DescentBB

you might think I'm only seeing outrageous calls to arms and exaggerated, inflammatory rhetoric on one side, but really I'm not. This is a perfect example of what escalates tensions which need to be addressed. He might even have a beef with outside cops in his district, but the only message that will resonate is a call to violence:
http://www.ksla.com/story/30861602/stok ... pe=generic

Black speed limits matter, slick. Our black children need to be able to play in the streets without fear.

Either this guy doesn't know he's in a position of authority, or he actually isn't and needs to stop pretending to be (trying to be). Either way this article should have been titled, "A call to third world action in a first world country." That's a good picture of the Al Sharptons of the world, IMO--we have legal recourse, but I have no significant legal experience/standing myself so I say let's throw ★■◆● at them!

Lot's of context missing in the "article."

such as, and why is it important? My point was despite ANY contextual justification, you just hear the radical part. See Thornes idiotic response for confirmation.

I hear stupid people...

Sergeant Thorne wrote:I hear stupid people...

go outside. Won't eliminate any, but the odds might drop.

callmeslick wrote:such as, and why is it important? My point was despite ANY contextual justification, you just hear the radical part. See Thornes idiotic response for confirmation.

So your point is that this is horrible journalism? Why are you posting it instead of ignoring it? And for that matter, why do you post so much click-bait on this forum? You like to support shitty reporting? This poor excuse for an article doesn't go into why the councilman said this, and context is important, especially when it involves outrageous quotes. I don't care that he said it. I want to know why he said it.

All that article (and this thread) does is invoke people's prejudices. There is nothing to learn from this other than the fact you keep getting suckered into posting crap links on a near daily basis.

You know, I've tried outside, and I'll grant you that the graphics are better and there's a lot less lag, but for some reason around this time of year the temperature drops drastically and people start dressing differently, to say nothing of the strange white substance that appears and then disappears just as mysteriously. Looks to me like they've staved off global warming for a few months at least. I wish they'd get a better handle on things and stop with the pendulum action, though--my black curtains are barely enough to hold the deadly rays from the nearest star at bay on the up-swing. Thanks, I'll wait for the sequel.

vision wrote:So your point is that this is horrible journalism? Why are you posting it instead of ignoring it? And for that matter, why do you post so much click-bait on this forum?

wait a minute.....this is a public official, and he DID suggest attacking police, whether out of frustration or whatever, right? Just because you don't like the style or detail with which this TV station site presented it, it becomes mere 'click bait'? Did my link not work correctly?

All that article (and this thread) does is invoke people's prejudices. There is nothing to learn from this other than the fact you keep getting suckered into posting crap links on a near daily basis.

my point is that the mere quote itself, in whatever context(which was accurately reported) is all that anyone will EVER focus upon, and it is that very intemperate(no matter WHAT the freaking excuse may be) choice that is counterproductive. Our discourse is ENTIRELY too full of an accumulation of such ill-thought out snippets, fed on 24 hour cycles to a public trained to only focus on the snippets. THAT was my point.

Sergeant Thorne wrote:You know, I've tried outside, and I'll grant you that the graphics are better and there's a lot less lag, but for some reason around this time of year the temperature drops drastically and people start dressing differently, to say nothing of the strange white substance that appears and then disappears just as mysteriously. Looks to me like they've staved off global warming for a few months at least. I wish they'd get a better handle on things and stop with the pendulum action, though--my black curtains are barely enough to hold the deadly rays from the nearest star at bay on the up-swing. Thanks, I'll wait for the sequel.

tin foil hats can be both stylish and functional.

callmeslick wrote:Our discourse is ENTIRELY too full of an accumulation of such ill-thought out snippets, fed on 24 hour cycles to a public trained to only focus on the snippets. THAT was my point.

So take a stand and stop posting news articles that exacerbate it? Reposting makes it part of the news cycle. We can do good as a nation to reject not only people who make comments like the councilman, but news outlets who feed the public this type of ★■◆● reporting, and people who repost it.

It is terrible that this man made such a comment, but it does no public good to report it with inflammatory headlines, and sharing this crap makes it worse because it tells shitty news outlets that they can make money off misery. Do you want this? I wish you would be more careful about the things you post. Sometimes you share a thoughtful and well written article, but lately I'm hesitant to read anything you link to.

I'm not taking blame off the councilman, but if your point is that people will only remember the violent comment, well you are part of the information chain, spreading it.

Vision: people have been making money off misery for years. It's not going to stop anytime soon, no matter how badly we want it to. But I do agree the story was rather sparse in details and context.

I guess that folks aren't making comments without thinking any more than they once did, but in this day and age, it is not helpful(as noted by the title) to the discourse. You can blame ME all you want, vision, for the reality that puts us in a sound-bite culture, but that would be missing the point.

oh, and for the record, I wasn't drawn to this specific article, but the fact that the subject matter was trending at #1 for a good while on a major social media outlet. Far more of the 24-hour news cycle is driven by social media than by actual news outlets at the present time. This is a horrible thing for discourse of any thoughtful nature(especially the well-known outlet that requires a handful of characters as the limit for a given commentary). Thus, we lurch from one inflammatory sound bite to the next, with the commentary driven by the extremes, those who would distill EVERYTHING to black and white. Now, perhaps, there is more deep discussion going on behind the scenes(Why does this guy say this? What was the context of his remarks? etc) but I strongly suspect that, collectively speaking, that deep discussion is comprised of a very small minority of the populace.

Myself, I just assume that his/their concerns about the police pursuits were valid. I think it's a safe assumption, and I stand by my remarks (and I stand by those which were uniquely tongue-in-cheek as being funny). It's not a matter, in my mind, of forming a highly accurate picture of the surrounding situation--this isn't a court of law--we don't bear that responsibility, but rather one of gathering an indication of how some people are willing to deal with a perceived injustice or threat in a society. In this case, destructively. I see no cause to believe this article is so other than the truth behind it, and for our distance from the reality of it I don't think that it matters so much. I think the sentiment is understandable on a certain baser level, but that positions of responsibility and authority should be reserved for loftier goals, the proper and best use of tools/options available, and a better comprehension of the big picture. For my purposes, in deciding whether it is right or wrong to encourage people to act outside of the bounds of authority against authority they themselves grant, because of problems with the execution of that authority, the details of the story don't really matter. I just see this as a head-shaker, and a warning that there are people in positions of authority who don't belong there. It also makes me wonder how common this might be among black communities who may have decided to consider themselves opposed to what should be their own law/authority, in light of some of the other things I have heard about blacks speaking and acting out against law enforcement. If that's totally wrong, then I've been misinformed. What opinions I now have that are misinformed, however, was up to me, and what I considered it worthwhile to reinforce with something so incomplete. It's our responsibility to control what we do with information passed in whatever form, and that should be Vision's primary concern, IMO. To be overly troubled with what is passed rather than what people do with it demonstrates a certain resignation to what I would consider an unacceptable standard of thinking, and I think people's energies would be better spent tearing that down than controlling information content and flow. Give people enough rope and encourage them not to be so foolish as to hang themselves, but let them own the consequences.