Mountains of Chutzpah, coming soon

Our own Trav Mamone has a new post up advertising an article they have published on another site, SpliceToday.

It’s a look at an article on another site, AeroMagazine.com, that with garish arrogance titles itself

AN ARGUMENT FOR A LIBERAL AND RATIONAL APPROACH TO TRANSGENDER RIGHTS AND INCLUSION

So I took a look at the original article. Trust me, when I say that Trav Mamone is being very, very generous when saying of the article,

It isn’t as bad as I thought, but still missed the mark.

So, I’ve cheerily taken a dive into a cesspool of ignorance and am swimming around it for a bit, all so that you don’t have to. I’ll soon have two -count them two- posts up thoroughly addressing important aspects of the original article, including a whole lot of wrong. Here, however, I wanted to pluck out a criticism I’ve made of something from the AeroMagazine piece both because I’ve seen it way too many times (so it deserves extra attention) but also so that you’ll have a bit of snark to carry you through until the longer pieces get here. Also, too, there will be more coming your way on gun rights, some  of it addressing a couple things about which Enlightenment Liberal is correct, but didn’t realize that I was going to say in a future post, and some things in which EL is grossly, laughably wrong. (Hint: Bell v Burson figures prominently in that last category.)

From the upcoming post further tackling Trav Mamone’s target:

[Read more…]

Police Violence is Racialized And Racist, But That’s Not All

About 15-20 years ago now, I first encountered studies whose data found a person’s disability to be a stronger predictor of police shootings than race. It is tragic, it is racist, and it is utterly predictable that the US law enforcement system would kill Black men disproportionately. I’m very, very glad that issue is getting attention and hope that the even more disproportionate killings of indigenous and First Nations men get the same attention. Our racism must end, and the NFL protests among other avenues are fruitful efforts to bring attention to racist killings by police officers and the utter lack of accountability for them.

I hope, however, that there is room enough for us to discuss not only the racism of police, but other things as well. The increasing militarism of the police gets some attention, though it is frequently (and wrongly) framed as an alternative reason for concern, as if it’s not okay for white people to care about racist killings of Black men, but if we concern ourselves with police militarism generally then we’re being “fair” or “reasonable” by devoting ourselves to an issue that affects all of us. But receiving very little attention is the slaughter of persons with disabilities.

[Read more…]