Not if you want a job at the BBC it ain't, and if you're straight and male you've got no chance.

All that link says is 'defund the police'. Does that mean they want no police in black areas?

More investment, that I get but outlawing the Klan? How big is the KKK these days? Is that much of a problem?

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - 1984 - George Orwell.

As I say I'm no member so don't feel I'm the person who should be outlining this.

My more general point though is that diplomacy and attempts at peaceful resolution are being overridden by a knee-jerk tendency to assert the violent authority of the state. I would argue that this seems to be a theme of what you could call the populist right, be it Trumps dealings with China, or the Brexit negotiations.

My question is, in the long run, is this the best path to achieve the goals you are aiming for? Is Trump making America great again by turning the army on his own citizens? Wouldn't it be better to offer them jobs and a future?

If punk ever happened I'd be preaching the law, instead of listenin to Lydon lecture BBC4

Me too.

#WWG1WGA

[Link]

Now I accept that Covid will impact on that, as it will for all sectors, but under Trump there appear to be record lows of unemployment for African-Americans.

What more can he do?

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - 1984 - George Orwell.

Yeah fair point.

I guess my argument has to be a bit broader. Most of us have lived through an era of uninterrupted growth in inequality, where social provisions and median income has consistently been dropping, and an ever tinier minority have been accumulating more and more wealth with very little pushback.

Now this is true in every country, but in America it is magnified. And it obviously impacts disproportionately the groups already struggling to keep up financially, which in America is heavily racialised. America has blended an economic ideology of low tax, unlimited freedom to accumulate wealth and a stripped back state with an uneasy nationalist ideology that has always had race as an inherent contradiction at its heart. First, the nation was built on the wealth accumulated from slavery. Second, freed slaves paid reparations to slave owners, preserving the latter's wealth, and retaining a two tier justice system through segregation. Now the remnants of that system are more subtly in place: a prison industrial complex, where for committing 3 minor crimes you are effectively imprisoned for life and made to work for nothing for corporations. Where the land remains in the hands of those who originally accumulated it through racial exploitation, and continue to make wealth through prohibitive rents on communities with high African American populations. And most commonly overlooked, there remains a dynastic and very solid segment within the Republican party of families with links to white nationalist organisations.

Now in this context, Trump is merely a continuation of the trend. I find it bizarre when you see videos like the one posted above as if his premiership marks the turning point of corruption, criminality and wealth controlling politics. But he also just so happens to be the President in charge when the tinderbox of mass unemployment has been lit. The question now is, what does he do? At the minute, he is reaching for violence, but what is needed, what has always been needed, is a radical reformulation of the things I've outlined, because they are the reason people talk about structural racism in the US.

If punk ever happened I'd be preaching the law, instead of listenin to Lydon lecture BBC4