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17 hours ago, Zanarkin said:

Having a weapon doesn't really always help as you can see from that video Armchair posted earlier

Well the guy had an assault rifle in plain sight in his truck (which is a red flag if it isn't secured) and was allegedly headed towards a drug deal.The patrolman originally pulled him over because of the tinted  windows and the driver straight up executes the guy and fills him full of lead. But the cops eventually caught up to him and managed to kill him.

 

Don't sell drugs, kids.

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1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

Well the guy had an assault rifle in plain sight in his truck (which is a red flag if it isn't secured) and was allegedly headed towards a drug deal.The patrolman originally pulled him over because of the tinted  windows and the driver straight up executes the guy and fills him full of lead. But the cops eventually caught up to him and managed to kill him.

 

Don't sell drugs, kids.

I'm not quite sure what your point is or how it relates to the point I made in that post. Are you saying we should assume all petty crimes are indicative of more nefarious intentions or deeds? Cause that is a fucked up mentality, the kind that leads to cops shooting and killing people of colour for the mere fact of answering the question "do you have a gun". Selling drugs didn't lead him to kill the cop. Neither did driving with heavily tinted windows or owning an assault rifle. Doing or owning these things does not make a person a vicious killer. Should you handle a person with a weapon carefully and on alert? Absolutely. Should you shoot them, potentially kill them, on the spot the minute you see the weapon because you assumed they were going to cause you harm? No. Self-defence only works in the case were you are actively going to be harmed. Similarly, a violent police response should be reserved for the cases where a criminal has already initiated their own violent response to the police.

 

And no running away, resisting being restrained or struggling to breath is not a violent response that justifies the use of a gun, choking, or killing. Neither is being high or drunk.

Edited by Zanarkin
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1 hour ago, Zanarkin said:

I'm not quite sure what your point is or how it relates to the point I made in that post. Are you saying we should assume all petty crimes are indicative of more nefarious intentions or deeds? Cause that is a fucked up mentality, the kind that leads to cops shooting and killing people of colour for the mere fact of answering the question "do you have a gun". Selling drugs didn't lead him to kill the cop. Neither did driving with heavily tinted windows or owning an assault rifle. Doing or owning these things does not make a person a vicious killer. Should you handle a person with a weapon carefully and on alert? Absolutely. Should you shoot them, potentially kill them, on the spot the minute you see the weapon because you assumed they were going to cause you harm? No. Self-defence only works in the case were you are actively going to be harmed. Similarly, a violent police response should be reserved for the cases where a criminal has already initiated their own violent response to the police.

 

And no running away, resisting being restrained or struggling to breath is not a violent response that justifies the use of a gun, choking, or killing. Neither is being high or drunk.

It's less of "all criminals are violent" and more of "the guy making a bad, routine situation worse" since the guy who got used the rifle was being lead to the officer's vehicle to run some information. And then the guy shoots the officer when he isn't being held at gunpoint.

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Apparently, Minneapolis police have refused to go anywhere near the area where George Floyd was killed and there's been a rise in violence in the surrounding area, for some reason. 

 

The media is blaming the residents for erecting barricades meant for impeding traffic, but it's hard to tell, considering that it's an intersection that's blocked off, if I'm right.

Edited by Armchair General
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On 4/29/2021 at 2:41 PM, Jotari said:

I would say tazers are a good option for trying to deescalate the situation while still providing a means of disabling people for the police, but if tasers did become standard issue then I know there'd be a slew of police killing people by liberally using them on people with heart conditions. As while tasers are certainly less lethal than guns, they're more powerful than they appear.

Tasers are already used.  Sometimes, they don't work as intended (a taser failure led to a recent shooting in my area).  And one time, a cop mistook their standard-issue firearm for a taser, with fatal results.

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59 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Tasers are already used.  Sometimes, they don't work as intended (a taser failure led to a recent shooting in my area).  And one time, a cop mistook their standard-issue firearm for a taser, with fatal results.

Yeah, used more I mean, as they're not standard issue all over the country I believe. There's obviously a time to use a gun and a time to use a less lethal weapon. It's just that the more lethal option is very commonly selected over the less lethal one in situations that definitely call for non lethal (or even no) take down at all.

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On 4/30/2021 at 12:47 AM, Etrurian emperor said:

I think that's an argument against the public having guns.

No, it's an arguement as to why the police in the US should carry firearms.

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I grew up in the country with the least militarized police force on the planet. So I am all in favor of disarming the police. An unarmed police force has no noticeable relation to an increase in crime rates compared to countries with armed police forces. I think it's something many developed countries should strive to do. But from the information I've heard it sounds like it is just not feasible to do at this time in most of the USA. The conflict between the police and the criminal aspect of society is way too high. People in disadvantaged areas are raised believing the police are their enemy, while the police view anyone mildly suspicious (which typically means nonwhite) as a potential drugged up nutjob ready to kill everyone in sight. Some kind of deescalation would need to happen first, and yeah, I think it would have a lot to do with private gun ownership. Most of that probably only applies to urban areas. Rural towns where the local police officer knows everyone by name could probably be unarmed pretty easily with no great change to the status quo.

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20 hours ago, Jotari said:

Rural towns where the local police officer knows everyone by name could probably be unarmed pretty easily with no great change to the status quo.

I think scaling down firearms is useful, but I wouldn't support completely disarming rural police.  Part of the reason why rural gun ownership is high is because they're also contending with nature.  Police can talk down other humans, but good luck trying to reason with an angry bear (whether a firearm would be good in this specific situation depends on a lot of things, but IMO it's better than relying on close-range defense).

Edited by eclipse
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4 hours ago, eclipse said:

I think scaling down firearms is useful, but I wouldn't support completely disarming rural police.  Part of the reason why rural gun ownership is high is because they're also contending with nature.  Police can talk down other humans, but good luck trying to reason with an angry bear (whether a firearm would be good in this specific situation depends on a lot of things, but IMO it's better than relying on close-range defense).

Well yes location for such things is quite relevant. In Svalbard (really weird place in terms of law and sovereignty by the way) it's illegal to not have a gun if you leave town due to polar bear attacks. Stuff like that would usually come down more so to having rifles in the station for when the need arises more than permanent handgun carrying.

Edited by Jotari
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10 hours ago, eclipse said:

but good luck trying to reason with an angry bear (whether a firearm would be good in this specific situation depends on a lot of things, but IMO it's better than relying on close-range defense).

Honestly, if all you have is an handgun to fend off a bear, you really are screwed if you aren't aiming for the vital organs. You'd be better off with a 12 gauge with slugs.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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It was bound to happen sooner or later.  I'll shout those people into the ground.  What happened on January 6 absolutely can't be whitewashed by the bastards who did it.

EDIT: @Lord Raven @Interdimensional Observer I'll continue the talk about the odd state of the Jewish side in the US.  On one side there are decent people, who aren't really concerned with whether someone is Jewish or not.  There's another faction that's supporting Israel the place to supposedly speed up Revelation.  This is the crazy side of evangelical Christianity.  Then there's the white supremacy guys (I have other ways of describing this segment of the population, but I'd have to warn myself if I wanted to be wholly truthful) who wants every last Jew dead for reasons that I refuse to acknowledge.  Meanwhile our government is supporting Israel politically, but I can't find the article that mentioned something about Biden sending aid to Palestine.

Edited by eclipse
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Biden has sent aid to Palestine ftr it was just 3 orders of magnitude lower than Israel.

 

But yeah that lines up with what I know. The extremist Zionism is a very strong faction in the US and for whatever reason wants to force the rapture.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I hope none of you were counting on Biden to help pay off a portion of your student loans, because he's backtracked on that, despite pledging to do it whilst he was a presidential candidate.

You know, I'm beginning to realise that maybe Trump wasn't all that bad after all.

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1 hour ago, NinjaMonkey said:

I hope none of you were counting on Biden to help pay off a portion of your student loans, because he's backtracked on that, despite pledging to do it whilst he was a presidential candidate.

You know, I'm beginning to realise that maybe Trump wasn't all that bad after all.

It's par for the course for such campaign promises to not go through since the Republican politicians are highly adverse to any government spending that doesn't involve military and giving money to their rich donors. You do realize that for legislation to pass, enough people in congress have to be for it and there's too many assholes there being bribed into avoiding any tax increases at all costs right? Their constituents' desires be damned.


I'm expecting Biden to have less legislation changes/success than Trump did but that wouldn't make him a worse president than Trump and a simple thing for that is simply: If Trump isn't "all that bad", then I pose the following question: Would you be okay with strangers serving the government taking away your kids for years and potentially never being able to find them just because you sought help from a supposedly 'humanitarian country'? Being locked up in concentration camps just like Nazi Germany because you wanted help?

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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1 minute ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Would you be okay with strangers serving the government taking away your kids for years and potentially never being able to find them? Being locked up in concentration camps just like Nazi Germany?

Not even the Republican party would stoop that low, they aren't that extreme. You bring up Nazi Germany, but conveniently forget that the Left has also done the same in the past, as seen in the USSR under Stalin and his successors.

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1 hour ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Not even the Republican party would stoop that low, they aren't that extreme. 

They did via the zero tolerance policy and got away with sterilizing women they captured... they also tried using the bible to justify why they're locking people up the way they did. By definition, the detained people do not have to be killed for it to be considered a "concentration camp", just detained and denied due process and this is typically done for political reasons. If they think it'll help them win an election, the Republican party will callously push for legislation changes to appease religious zealots and their worst impulses. Let's take for example the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott...

He just signed a ridiculously strict abortion law that allows for private citizens the go ahead to sue abortion providers, you know, like persecuting witches.

Earlier this year, he killed the mask mandate just a few days after this polling.

In the aftermath of the Texas winter storm that has recorded about 200 deaths, his first instinct was to attack the Green New Deal because politics. 

There's politicians in the Republican party basically selling their constituents that getting vaccinated is depriving them of their freedom. I'm seeing polls usually ranging with 40% Republicans saying they won't take the vaccine and Democrats being like 5%. The party doesn't care about its constituents, they only care about holding on to power. Remember the winter storm in Texas that resulted

1 hour ago, NinjaMonkey said:

 You bring up Nazi Germany, but conveniently forget that the Left has also done the same in the past, as seen in the USSR under Stalin and his successors.

I didn't "conveniently" forget anything, do I have to point out every single regime/governing body that's done it in history as opposed to using the most commonly known similarity for brevity?

My intention isn't to defend the left, I'm attacking the current culprits, be they left or right for what they've done RECENTLY. It's not like that shit is even left or right, it's just Authoritarian garbage and either side is capable of it. Hell, the Biden administration's current handling of the border situation but it is a mistake to say it is the same as it was under Trump as the latter deliberately chose to separate kids from their asylum seeking parents and mocked those that follow procedure.


Even for the conservatives in the US, I would argue that they should wish for the death of the Republican party as well because the politicians themselves see it as a losing party and to continue either losing to the democrats or maintaining the current deadlock means that the actual problems they're dealing with (low wages, inflated costs in just about everything, healthcare). The sooner the Republican party dies, the sooner you can have a second party that isn't entrenched in the Southern Strategy and may actually appeal to more than just mostly white old people.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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Brexiteer's concern trolling aside, at least the pause on student loans had been extended to the foreseeable future. It's not a solution, but it buys time to work on more pressing relief and job creation. I don't mean to diminish the issue, but student debt forgiveness wouldn't rank among my top 20 most pressing political concerns. Maybe if this were 2015 or earlier, but that was a lifetime ago.

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3 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Not even the Republican party would stoop that low, they aren't that extreme. You bring up Nazi Germany, but conveniently forget that the Left has also done the same in the past, as seen in the USSR under Stalin and his successors.

The Republican Party is low enough to promote conspiracy theories and undermine our democracy with false claims of election fraud, and their most deplorable constituents are extreme enough to invade the Capitol and have the audacity to bring that piece of shitstain Confederate flag inside.

As a whole, the USSR is more right wing than left wing. The USSR is "left" in terms of economic policy, but not much else. Socially and politically, the USSR is way more right wing.

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11 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Brexiteer's concern trolling aside

I'm not trolling, I'm being very serious, and whether or not I voted for Brexit, it has absolutely nothing to do with this..

Edited by NinjaMonkey
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21 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

You know, I'm beginning to realise that maybe Trump wasn't all that bad after all.

didn't trump aggressively go after student loan debt -- during a pandemic -- and charge interest

5 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

I'm not trolling, I'm being very serious, and whether or not I voted for Brexit, it has absolutely nothing to do with this..

the only actual reasons to vote for brexit

- profiteering

- spite

odds are you're in the latter boat and it definitely informs your politics

Edited by Lord Raven
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19 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Not even the Republican party would stoop that low, they aren't that extreme.

Yes they are.  And it's getting worse.  Here's the short list of recent events:

- Matt Gaetz is under investigation for child trafficking.  Has he been ejected into orbit yet?  Nope.
- "They weren't attempting an insurrection, they were tourists!"  As posted by one of your papers.  If you don't have a high opinion of the Independent, you're free to choose from one of our actual media sources (Fox News doesn't count).
- Someone in Congress apparently thinks that MSM is "Fake News".  Proof in spoiler:

Spoiler

 

- Guess who's sharing Russian propaganda?

And that's just what I remember off the top of my head.

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I mean, the events of January 6 are being compared to the Beer Hall Putsch for good reason, so it's definitely a "not all yet there" issue.

Anyway:

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/25/politics/manhattan-district-attorney-trump-organization-grand-jury/index.html
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/555404-manhattan-da-convenes-grand-jury-expected-to-weigh-trump-evidence
https://abc7.com/politics/manhattan-da-convenes-special-grand-jury-in-trump-probe-abc-news/10694479/

Some advancement on this other case.

Edit: Added more sources

Edited by Acacia Sgt
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