DocWatts

If you're open carrying a rifle at an incredibly tense protest, you're looking for trouble. The people who attacked Rittenhouse had an equally legitimate claim to self defense. With mass shootings taking place in America every week it's not an unreasonable reaction when you see someone who's clearly not from the area show up to a tense public demonstration armed with a rifle. Concealed carry is plausible as far as having a weapon for self defense purposes. The only reason to open carry in public is to intimidate other people. Negligent homicide would have been the correct verdict, as Rittenhouse intentionally put himself and others in a dangerous situation which led to two deaths. Gun culture is America is dumpster fire of toxic individualism, fragile masculinity, and corporate lobbying of gun manufacturers who thrive in an environment of paranoia, fear, and suspicion. The fact that he was fraternizing with a white supremacist gang is completely relevant, as the majority of domestic terrorism committed in this country is done by far Right ethno-nationalists. The verdict in this trial will embolden others that it's okay to out themselves in intentionally dangerous situations then claim 'self defense' when people end up being killed (if you happen to be white that is, no way in a hell that shit would fly if Rittenhouse was a year old 17 black kid who showed up to a Proud Boys Rally looking for trouble).

Where does a dysfunctional culture come from? Is it just an inherent quality, because people have genetic predispositions towards different types of behavior? Or does it develop in response to social conditions? If it develops in response to social conditions, is it at all plausible that oppressive social conditions have something to do with that dysfunction?

Yes both are necessary, but personal responsibility and access to social and financial capital are required for success. We happen to live in a society where predatory institutions will ruthlessly exploit disempowered and marginalized people. Hence why someone can be working three jobs in America and still be on living on the edge of poverty, and one missed paycheck or medical bill away from financial destitution. The biggest issue is systemic economic inequality stemming from generations of housing and employment discrimination whose effects are still with us today. Practices such as Red Lining, where people of color were prevented from living in areas where economic opportunity was readily available, led to the ghettoization of communities of color throughout the country. Black communities and households were systematically denied opportunities to build wealth and pass that on to their children for the majority of the history of this country, and it was only recently (within about half a century) that legal housing and employment discrimination was finally outlawed. That's within in living memory of many people alive today, just to put that in perspective. Just outlawing discrimination without actually working to rectify the harm such practices caused to those communities has resulted in an enormous wealth and opportunity gap between white and black households. White households have on average ten to twenty times the amount of wealth of black households as a legacy of these practices. Why does this matter? Well, just stop and think about it for a second. Public education, something that's supposed to in theory facilitate class mobility, perpetuates this inequality because they're funded by local property taxes. How good of an education you receive is determined by one's zip code. If you are born in an affluent neighborhood you likely have access to very good schools, and if you're born in a poor area your schools are going to be really bad, harming your chances on actually making it to college and transitioning in to a career. This sort of thing is what is meant when I've refer to Social Capital. Is it a good thing that some exceptional individuals have been able to navigate past these obstacles and better their circumstances? Of course. But it's not a reasonable expectation for someone to have to be exceptional to have a chance at a decent life. And a small handful of people escaping this cycle does not change the fact that this is a systemic societal failure. And all of that's leaving aside the issue of systemic racism within the criminal justice system that extends beyond just the police, which is a side effect of and re-enforced by the socio-economic disparities I outlined. What would I do to address these issues? That's a large and complicated discussion because this is a widespread and systemic problem, but the Root issue that needs to be addressed is raising the socio-economic floor for everyone within the society, to be funded by reallocating how our tax money is collected and spent. For starters, we need a much more robust social safety net so that no one who works a full time job is one medical bill or missed paycheck away from financial destitution and homelessness. Things like Healthcare and high quality Public Education need to be treated as basic rights. Public schools should be federally funded, with a set amount of funding per pupil (rather than the quality of school varying massively depending on zip code). Teachers need to be paid more much more generously than they are currently, and much better supported. We should be spending much more than we currently are for pro-social investment in to economically marginalized communities. Much more federal and state funding should go to funding infrastructure and basic services in these areas. After school programs and mental health services need to be much better funded than they are now. Incentives should be made for businesses to set up shop in these areas. We pay for all of this with a wealth tax on billionaires, a VAT tax for corporations that can't be avoided by shifting assets overseas, and a %0.1 tax on financial transactions in speculative markets. End the failed War on Drugs, stop wasting money on a bloated and ineffectual revolving door prison system, and Institute a %15 tax on legalized maraujana. Reallocate of funds away from our bloated military budget, the bloated budgets of militarized police departments, and useless subsidies to mature industries such as Fossil Fuel companies and weapons manufacturers. This wouldn't just help Black America, it would lead to a much better society overall.

Personal responsibility is necessary but not sufficient. Without access to external support structures which allow people in disadvantaged situations to acquire social and financial capital, hard work alone is not going to get someone out of poverty. On the contrary, the default position for someone in a disempowered situation is to become an exploited wage slave working for subsistence wages. It would be worth looking in to how inter-generational poverty actually works, as the moralizing you are doing is based on societal misconceptions of what poverty is, not understanding how it damages people, and not knowing the systemic reasons as to why this tends to be a cyclical problem. If you haven't lived in or been around poverty, and haven't researched the issue, you're probably not aware of the ways that the stresses of poverty damage people psychologically and instills a scarcity mindset which makes it hard to succeed in life. People who have a more systemic view of this issue know that portraying poverty as moral deficit doesn't help empower people to actually better their situation. External support structures meant to address the actual social and psychological barriers they face in their day to day lives does.

From my own life: I'm cognizant that the comfortable middle class life that I enjoy is something I was able to achieve not only because of my hard work, but because I had available to me external support structures which helped me build the life I currently enjoy. These include good public schools, good infrastructure, a safe and stable environment, and economic opportunities. What I'm advocating for would effectivly mean somewhat higher taxes for me, but I'm happy to pay it if it means someone just as deserving as myself has access to the same support structures I took for granted growing up. I live outside Detroit, a heavily economically and racially segregated area, and I know firsthand the structural barriers that exist for people living just a half hour away from me that make it incredibly difficult escape the cycle of inter-generational poverty. As a white person in a heavily segregated region, I'm cognizant that my interactions with the police and criminal justice system are of a very different nature than a 17 year old black kid living in the area. I know that I'm unlikely to be harassed by the police when out in public, or have my safety threatened during a routine traffic stop. Social (rather than personal) Responsibility compels me to not take the privileges I've benefited from for granted, and to take responsibility for the ways I've personally benefited from support structures not available to other people. Which means advocating for reforms to make the system fairer, lending support and solidarity to social movements and organizations which seek to address systemic injustice, and not project my privilege on to other people with different life experiences. On the contrary, it's my responsibility to listen to those people without judgement, and not be dismissive of thier lived experiences.

Hasan isn't someone who's work I follow, and have had some issues with some of his political takes, so I'll concede the point and won't try to defend someone that I'm not more familiar with. The problem is that the Right (conservatives and libertarians) frame personal responsibility in highly self serving, egoic ways. Framing societal problems with systemic causes as issues of 'personal responsibility' avoids the emotional labor of having to introspect and come to terms with privileges one has taken for granted that aren't available to other people. Maybe that person you're shitting on isn't poor because they don't work hard, but because they've been dealt a shitty hand in life. No amount of budgeting is going to get somebody of poverty when there are structural barriers that prevent individuals from being able to acquire financial and social capital. In America, that's taken the form of practices like Red Lining which was designed to prevent black households and communities from being able to purchase homes and aquire wealth, leading to entire communities shoved to the margins of society where economic opportunities were incredibly limited. Over time this becomes a self reinforcing cycle because people aren't given the tools and support they need to better thier circumstances You mention that the Left doesn't talk about personal responsibility. This is categorically untrue. The reality is that the more conscious and developed version of Personal Responsibility is Social Responsibility, which is what the Left advocates for. It means being actively concerned about and advocating for the well being of other people. It's a more expansive and mature form of responsibility, which is why it's invisible to somebody who has a far more narrow and restrictive circle of concern that's limited to only caring about yourself and your family.

It would require less, not more funding, because it would involve a massive reduction in the scope of what policing would be expected to respond to. The proper role of policing should be used to respond to violent crime. Literally every other role aside from this that the police are asked to provide would be far better handled by Social Workers and Human Services. Contrary to popular belief, cops spend only a very small portion of thier time responding to violent crime. The vast majority of situations police respond to are non violent misdemeanors, domestic disputes, mental health problems, and traffic violations. Right now police are given an impossible job. They're expected to be warriors, diplomats, family counselors, mental health therapists and substance abuse experts. These are far outside the scope of what one profession should reasonably be expected to accomplish. Also cops do not prevent crime. At best they can respond to a crime that has already happened, or by their visible presence alter where crime happens. This is because the vast majority of crime has poor material living conditions and economic desperation and despair at its root, that would better be responded to with social spending designed to lift the socio economic floor rather than continuing to pump billions of dollars in to militarized police forces.

If there any streamer in particular you're referring to? If you're referring to Vaush (the one I'm most familiar with), he wants to defund and restructure rather than abolish the police. The reason this line of argument is considered racist is because racists intentionally use it to imply that the problems faced by communities of color are caused by inherent flaws in people of color, rather than as a result of generations of structural oppression. It's a way of victim blaming using eugenic arguments, and of making racism more palatable. Rather than directly starting that communities of color are inferior to whites, it's implied with a thin veneer of plausible deniability. That said I don't see everyone who advances this argument as intentionally bigoted, so much as failing to realize how this line of thinking racist in its implications and serves the interests of actual racists.

@Raptorsin7 You realize there's a difference between a serious advocacy organization that's working with policymakers and city governments, and inflammatory remarks said by randos on social media, right? Any social movement with tens of millions of people is to going to have at least some of this. Where such 'all cops are pigs' sentiments exist they're counter productive, reductionist, and uncompassionate. Police Abolition is idiotic. Police defunding and reform is sensible. But at the same time these sentiments don't form in a vacuum, and tend to arise from the lived experiences of people in over policed communities where the lived reality of the Police is closer to an occupying army than as public servants. Context is important here. A common tactic of reactionaries is to intentionally decontextualize, for example by quoting statistics about 'black on black' crime ignoring generations of socio economic discrimination which forced black communities in to ghettos.

Here is what advocacy organizations are actually proposing, as opposed to the straw man characterization of these organizations being about Police Abolition.

This is a straw man argument. Defund does not mean Abolish. No serious advocacy organization on the Left is calling for abolishment of the police. What Defund means in this context is demilitarization and reallocating funding from bloated police departments to human services. Much of what the police are asked to do could be better handled by Social Workers who have actual training on things such as mental health problems, domestic disputes, and substance abuse. The police would still exist, but the scope of what they are asked to achieve would be reduced; namely responding to violent crime, rather than being asked to be warriors and diplomats and social workers. If someone breaks in to your house or an active shooter is present, you would still call the Police. If you're going to argue against Defunding at least respond to the actual arguments and proposals that are being made.

Of course Corporations and affluent Individuals are going to use every means at their disposal to avoid contributing back to the system that made them wealthy by finding ways to evade taxes, because that's exactly what a culture mired in toxic individualism incentives. Since we know that this is the case, it's on the more socially conscious among us to work and advocate for systemic reforms to limit the opportunities for the affluent to game and cheat the system. Allowing individuals and syndicates to amass so much wealth in the first place is one of the Root issues, as it gives Bad Actors opportunities to capture political institutions and corrupt them to serve their own interests. Unfortunately this is a feature rather than a bug that is baked in to Capitalism, where Capitalism and Democracy are working at cross purposes. Social Democracy is a step in the right direction, but more fundamental reforms towards a post-capitalist society that takes a different approach to how markets and capital interact with the broader society will be what's ultimately required to fix the flaws with this perverse incentive structure.

Jordon Peterson fans : "JP's such an concise and articulate speaker!" JP when asked a direct question about his beliefs : (Here's the actual clip, but the fact that a satirical show from the 2000s about a half man half bird half angel is reminiscent of Jordy's answer to this same question is illustrative).

Less of a binary thing and more of a sliding scale of Devilry. Exon Mobile is further along on that scale than Tesla, but they're both playing a game where the incentive structure rewards Devilry.

Truth. Compare either of these figures to someone like Noam Chomsky to see the difference between YouTube pseudo-intellectuals and an actual intellectual who's made important contributions to several different fields of knowledge. Both Jordy P. and Sam Harris's take on political issues are routinely so ill informed and reductive that they make my brain bleed. Being able to speak coherently on a given subject doesn't automatically mean that one's opinions are well thought enough to be worth taking seriously. Ben Shapiro is also someone who is decent at stringing words together to form coherent nonsensical arguments; that doesn't mean he should be taken seriously.

While 'if you're going to talk the talk then you should walk the walk' is a valid criticism to make, I do wonder how much personal responsibility a 15 year old Zoomer should be expected to have for thier personal consumption habits. Especially when there are multibillion dollar industries whose whole purpose for existing is to use knowledge of psychology to shape consumption habits in people at an early stage of development. Suffice to say that consumption habits are highly influenced by predatory forces baked in to the system. I'm all for taking personal responsibility for collective problems, but we also have to take in to account that a systemic problem like Climate Change isn't going to be solved by individual consumption choices. Whether the United States remains a democracy a few decades from now will have orders of magnitude more impact on the Climate than whether pockets of the country opt for more eco friendly options when buying groceries.

That list is pretty spot on. The next question is what's the lifeblood of this societal pyramid that's in scarce supply? I'd argue that it's capital, meaning both financial and social capital.

The question brings to mind a fun game where someone proposes a Wish for a genie, and the other person proposes a monkey's paw sort of twist to that wish. The point is to examine the hubris of your own wishes. So when someone Wishes for peace on Earth, the genie responds by setting the clock forward to when the Sun is a dwarf star and all life on the planet has been extinguished for billions of years. No life, no conflict. So maybe conflict has an actual purpose then, eh?

If someone knocks on your door, waving around an assault rifle 'asking' to be let in, it's not really a question at that point. Likewise, if someone drives to an incredibly tense protest in another city, open carrying a weapon with the intention of enforcing vigilante justice, that person has intentionally put themselves and others in a situation where someone is likely to be injured or killed. He was looking to escalate an already tense situation, and unfortunately he succeeded Third degree or negligent homicide (aka manslaughter) would be the appropriate sentence. And for what it's worth, I don't think it's unreasonable to see Rittenhouse himself as a victim of the toxic Right Wing gun culture in the US, any more than it would be to see a 17 year old kid living in a inner city who was indoctrinated in to a gang as a victim.

That's a rather good way of characterizing the current state of the two political parties; one being regressive, the other with some factional splits but on the whole conservative.

Conservatism is always going to be contextual to some degree. In some contexts that would entail maintaining the status quo. In the context of contemporary America which has been undergoing a paradigm shift towards Green over the last half century, Conservatism necessarily entails trying to roll the clock back on societal progress. So it's fair to say that Conservatism in a contemporary context is quite regressive. For example on abortion, maintaining the status quo would mean preserving Roe v. Wade, rather than trying to erase 60 years of progress on reproductive rights. Ditto for the expansion of civil rights that happened as part of this paradigm shift, as much of contemporary Conservatism is motivated in part by a resentment of the gains that have been made by communities of color in the last half century. Trying to reimpliment elements of Jim Crow by restricting voting rights with surgical precision towards communities of color is reactionary, rather than a preservation of the status quo.

The manufactured controversy about the long overdue removal of Confederate statues isn't all that dissimilar from the manufactured hysteria about Critical Race Theory. The fact that these statues of Confederate leaders were erected in the 20th century as a deliberate anti-civil rights statement meant to intimidate black people, is besides the point. The entire political strategy of the Right hinges upon emotionally manipulating low information Voters into a hysteria over issues that have no actual impact on their day to day lives. Not like the Right in America has anything to offer these people that will make their lives better, so they'll go out of thier way to move the narrative to literally anything other than socioeconomic issues.

@supremeyingyang Not sure if you've had the chance to read The Listening Society and Nordic Ideology, but they're a two book treatise on Metamodernism and Integral politics which emphasize exactly this; building a more compassionate society which makes it easier for people to self actualize.

The Good Place said it best. This is true not just for people damaged by growing up in rough circumstances. But also for privileged folks who never develop curiosity about what life is like for people less fortunate than themselves; because they were likely not surrounded by empathetic people, and thus were never encouraged to explore the possiblity of having social responsibilities for the well being of other people.