I used to do something similar too, briefly. If he claims to have been surprised, I doubt his credibility :)
If this is widespread, rather than cancerous clusters of evil, what's the cause?
Having asked that, I note that I lol'd at the idea of generalising 'the UK and most of Europe' in this regard. Presumably the same applies to the US.
In any case,it's still a problem with the system and incentives that allows groups of white supremacists to form and thrive out of a potential intake that broadly reflects the population.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
P.S.
Re the economics, the costs of slavery are 'externalities' in economics. It's like the way petrol (or gasoline, if you prefer) prices reflect the cost of oil, not the costof emitting CO2.
Also, one other thing, the US had something much like apartheid in the north during the JCl era. The South had the stuff you claim was only under slavery. People were still being burned alive with no law enforcement. (That was illegal before abolition too, for what that's worth).
It's odd how you're so invested in 'the North was morally right' that you'll mae arguments I would generally characterise as white-supremcst apologetics, given that your other statements make it clear that's not your intention- and indeed you seem to think the same of me.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
You don't appear to realise how late the US was to join the Abolitionist movement. The arguments you characterise as apologetics are in fact pure abolitionism, and the underpinning of US abolitionism.
I mean, you're literally calling William Wilberforce an apologist for slavery. If that isn't enough to make you consider that you might be wrong, there's no point my adding to it.
You do realise the US was almost the last place in the world to abolish slavery, don't you? Even Russian serfs had more rights by that era. This stuff was empirically proven long before you lot ever abolished slavery. FFS, the Northern states were some of the last places on the planet, let alone the South.
He just doesn't fit either popular version of the history, so he's ignored. He's far too interesting to deserve that, but he isn't wholly good or wholly bad, so no-one wants to take on the challenge of dealing with him properly.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
Re neo-Nazis in Europe, it's so stupid it's funny when Polish neo-Nazis claim to be nationalsts while marching to commemorate Hitler's birthday.
I find it interesting that we completely agree on the evils of slavery, but have such different views about why it was evil.
Leave aside the economic aspects, and you're horrified by the direct cruelty, while I'm much more concerned with dehumanisation and deprival of liberty that allowed the cruelty to flourish.
I think you're not as aware of how slavery really worked as you think. Ironically, you're arguing a view that's both better and worse than the reality.
The system didn't work. Slavery isn't efficient - unless you ignore the costs of keeping the social conditions and laws needed to make it work. And yet, most slave-owners weren't pure evil. One of the main ways of keeping slaves obedient was the threat of being 'sold down the river' to an owner who behaved in just the horrifying ways you describe; it follows, therefore,that most slaves were not treated as badly as the worst. (Also true of Jews under the Nazis. One of Hitler's bigger problems was that he made a big thing out of caring for the veterans of the Great War, but there were a lot of Jewish veterans and heroes. Hence Theresienstadt.) Similarly, there was an opposite pole on the spectrum to the horrific treatment, which was the people who truly believed 'negros' were incapable of being adult humans and required a master to look after them - bearing in mind that's how most landowners around the world saw their villagers, at that time - and, crucially, acted accordingly. Obviously that still isn't good, but Theresienstadt was a lesser evil than Auschwitz.
It's when you start to explore questions like how so many Jewish people remained in Nazi Germany, or how so many decent men fought for the worst cause imaginable in your civil war - e.g. Robert E Lee was offered command of the Union forces, and would utterly despise the people who put up statues of him today (and was also a slave-owner, like Washington, so not simple to pigeonhole) - that you start to understand what really causes history to happen.
Ultimately, it's a populist falsehood to suggest the north was good and the south was punished for being bad. That's the kind of easy untruth that serves populists on both sides, but it doesn't lend itself to understanding why peoople behave the way they do.
Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
Guy Fawkes' night may originally have been a celebration of failure. At least since I was a kid, though, the idea has been the opposite. We quite like the idea of an annual reminder to the politicians that they could all be assassinated - keeps them in line.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
I've never suggested anything other than that the flag is offensive. We're talking about why that is.
Perhaps being more distant from your history makes it easier to understand rather than get invested in. And as I pointed out in other comments, the constitutional issue has a direct bearing on current Us politics in a very different way to the legacy of slavery and segregation.
"You fed the overseers, then boiled soup or gruel out of the shreds they left and the kitchen waste - and gave to the slaves."
That's less profitable than selling it to them...
I don't think you have any idea how poor conditions were in e.g. company towns, absent slavery.
You also don't understand productivity. Sure, you can force a minimum amount of work from a slave. Let him think he's working to his own benefit, and you get much more out of him for the same cost, because you're still only paying him the food.
As for your views on the cruelty of slavery, apparently the fact that the same stuff was still going on a hundred years later has passed you by. Have you realy never heard of Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, or Jim Crow laws?
Firstly, i'll note that the value of discussing this sort of thing is that it brings out points that might not be clear. You're absolutely right to point out that people in the US who talk about 'states rights' do so to take slavery out of the discussion. That is in no way my intention.
I refuse to call them the First and Second World Wars, because they were not part of a series, they were two separate events.
The Great War was in fact 'the war to end all wars' - at least, an end to direct conflicts between major, rich, nations. The real root cause was that no-one knew how catastrophic it would be for both sides. So yes, you can take Germany out, or ally them with Britain, instead of France, and the war would still happen.
The 'Second World War' is only linked by occurring fairly soon after. It is a unique event: the Anti-Nazi war. I tend to believe it wasn't economic factors which were responsible - they're a prerequisite, but we often get economic collapses without a Holocaust. The cause was simple, for once: Hitler's talent for exploiting the then-new mass media in the service of populism, combined with his particular brand of hatred.
The Southern rebellion is also a unique event, and the root cause isn't slavery, but a failure of the constitution to adequately define and/or limit Federal power. (Let's call it that instead of 'states' rights'.) That issue has never been resolved. Does the majority have the right to enforce moral issues on other states? Forget slavery for a moment, and imagine we're talking about the illegality of murder being disputed. (Antiabortionists would probably argue that's exactly what we're debating there. Not my cup of tea.)
The relevance of slavery to modern US politics is less than that of the flawed Constitution. There's a reason things like abortion-legalisation and sex-irrelevant marriage were done through the Supreme Court rather than direct legislation, and that reason is fear of another civil war. It's not a good solution long-term, but it allows a different characterisation - rather than legislation imposing the majority view, a Supreme Court ruling says 'this is what the law always was, we just didn't realise it before'.
You've missed the secessionary constitutions, which prove that point even more strongly. There's no argument that slavery wasn't the immediate casus belli.
You've also completely missed my point. It isn't an either-or. It's a both. Actually understanding history is much more interesting than avoiding talking about things racists would like to use as propaganda - as well as, imo, the best way of countering that propaganda.
The point I tried to make clear is that whilst the disagreement between states was over slavery/white-supremacy, the reason that disagreement became civil war is that the Constitution isn't clear enough on whether e.g. Abolitionist states have the right to impose their views on other states. IMO, that problem has never been resolved, and explains the polarisation of current US politics, so it isn't an idle point.
Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
That's not quite right. The disgustimg heritage of the Civil War persisted until the civil rights movement came along to challenge it.
In any case,the reason we're trying to explain the offensiveness of the flag is because there are peopke who don't think it stands for such things. They're wrong, but it doesn't mean they're deliberately white-supremacist; it usualky means they've swallowed a load of propaganda and not thought about the broader meaning.
With Nazi symbology, it's quite common to find people from Yokelsville, Eastern Europe who were completely ignorant of the real meaning when they had something tattooed on their bodies. They only knew that everyone hates Nazis, and that they'd got dealt a shitty hand in life, so wanted to be offensive. Generally they grow up, see a bit outside their hometown, learn a bit, and get the tattoos covered up, because they were never really Nazis.
Here in Europe, most people with a confederate flag are just pig ignorant, and not even trying to offend. I have no idea how much that's true in, say, Kentucky.
Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
To be clear, my point is that while one can debate the extent to which 'the peculiar institution' was a cause or a trigger, there's no doubt that the flag represents white-supremacy. One doesn't need to note the somewhat debatable depths to which some Southerners sank, when there is an unarguable if marginally lesser vileness.
It's also a much better fit to the reasons people fought for the South. People who didn't own slaves were on the bottom of that society - except the slaves. They were fighting to preserve that dubious privilege, in many cases, but they'd been led to believe that was good for them when it was quite the opposite. (A lot like people duped by Hitler, really.)
Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
"Slavery was clung to with a dead man's grip because to the southern economy slavery was the vast majority of the profit driver."
This is completely wrong. It's the most bizarre part of the whole thing, in hindsight: slavery isn't as profitable as freeing the slaves and giving them jobs. (It's what got economics called the 'dismal science'.) Basically, if you keep slaves you have to feed them or lose your 'property', plus try and get work out of them. Free the slaves, and you can pay them what you spent on food etc, and save the costs of whips, overseers, etc - and get more work out of them. Of course, you have to make it impossible, in practice, for them to migrate in any numbers, but that's about it. No need for all the rest of it, you still get an underclass to oppress.
I wouldn't say it's clear the slavers generally knew this, but there's a good argument that the knowledge slavery was coming to an end anyway, in the relatively short term, and (avoiding?) facing up to a change in their social structure, is what triggered the Civil War. If they'd known what they'd still be able to do using the Jim Crow laws etc, the South wouldn't have seceded imo. They were concerned about maintainiing white supremacy more than worried about losing their 'property'.
"For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion launched over southern states' desire to own other people. Don't give me the "states rights" argument; it's entirely invalid"
I know this is a beloved topic of the people in the US who approve of the 'desire to own other people' part, and certainly southern states expressly went to war to prevent the abolition of slavery, but the 'rebellion'/war part is also significant. There was a problem with the Constitution that led to this particular highly contentious issue causing a civil war, and it's hard to say that no other issue could have provided a trigger if slavery hadn't.
In school here in the UK, we're taught a somewhat wider explanation that deals with the broader problems as well as slavery.
It's a bit like blaming the Great War on Gavrilo Princip, and ignoring train timetables, the Tripartite Alliance, and the clash of two great powers. (When you really get down to it, the root cause was basically Wilhelm the Tit feeling snubbed by his cousins in Britain.)
I find that approaches wishful thinking, whether in the US or the UK. I doubt it's that cops are in some way selected such that they're all terrible people. The system they're in and the incentives they face turn them into a problem. The same system with new people would have the same problems.
Conversely, I'd have thought that if we fix the systems and incentives, the current lot will mostly become good cops.
Personally, i suspect, in my unexpert opinion, that the big thing we're getting wrong is that police generally don't speak to anyone except criminls and victims of crime in their daily work. They aren't expected to e.g. deal politely with someone who wants directions or to check the time, anymore, and it's created an in-group and an put-group from their perspective.
I think people miss the real point here. Not that a group of cops did this, but that out of 18 'deputies', not one saw anything wrong with what they did(n't do).
There is no chance of randomly picking 18 from a population and getting unanimity on something like that unless the entire population, or a reasonable approximation of it, shares that opinion. This doesn't just prove those 18 aren't fit to be cops; it proves that the entire pool from which they're drawn is unfit.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What's "clear"? You ask WHY several times, g
Oops.
... Or why you'd think that what he released is all he stole. The null hypothesis is that he was a paid spy, given that he stole data and Immediately took it straight to China and Russia. Everything we have learnt since then is entirely consistent with that. He is living very well in Russia.
At this point, arguing Snowden blew a whistle is like arguing Trump won the election: it's a fringe view to say the least.
Re: Re: Re: Re: What's "clear"? You ask WHY several times, give
That's insane. Neither of the programs you mention were any revelation. We always knew the US spied on its own citizens. That's the whole point of Echelon.
It's true that we thought they did it via third parties, and that in the two cases you mention they hadn't dotted their i's properly, but the idea we didn't know what they were doing, rather than how they did it, is nonsense.
I have no idea on what basis you claim Snowden hasn't proven his motivations by his subsequent actions, or
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
I used to do something similar too, briefly. If he claims to have been surprised, I doubt his credibility :)
If this is widespread, rather than cancerous clusters of evil, what's the cause?
Having asked that, I note that I lol'd at the idea of generalising 'the UK and most of Europe' in this regard. Presumably the same applies to the US.
In any case,it's still a problem with the system and incentives that allows groups of white supremacists to form and thrive out of a potential intake that broadly reflects the population.
On the post: NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo Signs Law Banning Sale Of Confederate Flags That Will Absolutely Get Nullified
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
P.S.
Re the economics, the costs of slavery are 'externalities' in economics. It's like the way petrol (or gasoline, if you prefer) prices reflect the cost of oil, not the costof emitting CO2.
Also, one other thing, the US had something much like apartheid in the north during the JCl era. The South had the stuff you claim was only under slavery. People were still being burned alive with no law enforcement. (That was illegal before abolition too, for what that's worth).
It's odd how you're so invested in 'the North was morally right' that you'll mae arguments I would generally characterise as white-supremcst apologetics, given that your other statements make it clear that's not your intention- and indeed you seem to think the same of me.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
You don't appear to realise how late the US was to join the Abolitionist movement. The arguments you characterise as apologetics are in fact pure abolitionism, and the underpinning of US abolitionism.
I mean, you're literally calling William Wilberforce an apologist for slavery. If that isn't enough to make you consider that you might be wrong, there's no point my adding to it.
You do realise the US was almost the last place in the world to abolish slavery, don't you? Even Russian serfs had more rights by that era. This stuff was empirically proven long before you lot ever abolished slavery. FFS, the Northern states were some of the last places on the planet, let alone the South.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of
FWIW, I'd suggest Judah Benjamin as the epitome of the conflict between historiography and reality in the US Civil War.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/judah-benjamin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_P._Benj amin
He just doesn't fit either popular version of the history, so he's ignored. He's far too interesting to deserve that, but he isn't wholly good or wholly bad, so no-one wants to take on the challenge of dealing with him properly.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
Re neo-Nazis in Europe, it's so stupid it's funny when Polish neo-Nazis claim to be nationalsts while marching to commemorate Hitler's birthday.
I find it interesting that we completely agree on the evils of slavery, but have such different views about why it was evil.
Leave aside the economic aspects, and you're horrified by the direct cruelty, while I'm much more concerned with dehumanisation and deprival of liberty that allowed the cruelty to flourish.
I think you're not as aware of how slavery really worked as you think. Ironically, you're arguing a view that's both better and worse than the reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_rebellion#North_America
The system didn't work. Slavery isn't efficient - unless you ignore the costs of keeping the social conditions and laws needed to make it work. And yet, most slave-owners weren't pure evil. One of the main ways of keeping slaves obedient was the threat of being 'sold down the river' to an owner who behaved in just the horrifying ways you describe; it follows, therefore,that most slaves were not treated as badly as the worst. (Also true of Jews under the Nazis. One of Hitler's bigger problems was that he made a big thing out of caring for the veterans of the Great War, but there were a lot of Jewish veterans and heroes. Hence Theresienstadt.) Similarly, there was an opposite pole on the spectrum to the horrific treatment, which was the people who truly believed 'negros' were incapable of being adult humans and required a master to look after them - bearing in mind that's how most landowners around the world saw their villagers, at that time - and, crucially, acted accordingly. Obviously that still isn't good, but Theresienstadt was a lesser evil than Auschwitz.
It's when you start to explore questions like how so many Jewish people remained in Nazi Germany, or how so many decent men fought for the worst cause imaginable in your civil war - e.g. Robert E Lee was offered command of the Union forces, and would utterly despise the people who put up statues of him today (and was also a slave-owner, like Washington, so not simple to pigeonhole) - that you start to understand what really causes history to happen.
Ultimately, it's a populist falsehood to suggest the north was good and the south was punished for being bad. That's the kind of easy untruth that serves populists on both sides, but it doesn't lend itself to understanding why peoople behave the way they do.
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Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
Guy Fawkes' night may originally have been a celebration of failure. At least since I was a kid, though, the idea has been the opposite. We quite like the idea of an annual reminder to the politicians that they could all be assassinated - keeps them in line.
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Re: Re: Re:
I have no idea what 'blue outfits' refers to. My only interest in the Trumpa-loompas' lawsuits is laughing at their ineptitude.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a re
I've never suggested anything other than that the flag is offensive. We're talking about why that is.
Perhaps being more distant from your history makes it easier to understand rather than get invested in. And as I pointed out in other comments, the constitutional issue has a direct bearing on current Us politics in a very different way to the legacy of slavery and segregation.
On the post: NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo Signs Law Banning Sale Of Confederate Flags That Will Absolutely Get Nullified
Re: Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebell
Ths has been well known, and undisputed, for a couple of hundred years.
https://www.google.com/search?q=slavery+economically+inefficient
"You fed the overseers, then boiled soup or gruel out of the shreds they left and the kitchen waste - and gave to the slaves."
That's less profitable than selling it to them...
I don't think you have any idea how poor conditions were in e.g. company towns, absent slavery.
You also don't understand productivity. Sure, you can force a minimum amount of work from a slave. Let him think he's working to his own benefit, and you get much more out of him for the same cost, because you're still only paying him the food.
As for your views on the cruelty of slavery, apparently the fact that the same stuff was still going on a hundred years later has passed you by. Have you realy never heard of Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, or Jim Crow laws?
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Re: Re: States' rights?
Firstly, i'll note that the value of discussing this sort of thing is that it brings out points that might not be clear. You're absolutely right to point out that people in the US who talk about 'states rights' do so to take slavery out of the discussion. That is in no way my intention.
I refuse to call them the First and Second World Wars, because they were not part of a series, they were two separate events.
The Great War was in fact 'the war to end all wars' - at least, an end to direct conflicts between major, rich, nations. The real root cause was that no-one knew how catastrophic it would be for both sides. So yes, you can take Germany out, or ally them with Britain, instead of France, and the war would still happen.
The 'Second World War' is only linked by occurring fairly soon after. It is a unique event: the Anti-Nazi war. I tend to believe it wasn't economic factors which were responsible - they're a prerequisite, but we often get economic collapses without a Holocaust. The cause was simple, for once: Hitler's talent for exploiting the then-new mass media in the service of populism, combined with his particular brand of hatred.
The Southern rebellion is also a unique event, and the root cause isn't slavery, but a failure of the constitution to adequately define and/or limit Federal power. (Let's call it that instead of 'states' rights'.) That issue has never been resolved. Does the majority have the right to enforce moral issues on other states? Forget slavery for a moment, and imagine we're talking about the illegality of murder being disputed. (Antiabortionists would probably argue that's exactly what we're debating there. Not my cup of tea.)
The relevance of slavery to modern US politics is less than that of the flawed Constitution. There's a reason things like abortion-legalisation and sex-irrelevant marriage were done through the Supreme Court rather than direct legislation, and that reason is fear of another civil war. It's not a good solution long-term, but it allows a different characterisation - rather than legislation imposing the majority view, a Supreme Court ruling says 'this is what the law always was, we just didn't realise it before'.
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Re:
You've missed the secessionary constitutions, which prove that point even more strongly. There's no argument that slavery wasn't the immediate casus belli.
You've also completely missed my point. It isn't an either-or. It's a both. Actually understanding history is much more interesting than avoiding talking about things racists would like to use as propaganda - as well as, imo, the best way of countering that propaganda.
The point I tried to make clear is that whilst the disagreement between states was over slavery/white-supremacy, the reason that disagreement became civil war is that the Constitution isn't clear enough on whether e.g. Abolitionist states have the right to impose their views on other states. IMO, that problem has never been resolved, and explains the polarisation of current US politics, so it isn't an idle point.
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Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
That's not quite right. The disgustimg heritage of the Civil War persisted until the civil rights movement came along to challenge it.
In any case,the reason we're trying to explain the offensiveness of the flag is because there are peopke who don't think it stands for such things. They're wrong, but it doesn't mean they're deliberately white-supremacist; it usualky means they've swallowed a load of propaganda and not thought about the broader meaning.
With Nazi symbology, it's quite common to find people from Yokelsville, Eastern Europe who were completely ignorant of the real meaning when they had something tattooed on their bodies. They only knew that everyone hates Nazis, and that they'd got dealt a shitty hand in life, so wanted to be offensive. Generally they grow up, see a bit outside their hometown, learn a bit, and get the tattoos covered up, because they were never really Nazis.
Here in Europe, most people with a confederate flag are just pig ignorant, and not even trying to offend. I have no idea how much that's true in, say, Kentucky.
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Re: Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
To be clear, my point is that while one can debate the extent to which 'the peculiar institution' was a cause or a trigger, there's no doubt that the flag represents white-supremacy. One doesn't need to note the somewhat debatable depths to which some Southerners sank, when there is an unarguable if marginally lesser vileness.
It's also a much better fit to the reasons people fought for the South. People who didn't own slaves were on the bottom of that society - except the slaves. They were fighting to preserve that dubious privilege, in many cases, but they'd been led to believe that was good for them when it was quite the opposite. (A lot like people duped by Hitler, really.)
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Re: Re: For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion
"Slavery was clung to with a dead man's grip because to the southern economy slavery was the vast majority of the profit driver."
This is completely wrong. It's the most bizarre part of the whole thing, in hindsight: slavery isn't as profitable as freeing the slaves and giving them jobs. (It's what got economics called the 'dismal science'.) Basically, if you keep slaves you have to feed them or lose your 'property', plus try and get work out of them. Free the slaves, and you can pay them what you spent on food etc, and save the costs of whips, overseers, etc - and get more work out of them. Of course, you have to make it impossible, in practice, for them to migrate in any numbers, but that's about it. No need for all the rest of it, you still get an underclass to oppress.
I wouldn't say it's clear the slavers generally knew this, but there's a good argument that the knowledge slavery was coming to an end anyway, in the relatively short term, and (avoiding?) facing up to a change in their social structure, is what triggered the Civil War. If they'd known what they'd still be able to do using the Jim Crow laws etc, the South wouldn't have seceded imo. They were concerned about maintainiing white supremacy more than worried about losing their 'property'.
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States' rights?
"For starters, the flag is the symbol of a rebellion launched over southern states' desire to own other people. Don't give me the "states rights" argument; it's entirely invalid"
I know this is a beloved topic of the people in the US who approve of the 'desire to own other people' part, and certainly southern states expressly went to war to prevent the abolition of slavery, but the 'rebellion'/war part is also significant. There was a problem with the Constitution that led to this particular highly contentious issue causing a civil war, and it's hard to say that no other issue could have provided a trigger if slavery hadn't.
In school here in the UK, we're taught a somewhat wider explanation that deals with the broader problems as well as slavery.
It's a bit like blaming the Great War on Gavrilo Princip, and ignoring train timetables, the Tripartite Alliance, and the clash of two great powers. (When you really get down to it, the root cause was basically Wilhelm the Tit feeling snubbed by his cousins in Britain.)
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Re: Re:
I find that approaches wishful thinking, whether in the US or the UK. I doubt it's that cops are in some way selected such that they're all terrible people. The system they're in and the incentives they face turn them into a problem. The same system with new people would have the same problems.
Conversely, I'd have thought that if we fix the systems and incentives, the current lot will mostly become good cops.
Personally, i suspect, in my unexpert opinion, that the big thing we're getting wrong is that police generally don't speak to anyone except criminls and victims of crime in their daily work. They aren't expected to e.g. deal politely with someone who wants directions or to check the time, anymore, and it's created an in-group and an put-group from their perspective.
On the post: Eighteen Sheriff's Deputies Waited 500 Yards Away While A Burglar Terrorized A 70-Year-Old Disabled Man
I think people miss the real point here. Not that a group of cops did this, but that out of 18 'deputies', not one saw anything wrong with what they did(n't do).
There is no chance of randomly picking 18 from a population and getting unanimity on something like that unless the entire population, or a reasonable approximation of it, shares that opinion. This doesn't just prove those 18 aren't fit to be cops; it proves that the entire pool from which they're drawn is unfit.
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Re: If I were King for a day
If there's one thing that could make flying even worse, it'd be having to sit in a seat someone's been sitting naked in before you...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What's "clear"? You ask WHY several times, g
Oops.
... Or why you'd think that what he released is all he stole. The null hypothesis is that he was a paid spy, given that he stole data and Immediately took it straight to China and Russia. Everything we have learnt since then is entirely consistent with that. He is living very well in Russia.
At this point, arguing Snowden blew a whistle is like arguing Trump won the election: it's a fringe view to say the least.
On the post: Florida State Police Raid Home Of COVID Whistleblower, Point Guns At Her & Her Family, Seize All Her Computer Equipment
Re: Re: Re: Re: What's "clear"? You ask WHY several times, give
That's insane. Neither of the programs you mention were any revelation. We always knew the US spied on its own citizens. That's the whole point of Echelon.
It's true that we thought they did it via third parties, and that in the two cases you mention they hadn't dotted their i's properly, but the idea we didn't know what they were doing, rather than how they did it, is nonsense.
I have no idea on what basis you claim Snowden hasn't proven his motivations by his subsequent actions, or
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