bigotry

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bigotry, Civil liberties, US politics
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Ampersand is furious:

There’s no way a white person would have been shot the way James Perez (or Kendra James before him, or Jose Poot before her) was shot. And if by some miracle a white person was shot on a pretext pull-over, there’s no way the Portland DA’s office would cheat the grand jury system to make sure that the cops were spared the discomfort of a trial. And if that did happen, the mainstream papers would at least report it.

Mike Schrunk and his boss John Bradley looked at the color of the victim’s skin and said, “screw it! Blacks aren’t human; the shooting of an unarmed black person doesn’t require a trial, because black lives aren’t worth that much.” A hundred years ago Schrunk and Bradley would have gotten their rocks off participating in lynch mobs, but since they can’t have that pleasure nowadays, they have to settle for gaming the justice system to make it legal for cops to shoot blacks.

It drives me up a wall that Schrunk and Bradley are still being treated with respect. Why aren’t they spit on by every decent person, everywhere they go? Why aren’t they turned away from restaurants and stores? Why aren’t their houses and cars vandalized every day? Why isn’t the mayor – or any of the folks running for mayor – calling for them to resign or be thrown out of office?

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bigotry, Blogs, US politics
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The Sideshow on anti-semitism and anti-zionism:

The religious aspects of the situation can be terrifying, but let’s not pretend that it’s only the Islamic world that’s being horrible and bigoted about it. The Pentecostal Christians who “support” Israel with such fervor are possibly even more nasty and dangerous than Israel’s overt enemies. Virtually all of them are extremely anti-semitic, and the outcome of their planned “defense” of Israel is even worse for Israelis than merely dissolving the state. We’re talking about people who aspire to seeing virtually everyone in the Middle-east, Muslims and Jews alike, wiped out.



So let’s be clear: You can not distinguish anti-semitism merely on the basis of support for Israel – and I’m not just talking about the particular policies of this or that Israeli government: I mean any degree of Zionism or anti-zionism at all. There are plenty of Zionists who are anti-semitic, and there are even anti-zionism who would be perfectly happy to have their daughter marry a Jew just as long as Israel itself no longer existed.


Body and Soul:
Diary of a blogging hiatus:



Day 1: Life is better if you don’t read the New York Times.

Day 2: We are burdened by the obvious and nevertheless absurd idea that nonfiction is real and fiction is false. Newspapers are full of lies and there is nothing as honest as a Raymond Carver or Alice Munro story. I don’t think I ever want to bother reading nonfiction again.

Day 3: The New Yorker’s fiction isn’t as good as it used to be.

Day 4: I should at least look at the headlines. I mean, I’m still a citizen and all, right? I ought to have some notion of what’s going on in the world. It doesn’t require me to express an opinion or anything.

Day 5: I should save that article. I might want to write about it if I start blogging again.


Counterspin:



A VOTE FOR JEB IS A VOTE FOR MORE DEAD KIDS: The Miami Herald has just published an explosive report on the appalling state of Florida’s Child Welfare system under Jeb Bush.