5:15 pm June 26 update:
I have two different reactions to a podcast by Sam Harris here that need to be sorted out in advance. On the one hand I strenuously object to his anti-Trump politics to the point that I hardly want to listen to even a few more minutes of what he has to say. The Leftist mentality is simply infuriating. HOWEVER, when he gets into the meat of the subject of the current uprising about supposed racist mistreatment by police against blacks he does a great job of showing statistically that the whole idea is wrong. Something similar happens with Bret Weinstein, that he's very good at this same kind of factual presentation that derails the racist assumption while at the same time expressing political opinions I strongly object to. So both reactions are in the following. The important part is the evidence that the accusation of systemit or police racism is false.
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The discovery of Bret Weinstein has led me to other discoveries as I've been gobbling up podcasts such as the Rubin Report and others that encourage hope, meaning hope in there possibly being enough sanity and reasonableness in the world to keep the current situation from becoming the disaster Weinstein thinks it could become. As do I also think it could, though I'm not entirely sure where he sees the danger coming from, the Maoist character of the uprising itself or what he sees as the inevitable exasperated reaction of armed citizens to put it down in what could become civil war.
I have two different reactions to a podcast by Sam Harris here that need to be sorted out in advance. On the one hand I strenuously object to his anti-Trump politics to the point that I hardly want to listen to even a few more minutes of what he has to say. The Leftist mentality is simply infuriating. HOWEVER, when he gets into the meat of the subject of the current uprising about supposed racist mistreatment by police against blacks he does a great job of showing statistically that the whole idea is wrong. Something similar happens with Bret Weinstein, that he's very good at this same kind of factual presentation that derails the racist assumption while at the same time expressing political opinions I strongly object to. So both reactions are in the following. The important part is the evidence that the accusation of systemit or police racism is false.
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The discovery of Bret Weinstein has led me to other discoveries as I've been gobbling up podcasts such as the Rubin Report and others that encourage hope, meaning hope in there possibly being enough sanity and reasonableness in the world to keep the current situation from becoming the disaster Weinstein thinks it could become. As do I also think it could, though I'm not entirely sure where he sees the danger coming from, the Maoist character of the uprising itself or what he sees as the inevitable exasperated reaction of armed citizens to put it down in what could become civil war.
The accusation of systemic American racism has been effectively countered in many of the videos I've seen. It's a fiction. It is the typical Leftist way of explaining disparities that have complicated causes that have nothing to do with racism, but the explanation is nevertheless enforced as if it were the truth and anyone who objects is silenced. I'm not any happier with Weinstein's strangely abstract economic explanation instead of racism though, since it still offers an external excuse for complex causes that need to be addressed in the suffering communities themselves. Not that the nation couldn't supply help of various sorts in any case.
So I've been happy to discover that a liberal/leftist can see the madness in the rioting, and generally speaking Sam Harris is another who sees it like it is. But he is still a liberal/leftist and as I found as I kept listening to Weinstein there's always a point at which I lose any sense of rapport with them. So, listening to a Sam Harris podcast on these current events is very upsetting. Although he is able to criticize the protests, he's also doing a marvelous job of demonstrating the insanity on the Left of which he is a part.
For instance, he's worried about authoritarianism coming from TRUMP!!!!!!. This is insanity. There is not one shred of a hint of a clue of any evidence whatever that Trump has any dominating authoritarian impulses whatever. To his supporters he is a champion of American freedoms. Obama could be such an authoritarian as he fears, or the Left in general as well with its PC tyranny and fingerpointing at anyone they dislike, to intimidate them into silence and inaction, Communist-style "authoritarianism." And right now we can see it in the Maoist tactics of this uprising of violence. Trump SHOULD by now have done something to bring law and order to the situation. NORMAL "authoritarianism" if you will, the kind any society needs to survive. Perhaps he too is cowed by the tyrannical tactics of this bogus "movement," I don't know how to explain it otherwise. Other Presidents have used the military to quell riots and enforce the law, why doesn't he? I can't explain it. But his inaction is certainly not authoritarianism.
Earlier in this podcast Harris says the reelection of Trump would be an existential disaster for the nation or something like that -- the word "existential" was in there anyway. He also said that Trump's Presidency represents such a repudiation of Obama that it SEEMS it must represent white supremacy. That's certainly a piece of Leftist insanity right there. Maybe it explains why they have attacked Trump so viciously as a racist from the getgo without the slightest justification, but then what this demonstrates is that the racist mentality is all on the Left. They can't think in any other terms it seems. It's all invented by the Marxist mentality that controls today's Left, it's all a big fat lie, but it probably really does describe how they think.
Conservatives DO NOT think that way. I can agree that Trump's election was a resounding repudiation of Obama, but without a tinge of racism to it. It's hard to describe the sense of relief and hope we got from Trump's list of campaign promises. Obama's Marxist anti-American policies were depressing in the extreme, and it was those destructive anti-American policies that led Trump to his MAGA slogan. Obama was on his way to turning America into a third world swamp, and we wanted desperately for someone to restore us to our genuine inheritance as the greatest power in the world, and the greatest power for GOOD in the world. That is the hope Trump inspired in us. But the small minds of the left can't think in such terms, they have to reduce it to racism or some other ignoble human flaw. And beyond that they can't see Trump's obvious competence and successes either, they have to hallucinate failure where there is none.
So all that undermines what is otherwise another sane analysis of the dangers of the protests as they've become violent, and in Weinstein's terms Maoist in character. If they think a Democrat's win in November is going to help that situation they really don't understand anything.
Later:
Conservatives DO NOT think that way. I can agree that Trump's election was a resounding repudiation of Obama, but without a tinge of racism to it. It's hard to describe the sense of relief and hope we got from Trump's list of campaign promises. Obama's Marxist anti-American policies were depressing in the extreme, and it was those destructive anti-American policies that led Trump to his MAGA slogan. Obama was on his way to turning America into a third world swamp, and we wanted desperately for someone to restore us to our genuine inheritance as the greatest power in the world, and the greatest power for GOOD in the world. That is the hope Trump inspired in us. But the small minds of the left can't think in such terms, they have to reduce it to racism or some other ignoble human flaw. And beyond that they can't see Trump's obvious competence and successes either, they have to hallucinate failure where there is none.
So all that undermines what is otherwise another sane analysis of the dangers of the protests as they've become violent, and in Weinstein's terms Maoist in character. If they think a Democrat's win in November is going to help that situation they really don't understand anything.
Later:
I sometimes desperately wish for someone to discuss things with, and I mean such things as the liberal view of the protests that is so hopeful while at the same time including so much insanely leftist framework I can't stand it. But such discussion is impossible as I keep finding out. No point in going back to EvC where it's always been impossible, no point in bringing it up with liberal friends where I've found out it quickly becomes incendiary even if every effort is made to be as reasonable as possible. Writing my blog is something I need to do with or without feedback but after a point I do start craving dialogue, and of course I mean sane quiet reasonable dialogue with people on the other side of the political divide, and it's sad to know it can't happen.
Later yet: What I wrote above about the Sam Harris podcast covered only the first forty minutes or so. After that he gets into the statistics about police killing men they've arrested and shows that most of them are white, which effectively derails the racist assumption. I may try to come back and report on the details but I just wanted to say this much for now. The political remarks he made in the part I talk about above that annoyed me so much aren't repeated after that so it's all what I'm happy to see is the liberal sanity I started out wanting to present.
Later yet: What I wrote above about the Sam Harris podcast covered only the first forty minutes or so. After that he gets into the statistics about police killing men they've arrested and shows that most of them are white, which effectively derails the racist assumption. I may try to come back and report on the details but I just wanted to say this much for now. The political remarks he made in the part I talk about above that annoyed me so much aren't repeated after that so it's all what I'm happy to see is the liberal sanity I started out wanting to present.
