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I absolutely wouldn't defund the police and can't understand how most democrats find that the logical answer. First off, no society in the world right now successfully exist with out some sort of law enforcement. Furthermore, it seems to me you would want to give departments more money so they can recruit better qualified candidates, increase training, increase walking patrols, increase presence. If you've read my other post on here, many of you know my wife is a prior cop. I was surprised she would patrol the worst parts of Tucson by herself. Nearest help was 15-25 minutes out sometimes. When you recognize situations with police escalate quickly because police are saying they are in fear for their life, we should acknowledge that increasing their sense of security by bringing back the partner system is a positive step not a negative one. So what I think we really need with the whole "defund the police" thing is just give them less discretionary spending. Additionally, a big one my wife and I have discussed, is an overhaul of their hiring practices. Some departments are militantly protective of their high levels of scrutiny. My wife getting hired as a police officer was harder than a TS/SCI with full scope poly. Its ridiculous that you can be trusted to work with our nations most dangerous secrets/weapons but you can't be a police officer. This needs a thorough review for 2 reasons. 1.) Its not working. We still get bad cops. So clearly these practices aren't the end all be all for vetting morality. 2.) It prevents a lot of reformed people who would honestly be GOOD cops from doing so. These people often had challenged upbringings and can connect with kids and youth in a way someone from a middle class suburban neighborhood couldn't. Remember before anything else, police are successful because they earn the community's trust. Or better yet, they are members of that community already and they are working to help turn it around. I also agree that there would need to be a consensus on how far to let the war on drugs go. We obviously aren't going to legalize everything but we can change the extent and manner that we enforce it. This topic ties in heavy with incarceration and private prisons though. The overall point being however that we need to treat incarceration more seriously in our country. Its not only a permanent loss of several civil rights but it permanently affects your ability to seek employment afterwards. Once a debt to society is paid and a person deemed reformed they should not be living under reduced conditions for the rest of their life. Regarding poverty, I don't think dumping money into peoples pockets is going to fix anything. But providing education grants for better schooling and incentivizing businesses to move into destitute neighborhoods is probably a good start.

I once got aggressively lectured on privilege by a successful black guy. Turns out he actually came from a much more “privileged” background than I when we got down to it. Lots of assumptions made on all sides. We all have privilege...American privilege. Living in the richest, freest, least discriminatory society in world history. I’m tired of f-cking hearing otherwise. Ungrateful woke SJW progressives can f-off Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Can this wokefest get its own thread?

So true. Those of us who have seen the shit holes around the world understand.

Worthwhile read from woke conservative David French https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/american-racism-weve-got-so-very

Here's a thread where pilots can solve complex societal issues without contaminating other threads. Consider this a safe space for no one and a trigger warning for all. Mods, feel free to move the cross posting from the WTF thread to here. Or don't, I'm not your mother.

1.) Hundred % agree this is an inappropriate use of the concept of privilege and exactly why i hate the term. I believe the phenomena is real, but language is everything. Calling the phenomena "privilege" invokes a sense that some people are ahead in life because they received an unfair advantage. Trying to get someone to join my cause and then telling them they were only successful because they cheated doesn't usually work. Here's the thing; if you grew up and your family provided for you, you went to school, scored grades, found mentors, and worked hard; and then you were met with success and money; you are exactly where you SHOULD be. That is how society is SUPPOSED to work. The real question is, and I believe what most genuine people are trying to attack when they discuss the concept of privilege, is why does this formula for success not translate evenly over some subsets of society. Why is it that they are not getting to where they SHOULD be. When you use the term privilege people believe some people have things they shouldnt. The reality is some people don't have things they should. Its not a zero sum game. Everyone can win. You can have a society where everyone benefits. Recognizing that this was the intent of discussing privilege, and getting around the wording on it, was I think what allowed me to see around my mostly conservative points of view to realize that I might be missing something in the race argument. 2.) I dont think most people are looking for race targeted policy changes. Ignore the talking heads who are loud about reparations and speak to people in the middle. Most people want to see targeted reforms that benefit everyone but will benefit minorities disproportionately because of income class divide. For example, poverty. Putting in structures to alleviate poverty helps all Americans regardless of color. The black and latino community as a whole will benefit more from it though because they make up disproportionately higher demographics of the lowest income quartile. In law enforcement, getting rid of qualified immunity, ending the war on drugs and crack downs on other victimless crimes, increasing foot patrols over vehicle patrols (requires a huge manpower investment), overhauling recruiting methodologies, etc... none of those specifically target any one race. Get on board with those, they help everyone.

She’s the one I’d actually feel good voting for

In the longer read category, I highly recommend "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy" by Matt Stoller. It's a long book, but the guy basically went through over a century's worth of primary source material from the late 1800s onward to reassemble the story of American politics and economics. I would argue that story has been deliberately obscured and distorted for political and capital gain before Stoller put it back together, but that's just my opinion.

They are numerous examples in plain sight if you care to see them. Over on the new thread there's an excellent article by David French sharing very specific, racist incidents his family has dealt with since adopting a child from Ethopia. I hate to just post a quote from some old dead guys as a means to making my point but... “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” - Epictetus

Good read. This is very close to where my views start to lie. I don't see any reason anymore you can't be conservative but still be on the side that we need to continue to work on racism. In his bulleted points in the middle I've often found myself contemplating on #4. Specifically, that although we are a desegegrgated society in law, we didn't uproot and move 20.9 million black Americans into suburban middle class neighborhoods overnight. There are still geographic and economic segregations in our society that will take a few generations to fix. I also like the commentator who pointed out the roll of Europe in promoting the slave trade. I personally believe we give far too much a pass on Great Britain's role in the institution of slavery and it's establishment in the US.

Jesus dude, I would hope if someone treated you like that you'd have some choice words for them too. It was, however, an excellent example of your analytical perspective. As you indicated, we have no basis for discussion.

Absolutely worth the listen! Thanks and I’ll look up those other two as well. If you have specific videos I would watch them. Wow. Great dude. Awesome awesome awesome answers to a white girls questions who you could tell wasn’t happy with the toned down answers with facts and logic as his guide. Not emotion. He needs his voice heard. Let me aid in capturing his comments for those of you that don’t have time for a 46 min video. And I agree FLEA he is very well spoken with facts, data, and hardly any emotion which leads this to be a very good Q&A.not really a discussion as the lady has some very slanted questions. Not sure who the lady interviewer is. But her questions seem to be charged and try to lead him down the path of racism and hate. Maybe she is doing it on purpose or not, but it’s a very inflammatory way of speaking. At one point she gets upset that he states you can’t eradicate racism and he even goes so far as to say as some point it would be so low that it wouldn’t even be worth the effort. Near quotes: Actual number of racists and facists is very very small If a white family moves into or out of a neighbor hood, it’s racist. (Can’t win either way) It’s not the kind of racism that the civil rights movement was about fighting. Frankly it diminishes the power of the word racism which is a very powerful word. All of that stuff has been on the wain and it’s really hard to find racist stereotypes in 2020. Black people are 14% of America but commit 52% of homicides If you visited anywhere else you would find the US is one of the least racists places on earth. You’re likelihood of getting shot and killed by the cops is on par to the likelihood of getting struck by lightning. Cops are more likely to use non lethal force if you are black vs if you are white. It’s actually not true that the cops are likely to pull the trigger if you are a black suspect. In 2019 41 unarmed people were killled by the cops. 9 of those were black. 19 of them were white. He talks about the data that goes into that statement then says when you control for all of these there is no disparity at all for being shot by the cops (in black people and white people statistics) The BLM movement is based on half truths. Yes they mistreat blacks disproportionately but no they are not more likely to shoot and kill black suspects. He speaks for a while very highly of BLM. Which I am ignorant of and for the most part I lump them in with Antifa and the KKK because of their radicalism and results of their words and actions. So maybe I should learn more about them. The name is super off putting though. And very much an instigator. however he does speak well of some of their motives. He then goes on to say, their biggest fundamental belief is wrong. It’s not the case that it’s open season on black men being shot by the cops. He then goes to talk about Floyd video Vs a video of a white man in 2016 being video’ed and dying in nearly the same way Floyd died. Apparently the cops were joking about it while the man died right before them and the casualness of it. He goes into how this crime on a white guy doesn’t get publicized in most cases. I was hoping he would talk about how of the 4 officers in the floyd case, 2 of them are minorities and one of them is black. All the BLM people are victims of the (media) coverage bias. Because they have never seen these videos (other skin colors being victims of police brutality) so when it happens to a black person the media has uniquely trained us to make us feel like we are being uniquely hunted. I can’t help to feel that the black lives matters movement is full of people who have been duped in a very fundamental way. He speaks in a very through and thought provoking way against riots and why they don’t work in the sort or long term. The first rule of activism is to educate yourself and make sure you are not misled. Worth the watch!

I once got aggressively lectured on privilege by a successful black guy. Turns out he actually came from a much more “privileged” background than I when we got down to it. Lots of assumptions made on all sides. We all have privilege...American privilege. Living in the richest, freest, least discriminatory society in world history. I’m tired of f-cking hearing otherwise. Ungrateful woke SJW progressives can eat a nut Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

FLEA those are very good points and FWIW we are very close on many concepts you spoke about - namely getting to the root cause of why certain societal groups don’t see positive results while others do. One thing I realized reading that is that at some point, my personal definition of privilege changed from having something I “shouldn’t” have to having something someone else “doesn’t” have. That made it seem less like a personal attack on me and instead made me more interested in learning about the other persons experience. Semantics maybe, but like you said words do matter. 100% agree with addressing poverty and income inequality - by finding good policies and incentives so we can grow the pie, rather than simply redistribution of existing slices.

Because it’s tan. ......I’ll show myself out now.

Just re-read Flying Through Midnight by John T. Halliday as well as Starship Troopers By Robert Heinlein. Both highly recommended. If you were at Ali Al Salem in the 2005-2008 time frame, you might remember the dice pen tab patches that were inspired by Flying Through Midnight. FF

Hey mods - how about we get this thread back on track and move the George Floyd debate to its own thread. This used to be my fav but has become a buzz kill. Here's a little turn toward the normal for the WTF discussion...

So the only thing you've ever watched of his comes from videos made by people who hate him? That's like asking for a fair account of Barak Obama's presidency from Sean Hannity. JLP is one of the most inoffensive intellectuals in modern history. The hate for him is indicative of the mental flimsiness of progressive philosophy. If you're message is garbage, go after the person instead of the point.

This is a massive and important distinction. There *are* racists. Varying degrees of intent and magnitude, but they absolutely exist. The timeline and procedures for eradicating racism (if possible at all) is a long, nuanced conversation. But that doesn't translate into the existence of systemic racism, or a racist America. Or for that matter a racist police force, even though there are definitely racist cops. (Both once were, but no longer are) The statistics don't lie, there is no systemic extermination of black people in America. Even the Washington Post pegs the number of unarmed black men killed in the US in 2019 at nine. Nine out of 30 million is not a result of systemic racism. Why does it matter? Because people react violently and unpredictably to narative lies. We have an insane president because the Democrat party told a story about illegal immigration that just didn't jive with the American people. Despite what the Twitterati and talking heads say, the average American cocks their head to the side when they are told that America in 2020 writ large is a racist nation. Many times this fallacy is exaggerated to the point to say that it's *just as racist* as it was 200 years ago. Really? Why is this narative being pushed? Counter intuitively I think it's because the warriors of the bad old days, the survivors of a time when America *was* systemically racist, see the end of their crusade to change the system, and while they were successful (thank god), there hasn't been any sort of obvious retribution for the perpetrators of hate. This is why reparations are being brought up again. If we can't punish the people who bear the blame, we can at least extract a measure of compensation from the group as a whole. Or riot. Break their stuff. But thats just the way of things. The timeframe for wide scale societal change is measured in generations, not days or months or years. And the previous generation doesn't change so much as get overruled by their progeny. And they don't pay for their sins, they just die eventually, leaving their kids to sort it out. Dr. King understood this: Americans do not believe in the sins of the father. It's the generational version of "one guy shits his pants and we all wear diapers." It's a bad strategy in the military, and it's a bad strategy in social change.

Holy shit @Guardian, take some Adderall and calm the fuck down. 5 posts in 10 minutes...got some history you're worried about or something? Why do people have to be their past? Because they get called a coon in the work-center they thought they were joining to get away from their past. Seen it, dealt with it. They get slow-rolled on training because, "That dumb N***r doesn't want to learn." Seen it, dealt with it. Commander has a meeting with flight leadership on how to deal with "them" coming to the unit. Heard about it, was begged not to report it so they wouldn't be singled out. You're sweating a false accusation of racism?

@Guardian, as a fellow Guard guy now I sincerely hope you're not in a leadership position in your unit given your comments on this issue. I'm not sure why this particular conversation that Gen. Goldfein and Chief Wright are having has riled you up so much, but no one is going to investigate them, no one is going to punish them, no one is going to reprimand them. They are not ashamed to be leaders and have hard, uncomfortable conversations with the men and women they lead. I'm a white guy, and talking about race and racism is an uncomfortable conversation, I get it! But my friends who are black also say the same thing. Everyone I know would rather be talking about fast cars and cold beer and flying planes and killing bad guys. That being said, we're Americans and we don't back down from a challenge, and right now our country is being challenged by our long history re: race and how that history impacts people today. The people who are speaking out against racism and about starting a conversation about race in American and in our Air Force are signing their names and showing their faces. If you truly believe our leaders have a "sick mentality" and are doing a grave disservice to the Service, I honestly think you should speak out, sign your name and show your face in the same way. The kind of John Q. Public, anonymous leaking, etc. is just not my style and I don't think any of that helps nearly as much as speaking up frankly and standing behind what you believe in.

Not a movie, but “The Last Dance” documentary about Michael Jordan and the 90’s Bulls was great.