Yes, it is systemic.
And no, it's not only about racism.
And yes, recent events show us again that the USA have a looong-standing systemic problem of all sorts of injustice. So in-bred that everybody who tries to change it or even raise the topic is labeled left-wing, if not commie. They should take a look what conservative governments across the (democratic) world can do.

It IS systemic, largely because so many of our fundamental laws are so old and so much has just been tacked on to those fundamentals in conditions reeking of racism, and perhaps even more basically, class prejudice. It is important to recall that there are currently in office, government officials that are active members of the Ku Klux Klan and presidents as late as Lyndon Johnson, just 50 years ago, were members. Papers from the JFK assassination investigation recently declassified show the latter to be most likely true.

One difficulty with such situations is they create environments that become self-fulfilling "prophecy". The sweetest, most gentle dog or cat in the world when injured and backed into a corner will very likely bite somebody. Then it's easy to write them off as bad animals worthy only of destruction.

If you didn't click on the Zappa link, here's an excerpt

Mmmmm, I consider the current case a bit of a catch 22.
If black lives didn't matter already then there wouldn't be this much support worldwide.

But it's being pushed as if its not.
Which is a bit disingenous in my opinion, since pushing it further and further gives people ample ammunition to go "see, we were right all along, they are hateful" when in reality boundaries were simply overstepped and regular folk being antagonized with it.

They already mattered, they mattered way before the kneeling. Otherwise nobody would give a damn, despite the other inequalities and all that.
If it's just the police or goverment or something then make the scope more specific.

But then innocent bystanders who still get bopped and angered by it wouldn't be able to be vilified in the wake of it all.

Geist I think I get what you're driving at... that objectively all lives matter, but the fact remains that if it is perceived that police can kill unarmed blacks with impunity, they don't feel like they matter very much where it counts. I would go a step further and include anyone of the lower classes if only because they won't come to court with a battery of lawyers. One cannot "walk softly and carry a big stick" if one only has a twig.

A worldwide protest in even nations that have virtually no foreign people of color (like Japan) in the span of a few weeks and extreme media clout is not something I would call a twig, though.
In fact, even massacres like Waco had less of a global footprint (unless I'm mistaken of course).

P.S.:
And of course only a fraction of any population are police.
So, this kind of global movement is a bit astounding, for a people whose lives apparently didn't or don't matter and were only mostly endangered by a small minority of the population.

https://www.startribune.com/officers...est/571105692/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/more-a...ng-to-use-guns

I don't think it is just about what is referred to as "Race", which in itself is a rather silly differentiation since we are all Homo Sapiens, but is more about Class. The cycle of "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer" that so often follows even the best efforts to setup and maintain a vertically mobile society, is nearing an extreme. Several US Universities including Princeton and even Harvard declared "the US is officially an oligarchy" on the heels of the superb book -- Capital in the Twenty-First Century --

Recently I watched an illuminating Ted Talk from a guy who was legit "born with a silver spoon in his mouth" talking about how his buddies, some of whom he owns banks with, need to realize they are killing off those they sell to... that it is essential that the very rich follow The Dust Bowl experience and not turn the country into a desert through a blind devotion to increasing profit. Maybe he heard the joke about the chicken farmer who started cutting back on the portion size of his chicken feed to reduce costs and increase profit, and overjoyed with the results, progressed until one day the chickens betrayed him and up and died on him

In any case it was an enlightened Ted Talk and I'd forgotten the speaker's name so I did a web search for "elite economic imbalance" and got over 40,000 hits just with Duck Duck Go. Corporations are adept at maximizing just like the chicken farmer, and the lower classes, now creeping into the Middle Class, are getting fed up... not fed.

When I finally remembered the talk had something to do with warning his buddies that if they kept this up "the pitchforks are coming for us" and upon typing that in I now see that Nick Hanauer who gave the Ted Talk, is growing in demand and influence. Since the Ted Talk is several years old, maybe a few Plutocrats are finally starting to get the message. It's happening globally and in some less flexible countries I suspect it will play out like the movie titled "There Will Be Blood". Look it up. It's a very good, if a tad dark, movie, and Daniel Day Lewis gives a spectacularly good portrayal of one infected by insatiable greed.

TLDR - It's actually about Haves and Have Nots.

Mm, well, fair enough.
Kind of a strange attempt of curing it, though.
Doesn't help any regular folk if their stores get smashed and landscapes vandalized, imho...

But I suppose there's no good solution anyway.
I mean, even if they built personal explosive devices into the skulls of cops that eliminate them when they kill someone in cold blood.

That's like living in a state/place with the death penalty.
That's just a way to deal with a crime, not prevent it.

Anyway, I hope it's about have and have nots, whenever I see things it's mostly about race tho. White supremacy, and all that. Frontloaded by ye olde nazis from like, what three generation ago now?

Which is always amusing to me, but I suppose, that's what like...50 years of media and constant 'hateful knuckle dragging neo nazi strawman caricature' gives people.
They start to believe that that's the norm.
Has the great side effect that, by putting the bar to that, that low.
Just scrawl some tattoos on your face and other token gestures...well, then anyone can truly be a modern member of the NSDAP. (Or pretend to be one and come across as believable.)


I remain in my prediction that this will just be another thumbscrew on regular (white) people in the US, and nothing fundamental will change for the rest.

( It's a sort of pride parade. "Someone shakes their crotch in your face. You get a tiny bit cheesed and want it to stop. But now all the arguments that the population is full of homophobes and hateful bigots is trueeeeeeee. When in reality virtually nobody who matters would approve of actual public persecution of homosexuals, or even worse, lynching them. And as we can see, same with people of color. Both of them have mattered enough for the general population to get this much support in this short amount of time. )


Which is, in my opinion, unfortunate, and this is coming from a German who actually has a bit of revanchism in him.
Still, I like the US and its people more than I derive joy from any of this.

Edit: Of course it is, in my opinion, unfortunate that nothing fundamental will change for the rest :P
Despite my awkward structure after inserting that pride parade analogy.
Hehe..analogy.

I've lived in a lot of places in my life. I grew up in and around Detroit.

No one can believe what a hell hole of a town can be unless they live in a place where violence and crime is common. The big city cops face an everyday onslaught of crime. I used to live in the worst part of Detroit for a year. Someone would kill someone and everyone on the block would know who did it. Yet no one would tell the police.

I say if the folks who don't care about law and order then they need to continue to suffer from violence and crime.

The news again shows that every major city in the US is killing and even more so.

There can't be any justice until the victims of crime and violence have stopped. I doubt that will happen any time soon.

Don't even try to blame poverty. I've been in the poorest of countries and they really are poor. They aren't going around killing and raping and stealing.

It is possible that the Floyd was walking around like they claim the hospitals have. They get covid patients who can walk and talk but by O2 readings they ought to be dead.
I think they need to study that guys heart and lungs with more advanced means to see if the China disease is partly to blame. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Andy and Barney run a town. It just can't happen in the crime infested areas of the US.

That's because those "blue states" are where most people in the country live. There may be protests in East Bugtussle, TN but those in New York, LA, DC, etc., will be larger and more likely to attract news coverage.

Not initially. I'm finding it interesting how the more rural states have started having protests/marches. I'm guessing that seeing seemingly endless videos of police swinging batons and firing rubber bullets at and tear-gassing unarmed people had an affect on them. I haven't paid much attention to what's been going on in some of the protests in the rural states but I would guess that it's the younger citizens of those states that are doing the protesting there. Another thing that may be helping to make the more recent protests peaceful has been the wide dissemination of those videos. They likely have gotten the police to be more restrained than in the early days of the protests allowing them to remain peaceful. It probably also helps that the administration hasn't been repeatedly tweeting: "DOMINATE! DOMINATE!"

Absolutely, utube is full of it.

I'm not sure that they are listening yet. In the last few days there have been 2 incidents of cops still kneeing on peoples necks and hurting them.

One lady cop in Illinois was caught on camera doing that, on the news last night, she was suspended. Not only kneeing on his neck, but putting her whole weight on his head against the concrete. Young man was full of life and healthy, so he did not die, but still.

Another person was killed last few days by cop kneeing on neck, caught on camera. He is going to be charged it looks like. I'm going to have to look up where that was. It was on the TV news. And you know that for everyone caught, there were more that happened in the dark that did not get recorded. They need to outlaw that crap nationwide.

Makes you wonder. How on earth could cops miss what's going on in the news last 2 weeks, and just keep hard heading on. It does show you what culture and training is in the nations police.

This needs to be banned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYZ122l5Mpo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm2zF2eCAOs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syByMIgTNdI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z5ele3Fdig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2AoF7nBQII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yh4kekDLTI

Where is this practice coming from anyway? I only found one link and it's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2j-r6lM3JM connected to Israel.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates...munity-scotus/
https://justthenews.com/government/c...hadowed-failed
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...loyds-killing/
https://time.com/5628206/police-shoo...owlton-garner/
https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/de...ccountability/
https://www.vantunews.com/wiki/biography-urooj-rahman
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronso...court-n2570166

List of peaceful protests
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtestsofP...eful_protests/