Originally Posted by princeofcats67

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by 'hood mentality'.


Prince

The cops spend the bulk of their time trying to control the riff raff and dealing with the riff raff. We give the cops some slack because we understand this and we understand that that dealing with the riff raff can be rough at times. She's mad at the cops and she's tired of the cops harassing black folks and killing black folks. She believes the cops are against her and black folks in general and doesn't believe the police are their to serve and protect them. That's what I meant by hood mentality. I don't believe that she's riff raff. She came across as an honest and decent person. The police aren't paid to protect and serve the riff raff. We'd get really pissed off if the police began to protect and serve the riff raff. In reality, she's probably more of a victim of the riff raff than she's a victim of police activity and law enforcement in general. In order to ease up on her, the police will have to ease up on the riff raff. The man who died in custody was previously known as riff raff. Whites have riff raff too and plenty of them get heavy handed by the police and are often killed by the police too. This is acceptable to white because that's what we pay the police to do. As a general rule, whites don't have that hood mentality. The bulk of whites didn't come from the hood and don't associate with the hood or the white riff raff in general. You can see it in the differences in opinions regarding these issues that are posted here.

Originally Posted by nihilist moron

That's stating the obvious. My wondering goes deeper than that.
Even Jeffrey Dahmer was somebody's child.

I don't think that's the source in this case. Ideology, especially intense divisive ideology, mixed with black-and-white politics can move normal people pretty far to the fringes without mental instability being involved. I've known a few in the distant past. In the case I observed, a small group of zealots moved each others value-center right off the page. Luckily, no one in that group turned violent. On the other hand, almost all the members of this group came from solid middle to upper middle class homes and background, yet they went all the way. Many tried to go back but redemption is never automatic.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

The cops spend the bulk of their time trying to control the riff raff and dealing with the riff raff. We give the cops some slack because we understand this and we understand that that dealing with the riff raff can be rough at times. She's mad at the cops and she's tired of the cops harassing black folks and killing black folks. She believes the cops are against her and black folks in general and doesn't believe the police are their to serve and protect them. That's what I meant by hood mentality. I don't believe that she's riff raff. She came across as an honest and decent person. The police aren't paid to protect and serve the riff raff. We'd get really pissed off if the police began to protect and serve the riff raff. In reality, she's probably more of a victim of the riff raff than she's a victim of police activity and law enforcement in general. In order to ease up on her, the police will have to ease up on the riff raff. The man who died in custody was previously known as riff raff. Whites have riff raff too and plenty of them get heavy handed by the police and are often killed by the police too. This is acceptable to white because that's what we pay the police to do. As a general rule, whites don't have that hood mentality. The bulk of whites didn't come from the hood and don't associate with the hood or the white riff raff in general. You can see it in the differences in opinions regarding these issues that are posted here.

Offenders that the cops catch generally fit into one of two categories: (1) people who commit one offense and are unlucky enough to get caught, and (2) repeat offenders who get away with multiple crimes before getting caught. The first category ordinarily gets treated with some leniency in the courts, and rightly so; an arrest and some judicial processing can scare and shame someone back into the fold. The second category got only the message that the first scrape with the law isn't too bad. Such people are rightly locked up as dangers to society; those are the career criminals incapable of feeling shame, the ones 'proud to be bad'.

Oversimplification? Sure. There's no second chance for murder, forcible rape, child molestation, armed robbery, or involvement with ongoing criminal enterprises. Those crimes are so horrible -- either great bodily harm or destruction of the trust that allows people to live with prosperity and safety.

'Riff raff' does not mean -- I hope that you don't mean -- disadvantaged minorities, the people who have gotten a raw deal in jobs, education, housing, and opportunities for emotional enrichment. We need remember that some very good people live in some very unpleasant neighborhoods. (Hey, CxR -- what do you want to do for them? More trickle-down economics so that there can be more jobs for domestic servants?)

Urban riots show our failures as a nation.

One thing is certain: people at the economic low end get hit first, hardest, and longest. That usually means black people, but that can mean white people in Appalachia, too. Such are the last people to get attention from 'conservatives' intent largely on enriching and pampering elites while entrenching the power of those elites. Just look at the current US Congress, now arguably the most laughable national legislature in the advanced industrial world. We have pols who believe in scientifically-discredited rubbish like young-earth creationism as something that would improve K-12 education. Orwellian propaganda 'informs' the voting of multitudes, and it seems to work.

But that's nothing new:

Originally Posted by Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/qu...ufvL4tQl2S1.99

This is a Crisis Era. We can get through it reasonably well with humanistic reforms that assert the value of life, that create a more equitable social order in which everyone has a stake. On the other side we can have apolitical order that pushes superstition as allegedly 'improving' while also pushing mind-numbing entertainment that debases us. We can have an economy that works for only a small fraction of America while offering nothing but pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die as a salve for grinding poverty. We can have a legal system that inflicts great suffering on anyone who violates the orders of the super-rich. We can have the workplace transformed into serfdom in all but name. We can have brutal wars for profit that turn young poor people into cannon fodder while giving lucrative contracts to war profiteers and extending the domain of American exploiters abroad.

We can choose good or evil. We can choose wisdom or we can choose folly.

.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

'Riff raff' does not mean -- I hope that you don't mean -- disadvantaged minorities, the people who have gotten a raw deal in jobs, education, housing, and opportunities for emotional enrichment. We need remember that some very good people live in some very unpleasant neighborhoods. (Hey, CxR -- what do you want to do for them? More trickle-down economics so that there can be more jobs for domestic servants?)

Riff raff does not exclude them nor does it excuse their unruly behavior and the term does not pertain to the disadvantaged minorities in paticular. I had a nasty stare down with one of your white riff raff's during the Bush rally in St. Paul who was trying to scare my mother. I wasn't afraid of him. I'd dealt with his type before during my high school years. The 80's teenagers were always dealing with their own riff raff during high school and at school events. The high schools wouldn't have been able to operate without students who were willing and able to deal with the riff raff and emotionally accept what happened to the riff raff during the 80's.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

This is a Crisis Era. We can get through it reasonably well with humanistic reforms that assert the value of life, that create a more equitable social order in which everyone has a stake. On the other side we can have apolitical order that pushes superstition as allegedly 'improving' while also pushing mind-numbing entertainment that debases us. We can have an economy that works for only a small fraction of America while offering nothing but pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die as a salve for grinding poverty. We can have a legal system that inflicts great suffering on anyone who violates the orders of the super-rich. We can have the workplace transformed into serfdom in all but name. We can have brutal wars for profit that turn young poor people into cannon fodder while giving lucrative contracts to war profiteers and extending the domain of American exploiters abroad.

We can choose good or evil. We can choose wisdom or we can choose folly.

Yes indeed. Right now, the political parties represent that choice pretty well; especially in the case of the wrong choice.

I would like to see a society where the horizons are widening and the roads are opening, as it were, and people can unfold themselves and enjoy the values and pleasures of life to the fullest; a society where people find it easier to be happy and not cynical and worried about their next paycheck. We had that society for a while, more or less-- back before Reagan. But this unnecessary diversion into Reaganomics, followed later by the unnecessary diversion into imperialism and paranoia after 9-11, has diminished that possibility for people.

When it costs $4 per gallon just to get around; when it costs thousands of dollars just to rent an apartment; when you have to put yourself in extreme, lifetime debt just to go to a college that should be free; then it's hard to lift your head above the muck and mire of making a living to look higher to the possibilities of the good life. We can be self-reliant, if we can; and in our Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Tea Party society, a few people make out real well. And we can all blame ourselves if we don't.

But I look forward to the day when we overthrow this philosophy of the free market and individualism, so that we create a society that works for all people again, more-or-less, and we can unfold the good life together.

The highways will beckons us to wander; our streets won't be too dead for dreamin'. The renaissance of wonder will bloom again. And we won't be sending our youth off to die in unnecessary wars, and people won't be living paycheck to paycheck. The arts and well as commerce and science will flourish, and everyone will be well paid for their work. That will all happen when we ditch the Reagan free market philosophy for good, and not only from the presidency, but from the congress too-- instead of stopping a president's valiant efforts to bring us back on track after just 2 years by means of a black midterm election (e.g. 1994, 2010), deceived and worried by the propaganda about debt and taxes and welfare or stimulus spending and supposedly expensive "socialist" health care reform that really makes it possible for everyone to get the care they need at an affordable price and saves businesses too.

The choice is ours in the coming decade: ditch the free market philosophy and the resentment against those who get government help, and thus embrace the good life. Or wallow in free-market delusion and thus reduce ourselves to wage slaves and serfs for the 1%.

Conservatives, I ask you; don't you really want to see the good life flourish and blossom all around you? Don't you really want what I want?

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

I chalk it up as some folks are just born evil.

If I were brought up like Charles Manson or Saddam Hussein, I would be evil, too.

But we are not entering a period of socioeconomic expansion; government by formulaic bureaucrat is okay in an expansionary era because the general growth of such times ensures that the government merely has to look out for maintaining basic functions while infrastructure and other improvements are carried out using surplus funds. But we are not in an expansionary era, we are in a stagnation which is usually followed by contraction, in such conditions a government by young vigorous leadership is the only viable way to tackle problems as they arise, thus "new thinking" is a must have in order for society to progress in such conditions. The Baby boomers by being wedded to the decrepit ideologies of "conservatism" and "liberalism" and their attachment to the status-quo because it is more comfortable for them are ruining the future of the nation by being so cautious when the times call for actions and new ideologies.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Yes indeed. Right now, the political parties represent that choice pretty well; especially in the case of the wrong choice.

I would like to see a society where the horizons are widening and the roads are opening, as it were, and people can unfold themselves and enjoy the values and pleasures of life to the fullest; a society where people find it easier to be happy and not cynical and worried about their next paycheck. We had that society for a while, more or less-- back before Reagan. But this unnecessary diversion into Reaganomics, followed later by the unnecessary diversion into imperialism and paranoia after 9-11, has diminished that possibility for people.

We have a crisis of overproduction, a crisis that asks for much the same solution as its predecessor of 85 years ago: reducing the hours of work so that unemployment becomes leisure. We no longer need the 40-hour workweek, and we can use much more than two weeks of vacation. (A hint: the allusion to a wider range of experiences through travel makes eminent sense. Don't just wait for retirement and vegetate in Florida just to avoid winters).

We are not going to consume our way out of hard times. There's only so much stuff that people need. Anyone can stuff a tiny apartment with junk from a dollar store*. Just think of all the rich material one can get access to with an inexpensive tablet.

When it costs $4 per gallon just to get around; when it costs thousands of dollars just to rent an apartment; when you have to put yourself in extreme, lifetime debt just to go to a college that should be free; then it's hard to lift your head above the muck and mire of making a living to look higher to the possibilities of the good life. We can be self-reliant, if we can; and in our Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Tea Party society, a few people make out real well. And we can all blame ourselves if we don't.

In the 1960s and 1970s college was cheap compared to what it is today even making allowances for inflation. Kids from the working class could attend college if they so desired. If they weren't up to the challenge, they dropped out and were none the worse for wear. To be sure it was subsidized, but the subsidy prepared many to do jobs that better used minds.

Of course, that was as the low-pay, dead-end jobs started appearing in fast-food places** and shopping malls began to become more numerous. People with significant education could rarely relate to such work. But if the economic elites could make college more expensive, more people would have to work their way through college in such places and either fail at their schooling (and be consigned to such work) or be pressured after a point to choose between immediate survival and a college education. Want to keep your job during a recession? Give up on the dream of completing a college degree.

Of course, increasingly-costly college education offered a lucrative side effect: high-cost loans to students. The bigger the debt, the greater would be the interest.

But I look forward to the day when we overthrow this philosophy of the free market and individualism, so that we create a society that works for all people again, more-or-less, and we can unfold the good life together.

We do not have a free market. Cartels and trusts dominate American economic life. Small business depends upon a healthy working class; a not-so-healthy working class can only buy commoditized stuff like mass-market beer from a retailer like Wal*Mart that commoditizes everything. Small business has its virtues: it can't buy advertising to drown out competition and it can't buy the services of lobbyists or PR firms, let alone politicians. If war is profitable we get war -- whatever the human cost.

It's individuality that is precious. Individualism is good for getting people to queue for the same questionable dream that all too often becomes a nightmare.

The highways will beckons us to wander; our streets won't be too dead for dreamin'. The renaissance of wonder will bloom again. And we won't be sending our youth off to die in unnecessary wars, and people won't be living paycheck to paycheck. The arts and well as commerce and science will flourish, and everyone will be well paid for their work. That will all happen when we ditch the Reagan free market philosophy for good, and not only from the presidency, but from the congress too-- instead of stopping a president's valiant efforts to bring us back on track after just 2 years by means of a black midterm election (e.g. 1994, 2010), deceived and worried by the propaganda about debt and taxes and welfare or stimulus spending and supposedly expensive "socialist" health care reform that really makes it possible for everyone to get the care they need at an affordable price and saves businesses too.

That sounds much like Karl Marx' depiction of "communism"***, the final stage of history in which deprivation need no longer exist. So why do American elites need to enforce poverty? Command-and-control. Managerial elites who have only fear as a tool because of the shallowness of their imagination can get what they want by keeping everyone else destitute. Cheap labor managed brutally indicates capitalist plutocracy at its worst.

The choice is ours in the coming decade: ditch the free market philosophy and the resentment against those who get government help, and thus embrace the good life. Or wallow in free-market delusion and thus reduce ourselves to wage slaves and serfs for the 1%.

Conservatives, I ask you; don't you really want to see the good life flourish and blossom all around you? Don't you really want what I want?

Most current conservatives lack the imagination to contemplate a world in which tycoons, managerial elites, financiers, and big landowners can no longer order workers about as if workers were serfs.


*I have my uses for such places. If you need to furnish a flat with housewares, cleaning supplies, stationery, and lamps you can do OK. Trinkets? You don't need them whatever the cost.

** The fast-food places took on the characteristics of numbing repetition, as one critic put it, right out of the image of Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp in Modern Times without the possibility of a middle income as on an assembly line of an automobile plant.

*** Not to be confused with Marxist-Leninist "socialism" identified with Communist Parties supposedly allegedly empowered to hasten the transition to a world of unimaginable plenty but failed badly.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

Yeah, me too. I really don't know, and the thoughts I have are kinda too complex to try and share via the internet.

What do you think?


Prince

Perhaps they took "you're either with us or with the terrorists" literally.
PBS has all these Vietnam specials on right now. So awful. It's like you have to dehumanize people to kill them, and once it's ok to kill them anything goes.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

But they will be dominant in 2024, perhaps as no generation has ever been. Remember what I said; the 4T will not end until 2028, and it will be back-loaded; meaning most of the action toward the end. Until then, we get a gradual ramping-up. So an HC who can get only a few things accomplished in a first term at least would be as good as we can expect. People here and elsewhere continue to refuse to see the crucial need to get rid of gerrymandering. So I see no hope for any substantial progressive achievements for the rest of this decade, at least. I don't see how it could happen; certainly not by electing a progressive president. The millies need to learn their civic duty, which I have spelled out umteen times. So I don't need to keep restating it. Until they learn it, there's no hope for progressive change. Older generations are too conservative.

But the reality is, an Awakening is unlikely in a declining nation. A banana republic cannot produce an Awakening. Without a successful 4T in the 2020s, no hope can be placed in the coming Prophet generation. There will be no "victory children" raised in a prosperous environment, and thus no new prophets, without a 4T victory in the mid to late 2020s. So there is little prospect that we can "leave it" to the next prophet generation. Without a successful 4T, there won't be one. Again, I have already made that point. Please listen.

One thing though that I like; the breather that we have been given in this Indian Autumn, Crisis-High period we are in now. I don't know if I am looking forward entirely to a very disruptive period of change. It depends on how destructive it ends up being. Total war and revolution is never a pleasant prospect. So we might as well enjoy this breather while we have it, and take the time to support what progress and preparation CAN be made in a still-peaceful time. The coming green energy boom should smooth things over a bit as well.

I can see a potential FDR running for President in 2016. He's formed an exploratory committee and spent the last 2 weeks in Iowa. I'm surprised that nobody on this thread has mentioned him. He's James R. (Jim) Webb, former Senator from Virginia, former Secretary of the Navy under Reagan and a decorated war hero (Navy Cross) who fought as a Marine officer in Vietnam and never regretted or repudiated his service publicly while opposing both Bush and Obama's Mideast adventures. Which gives Webb a unique perspective to criticise ALL his opponents Democratic and Republican alike as "chickenhawks". And makes Webb a perfect early 4T (as opposed to $T) candidate--if only he can find just one billionaire "sugar daddy" who will be a traitor to his class and support him through the early primaries (Warren Buffett may be that man).
Webb has a unique path to the White House. Webb's hard core of support can be found amongst serving military, veterans and military families. Who tend to be concentrated in communities near military bases in Southern states that are either swing ( Virginia, North Carolina --which has Ft. Bragg and Camp LeJeume) or states on the path to flipping to swing or Democratic (Georgia--Ft. Benning-Columbus, Ft. Stewart, Texas--Ft. Hood--Killeen, Ft. Bliss El Paso and the complex of air bases in San Antonio. South Carolina could fit in this category because of it's relatively low population and concentrations of military in Charleston (Navy) Colombia (Ft. Jackson) and Greenville (a major AFB as I recall).
The concerns of military families are different than those of non-military families. Many of them are deep in debt because of predatory lending--to the point that military wives are the ideal surrogate mothers to try to get themselves out of debt while their husbands are on deployment. And the military is a place where racism is given little tolerance and inter-racial marriage is common. Webb himself has a Vietnamese wife. Which gives Webb a real chance at carrying states other Democratic candidates would find impossible to carry--and a deployable army of volunteers for the primaries as well as the General Election. Especially in the South, a volunteer walking on an artificial leg replacing one lost in Iraq or Afghanistan is likely to get a much more respectful hearing than a college student--perhaps long enough to break through prejudices.
Also, Webb knows his ethnic group, the Scots-Irish well enough to have written what is THE classic history of Scots-Irish "Born Fighting". Webb can talk to Scots-Irish in the same way that 1890s Populist James Weaver did. (And it took outright insurgency and terrorism to break the nascent Populist black-poor white alliance in the 1890s at a time when racism was far more acceptable). The way Webb approches racial issues is to point out things like the fact that if 60% of sharecroppers were African-American, the other 40% were Scots-Irish white. And treated as trash. And denied the vote by literacy tests (African-Americans were frightened away from the voting booth by riots and lynchings). Voter participation in the South 100 years ago was on the order of 20%.
Which is why Webb supports Affirmative Action for poor people not Affirmative Action by race. Racial Affirmative Action was an appropriate response to a unique set of circumstances in the 20 years after WWII. African Americans had been denied their rights under the New Deal but even more flagrantly GI benefits--after they fought in WWII just like everyone else. It was that military service --the "bill" Martin Luther King spoke of early in his I Have A Dream speech that gave Civil Rights it's legitimacy--and a use-by date once GI and early Silent African Americans were no longer in a position to benefit from it. Webb may be able to move the narrative from race to class ala "Race Matter--Class now matters more".
bb strikes me as a potential FDR (who was an Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson Administration), Hillary reminds me of Alfred E. Smith. Hillary may be moderately liked, but a poll that came out today shows that Hillary is not considered trustworthy by 61% of those polled. She is very vulnerable over the Clinton Foundation. If there is one thing Americans hate more than big money buying elections, it's foreign big money buying elections. And that's what the Clinton Foundation looked like when she was running in 2008 and again in 2016.
And then there's the question of Hillary's health. There are distressing reports that Hillary has had a stroke or two in the last ten years. Hillary may have the best chance of dying in office of natural causes than any President since FDR (Kennedy's Addision disease was simply agonizing).
For these reasons, Hillary Clinton is anything but a shoo-in. Hillary could likely lose to a strong Xer candidate like Marco Rubio, much as Smith lost to Herbert Hoover (although not by Hoover's landslide). Wheras if Webb DOSEN"T actually run this year, Webb is likely healthy enough to run in 2020 despite his age (which he dosen;'t look).
I've thought some about the last 16 years and those 16 years look a lot like how 1912-1928 might have looked if Theodore Roosevelt hadn't perturbed the 1912 Election by running against Taft and handing the election to Wilson. 1912-1916 as a second Taft Administration followed by Charles Evan Hughes in 1916--who probably could not have stayed out of WWI but would not have given us Wilsonianism or the League of Nations. The 2008 Great Recession looks a lot like the 1920-21 Depression and that depression had hit under a Republican President, we very likely would have gotten a Democratic President--Cox or someone else, maybe even Bob LaFollette. Which makes 2008-present look a lot like the Tribal 20s with Republican control of Congress. and rising inequality. A Democratic President probably could not have done much in the 1920s. Congress would not have let him and he might have been tossed out of office in 1924 after 1 term.
Which means that the REAL Crisis may come very soon, in the form of another Depression--a few years early, compared to the last Saeculum. Already there are distressing signs out of Europe--which fell into Depression in 1927, three years before the US did. It could spread. Maybe we would be better off if the next Depression hit during a Republican Administration forcing a Crisis Election in 2020.

Many of us are coming to feel that either 2016 or 2020 will have to be a crises election. It's just hard to see the currently dysfunctional system lumbering to January 2021 with the culture war and other 3T pathologies remaining in place. Yet we dd have a crash in Sept. 2008. Too close to the election to consign blame to the powers that be.
Maybe we'll have ''better'' luck with our next crash.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

Many of us are coming to feel that either 2016 or 2020 will have to be a crises election. It's just hard to see the currently dysfunctional system lumbering to January 2021 with the culture war and other 3T pathologies remaining in place. Yet we dd have a crash in Sept. 2008. Too close to the election to consign blame to the powers that be.
Maybe we'll have ''better'' luck with our next crash.

It's possible that the country after the 2020s will be almost unrecognizable compared to the country before. That's what they said about the civil war crisis, after all. We'll see just how much change Americans are willing to embrace this time. Probably less than then, but change will happen.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

If I were brought up like Charles Manson or Saddam Hussein, I would be evil, too.

IMO, Manson was born evil. Hussein was more likely misguided and the product of a brutal environment.

Until baby boomers give up their obsession with "human rights", "globalism" and "keeping things restrained" there is no possibility of a reconciliation and harnessing of the abilities of Millies, Homelanders and late wave xers. We have seen the boomers incompetence too much with the post-9/11 wars and their handling of the recession for it to be otherwise.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

Until baby boomers give up their obsession with "human rights", "globalism" and "keeping things restrained" there is no possibility of a reconciliation and harnessing of the abilities of Millies, Homelanders and late wave xers. We have seen the boomers incompetence too much with the post-9/11 wars and their handling of the recession for it to be otherwise.

What sort of ideology would you like to see "human rights" replaced with?

Originally Posted by mockingbirdstl

What sort of ideology would you like to see "human rights" replaced with?

I'm guessing it's the doctrine of "do unto others before they can do unto you."

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

The cops spend the bulk of their time trying to control the riff raff and dealing with the riff raff.

When the riff raff showed up at the Bundy ranch in support of illegal activity being conducted there, the law enforcement officers did not exercise control, they did not deal with them. Rather they withdrew and made no attempt to enforce the law. What kind of riff raff matters.

The police aren't paid to protect and serve the riff raff.

Yes they are. You expect them to proetect and serve you, right. Unless you were some kind of nebbish goodie-two-shoes when you were an adolescent, you were once riff raff. So was I. So was just about all red-blooded American boys. If the cops randomly stop and search you enough times they are bound to find some minor infraction. They can then arrest you, throw you in jail for a few days and bring charges against you that if convicted of all of them will mean several years in prison and offer you a plea for time served, you walk out free to go. Your PD tells you that's the best deal they can offer. You take it, it's a misdemeanor, it won't affect your employment prospects (as you lawyer points out). But not you are a convict, and by defintion one of the riff raff, and now they cops are fully justified in harrassing you. Which they do and pick you up in several more charges, one of which is a felony. Your are 19, you don't have the 50K it takes to go to trial and beat a felony rap. So you plea to six months probation, suspended. Again you walk free, but now you are a felon, big time riff raff. You can't get a professional job because of your felony, so whats the point of going to college. You take a job at the plastics factory. But then the cops nab you for DUI. Can you serious say you have never ever driven you car after having had a few drinks? Over the years they can build up quite a sheet of chickenshit offenses. This will piss you off and some of those times you express your anger and get more charges. If the cops want to, hey can make a thug out of anybody who doesn't have a parent with the money and the savvy to get a high-priced attorney at their son's first interaction with the cops. They don't go after white middle-class kids because the odds are high that the person they stop has such a parent. And if he does, then he comes from good stock and most likely won't choose a life of crime, so there is no need to.

But in the inner city, there is a zero change that a kid they stop will have such a parent (if he did, he wouldn't be living there). Since inner city neighborhoods have higher levels of street crime, some portion of the people you stop will be up to no good. As for the majority who are not currently involved in a crime, some will be guilty of one of the minor offenses above. Of the rest, most will have been stopped previously many times and will have something on their record, either real crimes or penny ante stuff. As the Freddie Gray case shows one can get killed even if you are penny-ante riff-raff

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It's possible that the country after the 2020s will be almost unrecognizable compared to the country before. That's what they said about the civil war crisis, after all. We'll see just how much change Americans are willing to embrace this time. Probably less than then, but change will happen.

People will not really change when they can't figure out what is going on. It's when the smoke clears and the dust settles that people recognize that there is no turning back. People will not want a replay of the Crisis even if such offers the prospect of better results, and they won't want to return to the depraved times (the degenerate 3T) that led to the Crisis. There was little nostalgia for the 1920s at the end of World War II.

This Crisis Era can end in anything from empowering triumph to the extinction of humanity. Extinction of humanity or even the end of civilized life won't leave much of interest to us, will it?

America as a failed Evil Empire? Other countries might redefine regional cultures in what used to be the United States -- such as what foreign languages are part of the K-12 school curriculum. But that follows a thoroughly-ruined world for Americans, one in which middle-class workers have had to go back to the countryside to be farm laborers just so that they can eat. Back to the 19th century in living standards for a few years?

Even with triumph, Americans are likely to have solved many social problems that can't be undone in an environment of crony capitalism and official superstition offered with the warning "Believe it or Burn!" Rational thought must prevail.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Sure. Of course, cynic hero himself is irrelevant; but his statement represents many Republicans and other conservatives who want to cut social security and medicare and think it will save us money.

Cutting Medicare and social security would free up money that is currently being spent on pampering wealthy boomers and silents, so that said money can be spent on infrastructure, industry, education, social programs for the poor and on improving the military. The nation would be spending on its future once again.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

Cutting Medicare and social security would free up money that is currently being spent on pampering wealthy boomers and silents, so that said money can be spent on infrastructure, industry, education, social programs for the poor and on improving the military. The nation would be spending on its future once again.

Damn kid, you got any other records to play?
People are leaving your party because it's BOR-ING.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

Damn kid, you got any other records to play?
People are leaving your party because it's BOR-ING.

I moved that comment to the "age of potential 2016 candidates" thread because it made more sense being located on this thread instead of its original location because there was a discussion on income inequality on this thread.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

I moved that comment to the "age of potential 2016 candidates" thread because it made more sense being located on this thread instead of its original location because there was a discussion on income inequality on this thread.

Cut funding for the military, and there'll be more funding for things like infrastructure and education.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

When the riff raff showed up at the Bundy ranch in support of illegal activity being conducted there, the law enforcement officers did not exercise control, they did not deal with them. Rather they withdrew and made no attempt to enforce the law. What kind of riff raff matters.


Yes they are. You expect them to proetect and serve you, right. Unless you were some kind of nebbish goodie-two-shoes when you were an adolescent, you were once riff raff. So was I. So was just about all red-blooded American boys. If the cops randomly stop and search you enough times they are bound to find some minor infraction. They can then arrest you, throw you in jail for a few days and bring charges against you that if convicted of all of them will mean several years in prison and offer you a plea for time served, you walk out free to go. Your PD tells you that's the best deal they can offer. You take it, it's a misdemeanor, it won't affect your employment prospects (as you lawyer points out). But not you are a convict, and by defintion one of the riff raff, and now they cops are fully justified in harrassing you. Which they do and pick you up in several more charges, one of which is a felony. Your are 19, you don't have the 50K it takes to go to trial and beat a felony rap. So you plea to six months probation, suspended. Again you walk free, but now you are a felon, big time riff raff. You can't get a professional job because of your felony, so whats the point of going to college. You take a job at the plastics factory. But then the cops nab you for DUI. Can you serious say you have never ever driven you car after having had a few drinks? Over the years they can build up quite a sheet of chickenshit offenses. This will piss you off and some of those times you express your anger and get more charges. If the cops want to, hey can make a thug out of anybody who doesn't have a parent with the money and the savvy to get a high-priced attorney at their son's first interaction with the cops. They don't go after white middle-class kids because the odds are high that the person they stop has such a parent. And if he does, then he comes from good stock and most likely won't choose a life of crime, so there is no need to.

But in the inner city, there is a zero change that a kid they stop will have such a parent (if he did, he wouldn't be living there). Since inner city neighborhoods have higher levels of street crime, some portion of the people you stop will be up to no good. As for the majority who are not currently involved in a crime, some will be guilty of one of the minor offenses above. Of the rest, most will have been stopped previously many times and will have something on their record, either real crimes or penny ante stuff. As the Freddie Gray case shows one can get killed even if you are penny-ante riff-raff

Do you still consider yourself riff raff and identify with the term or did you prove to yourself and to others that you are above it like me?

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

Do you still consider yourself riff raff and identify with the term or did you prove to yourself and to others that you are above it like me?

I was described a process in which an ordinary person can be converted into what you would call "riff raff". I was not criminally inclined and was never subjected to such a process (most white men aren't), and so I remain free of the label. Back in the 1990's wife used to work with interns at our company. All of them were engineering or science majors. One day I was sitting with some of them my wife was talking about some of the guys our former foster kids dated and made a comment about how most of them had been to jail. One of the interns said doesn't everyone spend a night or too in jail when they are young? Everybody he knew had been in jail sometime. The rest of us expressed surprise. In our experience, going to jail didn't happen to people like us, none of our colleagues had ever been arrested. My wife counseled the student that he shouldn't mention this sort of thing in his professional life because it is not common for professions and might affect how others see you. We chalked his experience as atypical and due to luck--his social circle had some sketchy people. In my youth, I knew of guys who had gone to prison, but they were in the group I hung with.

This intern was a black and male. Much later I suspected that his observations were not atypical, but actual the norm for black guys trying to climb the latter of success. After hearing stores from black guys my age of getting stopped for driving while black, and one of them for jogging while black in his own neighborhood. They were making jokes about it, the jogger now got friendly waves from all the cops when he is on his jog.

One can argue that he was stopped because he was not known by the cop as a resident. But I doubt cops who patrol by car can know by sight the thousands of people who live in the areas they patrol. A white jogger would not be stopped, whereas a black one is. Of course once he was identified as a resident his blackness makes him instantly identifiable and so he is personally acknowledged by the cops, whereas the white jogger would continue to be anonymous.


In black neighborhoods where black men do not stand out, the cops do not know them personally, any more than they know the white joggers. But, unlike the whites in nice neighborhoods, who are safe from policy harassment if thy are minding their own business, a black guy minding his own business will occasionally get stopped randomly, just to see if they are up to something, and if you object (say you are on your way to an appointment), they can arrest you for that.

Policy need to have a presence in high-crime areas and they need to stop bad guys who are up to no good. In bad neighborhoods bad guys are much more common than in good neighborhoods, but still a lot of the people you harass aren't going to be actual bad guys. Way back in the day cops used to walk a beat in high crime neighborhoods and they knew the people in the neighborhood. They knew who were the good guys, and who were the bad guys and were able to obtain from the former the info they needed to bust the latter.

Todays cops patrol the streets of American cities in ways analogous to the way Americas soldiers patrolled the streets of Iraqi cities, using much of the same equipment (like those tank-like vehicles deployed in Ferguson). This sort of "occupation" breeds resentment of cops analogous to Iraqi resentment of American occupation.

We can (and did) leave Iraq. We do not HAVE to nation-build there. But we don't have that option his is America. If we aren't willing to nation-build America, something like ISIS may be our future as well. Already we have out 1% living in gated communities where they provide privately all the typical services of a state. The only thing they lack is a military, but were not have a well-established mercenary companies--that is private armies, loyal their private masters and not necessarily the state.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

One of the interns said doesn't everyone spend a night or too in jail when they are young? Everybody he knew had been in jail sometime. The rest of us expressed surprise. In our experience, going to jail didn't happen to people like us, none of our colleagues had ever been arrested. My wife counseled the student that he shouldn't mention this sort of thing in his professional life because it is not common for professions and might affect how others see you. We chalked his experience as atypical and due to luck--his social circle had some sketchy people. In my youth, I knew of guys who had gone to prison, but they were in the group I hung with.

This intern was a black and male. Much later I suspected that his observations were not atypical, but actual the norm for black guys trying to climb the latter of success. After hearing stores from black guys my age of getting stopped for driving while black, and one of them for jogging while black in his own neighborhood. They were making jokes about it, the jogger now got friendly waves from all the cops when he is on his jog.

This has become personal to me. As you know, I'm involved with solidly middle-class African American. His son, when finishing up in high school in the early 2000s, was smart and a good student, but did stuff that kids do. He and some white friends were caught with dope. Guess who went to jail. If it wasn't for the pressure that his parents put on the system (and the fact that they were educated and solidly middle-class professionals), his life could very well have been ruined. Instead, he was released shortly before he started college and eventually his record was expunged. Today, he's a model 31-year-old, an accountant, a homeowner, active in his community, and a married father of three. But it could easily have turned out very bad.