Prometheus 6   

the outcome of his post is absolutely disparaging.

i'm not sure what else to say except that i'm really feeling for ST right now, just sitting here shaking my head.

some people. some people.

What I am absolutely amazed by is how people can't see why giving out the specifics of the crime would put S-Train's family at risk.

I'm also amazed that people think this would be national news. Maybe that's just my L.A.-ness but of the 400 or so murders that happen here each year, most don't end up on the news or in the paper, and I can't remember the last time I read a home-defense story.

I do, however, hear about every suspicious latino or black rapist that might be in your upperscale town at night looking for old ladies.
This is the type of shit that makes me want to take my ball and go home. Some people live in an imaginary world.

Sigh.

The reason I read S-Train is because he expresses real feelings with very compelling prose. I can't think of a better blogger. It bothers me how many wannabes are suddenly clogging his comments to this incident. But I've read comments from time to time on blogs like Atrios and concluded the bigger your readership at any one time the more wing nuts you have spraying their territorial scent. At least most of the comments were supportive. The others I don't think he should worry about. They'll tire of the tirade and move onto someone else. But it does make one pause about getting too personal in such a large impersonal venue. You really don't know who's out there.

There's this guy over there I've been trying to get off Train's blog and onto P6.

There's all manner of problems with that discussion. And it all comes down to fear. The one guy admitted to feeling threatened when I put it out there directly.

And demanding proof, like anyone owes someone else proof? He said The Smoking Gun would have posted it, but if you check its all idiots they're talking about. Nothing like Train's situation.

I want the guy here because whether or not S-Train is telling the truth (and I believe he is) isn't the important problem in all this. It's the fear this gentleman and people who agree with him feel that's the problem. That fear, taken to an insane level, is what brought the racist through Train's window. It's that fear than makes the gentleman NEED to prove a Black man couldn't had done this, or had reason to. Because if a white man gives Black folks legitimate reason to cap one of them, he (as a white guy) feels he's a target as well--when all he has to do to NOT get capped is don't be an asshole.

He don't realize it's his fear that can make him a problem to us.

One of the blogs I read every day is Prometheus 6. Friday, brother P6 highlighted some posts at S-Train Canvass....
Read more in black man with a gun »

P6,
I have a slightly different take on things: the person in question you're trying to direct over here isn't making the accusations b/c of fear that black people will start gunning down white people - at leats from what I can tell. He just seems like one of those people who are skeptical about everything. I agree that he's been going about it in an inappropriate way, but I think his motivation isn't racial.

Most of the other comments I have seen that were negative weren't directed at S-Train because he's black or because his assailants were white - they simply don't like firearms & anything that would seem to justify their existence has got to be wrong. Papers won't cover it cause it showed a positive use of firearms. NAACP won't bring it up cause it shows that a person must be capable of his own defense & not rely on them. ACLU wouldn't get involved (if there were charges brought against S-Train) 'cause they only agree with some of the Bill of Rights.

Just as with the organizations I mentioned above some people just don't want to hear or believe that a person can & should protect himself. They would rather everyone be as dependent as they themselves are.

I don't think that fear of race or any of the associated problems that would go along with it is the main thing we should be fighting. Yes, it's important to reduce the misunderstandings & misconceptions that lead to such fears & actions based upon them, but I feel the race thing is merely a distraction so we won't realize that the thing that threatens us most is dependence & the subsequent control by an organization, be it government, religious or societal in nature. If we start recognizeing & respecting the Rights of the individual, then the collective BS will start to fade.
The race issues are symptoms of a problem. The underlying cause is that the focus is on collectives rather than the individual.

Racist hate mail has killed a blogger. Not literally of course, but S-Train says, through his ISP that he won't be blogging any longer. The story behind it will test your patience. I am almost at a loss for words...
Read more in Not Since Cash »

Publicola:

I have a slightly different take on things: the person in question you're trying to direct over here isn't making the accusations b/c of fear that black people will start gunning down white people - at leats from what I can tell. He just seems like one of those people who are skeptical about everything. I agree that he's been going about it in an inappropriate way, but I think his motivation isn't racial.

He said he feels threatened by Black people. That we are "a violent people." That 90% of all interracial violence is by Black people against white people—a patent falsehood.

Forgive me, but I'm goint to take his word about his motivation over yours.

And I'm going to let you know that your downplaying race fears like his is the sort of thing Black folks might point to as evidence of white racial solidarity against Black people. Can you understand why that could happen? I hope so. I really do.

As for your collective vs. individual thesis, humans are social animals. It's biological, below consciousness, supporting the consciousness. Wired into the brain and body. We can no more avoid being collective than ants, wolves or antelopes. At best we can define our collective because we are conscious.

The denial of membership in the only collective available to us is at the root of all the pathologies you could care to point out in the Black communities. See this, and read "The Root of the Resistance."

P6,
I'll go back over his comments again. Assuming we're talking about the same person & said person made the comments you refer to in S-Train's comments section I must have either missed them or not realized it was said person that said them. All I remember was a very skeptical view that didn't seem associated with any sepcific bias. But like I said I'll check cause I may have missed it.

As for my downplaying racial fears... I understand how some could percieve that & take it for racism or a desire to condone racism on my part. Then again I can understand how a lot of things can be misconstrued.
If I were eloquent I could hope that my explanations about anything wouldn't be misunderstood. But I'm not eloquent & I realize that people will sometimes not completely understand a point as explained & rationalize that since another point was similar or used similar language or came from a similar person that the points must be the same.

I can agree that humans are social creatures, but this does not mean that we are chained irevocably to a collective identity rather than an individual one. I am not saying any participation in a collective is undesirable or even wrong, but that exalting the collective over the individual is. & that is the root of one of mankind's greatest & longest lived conflicts: will the collective dominate the individuals or will the individuals dominate the collective?
Race, culture, all the things that are the motivations of bias seem to me to be a result of one asserting a bias for or against a collective in place of a bias for or against an individual. I think we can all agree that judging a group of people as a whole is not usually accurate, but judging an individual is. This is because while we seek part of our identity in collectives, it does not & cannot encompass our whole being as individuals. So broad associations based on group identity are usually misleading whether applied to the group or individuals within that group.

I'll try to summize this quickly so forgive my bluntness.
The problem that we all have in the U.S. is not race. The biggest threat we have is not racism. It's government. You can view racism as a distraction that for any number of reasons &/or motivations keeps us from addressing the real problem, or you can see it as a subset of the real problem. There are good arguments to be made for the former & latter interpretations.
Now I'm not saying we have no problems with racism or prejudice that do not need to be addressed. what I'm saying is that those problems should be addressed but it's just as if not more important to address the bigger problem.
Goverment only exists because the people that live under it allow it power to function. & it becomes a see-saw: one cannot gain power without the other ceding it. It is in the governments interest to gain as much power as possible, which comes at the expense of the people, the individuals living under it. & it just so happens that a great strategy to gain governmental power is to have the people, in whole or in part, dependent on government. Another great strategy is to have people divided so it seems that government is needed to breech the conflict.
So if you'll overlook the abbreviated nature of this I hope you understand that from my point of view, racism is a symptom of a bigger problem, which is collectivism as expressed through intrusive government. & as such it follows that while fighting the systems is important & not to be neglected, fighting the disease is the only thing that will remove the symptoms.

I could be mistaken, but from what I have seen & learned over the years I feel my conclusion is pretty solid. But like you're attempts at defining racism I'm not sure I can put it into a tangible form in its entirety so it may be completely & thoroughly understood.
If I can explain or justify anything about my views of the collective vs. the individual more in depth I'll be happy to. & if you feel I am in error feel free to point it out. either here or you're welcome to e-mail me. There's no better way to understand your own views than trying to explain & or defend them to a rational thinking person.

edit: that should have read "...fighting the symptoms..." not fighting the systems. Too bad they haven't made a spell check for the mind. :)

Publicola:

I can agree that humans are social creatures, but this does not mean that we are chained irevocably to a collective identity rather than an individual one.

As I said, we can define our collective because we are conscious. That's not exalting it--exalting it would be letting the collective define us.

But…and I'm talking collectively now…when your personal identity has been effaced, all you have left is the collective one.

When you say collectivity in the form of government is the major source of our ills, I have to point out that the initial shape of that government is determined by the collective that implements it. There's then the whole feedback thing and the law of unintended consequences thing, without which slavery would still be the openly accepted order of the day worldwide.

I can do the history and the cause-and-effect to explain how racism is more fundamental to American culture than the specific form of government we have (short form of the discussion is that racism predates the American legal system, which was designed to support the culture that existed at the time). Bu more germaine to your point, I think, is a more basic fact-that race causes my irrational cultural problems and at the root of the rational cultural problems. Combine that with the fact that it was government that forced action to the point that I can make that rational/irrational categorization and you''ll see why I just can't agree that the form of government is a bigger problem TO ME than race.

P6,
First of all you are correct about the commentor in question having a racial hang up about S-Train's experience. Somehow I missed those comments when I initially recalled his criticisms & only remembered his arguments pertaining to what made him think S-Train was fabricating events, not his reasoning to justify his assumptions.
However, & this is a mainly acedemic question, do you think his racial ideas were the cause of his disbelief of S-Train's story, or were there merely justifications for his skepticism?

Now about the government & society...
A society does shape the govenrment. Initially at least. It reflects the desires of its people in one fashion or another, & this includes preserving or eradicating social structures within that society.
However governments, like religions, social clubs & any other organization, do not always remain perceptive to the needs or desires of its societies. In fact after an organization reaches a certain size & a certain longevity it becomes self concerned, self aware. This is because of its make up: unfortunately all governments are run by humans & therefore the temptations humans are faced with will affect the organization.
& government is certainly not the only example - there's the various social organizations like the NAACP, the ACLU, the NRA, etc... the religious organizations such as the Catholic Church & political organizations such as The Republican Party & the Democrat Party. All have, at one point or another in their history, forsaken either some of the ideals that inspired the organizations or the well being of its constituency for the sake of its own survival &/or growth.
So even though a government is supportive of certain things when formed, that does in no way guarantee that government will always be supportive of those things. After a certain point the will &/or the good of the people will take second place to the needs &/or desires of the government itself.
I believe our government reached that point a long time ago & things have been going downhill ever since.
Further, government fosters a dependence upon it, especially among minorities. Government has done some good here & there, but from what I've seen even most of that good it has done has been motivated by self preservation rather than benevolence. & in certain cases the suppossed or believed good that has occurred was not the best cure for the ills that it addressed.
The short version is this: while racism is a problem, especially for the races adversely affected by it, it is best addressed by educating the people rather than forcing a change in behavior & hoping they'll see the light. Goverment, while seeming to make efforts to end racism, has a vested interest in ensuring that race divides the people. It's like a bad doctor in that it doesn't want to point you to the medicine that will cure the disease & eliminate its role, but instead just keeps giving you occassional doses of medicine that treat some of the symptoms.
With that in mind racism (which is still problematic but not as much so on the whole as say 50 years ago) is not the biggest threat we all face. Nor is the government the proper vehicle for eliminating racism. At best it can only address certain symptoms. Where the greater danger of government does lie is in a subjegation of us all. This currently is more pervasive than racism within the country. It affects all people & the subterfuge used to take it off of most people's radar screens is made up of many things, not the least of which is an encouragement of racial division.
Racism in the U.S. today mainly affects those higher goals of an invidual in society - achieving a certain social status, etc...while government affects the more basic goals - earning a decent living, having the means of defense, etc...
& I do not mean to imply that racism is limited only to problems achieving those higher goals, but I think you'll agree that a person's social climb being halted because of prejudice is more common today than a person's life being in danger. Although I'll be the first to agree that a statistically low chance of being endangered by anothers racism means jack if you're the one faced with it.
So from my perspective, while racism is a problem that deserves attention, government is a much bigger threat to us all, even those adversely affected by racism. Further, government has a vested interest in continuing certain forms of racism in order to ensure a divide in its people. Racism & the problems of government are linked & addressing only racism is similar to cutting the branches of an evil tree while addressing the problems of government is more like striking the root of that tree.
& at the heart of it is a fight between who will be dominant: the collective or the individual. When the collective wins a case can be made that for the whole things are better, but it is proportionately worse for the individuals in that collective. When the individuals win, then the collective suffers, but to the benefit of the individual. I believe if you look back through history at any repressive form of government, even dictatorships, I think you'll find that the base of that power was support by a powerful &/or influential collective (be it a political party, or a racial group, or some other classification of people with a similar interest) & further that any attrocities committed by said repressive governments were directed towards another collective (Armenians in Turkey, Jews in Germany, etc...). But no government that respects the Rights of individuals (as oppossed to collectives)can without a serious alteration of that government, inflict an atrocity upon a collective. There are exceptions to this general rule, such as slavery in America, the Japanese interment in America, etc... but on the whole governments that focus on the individual rather than the group do not kill off segments of its population based on collective identity, while governments based or at least focused on a collective do.

So again while the problems associated with racism in the U.S. today should be addressed, they are not as important as keeping the government from becoming one of those repressive regimes that has murdered large segments of its population based on some sort of collective identity.

& the way to do eradicate both problems is through education: if we teach people to judge a person solely based upon his/her actions & not any sort of collective identity, then not only will racism be far less problematic, but it would be harder for a government to infringe upon the Rights of individuals.

I understand your perspective & if I had your experiences I can't say that I wouldn't feel the same. But I'm still convinced that the struggle between the collective vs. individual is at the root of the problem.

& slavery is still widely accepted in the world today. The UN won't talk about it that much, but from the reports I have seen, there are more people in bondage now than when slavery was condoned in the U.S. Whether it is 'openly' accepted or not shouldn't detract from the fact that it is still accepted.

Publicola:

However, & this is a mainly acedemic question, do you think his racial ideas were the cause of his disbelief of S-Train's story, or were there merely justifications for his skepticism?

I never considered it. My problem was the relentless attack, which I feel was caused by a fundamental disrespect allowed—perhaps even demanded—by his racial beliefs.

I understand your perspective & if I had your experiences I can't say that I wouldn't feel the same. But I'm still convinced that the struggle between the collective vs. individual is at the root of the problem.

That's more than acceptable to me at this point. And I understand your position as well, which I'll prove sometime today. The position I'm going to take as regards the outlook your presenting is that it's no better to exalt the individual over the collective than it is to exalt the collective over the individual.

Since you see an excessive focus on the collective you'll naturally present the individual position as a counterbalance. Itremains to be seen if the collective is being overvalued, by whom, and what can be done about it.

& slavery is still widely accepted in the world today. The UN won't talk about it that much, but from the reports I have seen, there are more people in bondage now than when slavery was condoned in the U.S. Whether it is 'openly' accepted or not shouldn't detract from the fact that it is still accepted.

Agreed. But I chose my words carefully. That there is work to do is a fact, but that it must be hidden is a welcome change.

P6,
My perspective, as you may know if you've spent any time over at my blog, comes mainly from the defense of indivual rights. & specifically the Right to Arms. As such when i speak of the collective I'm mainly referring to the government. Goverments, as far as collectives are concerned, are at the top of the food chain. Now most of the smaller subdivisions of Coolevtive may have slightly different cricumstances. But I feel in general that the same principles apply to a government as would another type of collective.

Two areas where I will concede that this varies slightly are the basic family unit & the individual.
The basic family unit (mother, father, children) is perhaps the only collective that I feel is not given enough importance, although it still can be given too much importance, but that is mainly the result of the remaining exception. The remaining exception is when the importance of the individual develops into a self absorbed nature. Now I'm seaking of the specific individual, not the Individual as a concept. If a person thought his/her family, friends, etc.. should be subserviant to him/her, or his/her obligations to them took second place to his/her desires for comfort or amusement (basic necessities excluded)then I would concede that as an example of placing too much importance on the individual.
With those two exceptions in mind I think my theories, undeveloped as they are, about the role of collective vs. indivdual will hold up to closer scrutiny.

Another thing to consider: most of the evils in this world were made possible or at least aided by placing too much importance on a collective identity.
For example, when a people think themselves above another people, this leads to the mistreatment of that people that is thought less of. Slavery would be a good example of this when the slaves are indetifable by a specific collective.
Further when a people place too little importance on the nature of the individual, then the collective has power to harm those individuals it chooses. An example of this would be a people placing too much power in the hands of government, which will inevitably abuse it.
Latly, all wars can be traced to a struggle between two or more collectives for dominance of at least one other.

Individuals don't start wars. They do commit crimes but I believe this would qualify as the latter exception I pointed to earlier.

Now I'm not one of those John Lennon types who longs for no collectives whatsoever (re: "Imagine") but I do feel that the greater importance should be placed upon the individual, & that the individual should in now way take second place to the collective. The only exception would be in regards to the basic family unit.

But I do look forward to your thoughts. It might take a little while to get back to you, as I have a lot of stuff to catch up on in the Right to Arms world.

BTW, how do you feel about the Right to Arms?

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