Boston crime thread - all posts go here. (rent, versus)

[BostonBornMassMade]

“George Floyd wasn't a Saint” ad nauseaum. Unbelievable disrespect....Neither are you how would you like someone to murder you outright? After you died- Would I be right to dig through your past transgressions and minimize the impact of your death on those around you and the national large-if your death ere emblematic of a larger issue?

Ignoring Brahman-youre late to the convo and missed out on where I addressed your strawman.

Black people calling out racism had always been derided ridiculed and n't finalized. That's how we reached this impasse in the first place. Son one f what you say-to me-falls out of line with a history of racism we've seen and continue to see. It's all from the same tired book.

As for proof of who you would in the 1840s, I would cite your post history.

[msRB311]

How is it disrespectful to say he wasnt a saint? As I said people are MURDERED every day and we don't talk about their deaths ad nauseaum for the next year! Why does he deserve this fanfare? just because he was accidentally killed by a cop?

GF also held a gun to a pregnant woman's stomach. None of those mean he should have been killed by someone else but I'm not crying over it either. I actually was horrified by the video but again why is his life so much more important than anyone else's who has been murdered?

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

“George Floyd wasn't a Saint” ad nauseaum. Unbelievable disrespect....Neither are you how would you like someone to murder you outright? After you died- Would I be right to dig through your past transgressions and minimize the impact of your death on those around you and the national large-if your Seth ere emblematic of a larger issue?

Ignoring Brahman-youre late to the convo and missed out on where I addressed your strawman.

Once again, YOU forced his likeability into the discussion. I am not qualified to judge another man. But take Whitey Bulger for example, I like him no better dead than when he was alive. Somebody murders me, the same people will go on liking me or disliking me as did before I took a dirt nap (that is reality). I still expect all to have respect for my family, as anybody should.

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

Black people calling out racism had always been derided ridiculed and n't finalized. That's how we reached this impasse in the first place. Son one f what you say-to me-falls out of line with a history of racism we've seen and continue to see. It's all from the same tired book.

As for proof of who you would in the 1840s, I would cite your post history.

"deriding people calling out racism", show me one example where I did such.



Post history? Have I been a proponent of slavery in the past (or anything leading down that path)? Advocated for the seizing of constitutional rights of others, or any form of discrimination??? Maybe in a previous life? I must be having a memory lapse or something, but you are invited to dig through my 14K+ posts.

[msRB311]

Where is the proof that George Floyd being killed was even an act of racism? People think anytime a black person is killed by someone white that it's racism.

[msRB311]

What about this one? https://www.wcvb.com/article/boston-...shire/35889080

Should he get in any trouble?

Or this? https://www.boston.com/news/crime/20...-investigation

Should they be held accountable or are you just out to get the white cops?

[msRB311]

no comments on korey franklin, a black boston gang unit cop who supposedly shot his wife in the head in 2019? Just make sure clif mchale gets his from what he supposedly did in 2005 to a drunk married woman?

[Space_League]

Good to see everyone in here is having fun. Lets see if we can drop a hat trick of hot takes on these issues:

(1) there is no evidence that race was a factor in George Floyd's death. There have been white people killed in almost identical fashion over the years

(2) the whole thing was arbitrarily chosen to become a global movement. Floyd's death was pretty bad, but just a drop in the bucket of messed up stuff that happens on a regular basis. It feels like such an insignificant and random choice to pick this one as catalyst for global change. Like do people realize what kinds of evil acts go on in the world that impacts millions instead of just a handful of people?

(3) That being said, remember when the video first came out and 100% of people on the right denounced Chauvin's actions unequivocally? Yeah what happened to that energy. Weird as it is to hype up some random act of minor evil as a focal point for a global protest movement, it's even weirder and worse to defend it as if nothing happened. All those evil acts that go on in the world and you want to shed tears over an abusive cop getting locked up? Pick a better hill to die on

[GeePee]

Originally Posted by Space_League

Good to see everyone in here is having fun. Lets see if we can drop a hat trick of hot takes on these issues:

(1) there is no evidence that race was a factor in George Floyd's death. There have been white people killed in almost identical fashion over the years

Exactly. But that is not the hot topic of the news today. We can site so many articles of people being murdered in similar if not worse fashion. It doesn't sell. It doesn't enrage enough people.
The real enemy uses the media to push this stuff so the public stays fighting amongst each other and not pay attention to the real big picture. I, and many of not all of us arguing on here have more in common with George Floyd than we do with the real evil that lurks. It's the same reason why people idolize and water bubbler talk about sports figures, actors, and tv shows. Keep em dumb. Keep em fighting.

[msRB311]

One of the girls stabbed to death on sunday along with a grandmother:

https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news...murdered-at-42

[Space_League]

Originally Posted by GeePee

Exactly. But that is not the hot topic of the news today. We can site so many articles of people being murdered in similar if not worse fashion. It doesn't sell. It doesn't enrage enough people.
The real enemy uses the media to push this stuff so the public stays fighting amongst each other and not pay attention to the real big picture. I, and many of not all of us arguing on here have more in common with George Floyd than we do with the real evil that lurks. It's the same reason why people idolize and water bubbler talk about sports figures, actors, and tv shows. Keep em dumb. Keep em fighting.

Yeah it's really weird how strong media and social media influences are, especially give the lockdowns. It seems to hijack this human tendency towards righteous indignation and takes us all along for that ugly ride.

Everyone is portrayed as the underdog. The innocent victims of police brutality systematically persecuted by corrupt cops. The reviled civil servant who puts his life on the line every day for the people in spite of their scorn. These sorts of narratives are super effective at engaging people.

I even notice it in myself and have to check it at times. Why do I suddenly feel aggressively protective of some population that heretofore I was able to think about objectively?

Most people here probably know both cops and criminals. I suppose I know more people who have served time than people who have served on the force, but that to be expected since almost 3x as many people have been incarcerated than are currently serving in law enforcement. If you include retired cops and ones who dropped out it's still probably close to 2x. So it would be expected that ordinary folks know more criminals than cops.

Now the cops aren't the 'evil that lurks' and I don't think you meant them by that either. Most of us are much further removed from that evil. Income inequality is commonly discussed and fairly stark in the US, but it pales compared to another kind of inequality.

Maybe the term for it would be 'cultural capital'? Basically the power to shift public opinion and overton window for the masses. Very, very few people have that power and many wealthy people don't have it. Even many celebrities, who might be expected to have it, don't have it. I don't even know how to describe the group of people who DO have it. I can name people who are in that group, but I can't well define the boundaries of membership or the hierarchies at play within it. I doubt they even have a firm control over the thing either. Technology may have loosened their grasp on it significantly.

Reminds me of this passage from a novel:

"You are not sufficiently democratic," answered the policeman, "but you were right when you said just now that our ordinary treatment of the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's."

Syme struck his hands together.

"How true that is," he cried. "I have felt it from my boyhood, but never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed--say a wealthy uncle--he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spying upon the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anybody else."