Comments: * Black lives matter but only if they are killed by a White person.
There is a reason why Black Lies Matter does not exist in Jamaica for example, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world. There is no White boogeymen in Jamaica. There are no Jamaican police officers who racially look like Darren Wilson. So no Black homicide deaths in Jamaica can ever be blamed on White people.
If you go by per capita, way more Black people are murdered in Jamaica than in The United States. Jamaica needs Black Lives Matter way more than The U.S does.
* Yeah, count me as someone who has little sympathy anymore when these “concerned” nice white liberals get eaten by the more vociferous (and more evil) lefty agitators.
My sympathy supply has simply dried up. I realize it sucks to be a decent black person surrounding by morons. But hey, you had your chance to push back against this tide of excuse making and most of them never did.
But I’m even more disgusted by these whites who’ve elevated black people to some sort of sacramental tokens that it’s our job to worry about. This for people a people who are serial screwups, express racial hostility to whites and physically attack us! The correct response is indifference–to outright hostility when they are messing with us. Show some self-respect and stop pandering to these people and treating them like gods to be appeased. Who cares what happens to them.
* All nations, ever, are capable of genocide as members of the human species, and many have committed it. In that, the genetic component of Germany’s brief period of exterminationist anti-Semitism is shared by all peoples. The specific period in which this capability was manifested and the target people chosen are more likely the result of environmental conditions [geography, history, proximity, specific cultural and social experiences].
* The curious “Reagan didn’t mention AIDS” criticism is something of a bizarre modern liberal bastardization of a legitimate line of complaint regarding the Reagan administration.
The response of the 80′s FDA to AIDS could be characterized as somewhere between recklessly incompetent and outright sadistic.
Although scientists and doctors had been literally begging the FDA to mandate testing of the nation’s blood supply as soon as effective HIV tests were discovered in 1982, the agency dragged its feet for three long years until 1985, during which time the number of known cases exploded from hundreds to hundreds of thousands.
Thousands of people, predominantly heterosexual and particularly hemophiliacs, were infected with HIV due to blood transfusions during that time, while the number who’ve been infected by faulty blood transfusions since testing started can be counted on your fingers.
The FDA’s rationale for its inaction was utter nonsense; they claimed they didn’t want to cause panic (perhaps not spreading the disease would be a good way to prevent panic?) and that they didn’t want blood donors to feel stigmatized by the assumption they might be gays or junkies (I’m sure the hemophiliacs who died slow, agonizing deaths were happy that nobody felt stigmatized).
Then there’s the even bigger issue of the drug approval process. In light of its being an exponentially-spreading pandemic of the deadliest disease ever known to man, doctors, scientists and patients again literally begged, pleaded with and (in the case of ACT UP) pulled desperate publicity stunts to try to convince the FDA to expedite its normally years-long drug approval process for HIV treatments and to allow public access to experimental treatments.
The FDA however did no such thing, keeping every promising treatment in approval purgatory for years and years, forcing the few HIV patients who had the resources and connections to become criminals by smuggling in drugs from overseas. Patients and doctors were prosecuted or had their medical licenses revoked for obtaining treatment for themselves or others.
All three drugs in the now-standard “cocktail” that keeps HIV in permanent remission, and reduces the transmission rate to near zero, were known and being trialled in the 80s, but didn’t receive approval until the early 90s, after hundreds of thousands in the US alone had died.
The one antiretroviral the FDA did approve in the 80′s (but still well after it was available elsewhere), AZT, was itself a fiasco. Though the FDA claims the rigor of its clinical studies justify the long drug approval process, the FDA’s AZT studies were at best severely flawed.
Doctors and patients quickly discovered that at the extremely high dosage approved by the FDA, AZT was ineffective or even had a paradoxical effect that caused patients to worsen. But they also found that at much lower dosages, AZT was indeed effective at holding off the onset of AIDS by up to several years.
Doctors and patient groups submitted reams upon reams of evidence to the FDA regarding their flawed dosage recommendation for AZT, but the agency once again completely refused to budge until the 90′s. Tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of people might’ve survived until the discovery of the truly effective three-drug cocktail (which contains AZT at the low dose), had the FDA done so.
Large parts of the gay community, seeing the FDA promote the “poison” AZT while barring access to promising treatments, stopped believing anything the government said about HIV/AIDS.
All the way into the early 2000s or so (and to a lesser extent even today) ideas caught on with many gay men (and assorted delusionists like Christine Maggiore) such as that all HIV treatments, even the three-drug cocktail, are “poison,” that condoms can’t prevent the spread of HIV, or that the HIV virus is harmless and doesn’t cause AIDS.
To be sure, crackpots will always be around, but they were able to appear much more credible to a community that had good reason to think the officials offering the mainstream line lacked credibility. And so even more people were unnecessarily infected even after it became known how to prevent and treat HIV.
So yeah, the Reagan FDA really dropped the ball. Even if certain iSteve readers love the idea of thousands of gay men dying horrible deaths, thousands of straight people were infected and died where the FDA could have easily prevented it.
Was it Reagan’s fault? While the Bush/Clinton FDA did behave more reasonably, I’d probably say it’s more an extremely unfortunate case of bureaucratitis than anything Reagan did (the FDA started becoming more reasonable during his administration, after all). But it’s nevertheless something that went very wrong under his watch and therefore a legitimate criticism.
However, the FDA, the regulations it produces and its drug approval process are all sacred to the modern left, so the actual criticisms of the Reagan administration that were made by contemporary AIDS activists are nowadays not to be spoken of.
Liberals, when discussing groups like ACT UP, will offer vague praise without mentioning anything about those groups’ messages and goals, and pivot to the weird “Reagan didn’t say AIDS” thing. (Which is a somewhat legimitate if very minor point—it could have cleared up a lot of ignorance and misinformation if a nationally-known figure made it clear early on that AIDS was sexually-transmitted and could be prevented by using condoms).
It’s one of the odder epicycles and penumbras of today’s leftism. The AIDS activists of the time, like Randy Shilts (And the Band Played On) and Larry Kramer (ACT UP) weren’t afraid to take on a liberal shibboleth like the FDA—their lives were literally on the line!
Nor were they unwilling to point the finger at their own community: that HIV had spread so quickly amongst gay men because they practiced unprotected sex with many partners, and were too slow to change their habits once AIDS arrived on the scene, and that gay rights activists had helped its spread by preventing, until it was too late, the closure of the NYC and SF bathhouses by public health authorities.
But nowadays, just as the FDA can do no wrong, it’s even more an article of faith that no wound suffered by a victim group could ever be self-inflicted, even if inadvertently or even on an individual basis.
It’s gotten to the point that there’s been a largely-successful campaign to rehabilitate the memory of the villain of And the Band Played On, the Québécois flight attendant and psychopath Gaëtan Dugas.
The Centers for Disease Control traced every AIDS outbreak in North America back to Dugas, who in the late 70s somehow figured out he was dying of a strange disease, took it upon himself to have as many sex partners in as many cities as possible, and after he finished, told each one “I have the gay cancer; now you do too.”
But per recent ideological developments he was actually just swell because a turn-of-the-century Congolese hunter was the real “Patient Zero,” not Dugas. (A strawman; neither Shilts nor the CDC claimed Dugas was the first person to contract HIV, rather that he was Patient Zero of the 70′s/80′s North American outbreak, which is true).
My sympathy supply now is solely reserved for my kids–and by extension other decent white people–trying to find decent BLM-free places to live good lives and enjoy family life.
* Most experts at the time were highly critical of the Reagan administration’s response to AIDS. It’s not some sort of crazy demand to expect quick action from the government on any sort of infectious disease outbreak. Other countries, especially in Europe, did a much better job controlling the outbreak.
A legitimate criticism just sort of morphed over time into this narrative about the saintly gay community being intentionally murdered by Reagan and the Moral Majority.
* Michael Fumento’s landmark 1992 book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, by using charts, graphs, and other information based on the CDC’s own projections at the time showed that the pandemic would peak and start to plateau in the US by about the year 2000. He was in fact proven to be correct and the CDC still owes him a public apology. AIDS today in the US is nowhere near as rampant as it was in the early ’80′s and even at its height it never surpassed deaths from cancer, stroke, or heart disease.
* That criticism – if it was ever voiced in a half-way civil manner (and I don’t remember that it ever was) – very quickly morphed into the “Reagan = AIDS” meme. The homosexuals were shameless in blaming others when they should have blamed themselves for the spread of the disease. To paraphrase Trump – somebody was doing the anonymous sodomy with fifty partners a night. And it wasn’t Ronald Reagan.
* In summer 2012, at the height of Trayvon Martin hand-wringing, I finally reached saturation with the obsessive cant of “race”, “unarmed black teen”, etc etc daily. I’d shut off NPR following mention of the word “race” and found myself listening fewer than ten minutes most mornings. And, like this pre-meditated slaughter in Pittsburgh, “race” was never mentioned in the context of black perpetrators and hate crimes against white people.
The media bias tells us that white life is cheap — it’s the murderers’ race that must be protected, not even to be released in an effort to catch the criminals. If the FBI violent crime statistics showed rough parity between blacks and whites, I might understand the concerns of BLM and race advocates. But murder commission rates are some 8 times greater for blacks than for whites. The media, horrifically, sees statistical knowledge as the threat and fetes BLM advocacy while shutting down, frankly suppressing as in the case of this journalist, any anger toward black degeneracy.
* I think Bill might secretly want Hillary to lose.
Remember the (in)famous phone call between Bill and Trump that likely played a role in Trump getting into the race? Some speculated that this might mean that Trump is a Clinton Manchurian candidate. But what it could mean is that Bill doesn’t want his wife to win, and felt that Trump would have a better chance of beating her than any of the Republicans that were already in the field.
Whatever you think of Goldberg’s politics, I think she’s probably right about the impact Bill’s comments could have in the Democratic primary. This may well help Sanders. It’s interesting that Bill’s anti-BLM comments come during a period that Trump is struggling badly in general election polls, and so maybe Bill is no longer confident that Trump can beat Hillary.
Now, why would Bill want his own wife to lose the election?
Well, Bill Clinton has always struck me as a man who cares a great deal about his legacy.
If Hillary is not elected, then Bill’s primary legacy is that of the 43rd President of the United States. His primary legacy is that of a US President that governed during a period of relative peace and prosperity. That’s a pretty good legacy, even if it may be lacking a major notable policy achievement.
But if Hillary is elected, then Bill’s primary legacy becomes… being the 1st First Husband. Hillary as the first woman ever elected President would easily become much more historically notable than Bill as the 43rd male US President. So much so that Bill likely gets noted in the history books more for being the 1st First Husband than for his own Presidency.
Now, what legacy would you rather have? Would you rather be remembered for your own peaceful prosperous Presidency, or would you rather be remembered for being the spouse of the 1st woman President?
* “BLM members will also lead Toronto’s gay Pride Parade this summer.”
A member of Black Lies Matter named Deray McKesson is a fag who is running for mayor of Baltimore. BLM here in The U.S was originally started by 3 dykes.
There is seems to be a disproportionate number of Homosexuals in the Black Lies Matter movement. I wonder why that is?
* Mexican (or Puerto Rican) vs. black ethnic cleansing is never newsworthy, despite the fact that it has taken place in many different urban areas, and is often accompanied by violence and/ or threats of violence. Look at the demographics of South-Central LA or Compton now, compared to 30 years ago. Not much mainstream discussion of that either.
This seems to be a particular example of a more general phenomenon. The Left is a rather motley coalition, united only by their hatred of normal white men. (+/- hatred of Christianity; it depends on how pozzed the particular sect is, and, of course, the race of its members). Blacks, Mexicans, teh gheys, Muslims, Jews, etc.– essentially nonwhites, perverts, and self-hating whites. This presents multiple potential internal fracture points, whether defined by identity or ideology. The progressive establishment realizes this, and works to keep its foot soldiers focused on the designated enemy. Thus, internecine conflicts, if they cannot be avoided, are at least not publicized.
One of the most obvious of potential conflicts is the homosexual-Muslim one. The standard Muslim view of homosexuality is not a tolerant one, to say the least, with the death penalty a not-uncommon solution. Yet somehow this is papered over in Western countries, with Muslims always part of the same “left-wing” parties that gays typically support. I suspect that each side of that one views the other as useful idiots for their agenda. Social/ religious conservatism is OK with the Left, as long as it comes from the “Other,” and serves the broader aim of destroying Western culture/ white people. It will be a cold day in Hell before we see a Muslim-owned bakery targeted for one of those homosexual “wedding” cake extortion scams. (The same applies to black-owned Christian bakeries, of course.) I don’t have the link in front of me, but there was a case a year or so ago in Sweden where a homosexual group planned a “Pride” parade through a Muslim neighborhood. This plan was nearly unanimously opposed as essentially “not cricket” (per leftist norms) by other progressive groups, including other gay organizations.
Homosexual-black is another obvious conflict, on a couple of levels. One is religious/ cultural, as Steve has pointed out with the CA homosexual “marriage” issue. Blacks, especially Christian blacks, tend to disapprove of homosexuals, especially open, effeminate ones (“down low” is another issue). The other issue is space– both homosexuals and blacks (with some notable exceptions in the Deep South) tend to be urban groups. Violent crime is an issue for gays, and “gentrification” an issue for blacks. The black population of San Francisco has dropped about 50% since 1980, in both absolute and percentage terms, yet no one in the legacy media seems to bewail this loss of “diversity,” or even notice it. That one’s more NIMBYism than direct intergroup conflict, though.
The most interesting aspect of this whole issue, to me, is that one would expect the Right to exploit these potential fracture points in the leftist coalition. Yet, somehow, they rarely seem to do so. Large-scale Mexican immigration, for example, should be an obvious economic issue for many blacks (in addition to the ethnic cleansing of black neighborhoods), yet Trump is the first Republican that I’ve ever seen even attempt to rouse blacks in opposition to open borders. It’s almost like the GOP leadership is opposed to doing so, for some reason…
