (ok, eight) (1.73 meters) and I saw him dribble the ball between the other players legs and ... on one memorable occasion, dunk the ball. A 40 inch (1.02 meter) vertical leap in his prime.

But you know who else is 1.73 meters tall and has a 36 inch (0.9 meter) vertical leap?

This guy ... only he weighs 350 lbs (159 kilos) ... and can you spot one other difference?



A couple other memories. When I was 8, Dino De Laurentis' King Kong came out and my Dad and me and the guy I mentioned above, the outstanding ball player, African American, all went to the movies and when Kong died I cried and I cried and this young man pulled me up on his lap and gave me a hug and told me it would be ok. He didn't say "be a man" or "don't be a baby".

Last thing - his dad always came to see him play and was always drunker'n Cooter Brown, that's what we said then ... and he clowned in the stands but this young man never turned his back on his father, never acted ashamed ... he always went over to him after the game and shook his hand and thanked him for coming.

So, I guess that's why I don't fear the black man. And it doesn't prove a thing ... all of these could be exceptional experiences that prove the rule or you may have some rationale as to why they don't apply, but they affected me and my outlook and I think for the better.

 

[Burnt State]

So, I guess that's why I don't fear the black man. And it doesn't prove a thing ... all of these could be exceptional experiences that prove the rule or you may have some rationale as to why they don't apply, but they affected me and my outlook and I think for the better.

Thank you very much for sharing this memory chain with us as it is highly instructional. We live too much in a world of stereotypes instead of a world of humanity. I think that those generalizations we have of the 'other' do us in, do our neighbors in and is the rough edge that bristles through a lot of human interaction. So cluttered is our mind with the tv, video game, parental taught, peer confirmed stereotype that we sometimes forget to see the humanity in the person standing in front of us. Too often we see the 'type' first and don't take time to get to know or even appreciate the individual.

You've expressed a lot of very natural humanity; it's the same kind I see Faulkner working on in his prose, as he struggles with the stereotypes and racism that are also part of his culture. Both of your writing memories are important gateway points for others who may never have had these natural, multi-racial interactions that you had. And what they prove is that when we grow up in households that are multi-racial, our appreciation for people that may be different than our pigment transcends the stereotypical prejudice and biased judgment that is all anyone else knows if they've never experienced difference first hand.

At a small video art event last night I found myself in the Black Heritage Society's building which is an old converted church in the city I currently live in. The building used to be the first black church in this town and now, 100 years later, has been reclaimed. This was a very multi-racial event, at least as multi-racial as this predominately white town gets. I found myself talking with people from the Caribbean, from Afghanistan, from China and other places unknown. I was surprised at how engaging the dialogue was as I was expecting the normally silent, small side conversations that usually takes place at such venues.

The artist was a young Afghani whose mom is French & Dad is Afghani. He was troubled by his mixed heritage and didn't recommend the experience because of his complicated upbringing and the rejection he felt within his own community. This prompted very interesting, spontaneous conversations about difference, pigment, racial mixing, patriarchy and the future of society. It was one of the most comfortable events I've ever had in this town, where my real discomfort is in the promotion of a lingering redneck culture. At least that's what the local baseball team calls themselves - The Royal City Rednecks. I have neighbors who hang confederate flags inside their house on special occasions. I find it a little scary. I fear what white people might do, much more than meeting any non-white person on the street. Our location defines our experiences and our upbringing will either confirm or deny such realities.

 

[smcder]

@manxman - here's the other side of the story, "law of the jungle" beast within - there are sheep, wolves and sheep dogs - you got to figure out what you are and be that
@Burnt State this will answer some questions around women's issues and mental health too.

Leo Wellspring (think Horselover Fat) ... was foreman on a nursery with about 250 men under him. He loaned money on payday to those who needed it. He was known to have an extraordinary head for numbers. I was told countless times growing up how Leo kept payroll on a little notebook he kept in his shirt pocket with a pencil. I grew up thinking this was a prodigious ability.

Some of these men gambled and drank the money away, some just wasted it. But others put it towards cars and houses because for the African American men, the bank of Leo was the only place in town to borrow money.

Leo was capable of great violence in his own home and no doubt did not rely on form letters to recover his investments. Leo had a couple of men who worked with him who lived in the African American community. Leo got the business from one of the nursery owner's sons ... there is a big joke in the name of the nursery but Horselover Fat won't let me tell it.

Leo was very good looking and married Mercy and Leo liked to drink:

CH3CH2OH

Cha-Cha Oh and how Leo could make Mercy fly!

Some times, Leo went to work on Mercy with a hornbill knife. They called it a hornbill. It was used in pruning on the nursery.



One of my favorites stories of Leo was when he went to buy a brand new Ford LTD. He come in his dirty work coveralls and the salesman ignored him. Mr. Leo finally walked over and said he wanted to buy the Ford. The salesman laughedisthatright and Leo reached in and pulled out a roll ... $5000 in one hundred dollar bills.

When Leo's son was 12, he took a pair of brass knucs



and beat Leo and left him for dead in the rain and ran away and never returned home. It took a while longer for Leo to sober up. In the meantime, Mercy hit him with a tire iron and the ugly end of a claw hammer in front of his friends at a poker game. Leo's son's first wife shot him one night. She married a state trooper and spent a lot of time in the "state hospital".

Mercy was ahead of her time I was told. I have a picture of her standing on top of a horse, bareback. She played piano by ear, won a state algebra contest, talked of bootlegging whiskey in the Depression while Leo worked on the road crew for $0.50 a day. She met Sheriff Bufford Pusser and she played at the theaters when the silent movies came into town.

When I started remembering her, she played Mockingbird and Blueberry Hill and made redeye gravy and stayed up all night on coffee and cigarettes and watched the creature feature with me and wrestlin' with her neighbor Saturday mornings and always loved to go - fishing and eating out and to the auctions.

One night she was showing me the little Saturday Night Special .22 caliber she kept by her bed. She went out to refill her coffee and I put all the little bullets back in so that when she came back she snatched it up to demonstrate and blew a hole about two feet from my head through the plywood wall and her neighbor's metal shed. We looked at each other and laughed so hard it hurt. Mainly because my Dad looked so funny when he came running in his under swearing at or to God.

 

[smcder]

So through family stories like these and dozens more - on both sides, both sides had alcoholism and violence toward women ... toward everyone ... an Uncle in the KKK .... and through my mother's battles as a social worker in the school system and the church and her own struggle to express her equality in the home with my father and my brother and I, to express her own remarkable abilities in the face of a kind of extreme rationality that has a violence of its own (that is why I'm so sensitive to it on this forum where it masquerades in a number of guises - as a kind of reasonableness, a wouldn't it be nice but you know the world isn't that way, but with hints at delights of bursting bubbles or an in your face I know the facts or a pedantic literalism - a let me teach you the meaning of this word ... but under it all a kind of smug superiority and under that ... of course, fear because that's what rationality is always trying to keep at bay)

- through all of that, @Burnt State I was sensitized to women's "spaces" (?) to everyone's spaces: the slow, the awkwardly gifted, the giftedly awkward, the gay, the transgendered - the unattractive, everyone has a space ... that and through working at the homeless shelter and transporting the women's shelter new residents to the hospital, no less than once a week at any hour of the day for a case of hadthehellbeatouttathem or combing the bushes with a Maglite because the cops wouldn't respond or the extensive abuse my second wife suffered before and after me: I slept with a .357 by my bed for two years ... seven rounds, hollow point. Her ex had beat a homeless man to death and then, for measure, burned the body in a dumpster. And now, fifteen years later, he was out and she was convinced he was coming for her. He didn't, but it made for some long nights and one in particular I suspect a young man will never forget.

So ... as @manxman said, law of the jungle - sheep, wolves and wolf dogs but it's not always that easy to figure out which one you are.

 

[manxman]

Yes, exploring reasons why people kill does get more to the heart of the matter. These have all been written down in history books already and I wonder if we forget that the history of hatred and killing is the same the world over. We tend to look down on murder, butchery and genocide when it occurs in less familiar regions such as the East or in Africa. But their reasons for killing are the same as ours: that complex mix of conditioning, historical hatred and power create the means and frequency for the kill.

Religious & sectarian hatreds are age old, so are ethnic hatreds and in the right circumstances you can have a genocide spill over the way it did in Germany, Serbia, Southern Ontario and Rwanda. What's fascinating is that there is usually a balance, or a set of social mores that first need toppling by someone else's imposed, organized imbalance, and then chaos ensues. All a mob needs is a voice to legitimize that what they are doing is right, is just and is lawful.

Would Iraq be the terror zone it is if not for Western involvement? Would Rwanda have happened without French colonization? Is not Serbia a direct product of WWII meddling? Southern Ontario tribes had no means to create the killing fields they did if it were not for European agitation, and the provision of the killing weapons. These disasters require the creation and magnification of scapegoats and the right environment for execution, so that people can get used to, or even enjoy killing, to even create a culture of it.

There are photo scenes of lynchings in America's very recent history where families gathered together like it was a picnic to watch the Black man castrated, hanged, burned & butchered. Families pose in front of the photos smiling with a dead body in the background. Dads would scramble around the ground to collect teeth to give to their kids as souvenirs. One could easily ask, "What kind of animals do such things?" But I think it's more important to ask what kind of kids & grandchildren were raised by those children who prized their collections of racialized hatred, their Gestapo, concentration camp like memorabilia? How many of them might be working in law enforcement I wonder, or hold positions of power in the U.S. senate, and when they see a black man selling smokes on the sidewalk does their history have something to do with why they pile on top of him in a delirious gang that knows no end until the last breath expires?

I don't see these as competitions so much as a very sad, violent, unreconciled histories.

You have beyond any doubt summed up my whole view on AGW in one sentence, i know the 'other' thread is that way >>.
But i want you to understand now, here, in your own words.

I dont want a reply, but a personal understanding between you and i.

You support the mob, for reasons i both agree and disagree with, me i despise the lies, hypocrisy, flawed and distorted science used to shore up genuine science, the whole new mother earth religion.

And so here are your words, the ones that sum up my view on that other toxic topic, perfectly.

What's fascinating is that there is usually a balance, or a set of social mores that first need toppling by someone else's imposed, organized imbalance, and then chaos ensues. All a mob needs is a voice to legitimize that what they are doing is right, is just and is lawful.

 

[Burnt State]

@manxman, ok, that's fair enough in terms of how you feel about AGW, though I just happen to feel that most of the emotion surrounding that topic is based on a lot of abstract and unknown scientific data and processes. Consequently , I don't see the need to bring a lot of emotion to that topic as it still needs time, more data, better scientific understanding etc. before any one group can make any proclamations with any degree of certainty. There's erring on the side of caution (the side i take) and then there's the notion that a conspiracy is under way of epic proportions and i can't see that, because I'm not getting angry about green or carbon taxes b/c they're about erring on the side of caution. For others this is about highway robbery. That's fine - everyone chooses a position. I've checked out of it b/c I don't understand the extremities of emotion that are brought to a nebulous circumstance.

However, when we're talking about real life conflict with blood, guts, hatred, violence and murder, things that have real numbers, real history - stuff that's indisputable, attached to the situation, I happen to think that this notion of being sheep, wolves, sheep dogs or wolf dogs is an apt metaphor. Real people have real histories and there are real answers to this talk. Getting exposed to violent real life, and finding ways to make peace with that in your own conscience, through the daily words and actions of your personhood, is something I admire. To straddle such memories and live well in the present is a unique skill.

@smcder, you sir, are a writer that has some Faulkner running though his veins. You have chosen to convert your upbringing into what I would describe as consummate, selfless, good Samaritan ideology. The Samaritans were outcasts in the bible. In fact in the story of the woman at the well, where Jesus comes and asks for water, she is Samaritan. She is a despised outsider, and is also a woman with a questionable past. Yet still, it is to this woman that Jesus decides he's going to reveal that he is the son of god. She's the only person in the whole book that he actually makes that proclamation to, if I remember my theology accurately. Regardless, and speaking outside any atheistic hatred, some stories have weight and merit because of the circumstances of the story. The choice of revelation is significant. She's lowest of the low, showing up at the hottest time of the day to draw her water because no one else will be around. Still, the hero of the story with the biggest secret of all, reveals it to a mst despised woman who has a lot of strife and struggle in her life.

My other favourite bible story is the one where Jesus stops all the dudes in town from stoning the prostitute, and addresses their hypocrisy in some interesting ways. His instructional statement though is always the same throughout the text, "Don't start complaining about the speck of dust in your neighbour's eye when you can't see the plank in your own." As a carpenter's son he couldn't stop himself from making such analogies. Anyway, I'm very appreciative of these pieces of yourself you've shared here. There's a real generosity of spirit in what you reveal and it makes me think of you as quite the good Samaritan in terms of the work you do, and there's a bit of JC mixed in there as well, at least philosophically I see that. Please forgive the sappiness of the season, but such excellent, real life writing deserves such compliments. Could just be a matter of perspective, so take it as you will.

 

[smcder]

A question on a practical level: was Wilson patrolling the streets alone that night? Don't policemen usually travel with partners, both to protect one another and to prevent excessive behavior on the part of cops operating alone?

It took a bit, but here is the response from a friend of mine - a retired LEO - who worked in the Ferguson area at one time and is knowledgeable of that community and surrounding area.

As for your Ferguson question - you're pretty much on the mark.

(I had written "I would just say it's budget and the kind of activities expected to go on in a patrol area, etc.")

Ferguson was for the most part a decent community - there may have been some questionable areas - but I don't remember that they ever had 2-man cars.

Now budget cuts mean that 2-man cars will be hard to find anywhere as departments opt for more cars over officer safety.

In X* we had two man cars in the bad areas when we could - but that wasn't very often because of a lack of manpower. But we backed each other up of course.

X* a large city where my friend used to work.

 

[smcder]

@smcder, you sir, are a writer that has some Faulkner running though his veins. You have chosen to convert your upbringing into what I would describe as consummate, selfless, good Samaritan ideology. The Samaritans were outcasts in the bible. In fact in the story of the woman at the well, where Jesus comes and asks for water, she is Samaritan. She is a despised outsider, and is also a woman with a questionable past. Yet still, it is to this woman that Jesus decides he's going to reveal that he is the son of god. She's the only person in the whole book that he actually makes that proclamation to, if I remember my theology accurately. Regardless, and speaking outside any atheistic hatred, some stories have weight and merit because of the circumstances of the story. The choice of revelation is significant. She's lowest of the low, showing up at the hottest time of the day to draw her water because no one else will be around. Still, the hero of the story with the biggest secret of all, reveals it to a mst despised woman who has a lot of strife and struggle in her life.

My other favourite bible story is the one where Jesus stops all the dudes in town from stoning the prostitute, and addresses their hypocrisy in some interesting ways. His instructional statement though is always the same throughout the text, "Don't start complaining about the speck of dust in your neighbour's eye when you can't see the plank in your own." As a carpenter's son he couldn't stop himself from making such analogies. Anyway, I'm very appreciative of these pieces of yourself you've shared here. There's a real generosity of spirit in what you reveal and it makes me think of you as quite the good Samaritan in terms of the work you do, and there's a bit of JC mixed in there as well, at least philosophically I see that. Please forgive the sappiness of the season, but such excellent, real life writing deserves such compliments. Could just be a matter of perspective, so take it as you will.[/QUOTE]

I started to say I bear better comparison to Jesus as a writer and Faulkner as a Samaritan - but then you bring up John 8, the one account of Jesus's writing :

But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. 7 But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court. 10 Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” 11 She said, “No one, [a]Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”

How many writers have that kind of immediate effect on their readers?

 

[Charlie Prime]

When do these folks have time to riot? Don't they have jobs? Oh yeah... LOL

Creating race riots to divide the populace is their job. Nazi collaborator George Soros paid them $33 million dollars.

George Soros funds Ferguson protests, hopes to spur civil action - Washington Times

Works great. Nobody cares that Wall Street banks receive TRILLIONS in wealth transfers by the I.R.S from working people.

Instead, the media keep them focused on crap like some thug getting shot for trying to beat up a cop. I'm sure the 24/7 coverage of this while banks robbed working people was merely an oversight or accident on their part.