Except, apparently, to all the black lives currently endorsing Bloomberg.
You don’t like Bloomberg. Got it.
…don’t use black people as a shield to protect the man who terrorised communities of colour for just over a decade. You can pretend that Bloomberg didn’t support, promote and defend a racist policy that disproportionately targeted people of colour if you like. You can pretend that he wasn’t still defending that policy this year until it was politically inconvenient to do so. You are welcome to erase black people from the narrative except for the ones that happen to agree with you.
I’ve got it. I know exactly where you stand.
So what are you saying about me if I don’t condemn Bloomberg completely? Spell it out explicitly, please.
…I’ve said what I said. You are happy to support a man who terrorised black communities for a decade. You’ve had plenty of opportunity to condemn those acts in this thread but you haven’t. You could have taken a stand like **RTFirefly ** who concedes that “he’s a racist, sexist asshole” but would vote for him if he were the eventual nominee. (And if I lived in America I would do exactly the same thing) But you haven’t.
What else is there for me to say?
Wait, so everyone in this thread who hasn’t explicitly come out and condemned stop and frisk to your satisfaction is… what, exactly?
…I’ve never seen a more obvious attempt to bait someone into breaking the rules of this board than this.
But it isn’t going to work.
Because you are fundamentally missing the point. My opinion on other posters isn’t relevant here in Great Debates. The fact that people are so willing to overlook the fact that Bloomberg terrorised communities of colour for a decade *is *relevant to this debate. This thread is full of rational, intelligent, nice people who are prepared to ignore what Bloomberg did because there is a possibility he might be more “electable” than the other candidates. It doesn’t matter that the word “electable” doesn’t really mean anything, we can’t measure it, and in the current climate is almost impossible to accurately gauge.
Bloomberg would be a terrible candidate. He would be terrible because of what he’s done before, he would be terrible because his moral centre can turn on a dime. He is only in the race because he is pumping millions of dollars into propaganda. The question really should be why are you supporting this person who has done these terrible, terrible things?
He seems like a smart cookie who gets things done with generally positive policy positions. If he’s the nominee, the black voters will likely give him a pass on stop n frisk. He’d be a solid candidate.
No baiting. You just seem to be on the hairy edge of making some pretty serious implications about the character of me and, it seems, anyone else who doesn’t toe your line on Bloomberg.
…all of the candidates are smart cookies who get things done with generally positive policy positions. All of the candidates are solid candidates. If someone else becomes the nominee then black voters will likely give them a pass on all things they’ve done in the past.
I’m not seeing why Bloomberg is so much better than the other nominees that we should overlook what he’s done.
Then tell me how my assertion about the Hitler analogy was wrong.
Forgive me as I really don’t want to research Wakefield now, as that’s really for another thread I think, so just a general comment about your earlier anti-vax analogy. Bloomberg, a long time advocate for gun control, looked at the science saying fewer guns means fewer deaths, and tried to get guns off the streets to save lives. Anti-vax people ignore the science that says vaccinations save lives, but act in a way that will result in more deaths. I don’t think your analogy holds.
I heartily disagree. Yes, I did live there and as I said I was against SaF then. Truly without trying to sound snarky, I did not do drive-alongs with the NYPD and see what they did. And either that type of thing did not make news at that time, or I just didn’t see the stories. Can’t remember which, but that is beside the point. I knew it was wrong. Still do.
I could get angry about this since, and correct me if I’m wrong, you are essentially calling me a racist on the same level as, oh, David Duke. But as you are just someone on the 'net, as am I, I’m not angry. Believe what you will about my empathy or lack thereof as you wish. I don’t care.
You just said he’d be a terrible candidate. Now, they’re all solid?
…I already have.
It isn’t about the science. It about the motivation. It doesn’t matter if anti-vaxxers ignore the science. Bloomberg ignored the science (despite your assertion that he didn’t) . The analogy was about motivation and whether or not we should give them credit it their motivation is to save lives. You think Bloomberg deserves credit because he wanted to save lives. Shouldn’t anti-vaxxers get credit because they want to save lives? Its simple yes or no question.
Imagine thinking you have to do drive-alongs with the NYPD to know the basic facts surrounding stop and frisk. I live on the other side of the world and have never stepped foot in America and I know more than you. Just to be clear this isn’t an indictment on you. Its simple privilege. This never affected you. You view it in the abstract. It was a bad thing: but you can’t quite conceive just how bad it was.
If I had intended to call you a racist I would have called you a racist. That wan’t my intent. I haven’t essentially called you “David Duke.” Not even fucking close.
You’ve made it quite clear that you do not care. Imagine walking down the street and having to present your papers on demand. That is what stop and frisk was. Except you lived in New York during Bloomberg and you (apparently) never experienced it. I’d say “lucky you” but it was never about luck.
…“solid” is a subjective descriptor that (in context of what I wrote) was talking about the other candidates. You consider Bloomberg solid. Do you not disagree that the other candidates are equally solid by your standard of ‘solidity’?
I’m not going to dignify this tap dancing bullshit with a response. I didn’t say jack about the other candidates and I’m not helping you change the subject.
…the subject is Bloomberg. You told me why you thought he was a good candidate. I asked why you thought he was a *better *candidate when the other candidates have **equal claim to the metrics **you chose to use.
I’m not the one tap dancing. I know perfectly well you didn’t say jack about the other candidates: I bought up the other candidates when I directed the question “why Bloomberg is so much better than the other nominees that we should overlook what he did” with Stop and Frisk to you.
Saying “my analogy was *too *a good analogy” does not refute it. Hitler wanted to kill people. Bloomberg wanted to save people.
You do this a lot. Take something I said, and pretend it means something else. I said Bloomberg looked at the science behind gun control, nothing more.
I know the basic facts. Stop people of color indiscriminately and frisk them. Regarding “indictment”, etc, this nothing to do with what we started talking about, so, I don’t have the time nor inclination to address it.
I accept this completely, that’s why I said correct me if I’m wrong. But you mention me in one sentence implying I have no empathy for certain people, and then bring up black lives matter. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume you were calling me a racist. But fine, we are cool regarding this.
Once again you pretend something I said means something else.* In the context of me thinking you were calling me a racist, I said I don’t care about your opinion on the matter.
*Please stop doing this.
…LOL.
This is Great Debates and I’m debating. I’ve clarified my position. I have no thoughts at all about your character. I’m debating the positions you hold. Why do you support a candidate for President who defended a racist unconstitutional policy that terrorised hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers over the course of a decade?
…the analogy stands because we are talking about motivations. “Hitler wanted to kill people” is as un-nuanced as the position “Bloomberg wanted to save people.” Hitler wanted to save people too. Just not every person.
You do this a lot. You post something completely irrelevant like “Bloomberg looked at the science behind gun control” and you expect me to take that seriously. But I can’t and I won’t. Bloomberg ignored the actual science. End of story. The science of “gun control” has nothing to do with the science of “stop and frisk.”
Its a shame that the people of New York barely know anything about such a devastating period of their history.
I never called you a racist. I hope that clears things up.
You call those two things “un-nuanced.” I say they are are a shorthand way of getting to the heart of the matter of what each intended. One had good intentions, the other did not. No matter how you try, you can’t twist what Hitler did to compare it with Bloomberg.
Are you going retract what you erroneously said about my post or not? We both agree that the way Bloomberg went about this was wrong. Stop and Frisk was wrong. You must know (don’t you?) that when I’m talking about the science, it’s about how you can reduce deaths from gun violence, not about Stop and Frisk per se.
You don’t have to clear anything up. I thought we were cool on this.
What does he have that the others don’t?
Obviously first is his nutso funding and organization abilities/apparatus. His billions were built on information analysis. If he wanted, he could probably have Facebook data focused troll farms that made Russia look silly.
He has a solid history of putting his money where his mouth is on some solid Democratic planks like gun control and climate change.
I rank running NYC at the governor level, so he has best executive experience. I know the Pres can’t run the country like a CEO but I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes a point of some needed cleaning up bad parts of the civil service