Rougarou

I had the thought the other day that what you've been saying on these threads reminded me of what you are accusing here in this quite (I guess it really is true; all accusations are confessions), in that rioters/looters, protesters, civil disobedience, etc.'s job is to harass the city and people who are indifferent or disagree until they get what they want. A bit of an extortion, though the premise is "well if you cared about the injustice and the root casues of the problems we wouldn't have people throwing paint bombs at people every night and looting the Gucci store, just as soon as you give that up then we will quit." It's the other side of the coin. It's the "good extortion" in relation to the term "good trouble", may he rest in peace.

This seems like the most reasonable and best option. Take the fully funded pension handcuff off the USPS and they will be just fine, I'd assume. If the pension fails, it fails. If not, awesome.

First day of school baby! Let's go!

He must like the parks-- I saw this earlier this month and actually think it's a good/cool thing: https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/president-trump-signs-great-american-outdoors-act-preserving-protecting-national-parks/

Brilliantly stated!

Oy vey.

From this old white guy, thanks for your perspective and point of view. I think it's problematic to have white people try and whitewash/whitesplain your own truth and experiences as a black man and how it relates to black culture, life and living in America. Especially as you aren't young, but have lived long enough to see a regression to a mean over time... Edit to add, I realize that the guy you are responding with an inflammatory way is a black person.

I mean, yea, but also it really is no joke like a quarter of a mile from my main house down to the road where the mailbox is. You are in California so you probably don't remember how much acreage we have out'chea and how cheap it is relative to California.

Exactly, as I understood it at least.

Pretty much this. I was afraid our private school would be inundated and run over by all the folks pulling kids from public but realizing they suck at homeschool because we are a smaller, faith-based private school that doesn't charge $25k/year per kid, but it looks like the price tag is still enough of a barrier to entry to keep class sizes small and things manageable. I've been impressed with their protocols and processes and my kids are at the age where goofing around at home while parents work and they are supposed to learn remotely on zoom or self-learn or take our help to teach them is not only ineffective, but counter-productive to their overall development.

What he is saying, as I understand it, is this: Brisket's logic is because [hypothetical fact 1]10% of people who make up cops are bad. But all cops are bad because they give cover and justification and excuses. but [hypothetical fact 2] 10% of protesters who make up BLM are bad/looting. But all BLM'ers are *not* bad *even though* they give cover and justification and excuses. It's okay and good to believe the above, but if you are trying to play the big brain logic game above the fray, it betrays a bias.

Great chart; but how do we interpret this data is more the question, right? Maybe you can educate me because my main question would be are the "production/nonsupervisory workers" in this chart considered middle/upper-middle class? What sorts of "working class and poor" jobs exist in 2020 that add to the net productivity to the economy, I guess is another question. For example, do the last two manual grocery store checkers who ring up the register count? Does the person who swipes your card at McDonald's? UBI sounds more and more attractive with each passing day...

I'd be curious to see an academic or otherwise as-close-to-unbiased-and-real study commissioned to see the actual data around: - What class actually produces and provides the value in America. Does the middle/upper-middle class provide 50%? 70%? Do the wealthy provide 50%? 10%? Do the poor and working class provide 50%? 10%? I ask because I think the assumption is that the poor and working class are toiling in the fields and providing all this amazing production and value that the middle class and rich are exploiting (varying degrees on the slider scale, of course). My hypothesis would be this isn't true. All the production that the poor and working would provide that is technical or skilled is offshored and grunt/physical labor is pretty lucrative in good economies (O&G, construction, etc.) to qualify as middle class. The poor and working class would seem to be largely of the most basic and entry levels of the service economy. We can see what happens to the economy looking at COVID-19, with respect to shutting off the services, but at the same time the industry seems to beg the question, meaning it seems that the service economy is something that is needed to feed itself and, further, can be looked at as the way America is laundering it's money in the insane economic framework and gridwork that drives America's day-to-day life, which necessarily has to be growing to survive.

Biden/Harris is going to win in historical faction and it’s because the essentially centrist position is what the middle and upper middle class crave. Make the electrolyte joke if you think the shoe fits.

I thought he had to be joking and being sarcastic.

So essentially, he's not the most gullible man in Cambridge, but in America as these people have convinced him that they are good and he's not a victim and he should go after the magazine for making them all look bad?

Yea, probably right. It's a big conspiracy. In and Out Burger is a nefarious frozen fry phony operator. Down with the liars!

Song narrating from POV about the kid who was shot point blank in Detroit and miraculously survived, in 2007:

This. I'm encouraged that adults are in the Biden camp, at least. With this pick you take the air out of the ball and run out the clock to victory.

I think you are hearing me and the cancer is still the cancer is the best way to sum it up. That said, I think it's hard to see that the cancer is still the cancer because there is so much more noise, and that is the point I'm making around greed and how it obfuscates the primal and visceral nature of why people are commuting from outside of the cosmopolitan downtown to come, risking a felony, to partake in both an individualistic and communal (paradox noted) display of taking a few scalps made of bedazzled Italian cloth with initials and logos on them. The whole point I was trying to initially make is that Black Chicago is doing this on a level, and in an unabashed way, hitherto unseen in the BLM/Floyd protest era and it's shocking....and just the tip of the iceberg if Black Chicago really gets inspired to mix the oil of wanton and hopeless chaos with the gas of good trouble.

No, the distinction is that over time the motivation has become more indirect (hence the introduction of greed) versus direct (political and pain). I'll use the analogy of a blister because it's poetic in that I can play with a homonym and it works: Baldwin's rioting was because of the pain of the blister. Black Chicago, many generations neglected and tramped down upon, are now callused. Thus the rioting appears callous, because some of these rioters might only know viscerally why they hurt and feel the need to lust for elastic, luxury goods. Greed is the abstraction. I hope that makes sense, as I speak from a place of immense and unfathomable privilege when compared to what I've seen of South Chicago.

I think there has been abstraction, as we talk about it in technology, in the sense that what looting was in Baldwin's day was more to the root or raw nerve-- open and honest-- (i.e. don't want the TV, but want someone to pay out of pain) versus what we have today which is layers upon layers built up by the repressive machine that is institutional poverty, racism and class warfare that the poorest and most violent of black people think they need a Gucci belt and and loud Versace outfits in order to feel like they matter and have worth in America. It's completely aspirational and comes from a place of being consciously or subconciously viewed as being less than, second-class, an "other" in white, patriarchal America. That's my theory, at least, which is informed from not only these recent events (pictures and videos and rioter commentary) but also study into the culture of Chicago, the Southside, the gangland, the rappers and rap scene there, etc and when zooming out and seeing Chicagoans as it relates to a) America at large as well as b) contrasting with other pockets of black culture and population (e.g. Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, etc. previously mentioned). Ultimately, my fear here is that what I'll call "Black Chicago" has the resources/population, the ideology, and the fearlessness to really make this a deadly problem if it's not snuffed out ASAP, and that ultimately the motivation--explicit or implicit, conscious or subconscious-- matters not when it comes to what I can extrapolate is going to be bloody tragedy if this thing really gets oxygen.

I made that statement after viewing some videos and listening to the commentary in the rioting videos, but like I said, a lot of this is theory, from your end too.

Always a position of strength when you have to micro-focus on the definition of what a word really is. Just ask Mr. William "depends on what is, is" Clinton.

I'll answer you because I don't believe they are a 1:1 to match. I believe, and stated earlier, that once this type of thing became normalized and once it started in Chicago, it was going to be bad news due to the unique intersection of population/critical mass, poverty, and culture. BLM has given the political cover (BLM spokesperson justifying looting and rioting) and is the flag under which looters can operate under, in a vague and gray area-loosely-defensible-way if pressed. The felonious looters can plead BLM/righteousness/"good trouble" in the thinnest way possible. Now, I do think most reasonable adults can discern whom are civil protesters and which are hoodlums, but the fact that rioting/looting during BLM protests in the early days of this stuff was allowed and justified has opened the door to where we are now. And as everyone knows, Chicago is the last one you want it with. This has potential to be the very, very tragic beginnings. Further, I think Baldwin's point does not meet with what we have seen on video and reported in Chicago. Chicago looters are mostly acting in greed and in search of aspirational/luxury goods that are generally difficult to procure for those in the South side of town. And there are a myriad of reasons/theories why which link to institutional racism and the poverty it's caused and why these items are identified as things to fill the psychological and mental issues caused by poverty (insecurity, identity issues, feeling less-than/other, second-class, etc.).