GregPersons

Case in point.

We agree they didn't need to shoot him. We disagree on how much you're willing to let the police off the hook and blame the person who was shot, like he had it coming. I disagree. I think his life was more valuable. His life had more value than his transgressions.

Yeah I don't actually know and don't care. I'm taking you at your word, because on a message board, words is all we have. And emojis. Congrats on learning the concept of agitprop ... it's like a kid with a new word. Interesting that I'm the scripted one. What's your solution to black on black violence, again?

Ah OK I was guessing based on "fan since 88" Yeah you're going to have a different conception of race entirely. Anyway no that's not my point. My point is it's simplistic and misleading, it's presented in bad faith, etc etc etc. It's rhetorical. You never cared about the answer.

Race is one of many communities, obviously. This board, also a community, not based on race; I wouldn't know yours if you hadn't volunteered it. You still don't understand racist/racism and still haven't the shame to consider learning before opening your dumb duck mouth.

Attaboy. You know Stalin and Marx aren't the same person? In case you thought it was Marx Stalin and John Lennon or something, not the case.

The cops didn't need to shoot him. They did not need to. They could have subdued him. They outnumbered him!!!! He had one weapon. They had several. They could've knocked it out of his hands with bully sticks, even. It's not right to excuse it anymore.... I can't, personally. I've done it before; I get the urge to do it. I think it is more than time to expect better. What you're talking about, the reform, that is essentially abolishing/defunding if you just take it to its logical conclusion. You divide the services into specialist groups, instead of making "police" be every single different function. Sometimes, you do need a tactical shooting squad. But not as default. I don't buy it. I have seen 0 examples of cops using their guns to save a life that would not have otherwise been saved without the gun (not "they killed a guy who might've later killed a guy"). This also needs to happen in legislation — there's a lot of laws that are BS, we all know it. There's a lot of laws that criminalize people for ***** that they have no control over; extremely mentally ill people. I've done some volunteering with homeless shelters in DTLA, and the amount of homeless veterans is unconsisnconable to me. One of the harshest examples of the way that America is a scam to take every individual for what they're worth and throw them away. It makes me sick if I think about it for long. Anyway. "Police" and "cops" and all of that really can be abolished. And we can improve the services even by replacing them more thoughtfully, and updated to our modern problems. Like, the real problems. Just... wouldn't it be cool if people actually just got real for once??? And just admitted the hard truth about some of this stuff instead of dodging, delaying? If we are truly looking and listening and evaluating, the real problems are clear. And it's not a new problem, and so a lot of thought has already been put into how specific police and prison reforms and abolition actions would look like. Tl;dr -- Even the most severe abolition efforts toward government services would not be nearly as drastic as is being imagined. It's not going to be "The Purge" -- in a way I think people are telling on themselves with this a bit, because it's like, well that's what you would want to do if there were no rules, maybe. But, this is where I am pro 2A -- it doesn't happen because people would be afraid that the other guy has a gun. That is what keeps everything in check more than the police.

http://www.purpleberets.org/violence_police_families.html https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-51773425 https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/ http://kutv.com/news/local/40-of-police-officer-families-experience-domestic-violence-study-says http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp ANYway just fun to look at this thread that wants to defend the police by joking about domestic abuse. @Koko78 is like, "Me? How can I be racist? My wife has a black eye!" ? 40% of cops are domestic abusers. That's what's KNOWN. Imagine how many cops just haven't been exposed.

How many black families in Chicago are describing it as "black on black violence", I wonder? Maybe just search around the internet for a few minutes and do a tally of who is talking Chicago violence in those terms. Where is the concern, particularly since you're white, for your own community? "White on white violence" like school shootings and serial rapists/murderers, not a concern? You'd rather judge the community that your people have historically oppressed for in-fighting, rather than ... I don't know... do anything more productive, helpful, or introspective?

How about this photoshop? ANTIFA is real.....ly one guy, apparently.

Oh no, there's plenty of solutions. The basic answer is that — the root of crime is desperation. The efforts need to be in preventive methods. All police are doing is, at best, cleaning up after the fact. In California, there are two "suicides" within 20 minute drive of each other, both Black men hung from trees, and in an area where KKK activity has been spotted (flyers on telephone posts, etc). Ideally you can look these stories up yourself and get into the habit of finding answers yourself instead of demanding them from strangers on the internet. Or you can be pissy and insist on me grabbing the links for you and I'll probably do it because I'm a goddamn saint. You're a millennial and you have lived through what you've lived through, and you are trying to insist on a reality that Black people don't have the history that they do? "Black on black violence" is a KKK talking point, #1. It is repeated generationally. Nobody is ever coming in with stats they have verified. People are coming in with memes. That's because it's a fiction, and a distortion. "White on white violence" — what are we doing about this? Why does this not come up? School shootings, serial killers, the Civil War? Lots of bloody "white on white violence" in our country, what is being done about this? "White on white rape", sounds like a lot of white people are child rapists too? John Grisham was defending child porn in a news story this weekend. Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer... lotta white guys here. Depending on whether or not Jewish people are allowed to be white, depends who you ask. The solution is to repair the unhealed damage inflicted on Black America from the origin of the country to present day; damage that has never been addressed. Anytime it comes up, it's like waving the Holy Bible to a possessed child... just shrieks and projectile vomit. The obvious solutions would be Universal Basic Income and Universal Healthcare. In a society in which everyone's basic human needs are met --- possible in THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE HISTORY OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION -- in which the wealth is "re-distributed" more equitably among all citizens, instead of everyone being exploited to the bone so that Elon Musk can fly to Mars or whatever -- that is going to dramatically reduce all forms of crime. Of course you didn't need me to tell you that. You could've Googled or Binged or any other thing. You just think you've "got me." The truth doesn't matter to you. You just want to feel "right." Right? Anyway that's my idea for solving citizen-on-citizen violence in America particularly in oppressed and under-served communities. What's yours?

Yeah. It's bad. The rot goes to the core. That's why "defund" and "abolish" are the right terms. This is a negotiation of how a major part of society works. Incementalism has been given more than a fair chance. It's time to think bigger, and to start remember the American history and what is possible. Teddy Roosevelt. He was police, and a reformer. Created national parks. Did a lot of good things, including, breaking up the corporate monopolies of the gilded age. We need that ALLLLLLLLL over America. We need the massive corporations and monopolies broken up. And we need it on government organizations like the police that have absurd budgets and yield little value. We're all investors, right? Taxes pay for this. What I'm seeing from police locally and nationally.... that's where you get into taxation without representation. I don't want another dime going toward police in their current form. I want results that de-escalate, that improve people's lives. All they do is destroy. Rayshard Brooks should not have died. We shouldn't know these names. We know so many of them. We've forgotten even more, because it's impossible to keep up. And.... NOTHING... is being done. 3 weeks straight, protests nationwide, America very clearly demanding change.... and instead, somehow.... Rayshard Brooks is harrassed with a taser for sleeping in his car (if Universal Basic Income and Universal Healthcare, this isn't a problem; there's a reason upper middle class people aren't robbing liquor stores; desperation creates crime), and then he has the human instinct to not want to be tasered and protects himself. For this, because of the threat -- the EXACT threat, less in fact, that the officers posed to him with the taser -- that justified them shooting him to death. And yet, he would not be justified in standing his ground and shooting them to death once they produced the taser, would he? Do they think we are not seeing through this crap? Anybody who isn't genuinely pissed off about this stuff is pretty suspect to me. This should be unacceptable to anybody who takes any amount of pride in any kind of American identity or any ideas of freedom equality liberty etc. If they don't apply to every American, then they're meaningless, it's a lie, everybody's all died in vain for no good cause. Or they do apply to everybody. Things are pretty f---ed, but in a weird way, I have more hope than ever before. Because I see the rage in other peoples eyes too, and that feeling that this time is different. This time there's no stopping. Why stop now? For what reason? To do what else, instead? Where else would you rather be, than right here, right now, fighting for this cause? That last bit might be lost on you as a gangrene sufferer; it's a tweak on a Marv Levy quote.

You're not disproving my point. You're proving it exactly; we're saying the same thing on this part. Italian — which, great heritage, who doesn't love Italians for real, but in America, it's counted as White, you know it as well as I do. There are a lot of "conditional" White groups, like Irish and Jewish -- it's because "White" isn't really real, not in the way that Italian is, "white" is just a tool of oppression. Cracker, honkey, goomba, etc — these don't mean and do anything. That's my point. They're not racist, because they don't have any power to remove the rights/advantages a White American is born into.

fixed that for you Do you know why "cracker" is an example of a derogatory slur, but isn't "racist"? I've explained it enough. The first part of the sentence is "You can't be racist to white people in America, because..." Can you complete the phrase? Incorrect answers include: "Because Greg told me so" "Because white people are the devil" "Because that's just how the liberal PC mafia works"

Yup. If nothing else, it's a clear example of how the NFL is unable to do anything but chase the curve. They had a great opportunity to be an ally from the beginning. They could've amplified Black Lives Matter like they do with Breast Cancer and Veteran Salute or whatever other causes the NFL sanctioned. They could've come away from this with renewed respect -- it would've been a little rocky with the MAGA people but the NFL would've been just fine. These people boycott every thing constantly, and it never matters. How many times have they boycotted Starbucks? How are they doing? That the NFL couldn't get behind BLM is grotesque in hindsight. The phrase is so clear and so obvious, too, it's just... ugh. It's not a debate. It's a magnifying glass on hate and prejudice, on racism. They do or they don't. America/ns care, or don't. The NFL, with all of the access in the world to black voices and already a supposed commitment to community work, couldn't just get on board. They were too afraid of the police. So, if everybody is afraid of speaking up against the police, what does that say about where we're at? It feels like a society where you have to perform demonstrative respect to cops on a regular basis, to give them absurd amounts of money we donate to them through taxes, and also aren't able to criticize it without getting death threats.... yeah that seems about what a police state would be.

I agree, thanks for sharing in a kind of personal way because I do think it's important to realize this is a process of learning & unlearning... there is a such thing as American propaganda, it's foolish for us to think otherwise, and obviously the enforcement officers of the state would be something that any citizen of any country would be given ample reason to believe are heroes. Your thought process describes my reaction as well. I do feel like I was tipped further, radicalized further, and forced to consider/confront a lot of things that I "sort of" knew but had not given full consideration. Like most of us here I have the privilege to not think about race or to be worried about police brutality on an individual level. And while I knew that police brutality and injustice was reality, I now realize I vastly underestimated how deep the roots go, and I think if/when we begin to really confront some very difficult truths, then frankly a lot of things click into place in a sharper clarity. My view of police and racism in America has gone from a 90s box top to 1080p HD 4K.... I am much clearer on what is happening, what has been happening, and why it was so easy to ignore before. There's a history of intentional government diversion tactics, like COINTELPRO, the effects of which are ongoing today. From the way we talk about it, to the way conversations are framed and distorted. It's the same story every time. James Baldwin talked about it 60 years ago, it is the same story today. I am horrified and embarrassed and feel betrayed by ... my/our fathers/grandfathers for being complicit, for not doing more to do the morally right thing. I think this is a winnable war. Maybe not this generation. But racism and oppression and fascism don't need to exist. Especially in the RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE HISTORY OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION... it's unimaginable that there are families uncertain if they'll have money to feed their families in August. Elon Musk is working on flying to Mars. This seems tangential, but it's all connected. America could take care of its people. Universal Healthcare and Unviersal Basic Income are things supported by both left & right, but not really by anyone elected in government. There's just no reason not to anymore. It's time to call the bluff. It's time to stop the looting from the mega-rich and simply "re-distribute" the wealth in the other direction. For ONCE. Because we've been trying "trickle down global economy" for a couple generations now and I don't think it's working so well. It's hard to believe how oblivious I/we all have been up until now. Because it seems so obvious now. And BIPOC were saying so. But the reality is that white people can afford for race to be "theoretical" while imposing it as a practical reality on minorities. Most white people don't really feel like there's a "white culture" really; other than the KKK, most white people I know don't feel like "white" is really part of their identity in the way that Black or Latino would be. White people identities are more based on their beliefs or activities; I'm talking in terms of cultural perception. You've never heard of "white on white crime" but wouldn't that be, idk, most serial killers & school shootings? White criminals even are celebrated; the Confederacy only lasted 5 years ... basically the amount of time Rob Johnson spent as a Bills QB... and this is an identity. Mafia -- Bills Mafia -- this is okay because it's white. "Bills Bloods" or "Bills MS-13" probably wouldn't go over so well, right? Well, what's the difference?? Again it's all obvious, it's like the FedEx arrow, or a magic eye trick... it's something that once you see it, it is obvious in so many places, in so many forms. Anyway. I saw this going around on social — it's anonymous so take it for what you will — confessions of a former cop in a Medium article. Also, the Dave Chappelle special (posted in Off Topic forum) reminded me about the Christopher Dorner story and I see it in a new light, even more tragic than it already was, which was already incredibly tragic. He wasn't "insane" in the sense of being unclear about his actions. He was "depressed" to suicide; he was left without hope. He was pushed to an extreme amount of violence. I'm not excusing it. I'm saying it was preventable. He tried. People wouldn't listen. And his story was so distorted, it's hard to look again at his "manifesto" and not just feel renewed anger at the structural failures that led to this. Dorner is something people struggle with because, while his actions were evil and wrong, his reasons and justifications and feelings were not. That can be hard for us to hold in their heads, I guess. And I remember following it at the time with the perverse interest of a car chase. It was insane living in Los Angeles for those days/week or so. I remember LAPD shooting an innocent mail carrier because they misidentified the van. I remember a few years ago the LAPD agitating the stand-off at Trader Joe's, also shooting and killing an innocent bystander. The suspect gave up willingly because the employees of TJs talked him down. "All cops are bastards" is talking about the institution. On a human level, of course there are good people who happen to be police officers. There's also good people who happen to be MS-13 gang members, I'm sure. Both organizations behave the same. One has the law, the other doesn't. That's just the simple reality behind all of the pretense. The propaganda of non-stop cop stories that all of us love... every single one of us has a favorite cop TV show, cop character, cop movie, cop book series, cop video game character.... and they'd be different people/characters, too, for each one. There's so much propaganda in American media that we just don't question. The reality is police do very little. They do so much LESS than we all assumed. They deal with noise complaints, they settle disagreements, they write tickets. Otherwise they look for trouble and harass people; the amount of dangerous situations these officers are supposedly placed in — I think we're all calling BS. It seems like these "dangerous situations" are dangerous because of the police, not in spite of them. They are civil servants cosplaying as Storm Troopers. They're not soldiers. The #1 immediate thing is to end police immunity. Defund the police. And end immunity. Nobody should be above the law. Including law enforcement. That shouldn't be controversial. And yet!!

This keeps coming up too I wonder if anybody has read Marx, or knows any of his positions on anything at all. . Mostly you see the word only as pejorative from the right. You rarely hear leftists describe themselves as Marxists, really, but no leftist would disagree with any of his principles. He was ahead of his time and just had clarity and history has only proven him correct. Das Kapital and Communifest Manifesto aren't even that long, honestly. Cliffs notes would be fine too. He was like 20 or something when he wrote it? It was a blog. People ignored it. Then they didn't. And then, a series of unfortunate events by people inspired by him. Anyway. They're just books. Not too scary. You can read things besides sports history books and Tom Clancy. They're just words. Not too dangerous... you love the marketplace of ideas, right? "I hate Marxism because of all the people who have died in his name" = so you also hate Christianity, and every religion? You hate America for all the people who have died in her name? Does Charles Manson murdering people mean The Beatles are evil? Same logic. "I hate Marxism because every state that's attempted it was or is a failed state." Name one that existed without interference from the USA. How is capitalism going for everybody here, incidentally? We're all happy to be exploited to the bone so Elon Musk can fly to Mars? From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. (this is just the golden rule applied to society; this could be a Christ quote for Christ's sake) History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. (hard to argue this one with a real life president Donald Trump ... imagine president Rosie O'Donnell but... so much worse. and it's reality.) The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles. (name an example that isn't. including our present reality, yours included). ANYway, hope you had a great weekend. To start the discussion, would anybody like to tell the class where "the weekend" and the "8 hour workday" comes from?

Funny and good point from NYC comedian BIPOC, is this term okay with you @TakeYouToTasker / @Chef Jim? Feel free to take the money by going on video telling us why it's invalid.

Abolish the preseason? Why? Just because it's useless and everyone openly despises it? But the preseason is our heritage!

IMO Brown is much better than many here are giving him credit for... "over-rated" being applied to any linemen, especially a non-LT or C... a bit ridiculous, imo. Sometimes I find fan culture to be very embarrassing in the complete lack of appreciation for the people who make the thing they're a fan of... it's one part "everyone's a critic" and another part "people need to be more appreciative/grateful, in general"

This has nothing to do with Trump, or not much anyway. It has nothing to do with Biden. It has nothing to do with Congress. It has to do with the fact that Minneapolis wasn't just one example. There have been, I've lost track, of how many since. Man was shot to death for sleeping at a Wendy's and resisting arrest. He grabbed the tazer. This was such a threat -- though suspects, like this man, Rayshard Brooks are supposed to just go along with it -- that the cops had to shoot him to death. And again Breonna Taylor. Was shot to death in her bed. Her killers have not been brought to justice. It is much bigger and deeper than Biden or Trump or Democrat or Republican. Nobody is more deluded about this than white people, because, white people have been afforded the luxury to simply not think about race as a real concern. Because it hasn't been to them. By design. But this is what is happening, and it's not new. Social media also allows a lot more first-hand reporting, and the mainstream news (btw Fox News / right-wing --- these are mainstream, by definition) is massively distorting the reality. In Richmond tonight, here's how police are dressed to deal with unarmed citizens with poster boards and t-shirts. The police are the ones instigating. This is consistently happening.

I'd take it. Over no season? Why not? 6 games. All divisional. That'd be pretty cool, if you ask me. Especially this year with our roster and the rest of the division?? Let's do it. Bills are in prime position to succeed in that kind of situation, like the post lockout Sabres run in the 00s

100% I can definitely see a push for the HOF to be more inclusive in their considerations in the future, acknowledging more positions that are relatively under-heralded, and also players who excelled in difficult circumstances. I know nobody is going to agree that Eric Moulds deserves HOF but I do think he certainly should 100% be on the Wall. That guy was a baller, and I wish he had better teams. But he made a lot of average QBs look pretty good sometimes. Antoine Smith is another guy who... I mean I hated that he went to the Pats... but enough time has passed, I don't really care now, and I moreso remember really loving him and the Flutie teams of the late 90s, those were the first teams I saw play live at the Ralph. Ruben being part of those teams, similarly, I have just a general fondness for all of those guys. Sam Cowart, our MLB was an absolute beast before injury ruined his career; he was on par or better than Ray Lewis at the time. Antoine Winfield...! Just a really fun group. Ruben was a bright spot too, because that line was pretty shaky. John Fina was rough. There were a lot of injuries too. Ruben I remember as being pretty reliable; a few injuries but mostly he was always there IIRC.

Republicans were the progressive / liberal party before the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s, when the Dixiecrats left to join Barry Goldwater and formed the modern Republicans. It's why this is another example of your caveman thinking. "Republicans good, Dems bad." It's also why it's funny when people like yourself try to claim Lincoln or Black American Republicans prior to 1960 as examples of your party's history. It's not the same party, at all. You. Are. Too. Stupid. To. Understand.