Worth listening to. Closely.
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Nothing to add. Just wanted to say thanks for posting this.
….Allright, I can’t resist adding this. As an older white guy whose idea of music is Beatles, Dylan, Bach, Beethoven and Prine (RIP), I find rap and hip-hop undecipherable. Which is fine because I’m an older white guy and different generations and groups have their own expressions and I’m out of that loop. So when I saw that some guy named “Killer Mike” was giving a speech my expectations were jaded. Alas, the eloquence and clarity of his words are a powerful antidote to my cultural stereotypes.
I wish “Killer Mike” (I still don’t like the name) was in the “White” House instead of that mentally ill, agent of Satanic lies / disruption / disorder / fear and death who currently occupies it. As for how Trump got there in the first place, I get it …even though I disagreed with it then and especially now. I know (otherwise) good people who voted for Trump. They were tired of the political class messaging machine. They wanted a wrecking ball and some fresh air. In 2016 we were looking at dueling dynasties in Hillary! vs Jeb! Trump voters assumed that institutional resilience would be enough to limit how much damage he could do, or that once in office he would mature once he had that kind of power and responsibility.
What happened is the opposite. His endless narcissistic black hole of unfillable need for validation has only grown as it has accumulated more reinforcing mass. All who associate with him eventually come away tarnished or chastened that cooperating with evil only begets evil. He has degraded norms to the extent that it is barely newsworthy that spokespersons and media outlets have to follow behind picking up his droppings every time he breaks away from Fox News long enough to tweet. There is constant need to correct his mad rantings that the virus won’t happen or that injecting bleach may cure it, that the laws of physics that drive climate change do not exist, that people chanting Nazi slogans are the moral equivalent of counter-protesters, or that George Floyd is having a great day being dead and smiling down from heaven because the May jobs report came in higher than expected.
Trump is sick. I wish him and every soul peace and well-being. But first we have to get him out of office. He is a mortal threat to everyone on this planet. Tamino is right about job one. Get Trump Out.
gk: ” I know (otherwise) good people who voted for Trump.” If they voted for Trump, then by definition, they are not good people. They are at the very least stupid and ignorant if they were unaware of the history of one of America’s worst people. Donald J. Trump was a joke in the ’80s, a misogynist, a racist. He bankrupted casinos. He helped to bankrupt Atlantic City. If someone managed to ignore all that, then I hope they at least realize they are too stupid to ever vote again.
gk, thanks for a fine fine rant. Please add to your list those hypocrites who call themselves Christian but would put Jesus away as a terr’ist. Too many megachurches are all about hypocrisy and money.
gk, if it helps, remember that “killer” is also an adjective meaning “excellent” or “outstanding”–and that it’s a pretty common idiom in the music world.
Thank for posting, Tamino. I’m spreading this video around.
Reblogged this on Don't look now.
I’m seeing a bunch of contradictory information that either implicates or excuses what I believe are the relevant considerations in this debate – whether there is systemic racism underscoring the thrust of the BLM movement. For instance, whether death by cop is a significant concern for young black males (I’ve seen it displayed as both the 6th and 7th cause of death) – but the analyses are not as crisp as the kind you apply to climate or, more recently, C-19. Any chance you might be cajoled into looking at systemic racism as a statistical challenge? I assume there are sources of relevant data. If not, that might, in itself, be an interesting finding.
[Response: Perhaps I’ll post about systemic racism in America.]
Death is obviously an extreme issue. Similar to hurricane frequency it might be difficult to see patterns in sparse data. If you compare the percentage of police deaths that are black to the percentage of blacks in the population you get a better idea of what is the problem. According to https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed, unarmed black people were killed at 5x the rate of unarmed whites in 2015. Blacks are only 13% of the US population. Many blacks are rightfully afraid of the police.
Comparing police killings to the total death rate is deliberate lying with statistics.
Currently I only have a few black friends. When I talk to them every single male has several stories about police harassment. Things like being questioned for 10 minutes for mowing your lawn, handcuffed at a party while white partiers walk away or being pulled over for failing to signal a lane change happen to blacks all the time. I rarely signal a lane change but have never been stopped.
For comparison a white friend was stopped for towing a military tank that was overweight,, he did not have proper lights on the trailer and he did not have the required permit to transport the tank. The cops let him drive on, no ticket or warning.
[Response: I might look at the data, but it has already been done. Many times. The result is always the same: police killings of black people are way higher than police killings of white people. Disproportionate not just to the point of “statistical significance,” but to the point of “this is ridiculous.” Make that “this is so fucking fucking ridiculous it has got to stop.”
So I might post about the numbers. But before that, I’ll probably have a few other things to say.]
A good example of the sort of innumerate morons out there trying to raise doubts about the racism in US society is Major Travis Yates of the Tulsa PD, who recently grew so confident in his “alternative data” that he said the quiet part out loud, claiming that police should actually be shooting more African Americans. Yep, he actually said that.
The “alternative data” upon which he based his analysis was simple–more white folks are killed by cop than black folks, ignoring the fact that black Americans constitute only about 13.4% of the population.
It is the same bullshit pulled by climate denialists, antivaxers, COVID denialists, HIV denialists and all the other innumerate imbeciles that plague us–choose the statistic that is meaningless in the situation and draw conclusions that suggest the situation doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, it’s the 90% of humans that give the other 10% a bad name. And that is why humans are on their way to extinction–probably sooner or later. We are yet another evolutionary failure.