supposedly: we care for guns more than people's lives, as Americans we try to draw attention to the positives of our culture while completely ignoring the fact that the negatives are extremely present, the video is filled with black people and police cause they're caught up in all of this shit in various ways, Gambino (can I just call him Donald Glover, I don't know "Gambino") dances and makes exaggerated facial expressions as a sort of reference to when there were blackface actors but that dancing can also be taken to mean that... I don't want to go to 2000 characters (and I had no idea how much I'd typed) hold on

that dancing can also be taken to mean many other things, ex. he fires the pistol in such a silly pose, indicating that he's used the gun so much he's not even focused on proper handling of it, he's trying to show how cool he looks firing it

"Americans we try to draw attention to the positives of our culture while completely ignoring the fact that the negatives are extremely present"

what America is this? because in the one i live in, they ignore the positives, focus on the negatives, and then make those negatives 1000 times worse than reality.

just one of the things I heard but I assume it's that shit like "MURCA IS THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH!!!" but we still have school shootings or whatever cause we just won't go ahead and do gun control

that kinda point I disagree with, but I think that's the mindset of it

name a single person who thinks America is perfect.

just because they may think its the greatest doesn't mean they think its perfect, or can't be imporved

although if you look at everything, makes you wonder how shitty the world is for that fact to be true

to be the greatest for e xample doesn't mean perfect, I meant they're saying "greatest? you consider it great when we've still got problems A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, etc. yet we have all the power in the world to do something about it?"

pretty bleak world view

do we all the power to do something about it?

🤷

i think that question is part of the debate

different problems got different shit to it

ex. they say black on black crime kills the most black people, I don't think that's just Tyrone and Dr. Dre beefing

I think it's dudes trying to make money selling drugs

take the gun debate: people say take away all the guns is the answer, yet can't prove it will work. people say give more guns, but can't prove it will work. If we have no proof that either side will work, then how can we know we have the power to stop it?

in order to even fix that we'd have to be willing and able to divert resources to that

then there is the problem of are you actually even looking at the problem, yet alone solving it.

with any given issue

I watch a lot of TV and shit and I correlate what goes on in TV to wondering about what happens in reality. having never looked into it, I dunno how much is shit and how much isn't

but for example, I've finised watch ing The Wire, and the drug game there exists pretty much because... "what are you gonna do about it?"

the police departments, the government, everyone's hurting for money

except the damn criminals

well drugs is a good case study. the war on drugs is an utter failure. Not only was it started in part to jail political opponents, it has had the unintended side effect of making legal drugs more expensive and illegal drugs less so.

but attacking drugs didn't even go after the problem

addiction is a health problem, and jailing people for having a medical condition is a horrible way to treat this.

not to mention, it vilifies medicine with legit uses.

I should've mentioned I do this not just with TV but with games

playing Mount&Blade Warband, I drew a sort of correlation between those criminal elements, deserters/looters/etc. and people doing drug startups irl

eventually, if they go unnoticed for long enough, they reach a size or gain abilities you can't do much about

you might want to take your head out of the games a bit.

games are love

games are life

well, then don't confuse them with reality

besides, comparing them like that brings out interesting things

if you think GTA is how people act normally IRL, boy do you have a low respect for humanity

ex. that specific comparison made me realize, what's to ever stop someone else from starting up the drug game?

say you have a plan to wipe the streets clean of every single drug dealer, even on down to the lowest ranking member

and it works

it works until there is demand, and someone low on cash but access to drugs