I do love the obsession with ~inner cities~ he and his supporters have. Watching him speak to these crowds of people losing their shit cheering over his dystopian portraits of these third-world shit holes crumbling under all their "carnage" and how he's going to fix them by bringing back "law and order" was so ... strange. The man hasn't been below 14th Street or above 96th Street since the '60s, and all those people have never stepped foot in a city - let alone The Inner City - and never plan to. Why is that one of their biggest rallying cries? I mean, I know that creating this image of cities helps to solidify the idea that rural America is the moral backbone of our country while the godless festering hellholes overflowing with the Criminal Element is just a problem that needs to be fixed, but still. And besides, I don't know why, of all presidents, he would want to lift so many things - law and order, the silent majority, forgotten america etc etc - from Nixon. Or maybe he'll be like Ford, and soon enough it'll be the Chicago Tribune this time with the cover "Trump to city: drop dead." (I also don't know why he'd want to model himself so much after Putin of all people too, regardless of whether or not there's any connection between the two, but that's a whole other thing.)
A long time ago on the Serious Thread we discussed this; I pointed out that it was time for the inner city communities to get serious about fixing these problems otherwise the other side would. The community fixing itself is the best solution (and how I wish it would happen), people like Trump "fixing" it will be very ugly. This goes for Chicago as well; you can only go so many years behaving this way before people are going to look at you and decide you are going to be "helped" whether you like it or not. Don't worry though, we'll get it right eventually, once we have exhausted all other options.
Sure, but again, why do they care? What does a small section of Chicago have to do with a rally full of passionate Trump supporters in Missouri or Texas?
One of the planks of elderly conservativism for a LONG time has been being tough on crime. In all forms. Everywhere. As I recall, the discussion centered on racial profiling, double standards in police tactics, etc. In any case, it looks like police are going to start cracking heads again, which means more cops get shot, which means more heads get cracked......you get it, the spiral goes further down. Anyways, not a good scene. Fathering your children and having a Government that put more emphasis on jobs (amongst other things) than welfare would be a much better solution than the billy club.
Yeah, I understand that. But the answer to "why do people thousands of miles away from a place having problems with crime care about the crime there" can't really be "because they care about the crime there." Even from one inner-city-person to another, I can barely bring myself to feel any stronger kind of way about Chicago then "damn, that sucks for them," and I know little to no other people who live in cities who do. So I'm trying to understand why it's such an important issue to someone in, like, Nebraska.
It's not just the inner cities, it's the trailer parks and everywhere else that has crime. Chicago is just the lowest of the low hanging fruit and the image everyone thinks of when they think of urban decline. Trump is going to empower police forces around the country to go back to bone crushing like the old days in high crime areas in Nebraska just as much as he will in the South side; it will be drugs and vice as well, not just violent crime. Why exactly old people and fundamentalists (they should be included in this) care so much about law and order? I don't know, it's tied to morality and civility and all that other crap they always go on and on about.
Why do people on the left get so concerned about who can use what bathroom in NC? Or care what the Mississippi flag looks like? I mean if people shooting each other every 2 hours of every day of the year illicit's a "Meh, sucks to be them" attitude, why get so worked up about people hurting other people's feelings?
Can someone explain to me why it's bad to send in Feds to clean up Chicago? Obviously whatever in the fuck they are doing isn't working.
Well, yeah, on a similar note, I would think that if anything is best left for the states, it would be how to deal with their own crime problems. Things like "hurting people's feelings" are universal issues of right or wrong. There's a disagreement about how much they should be cared about or over which side is right and which side is wrong, but it still transcends their immediate environment. These discussions about crime are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of a specific kind of place that they've never been in. Thinking crime is bad is universal, but I'm not going to hold the opinion of how to go about solving a crime problem in the inner cities from someone who's never spent time there in that high regard. The vision Trump has been painting of what cities are like, I think even he knows they're inaccurate. There's a lot of things surrounding all this that I'm not a fan of that's not specifically the action he wants. (The least important reason being I still can't quite accept the idea of our president sitting around watching Fox News and then tweeting out policy based on a gut reaction rather than, say, prioritizing the issue and figuring it out with his team of people that are at least supposed to have been working on these kinds of issues their whole lives and know better.) If the idea is that Chicago can't afford enough police to even cover the bare minimum because of their budget crisis, let alone to cover a surge of crime, and now they're going to get more help from the federal level then, sure, I think that would help. But I think the big divide here is that there's so much of a focus on temporary surface-level bandaid solutions like increased policing and incarceration, while the same people have little interest in or are actively working against long-term solutions in addition to all that. This administration, in general, is pretty much only focused on temporary surface-level bandaid solutions for every problem.
Ive been thinking about this a lot since the word carnage has been harped on in the media. Hyperbole is a device both sides use. Somehow we are a country at the same time racist, bigotted, xenophobic, that any and all minorities from around the world die to get to? It's a framing issue politicians have since it's the easiest way to illicit a response from the voting public.
As Juice linked to providing federal help to a city that requests additional resources is fine. The issue with Trump's tweet is several fold: It clearly implies it would be happening against the city and state's will. What authority does the President have to do that, and what mechanism does he have that would actually accomplish it? The answers to both of those questions are all bad. Who is the audience for this tweet? It's not like this occurred in a closed door meeting with the governor/mayor where Trump leaned on them and said "get your shit together," he tweeted it publicly. This is a strong indication that this stance is not in any way for the betterment of Chicago, but is red meat for his fans who hate Chicago. Trump's prior statements on how he believes crime should be dealt with are all indicative of skull-cracking, civil-rights-violating, ineffective policy. So we can probably look forward to Chicago getting worse.
The Onion has long been the height of satire, and I think this is one of their best pieces ever: http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/you-people-made-me-give-my-peanut-farm-i-got-be-pr-55143
It's getting harder and harder to tell real news from satire. And I find it absolutely hilarious that Donald is still tweeting from his own, personal account, not the Presidential account.
The first thing that strikes me is, why Chicago? According to this site Chicago isn't even in the top twenty for violent crime in US cities. So what makes Chicago so special?
Well, protesters in Chicago had a hand in getting a Trump rally or two cancelled. And, as has been proven this past weekend, President Crybaby doesn't exactly handle it well when things don't go his way and carries something of a vindictive streak.
When you take in all of Chicago, no it's not that bad. There are nice places. Then there is Austin. Population 95K, 2017 total shootings 32 Or Garfield Park. Population (East & West) Approx. 38K, 2017 total shootings 25. (2017 shootings through 1/21) So basically you've got two areas with a combined population of about 135K and in 21 days 57 people have been shot there. In January. A cold January.
The two neighborhoods I listed have a combined total of about 1/5 the population of Memphis. Memphis would've had to of had 285 shootings through the first 21 days of the year to equal the output of those two neighborhoods. Even Memphis is nowhere near that.
It's easy enough to double the population with 0 added shootings. Then Memphis would've had to of had 140 shootings in 21 days. Still not even close.