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I wouldn't say so. Just looking at what Biden did as a senator: In 1983 he introduced the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act, which became law in 1984. That's the ma

by knaq 6y ago

I wouldn't say so. Just looking at what Biden did as a senator: In 1983 he introduced the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act, which became law in 1984. That's the main piece of law that enabled civil asset forfeiture. That's how cops take property, alleging it to be drug money without any evidence. It's legalized theft, turning cops into gangs that prey on the people. Black neighborhoods are popular targets. Note that "defund the cops" will make them rely more on this source of revenue! In 1994 he introduced the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This is the infamous law that put many black people in prison for decades, particularly for crack cocaine. (meanwhile his own son smokes crack with impunity, aside from being tossed out of the Navy) Kamala Harris used the law very often as prosecutor. She warned against leniency, saying that she needed the prisoners to fight California wildfires. In other words, she wanted black slaves. It took Donald Trump to fix this problem, with him signing the First Step Act in 2018. It really does seem that the facts are the other way around.

mindslight 6y ago
The bounds of cognitive dissonance never cease to amaze me. First, you're dragging the argument into personal whataboutism, seemingly so you can include irrelevant jabs about family members. Even though cracksmoking by itself wouldn't have harmed anybody else, unlike say a nepotic and malevolent pandemic response that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Second, even continuing in your celebrity framing, there is a huge difference between introducing establishment legislation decades ago that disproportionately affected minorities and overtly encouraging racist militias as part of one's ongoing campaign. The correct answer when a racist militia expresses their support is condemnation, not acceptance. That newly inflamed distributed bigotry will haunt us for decades. For context I'm a libertarian and shy away from ascribing racial motivations because racism begets more racism (aka "identity politics") and it's all just a form of collectivism. I see Breonna Taylor's murder as a failure to apply the rule of law to the police themselves, and not racism per se. But that bullshit about Harris's "birth certificate" was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I'm done steelmanning Republican talking points to explain away the elephant in the room as just some fading contingent. You too can either admit that and move forward, or be part of the problem dragging us back 50 years.

by knaq 6y ago

mindslight 6y ago

The bounds of cognitive dissonance never cease to amaze me. First, you're dragging the argument into personal whataboutism, seemingly so you can include irrelevant jabs about family members. Even though cracksmoking by itself wouldn't have harmed anybody else, unlike say a nepotic and malevolent pandemic response that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Second, even continuing in your celebrity framing, there is a huge difference between introducing establishment legislation decades ago that disproportionately affected minorities and overtly encouraging racist militias as part of one's ongoing campaign. The correct answer when a racist militia expresses their support is condemnation, not acceptance. That newly inflamed distributed bigotry will haunt us for decades. For context I'm a libertarian and shy away from ascribing racial motivations because racism begets more racism (aka "identity politics") and it's all just a form of collectivism. I see Breonna Taylor's murder as a failure to apply the rule of law to the police themselves, and not racism per se. But that bullshit about Harris's "birth certificate" was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I'm done steelmanning Republican talking points to explain away the elephant in the room as just some fading contingent. You too can either admit that and move forward, or be part of the problem dragging us back 50 years.