This is not a radical proposal — it’s actually simple common sense.

This week, Alton Sterling was shot by the police — his “crime” was either having a gun (which, as the NRA frequently tells us, is perfectly legal) or selling CDs, which may have been illegal, but did not to be dealt with with violence. It’s telling that no one can even say what he did wrong to justify his execution.

Yesterday, Philando Castile was killed for having a broken brake light, right here in my state, in Roseville.

Both murders were caught on video. I expect none of the police officers will face any serious penalties for murdering black men.

But I have a serious question about these incidents. Why are the police armed? Do you need a gun to issue traffic citations? I remember when the police would send a representative to my public school — that “Officer Friendly” crap — and they always had a great big scary handgun strapped to their hip. Why? Were they concerned that a firefight might break out in the fifth grade?

All those policemen patrolling the streets, looking for parking infractions or speeders or jaywalkers…they don’t need guns to do their job. Given that many of them are turning out to be bullying cowards, having a gun is even a detriment to their role of defending the law and the public peace.

So disarm them. Keep a few weapons back in the police station that can be issued to deal with specific situations in which they are necessary, but for the most part, guns are totally inappropriate for the job at hand. This would have a number of beneficial effects. For one, the swaggering assholes who need their firearm to be tough would quit, and good riddance to them. For another, the police would actually have to take non-violent approaches to confrontations seriously. Maybe they’d live up to the title of “peace officer”.

I know what the arguments against this proposal will be: but then civilians will be more heavily armed than the police! After all, Philando Castile had a handgun — which he openly declared, and had a permit for — so what is the policeman to do?

That’s easy. If he were scared, the appropriate response would have been to run away, and call for assistance. But in this case, there was no sign that the man in the car was a threat. All escalation was caused by the armed policeman. Except for the fact that the policeman drew a gun and shot the man, this whole incident should have ended with a warning or ticket given to the driver, and everyone would have gone on their way.

You know what else tells me that the police don’t deserve to be armed? What they did with the murdered man’s girlfriend. They had just shot the man, she was weeping and worried about her daughter, and they handcuffed her and took her to the police station, when they should have been helping her get to her boyfriend’s side at the hospital. That made no sense. She was not a threat. She had done nothing wrong, other than maybe having a car with a broken taillight. Yet they treated her like the criminal, after murdering her boyfriend in front of her.

I’m white, and I don’t trust the police. They’re out of control everywhere. It’s time to change.

I just have to say that I totally despise the “e-begging” nonsense: not the requests for donations, but all the assholes who come squirming out of the woodwork to sneer at people who have financial difficulties, who make pleas for donations to support the work you are reading, who think it is somehow a mark of inferiority that someone does not have a prestigious job to support the leisure activity of writing, and are offended that they’re asked to maybe, voluntarily, donate a small sum to an author who’s having a hard time making ends meet.

Ultimately, the complaints are rooted in classism and bigotry. I’m in the odd position of being financially rock-solid — not rich by any means, but economically stable, with good health insurance to protect me from catastrophe, which, come to think of it, does mean I’m wealthy — yet here I am promoting people who are the less widely heard voices in freethought, and they generally have less robust incomes than I do. There is a big gay and transgender pay gap, and an even wider pay gap for racial minorities, and yet, when someone with less dares to hold out a hand and ask for some help, the hecklers all come to mock me, which is just plain weird. It’s as if they not only scorn the underprivileged, but they despise them so much they don’t want to even talk to the person, but instead come to spit in the face of the old white man, because he’s the one with authority.

The first time this happened, years ago, I was so discombobulated that I actually asked the asshole what he was complaining about; I said that I whole-heartedly supported people who asked for voluntary donations, and that those of us who could, should be chipping in to promote talent. Apparently, that was the problem: that I was enabling “freeloaders”, so I was responsible for the epidemic of begging that was annoying him.

Apparently, too, writing is something people should do for free, because hey, anyone can do it. It’s strange how so few authors get paid what they’re worth, then.

Well, fuck that.

Also, have you noticed all the outrage directed at Anita Sarkeesian because she’s held wildly successful fundraisers? These are donations by people who appreciate the fact that she promotes an important and interesting perspective, and they freely give to support her work, and this stirs up intense resentment among certain other kinds of people…who say nothing about the “e-begging” of Thunderf00t or Sargon of Akkad, which, apparently is something fundamentally different and isn’t even called “e-begging”.

And, as a mentioned, I get to be the recipient of all these bullying complaints about people who ask for a few dollars to support their writing. All that means, of course, is that I get to witness first hand how these whiners react to people of color, or gay or transgender people, reminding them of their privilege. I also get to be dumbfounded at my privilege, which is to be treated as the master who is supposed to keep all the little people in line.

The latest case: Tony is trying to make ends meet. So I get to hear all these weirdly inappropriate insults because, obviously, I have something to do with allowing these “e-beggars” to pollute their internet (I also get supportive suggestions, so it’s not as if the internet is entirely a cesspit). It’s weird because Tony is on a different network, I’ve never met him, and he doesn’t even like me very much, but because I’m the Emperor of all things SJW within atheism, I’m responsible. They have such a blithely authoritarian perspective. Note also: these are people who are so ravingly anti-black, anti-gay, and anti-SJW that the only reason they can be reading Tony’s blog is to metaphorically spit on it, and they’re complaining about a donation request that won’t take a penny out of their pocket.

So I’m going to come out and say it: if you want to see a greater diversity of ideas on the internet, if you want to promote greater equality, and if you’ve got the financial ability to do so, you should seek out people other than us noisy old white cis-het men, and put your money where your mouth is. If you like Tony’s writing, give him a little help. If you want to hear more from other than the usual suspects with the big bullhorns, look around, explore, and read what they write…and if they have a “donations” button, click on it. It’s good for everyone.

And now when the jerks come complaining to me that I’m enabling freeloaders, I’ll be able to say that yes, I try to enable writers, but you’re mistaken. My job is to shut down assholes, goodbye.

I’m reading about the alt-right yahoos at Portland State University, and it’s horrifying. It’s a long story, focusing on a small group of admitted racist trolls who have absorbed 4chan/Reddit culture and have decided that openly parading their ignorance and bigotry is fun. What’s particularly appalling to me is that they claim that their views are scientific and rational…but when I read them, they’re just wrong about everything.

Well-read in the authoritarian right, Kolychev says he supports the liberal values of the Enlightenment.

This is a common refrain among certain kinds of conservatives. They claim they are the True Liberals, or neo-liberals, and they are simply returning to the original values of the Enlightenment. There is a grain of truth to that, but they’re doing it wrong. A central value of the Enlightenment ought to be the embrace of change, accepting the idea that we can learn more and become better; it’s not a fixed set of rigid values. You especially cannot support the liberal values of the Enlightenment by thinking that you should turn back the clock three or four hundred years.

The Enlightenment arose in the 17th/18th centuries. It was also a time of colonialism, empire building, racism, slavery, oppression of the poor, and vicious punishments. You don’t support the Enlightenment if you think everything about the past was virtuous, so therefore we should bring back public hanging, workhouses, and colonial exploitation.

Modern liberalism is different than 18th century liberalism. Ideas change. Seeking justification in the past is a conservative value.

[Read more…]

James O’Brien makes a very good point here.

If I was to be reading my newspaper every single morning and be told that my very existence was under siege from people I’ve never met and never seen but keep getting told are coming here in their hordes.

If I was to open my newspaper or turn on my radio or TV to hear that everybody who is coming here is a rapist and they’ve got their eyes on our women and we’ve got no chance whatsoever of protecting ourselves.

And unless we do this or do that, or treat them like this or treat them like that, then we’re all doomed, we’re all going to hell in a handcart.

If I was being told it’s time to reclaim our country every time I got out of bed in the morning, I’d begin to believe it, I think, if I didn’t have the knowledge and the insights and the education to know that it is not true.

We atheists are very, very good at telling people they ought to use their reason and think rationally. The most important thing is reason, we say, not emotion; if only those wacky religious people would use evidence and rational thought, they wouldn’t believe in such silly things.

But reason is not enough. “Garbage in, garbage out” is a familiar phrase to describe what happens when your eminently predictable, logical computer is reduced to processing bad inputs, but it’s also true for human beings. We make the mistake of thinking other people’s brains must be inferior or working badly when they reach bad conclusions.

Those wacky Catholics…how stupid they must be to believe in original sin or that Jesus and Mary are watching over them. But Catholic culture actually values education and logic, and they aren’t stupid at all: what they’ve done is reach an entirely rational conclusion built on a set of premises that have been dunned into them from an early age. Their flaw isn’t that their minds are bad, it’s quite the opposite — Catholic scholars think creatively and intelligently from a set of invalid claims about the nature of the universe.

Consider any group you disagree with. Your first assumptions shouldn’t be that the group is a unique vortex of stupid that draws in mentally deficient people who don’t know better, and will be unable to think their way out of a soggy paper bag. Assume that they are a group with the same mental capacity in general as your favorite people. Then try to figure out what foundational ideas are leading them to conclusions you find repugnant.

Look at gun fanatics, for instance. That earlier post about arguments for owning an AR-15 is addressing an entirely reasonable set of justifications for needing a deadly weapon…if you believe you are living in a world in which you and your family are facing an existential threat from hordes of other human beings who specifically intend to do you harm. That guy’s rationale would make a lot of sense if this were the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, and we had to deal with random monsters popping up and trying to eat our brains, and also needed to forage for any wild game to survive.

We do not live in such a world. He thinks we do. GIGO.

As O’Brien points out, if you wake up every morning to listen to right-wing talk radio, or Fox News, or to read Stormfront or white nationalist literature, the inputs to your mind are all skewed. Those outlets are committed to presenting a terrifying picture of the world, in which you, your family, your tribe, your race, your whole damn species is in peril. The brown hordes are coming to replace you…yes, you personally! Your problem with landing a job is not your fault, it’s because that immigrant over there is competing with you unfairly. We once were a great and powerful nation — you know because your grandparents said so — but it’s all gone to the dogs in your generation, because it’s different.

Get that message over and over and over again, and then apply your rational, intelligent, thoughtful brain to the problem, and you’ll come up with reasonable solutions. Kick out those immigrants. Assassinate that politician. Build a wall. Vote for Trump.

The man who killed Jo Cox was not crazy. He was somebody who read and listened and came to what he thought was a necessary solution to a serious problem. He had built a world in his mind that corresponded poorly to reality, because he’d been consuming lies.

Lies kill.

Unfortunately, we all live in a world where institutions and media lie to us constantly, and navigating through all the chaos is a difficult skill that none of us have fully mastered and that misleads many of us.

Charles Blow on the ill-aimed rhetoric and misplaced goals of the current bigotry.