Saturday, May 30, 2020

On the Death of George Floyd

Fact 1: The death of George Floyd was not divisive. Everyone agrees it was murder.

Fact 2: Everyone wants the same thing for that cop: try him for murder, throw him in jail for murder. In fact, try and jail every cop who commits any crime. In fact, cops should be subject to special guidelines wherein they have to serve TWICE the normal penalty for any crime they commit. Get rid of "qualified immunity" for cops and politicians. SCOTUS invented that in 1982, and it has been an unqualified disaster.

Fact 3: The riots ARE divisive. Blacks are destroying the lives of other blacks. IF we are not supposed to stand by while whites kill blacks (and of course, no one should stand by), then why do you want us to stand by while blacks destroy blacks? That is exactly what the riots are doing. One black man died at the hands of a white man, and already over 170 black businesses in the black community have been destroyed, the lives of thousands disrupted and destroyed, by these riots.

Fact 4: The riots are not being caused by locals. This isn't local outrage, this is manufactured outrage, people who were imported, or who imported themselves, to destroy communities they are not themselves a part of. Shouldn't we be trying to stop that?

Fact 5: 50% of murderers are black males between the ages of 15 and 30, 50% of murder victims are black males between the ages of 15 and 30. Of the 3203 black murder victims in 2017, 2627 were black on black murder. That's 82% of murder victims being killed by their own community.

Most murders in the US result when two young men who know each other get in a fight and one kills the other. Half the time it is young white men, half the time it is young black men. But, since young black men only make up 6% of the population, yet commit 50% of the murders, it is pretty clear that young black men do this on a per capita basis far out of proportion to other young men.

Fact 6: Blacks are in FAR MORE DANGER from their own community than they are from cops. But, as Van Jones points out, racist whites - who tend to be white liberals - refuse to acknowledge the facts.

Conclusion: be careful
Now, I have undoubtedly upset some of you. Your feelings are raw, jaded, etc., and you want to deny one or more of the facts above, because you FEEL that there is something wrong.

Aristotelian logic says:
Facts are infallible.
Feelings are facts.
Therefore feelings are infallible.

Yeah, that is a valid line of reasoning, but it isn't true. "Valid" means you constructed the argument properly, according to the rules of logic. "True" means the conclusion accurately describes reality. But the conclusion does not do so. Why is the argument wrong? Because the terms don't match.

Now, facts are infallibly true, and you truly do feel the way you feel,

BUT

A fact is a statement that accurately describes external reality.
A feeling is an emotion that accurately represents your internal reflection/reaction to reality.

And your internal reflection/reaction absolutely can be wrong. You may not have all the facts, you may think about those facts in the wrong way. Your reactions, your emotions, your feelings can be totally wrong. Feelings are NOT infallible, feelings are often complete bunk, wildly inaccurate. You aren't infallible, so your feelings are not infallibly correct.

The facts are listed above.
They cannot be controverted.
Your feelings are facts, but your feelings are an internal state that don't necessarily match or accurately respond to external reality.

No comments:

Post a Comment