Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

Aimless that’s a hell of a story!

I understand and appreciate irony well-deployed. Burrito's post was satire that relied on sarcasm and hyperbole, and seemed to suggest that being against cops is in any way similar to being against firefighters. It isn't.

I read the first half of burrito's post as mostly serious about firefighters, and the second half as mostly making fun of burritoself

as pointless as it is to be "against" all individuals grouped together into one vocational category (cops in general, all irredeemable garbage people each equally deserving of the absolute depths of scorn to a certain degree more or less than that of firefighters or Army Drone Operators or hedge fund managers or personal injury lawyers or insert whatever other controversial profession), it would also be pointless of me to try and bring a new persuasive argument in response to this mentality, as if that hasn't been attempted a billion times already on this message board or in every other conversation about police that happens after they shoot yet another unarmed black American.

if you think all cops/any cop is worthless, then where do you go from there? total anarchy, shifting towards experimental non-governmental community policing schemes, defunding, reform? doing what the Oakland PD tried to do to get out from under federal oversight in that pretty decent documentary The Force? these are all totally worthwhile topics for discussion, but if you think law enforcement agents are just inherently bad people, how can you even go there? it's like giving up

My thinking from exposure to Foucault: enforcing state laws corrupts the soul, so let's pay for state controls for this aberrant behavior

wait, which aberrant behaviour - enforcing the laws?

I don't think all cops are worthless garbage humans, but I'm a LOT closer to thinking that than I was three years ago. It's comforting to imagine that cold-case detectives solving serial killers aren't hateful pieces of shit who joined the force just so they could make up for feelings of personal inadequacy dating back to high school by beating up ppl who pay them. Also, Columbo was ✊

Our own opinions on options for reform vs replacement are probably best suited to another thread, but Joe Biden's devastating hypocrisies on copism are one of the two most alarming aspects of his 2020 campaign.

I just interpret Biden's comments as what are necessary to hold the center, maybe naively

I like burrito's post

doing what the Oakland PD tried to do to get out from under federal oversight in that pretty decent documentary The Force?

for the sake of mine and table's sanity, let's not bring Oakland PD into this ... okay, maybe mostly just my sanity ... and the thought of the significant percentage of the City's budget that went to paying for the misconduct and shitty behavior of OPD, on top of the huge percentage of the City's budget that goes to OPD in general, and not the "settling police brutality lawsuits" ... which reminds me, I need to vote still

Total police abolition and the expansion of often already existing resources would go a long way in creating a more just, safe world.

It is ridiculous to address the so-called 'violence' of looting and rioting while ignoring the massive infrastructure of state violence that keeps much of population immiserated, fearful, and in pain. Some, apparently quite a few on this board, are so completely cut off from understanding this simple fact that they'll cape for cops, who exist solely to enforce the laws of this massive infrastructure.

Many middle-class white people swallow cop propaganda like that absurd Biden statement partly because they care about property more than people in a continuation of master-slave relations, and others swallow it because they simply cannot imagine what Baldwin called 'the low ceiling of possibilities' for many Black people in this country.

A man in mental health crisis was murdered in front of his family, his mother. His wife is expecting their child. And yet the story is always about looting and how not all cops are bad. Fuck that.

xp oh it is precisely those sorts of frustrating setbacks and constraints that make the effort to reform so compelling (at least in a documentary sense)! if it was easy to make the difficult changes, no one would care. but yes this is not really the #onethread for it

I just interpret Biden's comments as what are necessary to hold the center, maybe naively

That might even be what Biden tells himself, assuming he still has a functioning internal monologue.

The reality, though, is that he's never shown any indication of caring about systemic racism or police violence - he's speaking from the heart that riots are bad and disruptive to property values and American capitalism and don't you know most cops are good eggs who don't want to shoot you, man?

This is a guy who introduced a 'Cop Bill of Rights' two months after the LAPD beat Rodney King.

replacing handguns with tasers would also be a good step towards JustSafeWorld

fuck milo, your posts are so scathing

fuck milo, your posts are so scathing

You misspelled "boring"

yet the story is always about looting and how not all cops are bad

I see what you're trying to say but there's also sorta more than just the one (1) Story going on "these days"

I never said there wasn't, I said that a lot of mainstream media focus is on looting and rioting and not the cold-blooded murder of a mentally ill young man in front of his family.

Nor is it on the conditions that created the desire to loot in the first place, which circles back around to that immiseration I mentioned.

Non-committal centrists who are very concerned about riots and looting are very much a real thing. There's a rather disturbing amount of these people.

feel like the entire point of riots and looting is to make people concerned about larger issues, but yeah I see what you mean

It definitely did not work with a significant portion of the country, namely low information, both sides dummies.

It definitely did not work with a significant portion of the country, namely low information, both sides dummies.

idk if they are dumb, it's that so much of this country is segregated racially and economically and there are a lot of people in small towns and suburbs for whom the places where the rioting and looting happens are like some foreign country. ... and a lot of media content, even that which is sympathetic to leftist beliefs and explains them, a lot of that content is from the perspective of law enforcement. It's like we need some popular Prestige TV centered on Activists in order to get through to people.

The reflex to trust Facebook/YouTube sources over mainstream journalism is at the root of a lot of this confusion. I kind of think one possible approach to people who feel helpless when it comes to discerning between many media options is to just recommend going to Google News where you can see a single story reported by dozens of sources of varying quality. It doesn't take long to understand what sources take what positions and make up your own mind about who to trust.

The reality, though, is that he's never shown any indication of caring about systemic racism

He talks about it all the time these days. He didn't used to. I'm inclined to believe it's because he's been persuaded that it's an issue worth his attention and concern in the present moment, even if his past record isn't strong.

He talks about reinforcing it, though. Those who've persuaded him to consider it are obviously butting up hard against the limits of his inherent concern.

It's like we need some popular Prestige TV centered on Activists in order to get through to people.

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320470291l/6580969.jpg

https://64.media.tumblr.com/53c8f2bf70c02f904d5dc6ee2112992e/54a4e749606e6c06-7f/s500x750/6f5cd63841886c67b52eeebbbfb6104d0d5c99f1.png

https://64.media.tumblr.com/787e3294b4f1fd163b6c59ff2bd30436/54a4e749606e6c06-c9/s500x750/744d7af3e684b1da353318296c1c81e2900e5290.png

(I wonder if anything else in the post was a lie?)

The rest of that national police union's feed is a flood of VOTE TRUMP affirmations, claims that the media is lying, dogwhistles and complaints that departments have been told not to arrest protestors. (Plus, inexplicably, memorial cards for cops that have died from COVID.)

It's hard to see what Biden gains by campaigning on increasing police funding, and promising to escalate their response to protestors.

he's not campaigning anymore, the election is over

It's hard to see what he gains by saying those things in official campaign press releases, on-camera doorstops at in-person voting locations, and televised debates against the President Of The United States while not campaigning, then.

Level setting your expectations for February 2021

he's not campaigning anymore, the election is over

― Dan S, Friday, 30 October 2020 05:48 (two hours ago) link

Really, who won? Can't find the results anywhere

they're being shipped by UPS right now

motherfucking pinochle

oops wrong thread

IS it?

One thread

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= Yp6NZO6jI-Q

Um

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp6NZO6jI-Q

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/27/upshot/biden-trump-poll-quiz.html

^you'll want to click through on that one

man, a tub of sabra but then there's two 2.5 pound bags of shredded cheddar cheese.

I've just got White Claws and salami.

White Claws and Salami -- now that's what I call a part-ay

As much I am for police abolition, I’m not going to expect it to happen over the next five years at the very least. Most of the people were introduced to the idea a few months ago, including me, it is still a radical idea that goes against the fabrics and history of our nations and I would not expect a politician wanting to win an election to present a whole new paradigm on security that might alienate a huge chunk of the electorate; I am starting to wonder what are the expectations some people have of the american electorate: Biden is trying to win over the very same people who have fed the systemic racism that police abolition is trying to solve.

Are you actually talking about the issues when we clearly have refrigerators to parse?

Hummus and multiple bags of shredded cheese in the fridge, a Subaru in the driveway, and a Biden sign on the front lawn is like every single family within five miles of me (my own included)

got a trumper with almond milk, must be shy

you can always spot a lib fridge by the fresh arugala. the fresher the arugala, the further to the left they are

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Ln43bGdj0

VHS, I'm not expecting it in my lifetime. Doesn't mean it isn't worth fighting for and repeating the observable facts about the police at every possible point.

Because the police murdered a man, the main street running through my neighborhood has at least 5 cops on every single corner for more than a mile. They murdered someone, yet we're the ones who need to be policed, according to their logic. We live in a police state. Fuck em.

I think it's one thing to be an activist whose goal is to abolish the police force, it's absolutely worth fighting for, but I think it's another thing to expect large parts of the electorate to agree with you. Asking a politician, whose job is to find a compromise between millions of dissenting voices to adopt a viewpoint that is still clearly seen as radical is a bit childish.

a lot of people will die needlessly if a lot more people than we're currently seeing don't start to demand the seemingly impossible, whether it strikes one as "childish" or not. (I'm thinking mainly of climate action, but police abolition is relevant as well.)