IF YOU DONT LIKE THAT YOU DONT LIKE (UPDATE: he fired himself)

[Nuntius]

If there is a place other than America that is better for those starting with nothing to make something of themselves, I would like to know about it.

Anywhere with universal health care.

And cheaper universities too.

I’m pretty sure the “American Dream” is just a myth perpetuated so poor people think they can make it as much as rich people. A dream is way cheaper than actual wealth redistribution that would allow a kid from a poor family to have a better access to healthcare and to a higher education.

It’s really not complicated. The more money you have, the less the extra money have an influence on your happiness. So to have a happier, healthier, less prone to crime society, you would be better off having more people in the 50k range and less billionaires.
Plus people winning 50k generally don’t take the money out of the society by using tax heavens. No one can really spend 10 billions.

But I guess some people have somehow convinced themselves that having a lot of poor people is globally better and is the only way to do it.

The billionaires that you mentioned and the people that work for them (the politicians) have indeed made sure that the populace is convinced that this is the only way to do it.

[Nuntius]

And you can certainly find some recent examples of unarmed, unaggressive whites who got killed by cops. Problem is those cases don't lead to huge ratings and thus don't receive the same extensive media coverage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_Mardis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kelly_Thomas

It's interesting that you mentioned Daniel Shaver. You know that BLM called Shaver's murder an outrage and that they held protests for him, right? If you don't know it, read up:

https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_4f6138fe-ea8c-551b-9e60-9e99feacacf2.html

[Metallikid]

Can someone provide context instead of some tweets? I've heard many people say 'All lives matter' but it doesn't mean they're racist.
I get that, at this moment, it's about black lives but what happened that Cousins called this guy out during a sensitive time?

If you're saying 'All Lives Matter' as a response to "Black Lives Matter" yes, you are racist.

[Syd-TK3]

How easy would it have been for him to just ignore the tweet?
Cousins asked about BLM and he responds with ALM, you know what that means and are just asking for it, it's as simple as that.

[Nuntius]

I’ll probably get flamed for this but whatever.

I have a different feeling about this and don't agree with the terms of this Analogy. This idea that people believe that their should be a "Daddy" ( I guess the government?) that is here to provide for all Americans a "fair share" to everyone is unfathomable to me. There is no "fair share" in life. Some people are born rich some born poor. Some born black, some white or Asian. Some born ugly, some born handsome. Some born tall, some short. There is no such thing a "fair share" biologically or socially.

A better example would be: Imagine you go hunting. Your friend brings a gun his dad gave him. Your cousin brings a knife he bought. A stranger brings crossbow. You don't bring anything. Well guess what?
Is it fair that they are hunting the same prey but they are starting with wepons and you have nothing? No, not exactly.

Does it mean you CAN'T hunt or figure out a way to make a weapon to eat? NO! it's up to YOU to improve your chances to eat. No one else is going to do it for you. They are worrying about themselves. They have their own prey to hunt.

What are your Options? Eat or die.

The American Way is to figure out a way to improve your lot in life. Not rely on society of the government to fix it for you. There will always be someone who was born with more than you. Your job is to the same for your kids.

Just be grateful that you are even in a "Jungle" where there is plenty of opportunity to survive.


If there is a place other than America that is better for those starting with nothing to make something of themselves, I would like to know about it.

It's funny that so many people actually believe the bolded. America actually isn't that great for economic mobility (27th in the world in this study)

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/ranked-the-social-mobility-of-82-countries-1028885766

There's a bunch of European countries where it's easier to change your economic status. Most people's economic status in the US is largely based on that of their parents.

#1 Denmark 85.2
#2 Norway 83.6
#3 Finland 83.6
#4 Sweden 83.5
#5 Iceland 82.7
#6 Netherlands 82.4
#7 Switzerland 82.1
#8 Belgium 80.1
#9 Austria 80.1
#10 Luxembourg 79.8
#11 Germany 78.8
#12 France 76.7
#13 Slovenia 76.4
#14 Canada 76.1
#15 Japan 76.1
#16 Australia 75.1
#17 Malta 75.0
#18 Ireland 75.0
#19 Czech Republic 74.7
#20 Singapore 74.6
#21 United Kingdom 74.4
#22 New Zealand 74.3
#23 Estonia 73.5
#24 Portugal 72.0
#25 Korean Republic 71.4
#26 Lithuania 70.5
#27 United States 70.4
#28 Spain 70.0
#29 Cyprus 69.4
#30 Poland 69.1

I guess your right. But That’s to move from poor the median. To reach above the median, id imagine it’s Still US. It’s also interesting the top of your chart is all small euro countries that have homogeneous populations and fairly tight immigration policies

Actually, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg are quite multicultural.

[-TheDocOfDenial]

I love threads like these because it exposes racists on this board.

[Lockdown504090]

:sleep:

We need NBA back, sheesh.
Maybe the guy isn't as "woke" as he could be. Maybe he was just trolling Cousins. Who cares?

80 percent of the players who you want to watch care.....

[DavidSterned]

And you can certainly find some recent examples of unarmed, unaggressive whites who got killed by cops. Problem is those cases don't lead to huge ratings and thus don't receive the same extensive media coverage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_Mardis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kelly_Thomas

It's interesting that you mentioned Daniel Shaver. You know that BLM called Shaver's murder an outrage and that they held protests for him, right? If you don't know it, read up:

https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_4f6138fe-ea8c-551b-9e60-9e99feacacf2.html

I'm aware there were definitely some folks protesting it, but you also can't compare the responses. It'd be fairly disingenuous to do so, and the national media has made no concerted effort to steadily cover that or other instances of non-black police violence. The media still wields a lot of control over what the national response is going to be.

Which is why, fair or not, a lot of the critics on this come from the perspective of believing that a lot of this conversation seeks to divide rather than unite and frame certain things in a manner that only fuels identity politics and tribalism, rather than true social unity that seeks to tackle the teeth of some of these problems (which are all multi-faceted and cannot be easily summed up with simple and unproductive tropes like "if you're not with us 100% then you're racist and part of the problem"). It's always important to listen to each other and seek to create a productive dialog, and far too often we aren't seeing that and are seeing blind rage drown out the folks trying to have productive conversations.

[ILOVEIT]

Warrior fan who lives in Sacramento now. Can't stand Grant's style....and I've called him on his talk show a couple of times. That call is soooooooooooooooooo deliberate and fake....ugh. I do give him credit from time to time for calling things like they are about the team....not being very good etc.

[HEKTOR]

[Nuntius]

And you can certainly find some recent examples of unarmed, unaggressive whites who got killed by cops. Problem is those cases don't lead to huge ratings and thus don't receive the same extensive media coverage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_Mardis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kelly_Thomas

It's interesting that you mentioned Daniel Shaver. You know that BLM called Shaver's murder an outrage and that they held protests for him, right? If you don't know it, read up:

https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_4f6138fe-ea8c-551b-9e60-9e99feacacf2.html

I'm aware there were definitely some folks protesting it, but you also can't compare the responses. It'd be fairly disingenuous to do so, and the national media has made no concerted effort to steadily cover that or other instances of non-black police violence. The media still wields a lot of control over what the national response is going to be.

Which is why, fair or not, a lot of the critics on this come from the perspective of believing that a lot of this conversation seeks to divide rather than unite and frame certain things in a manner that only fuels identity politics and tribalism, rather than true social unity that seeks to tackle the teeth of some of these problems (which are all multi-faceted and cannot be easily summed up with simple and unproductive tropes like "if you're not with us 100% then you're racist and part of the problem"). It's always important to listen to each other and seek to create a productive dialog, and far too often we aren't seeing that and are seeing blind rage drown out the folks trying to have productive conversations.

1) By "some folks" you mean the BLM movement that people are decrying when they pull the "All Lives Matter" maneuver. Their stance on police brutality and the impunity culture in the police is consistent. The race of the victim doesn't matter to them.

2) Don't give me that crap about the media. i don't care about what they do. The media does what the media always did. They chase after profits. They are private businesses after all and under the current economic system, the pursuit of profit is the sole goal of private businesses.

[OfficialRef]

The witchhunt is real.

Calling Grant a racist is stupid. Hes ignorant for sure but this just seems like a bunch of people who have had it in for Grant trying to gang up on the guy.

[DavidSterned]

It's interesting that you mentioned Daniel Shaver. You know that BLM called Shaver's murder an outrage and that they held protests for him, right? If you don't know it, read up:

https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_4f6138fe-ea8c-551b-9e60-9e99feacacf2.html

I'm aware there were definitely some folks protesting it, but you also can't compare the responses. It'd be fairly disingenuous to do so, and the national media has made no concerted effort to steadily cover that or other instances of non-black police violence. The media still wields a lot of control over what the national response is going to be.

Which is why, fair or not, a lot of the critics on this come from the perspective of believing that a lot of this conversation seeks to divide rather than unite and frame certain things in a manner that only fuels identity politics and tribalism, rather than true social unity that seeks to tackle the teeth of some of these problems (which are all multi-faceted and cannot be easily summed up with simple and unproductive tropes like "if you're not with us 100% then you're racist and part of the problem"). It's always important to listen to each other and seek to create a productive dialog, and far too often we aren't seeing that and are seeing blind rage drown out the folks trying to have productive conversations.

1) By "some folks" you mean the BLM movement that people are decrying when they pull the "All Lives Matter" maneuver. Their stance on police brutality and the impunity culture in the police is consistent. The race of the victim doesn't matter to them.

2) Don't give me that crap about the media. i don't care about what they do. The media does what the media always did. They chase after profits. They are private businesses after all and under the current economic system, the pursuit of profit is the sole goal of private businesses.

1. Again, if you believe the responses to them are equal then I don't know what to tell you. They weren't equal and that should be fairly obvious. BLM is a pretty large umbrella so I'm sure many, many folks involved cared deeply about the Daniel Shaver shooting. And many also did not. I'm not going to assume to generalize everyone involved under that umbrella (that's millions and millions of people).

2. I don't believe you for a second when you say that you don't care about the media, but okay. The media is a highly influential vessel of the system that you're literally railing against in the next sentence. If you don't think they're critical in framing people's belief structures then you're incredibly naive and myopic.

[Bornstellar]

If you can't understand the dismissive undertone of saying "all lives matter" then I'm not sure it's worth explaining, you're clearly part of the problem to begin with

All lives matter, if you dont agree with that then you clearly are part of the problem and a racist

People like you are sad AF

[LKN]

If there is a place other than America that is better for those starting with nothing to make something of themselves, I would like to know about it.

Anywhere with universal health care.

And cheaper universities too.

I’m pretty sure the “American Dream” is just a myth perpetuated so poor people think they can make it as much as rich people. A dream is way cheaper than actual wealth redistribution that would allow a kid from a poor family to have a better access to healthcare and to a higher education.

It’s really not complicated. The more money you have, the less the extra money has an influence on your happiness. So to have a happier, healthier, less prone to crime society, you would be better off having more people in the 50k range and less billionaires.
Plus people winning 50k generally don’t take the money out of the society by using tax heavens. No one can really spend 10 billions.

But I guess some people have somehow convinced themselves that having a lot of poor people is globally better and is the only way to do it.

Obviously communism doesn't work either... but you are correct that our wealth inequity has reached levels that are bad for society. In particular, it's difficult to have a functioning democracy with huge levels of wealth inequality.

[LKN]

#1 Denmark 85.2
#2 Norway 83.6
#3 Finland 83.6
#4 Sweden 83.5
#5 Iceland 82.7
#6 Netherlands 82.4
#7 Switzerland 82.1
#8 Belgium 80.1
#9 Austria 80.1
#10 Luxembourg 79.8
#11 Germany 78.8
#12 France 76.7
#13 Slovenia 76.4
#14 Canada 76.1
#15 Japan 76.1
#16 Australia 75.1
#17 Malta 75.0
#18 Ireland 75.0
#19 Czech Republic 74.7
#20 Singapore 74.6
#21 United Kingdom 74.4
#22 New Zealand 74.3
#23 Estonia 73.5
#24 Portugal 72.0
#25 Korean Republic 71.4
#26 Lithuania 70.5
#27 United States 70.4
#28 Spain 70.0
#29 Cyprus 69.4
#30 Poland 69.1

Lithuania is ahead of USA, thats funny. When I was younger, I was bitter for being Lithuanian, for our poor wages and economy, but in recent years I realized how lucky I got. I am sick person, have strong depression and all that, and for being a working man I get so much healthcare benefits. I realized that if I was American, even if my wage was 4 times larger, I would probably be in serious medical depts right now, I would be Joker 2019. I cant imagine surviving there anymore, and with guns everywhere, the cancer that is second amendment, I would probably be years gone by now.

Capitalism in Lithuania definitely works, its not socialist state just because we have social healthcare and that our country actually invest into our citizens, rather than putting billions in wars for novelty of ''ruling the world'' and ''freeing'' all that oil. My grandparents were Siberia deportees, when they came back, they had nothing, and their children, my aunts still made a name for themselves when Soviet regime was destroyed. That said, I do not advocate for Socialism, but Capitalism is flawed and most people just do not want to admit it. Capitalism gives everyone a chance at life, but in practice, capitalism favors very few mental strengths in human beings, if you dont have it, good luck, you will study and work hard all your live, crawl into middle class maybe, but thats about it.

Americans who still think that their country is Utopia, the paragon of righteousness and freedom, well thats funny, all that propaganda worked. - America, the good guy in every war, and defender of freedom - written by America.

With the leader that is sitting there right now, being good for nothing, USA has lost all their right to lecture the world. Its done, you lost it.

Stay safe.

I think that the best system is generally one of free markets with a strong social welfare system. That's how much of north Europe (full of strong economies) operates.

[HEKTOR]

1. Again, if you believe the responses to them are equal then I don't know what to tell you. They weren't equal and that should be fairly obvious. BLM is a pretty large umbrella so I'm sure many, many folks involved cared deeply about the Daniel Shaver shooting. And many also did not. I'm not going to assume to generalize everyone involved under that umbrella (that's millions and millions of people).

The responses haven't been anywhere close to the same. Another name worth mentioning is Tony Timpa who was killed by the police in a similar way to George Floyd. Instead of the officer putting his knee across Timpa's neck like what was done to Floyd, his knee was on Timpa's back as he suffocated. I believe Timpa had originally called the police for help as he was off his meds and even feared that the police would "kill him" while they were arresting him. What's even worse is that there were a group of officers and they were making fun of him and laughing about it the whole time. Definitely a tough vid to watch.

2. I don't believe you for a second when you say that you don't care about the media, but okay. The media is a highly influential vessel of the system that you're literally railing against in the next sentence. If you don't think they're critical in framing people's belief structures then you're incredibly naive and myopic.

The media is the root cause for racial divide. They are always talking about race, even in this event with George Floyd. Yet, there is no evidence to suggest that this was racial. The media lied about Michael Brown from Ferguson and as a result of their coverage of his death, riots took place in Ferguson, people were killed, businesses looted and burnt, and the community destroyed.

What's more concerning is that one is not able to have a civil conversation about these things god forbid one actually quotes statistics and raw data that doesn't support the MSM's narrative. People need to start waking up and realize that they are just pawns in this. Racism obviously exists but so does police brutality - regardless of race. More focus should be on this, and education as ideologues pushing identity politics are running rampant in Western educational systems and are only putting more gas on the fire by dividing people as opposed to trying to bring people together. Personal responsibility from all sides should be promoted and perhaps then we can and will see real change.

[bullsnewdynasty]

Why does Napear feel the need to defend himself so hard against keyboard warriors?

Cousins as usual trying to be a bully. Just go away dude, you get paid millions to rehab injuries, stop acting like you're so persecuted.

[Nuntius]

I'm aware there were definitely some folks protesting it, but you also can't compare the responses. It'd be fairly disingenuous to do so, and the national media has made no concerted effort to steadily cover that or other instances of non-black police violence. The media still wields a lot of control over what the national response is going to be.

Which is why, fair or not, a lot of the critics on this come from the perspective of believing that a lot of this conversation seeks to divide rather than unite and frame certain things in a manner that only fuels identity politics and tribalism, rather than true social unity that seeks to tackle the teeth of some of these problems (which are all multi-faceted and cannot be easily summed up with simple and unproductive tropes like "if you're not with us 100% then you're racist and part of the problem"). It's always important to listen to each other and seek to create a productive dialog, and far too often we aren't seeing that and are seeing blind rage drown out the folks trying to have productive conversations.

1) By "some folks" you mean the BLM movement that people are decrying when they pull the "All Lives Matter" maneuver. Their stance on police brutality and the impunity culture in the police is consistent. The race of the victim doesn't matter to them.

2) Don't give me that crap about the media. i don't care about what they do. The media does what the media always did. They chase after profits. They are private businesses after all and under the current economic system, the pursuit of profit is the sole goal of private businesses.

1. Again, if you believe the responses to them are equal then I don't know what to tell you. They weren't equal and that should be fairly obvious. BLM is a pretty large umbrella so I'm sure many, many folks involved cared deeply about the Daniel Shaver shooting. And many also did not. I'm not going to assume to generalize everyone involved under that umbrella (that's millions and millions of people).

2. I don't believe you for a second when you say that you don't care about the media, but okay. The media is a highly influential vessel of the system that you're literally railing against in the next sentence. If you don't think they're critical in framing people's belief structures then you're incredibly naive and myopic.

1) The response from BLM's part was pretty damn equal. They publicly called out the murder and they protested about it. If you want to dispute that fact, you need to provide some kind of evidence to the contrary. You know, just like I did when I replied to your original post.

2) The media definitely plays a critical role in shaping people's beliefs. They have always been the ones that propagate the views that a country's establishment wants to promote. The US media has played a large role in shaping the beliefs that the average American has and, yes, that includes the ingrained racism that the protests are decrying. That's why I said "don't give me the crap about the media". It's an argument that works against the point you're trying to make, not in favor of it.

[lakerz12]

Is it really about "Black Lives Matter"?

If it were, what about the ~2,800 homicides every year to black Americans?

90% committed by other African Americans.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls

Why doesn't LeBron ever tweet about that? Do their lives not matter?

It seems like this is actually about "The White Man is at Fault" or "The Police is at Fault" or "[White] America is at fault".

Apparently it's like the N word where if you're black, you're allowed to use it. Likewise if you're black, you're allowed to kill another black person without creating a movement or a protest.