How does the World view America these days?

[ignatius]

[zlemflolia]

actually ive been thinking and i decided much of what i wrote above is dumb, except the abolishing luxury cars thing

Edited June 2, 2020 by Zeffolia

[Silent Member]

lol, Spotify has jumped in on this I see. I thought it had bugged when I opened it up this morning. A lot of the regular playlist art is replaced by black boxes (with vaguely readable playlist titles) and the description for all of them reads "black lives matter" instead of the typical "sweet deep house jams for yoga and tea-drinking". Top placement in my "feed" is a playlist called Black Lives Matter illustrated by a raised fist, "songs of empoverment and pride". Edit: it's this thing

I don't know man (and woman), looks like this could turn the tide after all. If people just keep at it, maybe Nike and other "cool brands" will jump on the bandwagon as well, and if they do, I believe everyone else will follow. Come on fortune 500, you know it's the right thing to do. If the mainstream embraces this movement with sympathy (which I think you need big corp advertisement dollar to get across) it's certainly game over for el presidente.

big corps>big corpus

imo.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Gocab

[goDel]

Although I'm hopeful for a "turn the tide" kind of development, I'm very sceptical. Can write a whole post about why, but I don't want to depress people. So I'm just keeping it to: don't keep your hopes up to high.

Some reporting here that the nightly riots appear to be done by outside interest groups. Unclear which. Both signs of radical leftists and extreme right. Smells fishy. Couple of groups want to see the US burn. And it has nothing to do with racial inequality either, I'm guessing.

[Silent Member]

I think the outside groups talk is just a ploy to deligitmize the protest.

[ignatius]

Although I'm hopeful for a "turn the tide" kind of development, I'm very sceptical. Can write a whole post about why, but I don't want to depress people. So I'm just keeping it to: don't keep your hopes up to high.
Some reporting here that the nightly riots appear to be done by outside interest groups. Unclear which. Both signs of radical leftists and extreme right. Smells fishy. Couple of groups want to see the US burn. And it has nothing to do with racial inequality either, I'm guessing.

Simultaneously there’s a lot of peaceful protests and marches and vigils but they don’t get the same airtime. If it bleeds it leads.

Regarding groups spreading chaos, yep. Even heard “boogaloo boys” mentioned on the nightly news yesterday. So that narrative is getting traction. I think chaos is competing evenly with everything else.

The police and national guard aren’t know for being nuanced in response. They’re all blunt instructions especially as trump spews his bullshit. It’s infectious.

The next few days are crucial. It’s gonna stay weird though I think.

[Candiru]

Let’s get a show of hands: How many of you have properly repented for the original sin of being white/male/straight? Don’t lie.
 

Present me your shame...

[goDel]

1 hour ago, Gocab said:

I think the outside groups talk is just a ploy to deligitmize the protest.

Not so fast. Firstly it was about what is happening specifically during the nights. Second, it's not a ploy to degilitmize these protests when there's people coming in from outside the state with what appear to be completely different intentions. Should we simply ignore that? The core of these protests seem to be peaceful and aimed at police violence against black people. But a number of people appear to show up with completely different intentions.

OK, nothing is happening. It's all fake news. Believe no one. Sure. That's also a way to deal with it.

[dingformung]

Not so fast!

[Silent Member]

Thanks, I've not seen this reported by any news sites that I read regularly, but I know the president was fast to play that angle, so that's why I was sceptical, because, you know he does nothing but lie.

[goDel]

Faster!

 

1 minute ago, Gocab said:

Thanks, I've not seen this reported by any news sites that I read regularly, but I know the president was fast to play that angle, so that's why I was sceptical, because, you know he does nothing but lie.

I hope you're not thinking I take my cues from Trump....

*triggered*

[hello spiral]

[goDel]

1 hour ago, Gocab said:

Thanks, I've not seen this reported by any news sites that I read regularly, but I know the president was fast to play that angle, so that's why I was sceptical, because, you know he does nothing but lie.

There's some reporting at NYT

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-protests-white-supremacists-antifa.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

Conclusion: concrete evidence "something" is going on, but unclear what groups and why. Still under investigation. Antifah seems like a red herring. But we don't really know at this point.

[Silent Member]

That just reads like "lots of people are saying" wich is generally a bullshit argument imho.

 

But yeah, of course this will attract slaphappy vandals, I'm just not buying the angle that they're being bussed in in any organized way.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Gocab

[dcom]

How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change -- Barack Obama @ Medium

[Candiru]

I was talking about this at work and someone said that the staged bricks at the protest spots are actually so people think to pick them up and break windows and stuff because they will focus on something other than attacking the police, which would be a more dangerous situation than just destroying property. Maybe I'm out of the loop but I thought this sounded somewhat plausible. They know a lot of people want to do something violent and destructive, so they give them the safer option. Old news? Dumb?

My first thought was that they were to provoke any protesters so that more can be arrested. 

 

[Silent Member]

Yeah, I've seen a couple of videos where stacks of bricks are conspicuously just sitting there surrounded by tape/traffic cones etc. I don't know if that's stuff you'd normally find curbside in big US cities, but I've never seen something like that outside construction sites over here. 

It's #blackouttuesday today guys, it's steadily taking over my social media feeds.

[chenGOD]

4 hours ago, Gocab said:

I think the outside groups talk is just a ploy to deligitmize the protest.

Yo, if they are outside groups, then doesn’t that actually make the protests legit?

[Silent Member]

we need a roll safe emoticon.

[chenGOD]

1 hour ago, hello spiral said:

Can you replace “we at [Brand] are” with “I [name] am”...?

(not you Spiral, I’m talking about another round of social media activism from the “woke”).

[milkface]

2 hours ago, dcom said:

How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change -- Barack Obama @ Medium

Okay but wasn't he president for EIGHT whole years? Seems like he missed his window of opportunity for this.

[chenGOD]

16 minutes ago, milkface said:

Okay but wasn't he president for EIGHT whole years? Seems like he missed his window of opportunity for this.

Police agencies implicated in extrajudicial murder are usually of the municipal level - the cities are responsible (reading the article, he actually writes quite a bit about this). There's a lot in that article that makes sense - but it's not something that's easily digestible and doesn't resonate with the people who go "capitalism bad".

This is the most important takeaway from the article from my perspective:

Quote

...I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.

 

[ambermonk]

America as a whole is under threat of white supremacist usurpers. AFAIK they've already infiltrated the military and law enforcement agencies. We've seen the trends of thru countless memes over the last few years - psychological influence, perhaps establishing roots in 4chan since the early 2000s. And then there's the recent evidence of looters having ties to Identity Evropa...conveniently re-branded the American Identity Movement as of last year. 

If I'm not mistaken the Nazis themselves were partially inspired by white supremacy groups in the US, nearly a century ago. So we're effectively dealing with the exact same ideological enemy today as we did then.

Edited June 2, 2020 by timbre monke

[brian trageskin]

[zlemflolia]

the bricks are extremely clearly there to goad protestors into throwing them.  these cops are dirty, theyre fucking garbage, get with the program

5 hours ago, dcom said:

How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change -- Barack Obama @ Medium

obamas a dumb baby

he was president now hes posting dumb motivational shit lmao

why didnt he, you know, do this when he was president