Now a lot of folk on here know...

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

...That I'm no fan of the Donald. Really no fan of the Donald.

But some things make me despair of some of the folk in opposition to Trump:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/04/facebook-live-stream-video-man-attacked-chicago-trump

This is reprehensible. Kidnapping and what I can only call lynching a person for their political beliefs is what we expect of the Klan or the more extreme white supremacists.

What do folk from the Democrats side of things think of this? (BTW I don't get a vote in the US elections, and though I would regard myself as conservative, in US terms I'm an elitist socialist.)

And what do folk from the right think too? Is this polarisation of society over the last few decades a good thing?

I find myself wanting to imprison these folk exactly as much as I want to imprison people from the racist right who do these things to black folk and immigrants, i.e. lots.

Comments

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

BTW, this drop in violent crime has happened concurrent with an absolute flood of firearm sales in the US over the last 20 years. Go figure.

Correlation with lead exposure levels having gone down appreciably since banning lead in petrol/gasoline? (It's a worldwide, or at least a supra-national correlation too BTW.)

But still, despite this, the attritional stats of gun crime don't favour the US over other developed nations with more stringent gun laws. But as far as I can see it is not really a subject for debate. Until you chaps replace the bill of rights with something even better (because it is still pretty damn good, no matter what) this situation will not change.

In general, when it comes to change, I think it should be properly thought-out, managed, and implemented with as little damage to the fabric of society as possible; unless there is an injustice that cries to heaven for redress - like slavery. It may be (I am uncertain, certainly) that in a world of overproduction in food, goods, and services, and great distributional and logistic abilities, poverty is another such thing.

The gun thing is a trifle behind in the queue for things that need to be done urgently; climate change may not be, even though we as a species adapt pretty well thanks in part to the benefits of civilisation.

But what do I know?

[Tips hat.]