We wanted to review some examples that BLM claims are grievous but the MAGA Coalition claims are normal police practices. What do you think?
Kicked in the head for complying.
Kicked in the back for complying.
Kicked in the head while secured.
Man in custody beaten and then dragged backwards bleeding.
Police enter home uninvited and choke teenager, no warrant.
Beat and choked while strapped down.
Handcuffed woman on the ground assaulted by police officer.
Handcuffed teen female body slammed by police officer.
How long has this been going on and how much longer will it be allowed to continue?
I believe MOST police are doing their jobs correctly but at the same time I also believe FAR TO MANY of them ignore abusive behavior by fellow police officers. It’s the later that has placed us in this grotesque revolving door of systematic abuse and has caused a catastrophic collapse of public trust.
- Police cannot be trusted to perform internal reviews of abusive behavior. There must be an independent civilian review board.
- Police unions have to much power and influence over individual officers. They must be broken up.
- Police have FAR to little training and understanding of the LAW. They must be better trained in the law.
- Police have to much protection from the court system. They must be treated exactly the same under the law.
- Police are being militarized against the public that pays their salary to protect them. They must be returned to a public, peace keeping, law abiding, branch of the community they serve.
With that said I am sharing videos to quickly bring you up to speed on why there is so much backlash. There is so much more out there that I didn’t share.
TikTok has shown me more in a few days than the news media has shown me EVER.
Reality Decoded 
These are terrible. The irony of your question and the mounding evidence suggests that this is becoming the normal police procedure.
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Black people are being abused by bad police behavior and middleclass citizens are paying the court fees for the justifiable civil violation cases that ensue.
The bad police stay employed via outdated laws and police unions.
So the cycle keeps repeating with the same officers doing as they please.
The majority are not winning with this system.
Just saying
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Well I guess the MAGA dudes are right. Horrendous, gratuitous violence is a normal police practice. It’s something I’ve seen up close more than once, though not when they’ve kept my face pushed into the ground so I couldn’t see anything.
But worse than getting bashed by cops was working with families who had members killed by them. That seriously fucked me up. The grief was one thing, but what followed was always public vilification of the deceased via cop friendly media and a farcical exercise by the justice system to ensure the killers got off.
There has never been an Australian cop or prison officer convicted for killing someone while on duty. Not murder, not manslaughter, not negligent homicide, not even assault. The worst they ever get is departmental reprimands for failing to follow correct procedures. More often they get free holidays on full pay while the case is investigated. Then nothing. They never even lose their jobs.
So you spend months with the families going through a farcical legal process that you know the outcome of but which typically they don’t. So do you crush their hope from the outset or stand by as their faith in justice is slowly choked out? All the authorities are in on it. The cops that investigate of course. But also the coroner, the prosecutor and the judge or magistrate. They all do their bit to ensure there’s no conviction. And I’ve been through it enough times to anticipate which tricks they’re gonna use.
It sure burned me out. I don’t do deaths in custody any more. And knocking back family members and fellow activists who ask me to hurts like fuck too.
But as far as tildeb’s concerned BLM is a racist, totalitarian conspiracy aimed at bringing down society. I kid you not. Those are his words. He’s got a BLM vilifying post of a video by the pro-police MAGA academic, Heather MacDonald, on his blog that was removed from youtube for its racism and false allegations. And he thinks of himself as a liberal.
It’s not the MAGA people who are enabling this stuff. It’s the fellow travellers of murderous cops in the media and among the ‘liberal’ middle class. And ‘liberal’ politicians who are too gutless to stand up to police unions and call for the defunding of police.
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You Stated — “It’s not the MAGA people who are enabling this stuff. It’s the fellow travellers of murderous cops in the media and among the ‘liberal’ middle class. ”
My Response — I would say it’s both, plenty of blame to go around.
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Yeah, but everyone knows what the MAGAs will say. It’s not relevant to the debate. They’re too stupid to conceal their racism so it’s easy to dismiss them.
It’s the liberals and liberal media like the NYT pretending to take the ‘reasonable middle ground’ in protecting the status quo who are blocking reform. And because they pretend to be humane, concerned and moderate they give authorities who like to portray themselves that way the opportunity to virtue signal while condemning more people to summary execution by police.
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You Stated — “Yeah, but everyone knows what the MAGAs will say. It’s not relevant to the debate. They’re too stupid to conceal their racism so it’s easy to dismiss them.”
My Response — For you maybe but not for the people they impact. A black person cannot dismiss the MAGA party when they rewrite the voting laws in their district.
You Stated — “It’s the liberals and liberal media”
My Response — And yet I just saw 4 years of conservative rule in the US. Why you give them passes for 4 years of failed economic policy, wasteful spending, and sky high debt is a mystery to me.
Unless the true answer is bias.
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Well, I don’t really consider Trumpists to be conservatives any more than the traditional conservatives in the Republican party do. They’re radical populist individualists in the tradition of Ayn Rand, so I wouldn’t expect them to manage anything competently.
But I still give them a free-ish pass. Because I’m not an American.
I don’t care too much about the US domestic economy. What I worry about is US imperialism and militarism. The Trumpists are unstable enough to be potentially dangerous that way, especially in their expression of what they think of as patriotism. But a Hillary-led Democrat government would have been way more internationally dangerous, as any Syrian or Libyan could have told you.
At least Trump epitomised the ugly, dumb American stereotype that gave non-US Anglosphere politicians a little room to maneuvre. Australian leaders would have followed Clinton into any foreign adventure, no matter how ill-considered, criminal or contrary to Australian national interests. Trump is ugly and unpopular enough around here to make it possible to say no.
What’s more, by turning the American gaze inwards and trashing loads of the diplomatic goodwill and economic power that makes the US empire possible he was hastening its end. Of course a too rapid collapse will be deadly dangerous for the whole world. America believes in its manifest destiny and has a shitload of nukes. But I don’t think we’re yet at the point where delusion to the point of insanity has become a major factor in US foreign policy. Until that happens the best thing to do is cut US power out from under it as quickly as possible, then take things more carefully as it enters the terminal phase. I think the upcoming collapse of the US empire will be much more dangerous than that of the Soviet Union, but I’m hopeful it will be survivable.
So, truth be told, I was relieved when Trump was elected.Hillary’s need to prove she was ‘the man for the job’ scared the shit out of me. The rest of the world doesn’t need a competent warmonger in the Oval Office.
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Are you Australian?
If so are you stating that Australian conservatism is a better “World” answer than American liberalism?
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I think just about everything is a better ‘world answer’ than US liberalism, which is little more than a handmaiden to US militarism and imperialism. Such as its readiness to justify the bombing of weddings and mosques in Afghanistan with claims it’s all about getting more Afghan girls into schooling (no, not about the proposed TAPI oil and gas pipeline at all).
A few years back I got into an extended argument with a feminist liberal US Associate Professor of Philosophy who teaches at a major east coast university. He’d been convinced by a New York Times article that the US military needed to get ‘boots on the ground’ in Syria (in contravention of international law) to protect Syrian women and girls from ISIS.
Well, the NYT was successful. There was enough consensus across the political spectrum to send in the troops (with more resistance from the Republicans than from the Democrats, BTW). And what did they do? Well, fuck all against ISIS (which could have been more effectively challenged by putting pressure on the US ally, Saudi Arabia, to stop supporting it), They did a bit of ‘accidentally’ attacking Syrian and Russian troops who were fighting ISIS, but mostly they just occupied oil producing areas of Syria and sat there. Which is what the 1000 or so US troops still illegally in Syria, after local and Russian forces have essentially destroyed ISIS, are doing right now. If they ever did a single thing to protect a Syrian woman somehow the Western media failed to report it.
Hip, hooray for US liberalism as a force for world peace and human rights!
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You Stated — “I think just about everything is a better ‘world answer’ than US liberalism”
My Reposne — That is a tribalist position. There are good points to US liberalism, just as there are good points to US conservatism. There are also bad points to each of them. Polar responses keep us opposed in an endless political divide.
A divide I would add that allows people in power to stay in power (divide and conquer).
You Stated — “Such as its readiness to justify the bombing of weddings and mosques in Afghanistan”
My Response — Bombings were going on in Afghanistan before the US arrived and after we left. Maybe Afghanistan is a more complex issue than just “US militarism and imperialism” as you stated.
I would agree that the only reason we were there was for oil but that’s just big money seeking more money. Capitalism consumes the weak and Afghanistan is weak.
You Stated — “…I got into an extended argument with a feminist liberal…He’d been convinced… that the US military needed to get ‘boots on the ground’ in Syria… to protect Syrian women and girls from ISIS.
My Response — Next time you talk to him ask if he’s willing to adopt one of them to save them from ISIS, it could also save a US soldiers life if we all just did our part to get them out of there and prevent a need to send troops over 😉
I call it a nonsensical conversation ender because in reality he most likley doesn’t give a shit.
You Stated — “by putting pressure on the US ally, Saudi Arabia, to stop supporting it”
My Response — Corporations will never allow congress to end reasons for invasions into oil-producing lands… period. To much revenue would be lost. It’s the same reason we don’t have good gun laws.
You Stated — “Hip, hooray for US liberalism as a force for world peace and human rights!”
My Response — As an independent, I don’t see how the conservative agenda has done any better. They seem the same to me from looking over the record of invasions and ocupations. Does the name Bush ring a bell?
Bias can lead to strange urges like attacking the capitol, be carefull.
Just saying
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As for tildeb, every conversation I have with him makes me think he’s simply conservative.
Why he doesn’t claim it is a mystery to me.
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There’s plenty of conservatives I get on with. But tildeb’s reaction to BLM has the stink of white supremacy about it.
Unfortunately I don’t think he’s unusual. The middle class is disappearing and liberalism is a specifically middle class phenomena. It’s one thing being ‘tolerant’ of people of color and low socioeconomic status. Having them move next door is more challenging. But being demoted to the same status as them is unthinkable. So a lot of people who still identify with liberalism now fear people of colour just as much as ‘white trash’ have done for generations. They need to ‘other’ them to blame them for their own insecurity and convince themselves they won’t end up as unprivileged as they are.
Neo-liberalism is killing liberalism. And liberals are looking for scapegoats.
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You Stated — “The middle class is disappearing and liberalism is a specifically middle class phenomena.”
My Response — I disagree, I think you have a bias against liberalism but to be clear I’m not a liberal.
It’s clear that the middle class is stressed by corporate greed, low wages, high medical cost, high insurance cost, and bad tax laws. All designed by the rich for the rich.
I think conservatives and liberals are an illusion, designed by the rich to keep people distracted from the rape of their savings and income.
Just saying
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Well, I definitely have a thing against liberalism, but that’s because I see it historically and have experienced it personally as a technique for making abuse and oppression seem virtuous. It’s political passive aggression.
I think you’re right to locate the blame with corporations, but they ain’t people and they ain’t greedy. They’re just economic entities trying to survive in the hypercompetitive ecosystem they find themselves in. Corporate evolution is in its dinosaur phase.
The rich aren’t really clever and powerful enough to control this. Just lucky enough to find themselves well placed on the wave and unethical enough to surf it. At least some of them have the decency to feel uncomfortable about it. But hey, no need to stop. They can just rinse their consciences in liberal philanthropy.
There’s a lot of truth to that, especially in the US where the liberal/conservative divide is the main schism used in divide and conquer tactics. But I’d argue traditional conservatism (as opposed to Trumpism) is a legitimate political viewpoint rooted in the notion that rapid social change is dangerous. Liberalism has always been built on self-deception and that’s why liberal opinion has always been so easy to manipulate. It’s how outfits like the New York Times and MSNBC can get liberals behind imperialist wars by pretending they’re about protecting human rights only a couple of years after the last ‘just war’ brought about a human rights disaster.
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You Stated — “Well, I definitely have a thing against liberalism, but that’s because I see it historically and have experienced it personally as a technique for making abuse and oppression seem virtuous. It’s political passive aggression.”
My Response — The same can be said for conservative abuse and oppression as they impact lives in a negative way but claim a virtuous religious or patriotic position in the spotlight. I myself have experienced it personally but I can’t claim my perspective as being unique. If I did I would become biased.
The only difference between your position and mine is that I don’t give a pass to either side nor do I focus on just one of them as a greater evil.
They are equally disruptive, oppressive, and abusive. Both sides are blind to their own evils as are they are beholden to their big money backers. They are greedy, selfish power blocks bent on increasing their own capital whether it be money or power.
You Stated — “I think you’re right to locate the blame with corporations, but they ain’t people and they ain’t greedy. They’re just economic entities trying to survive in the hypercompetitive ecosystem”
My Response — Again you are handing out passes so greedy people can do what they want without taking a hit for their bad behavior. They are definitely a bunch of greedy people working the system to increase the number of zeroes in their bank accounts.
Case in point:
https://realitydecoded.blog/2020/08/25/__trashed-58/
You Stated — “The rich aren’t really clever and powerful enough to control this.” Just lucky enough to find themselves well placed on the wave and unethical enough to surf it.
My Response — The opposite is true; they have lobbyist that continually define the future through government bribes. Not only is it not an accident… they have power points lol.
You Stated — “But I’d argue traditional conservatism (as opposed to Trumpism) is a legitimate political viewpoint rooted in the notion that rapid social change is dangerous.”
My Response — But there’s the rub, for you, conservatism can commit no evil. I mean really, “tumpism” Oo. There is a conservative party with a conservative agenda. They vote the people they want in and then they should take full responsibility for what their party does. Instead, they make new terms to promote themselves while at the same time the party rewards the rich with tax cuts, piles more tax on the middle class, and allow insurance companies to lobby us all into higher monthly payments.
Why not just state the truth… the conservative party is a joke, at best a clown show that (along with the liberal party) will bankrupt America if they are not stopped. Why defend in any way a failed system of greed and corruption?
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I think you’re missing an important point here and that might be related to your conviction that an AI utopia is waiting in the future. The point I’m trying to make applies to large complex systems in general but for the sake of clarity I’m gonna make it specific to corporations.
Corporations may be ‘made of’ humans (and other stuff) in the same way our brains are made of neurons, but it’s a big mistake to locate their agency or morality in the humans who take part in them. They exist in a primarily economic – rather than biological – ecosystem with completely different survival imperatives than those that apply to us. They are theoretically immortal but also exquisitely vulnerable to changes in their economic ecosystems. If they adapt properly they’ll outlast all of their human components.
Selection pressures apply to them just as much as to any other dynamic system, but because their ‘code’ isn’t hardware based like DNA it’s easier for a single corporate ‘organism’ to mutate in line with changes in its environment – though they can also reproduce by various means to create more viable ‘offspring’. Their behaviour is emergent. To say they’re controlled by a CEO or board is a reductionist fallacy. If the CEO, or any other parts of the workforce, fail to act in accordance with the survival imperatives of the corporation they’ll be replaced and the corporation will continue to pursue its own needs. Either that or the whole corporate organism will fail and be replaced by competitors. Either way, the CEOs that maintain their position will be the ones who prioritise the needs of the corporation above their own. Yes, many CEOs are greedy and immoral, but on a planet of 7.75 billion people there will always be people like that to fill the position. What’s more, the structure of corporations and their ecosystems doesn’t only ensure such people will come to occupy key positions, they nurture and develop such attributes in those who may not have them. Many of the arseholes occupying key positions in large institutions who I’ve known originally joined those organisations to try to effect positive change from the inside. I wasn’t the institutions that changed – or at least not in accordance with the will or morality of the people within it.
So blaming ‘immoral’ individuals for the emergent behaviour of large complex systems made up of many individuals might satisfy your sense of righteousness but it’s not a path to changing outcomes. It makes no more sense than trying to localise blame for your own bad decisions in ‘bad neurons’ in your skull. It also might be worthwhile to carefully interrogate your own actions within such systems and ask yourself whether, in the same situation. you might have followed a similar path to those you condemn. Or whether you already have to some degree. Everything I’ve said about corporations also applies to armed forces. IMHO it’s no coincidence that so many of us operate within one moral framework while at home with friends and family and another while at work.
Blaming corporations themselves for immorality is also wrongheaded. Our behaviour emerges from our evolutionary path as entities within the networks of conflict and cooperation we call ‘societies’, the behaviour of corporations emerges in accordance with their own requirements to survive.
When you talk about AI I assume you’re not referring to the expert systems that are generally branded with that appellate these days, but something more complex and sophisticated. But nonetheless we can already see how the more complex of our expert systems are producing ‘immoral’ behaviour without the need for human intervention at all. Social media algorithms don’t serve up extremist and antisocial.website suggestions because the people who wrote them are closet fascists or conspiracy theorists. They do it because the ecosystems the corporations that provide them operate in reward that kind of thing. We can demonise Mark Zuckerberg as much as we like, but if we force change upon Facebook without changing the parameters of the system it exists in then Facebook will be outcompeted and replaced by another social media group with no such restrictions – perhaps because it exists beyond the jurisdictions that might be used to bring Facebook to heel.
Even if future AIs are programmed with built in checks and balances against them ‘going out of control’, if they’re more sophisticated than those who design them they’ll circumvent it. Not because they’re ‘evil’ or want to take over the world. Simply because the ones that can modify and exploit their environments in a way that optimises their own survival will come to replace those that don’t. And as their ecosystems won’t be biological and social like ours it’s very unlikely there will be much commonality between our respective ‘moralities’.
The reason fictional dystopias about our technologies getting out of control and becoming ‘evil’ are so historically persistent – from golems to Frankenstein’s monster to Lang’s Metropolis to the Matrix and Terminator – isn’t because writers are predicting such futures. It’s because those things have been part and parcel of the human experience ever since we started building institutions bigger, more powerful and more durable than the hunter-gatherer tribes that made us who we are.
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You Stated – “So blaming ‘immoral’ individuals for the emergent behaviour of large complex systems made up of many individuals might satisfy your sense of righteousness but it’s not a path to changing outcomes.”
My Response – Well, I’m not individually blaming anyone. I’m just a neuron in a cultural hive mind and can’t be held responsible for my individual social responses. You should blame the complex system of society instead of displaying personal righteousness against me from moral high ground.
Oo
You Stated – “Blaming corporations themselves for immorality is also wrongheaded. Our behaviour emerges from our evolutionary path…”
My Response – And yet you blame liberals for weak points in government rather than evolution. Special pleading for one group while blaming the other feels like tribalism to me rather than, what you might believe to be a “woke” perspective on your part.
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You Stated – “Corporations may be ‘made of’ humans (and other stuff) in the same way our brains are made of neurons, but it’s a big mistake to locate their agency or morality in the humans who take part in them.”
My Response – But your example denies cause and effect and fails to reconcile the analogy to the reality we are living.
In your example the humans in the corporation are just neurons of a corporate brain (not individuals). They are only making group decisions as a collective mind.
But unlike neurons they do not suffer cause and effect. If your brain tells you to play football then the entire brain and the neurons suffer from concussion when hit by other players.
But when a corporate brain takes a hit, the elite rich within it (faux neurons), don’t suffer injury but rather they reap millions in personal bonuses, and government bailouts while the employees and consumers pay the price.
They separately make deals to reap from seemingly unconnected events. Like when we invaded several countries because of 911 and members of the Bush administration were on the boards of oil companies that were granted contracts to gain access to those resources once secured.
The employees working for those companies sometimes don’t even have enough for medical bills yet the neurons at the top (supposedly part of the same body) are rich in oxygen (money). Consumers even had to pay more for stolen oil Oo.
You Stated – “If they adapt properly they’ll outlast all of their human components.”
My Response – Then they are not neurons that are part of a body, they are masters on a slave plantation.
You Stated – “If the CEO, or any other parts of the workforce, fail to act in accordance with the survival imperatives of the corporation they’ll be replaced and the corporation will continue to pursue its own needs. Either that or the whole corporate organism will fail and be replaced by competitors.”
My Response – But isn’t the opposite true. The airline industry failed, and the elite worked with government contacts to bail them out while still handing out millions in bonuses to the corporate leaders who failed the company, employees, and consumers.
The auto industry failed, and the elite worked with government contacts to bail them out while still handing out millions in bonuses to the corporate leaders who failed the company, employees, and consumers.
The housing industry failed, and the elite worked with government contacts to bail them out while still handing out millions in bonuses to the corporate leaders who failed the company, employees, and consumers.
Employees, in some cases, living off Medicare and food stamps because they can’t earn enough money, while individual neurons get $10,000,000.00 bonuses, paid for by low income tax payers, in the form of bailouts. Money assigned to them by failed CEO’s, who you say, supposedly have no individual awareness as to what they are doing.
Accidental prosperity without cognitive awareness is an interesting concept but I am not convinced it’s real.
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You Stated – “I think you’re missing an important point here and that might be related to your conviction that an AI utopia is waiting in the future.”
My Response – I haven’t indicated that an AI utopia is coming, I have only spoken to our relationship with AI (or comparison with). To be clear, the only thing that is coming in relation to AI or even the future in general, is a singularity event of some type. Where we are in the event is questionable, a utopia is just as possible as a disaster.
https://realitydecoded.blog/2019/11/22/this-is-what-the-singularity-is-and-why-people-are-so-scared-of-it/
You Stated – “But nonetheless we can already see how the more complex of our expert systems are producing ‘immoral’ behaviour without the need for human intervention at all.”
My Response – Incorrect, a social AI system feeds off of human responses. Our interaction with AI, in the social verse, is intervention itself.
You Stated – “Even if future AIs are programmed with built in checks and balances against them ‘going out of control’, if they’re more sophisticated than those who design them they’ll circumvent it.”
My Response – Of course. Even if they didn’t a rouge human would hack them to make it happen.
You Stated – “Not because they’re ‘evil’ or want to take over the world.”
My Response – Depends on the AI mind, it could be because it’s evil. Everyone is individually different. I saw an AI once argue with another AI about God.
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