hitta

That's kind of the ****ed up thing with the world. We have all these different ways to express our viewpoints and stuff. We use those platforms to spew our ideas and attack others. I don't get why we can't use those platforms to actually have an open dialogue. I think twitter is garbage for that so I tend to stay away from twitter. People can't have intelligent conversations in a certain amount of characters, so twitter in itself, is kind of a platform made for ****-talking. As a society though, with all these different forms of social media though, I don't get why it is so difficult for us to actually discuss things. Instead of pulverizing Brees through social media, wouldn't it have been more beneficial to have a Q&A with him of sorts to actually understand his viewpoint. If people would have been willing to pay attention to this, I think it would have disarmed a lot of people's gripes with what he said. We have an attack first, ask questions later mentality in society and it's going to lead us no where.

hitta

I think there are a bunch of different groups with different ideas that are all involved in this. This is the central thesis of my point. The media/celebrities create this us v.s. them mentality in which it kind of forces people with slightly different (or even widely different views) to all conform to and participate in the same type of social lynching.

AsylumGuido

If you have followed me over the years you would know I am very anti-media. I was media. I left media for the very reasons you mention.

Beastmode

Lebron has a HS diploma. He's ignorant on every topic except basketball. Best in life not to listen to the uneducated and ignorant on any topic unless you like agreeing and shaking hands with stupidity.

hitta

I don't hate the media as an idea, I hate the media that exists in the US as it currently is. What you have is a media monopoly that has been established by corporate welfare/cronyism and certain media entities getting favoritism. I believe in a true free press, which we are very far from having. All of the major media conglomerates are pretty much owned by giant companies that have all the power and so their media branches have pretty much had the road paved all the way to the top for them. Everything is pretty much locked in place for them, so they can pretty much do and report anything they want(such as control the narrative of the world).

hitta

I don't think Lebron is a bad person. I think he means well. I think he tries to do a lot of good for people in the community and I believe his actions in this regard to be genuine. I just believe he has a very limited perspective. He's seen the polar extremes of what the US has to offer. He was born into a poor family(probably experienced his fair share of social injustice). Then suddenly he was the center of the basketball universe. Even guys like Jordan, Magic, Bird, etc, had to deal with coaches that taught them very valuable lessons on and off the court, whereas Lebron has kind of been his own coach, always got everything kind of tailored to him. He hasn't had to deal with the differences and subtleties of other people and and the main issue: learning to adapt and change to things around him. As a result I don't think he is very bright when it comes to seeing the subtleties that are involved in life. He takes a very black/white(not in a racial sense) viewpoint on everything and has a very hard time seeing the grey area in things. I think a lot of time it is easy to criticize people like Lebron in a general manner, because because people like him have deep and embedded character issues pervades throughout their entire social persona. I think as a society we need to stop ourselves from this, which is a very hard thing to do. Social media makes it every difficult as we have all of this information going all over the place. We don't look at things deeply. Just like with Brees and what he stated yesterday we need to get to the bottom of why Lebron thinks the way he does and actually have a dialogue. The only thing from guys like Lebron that I don't think have any value is when he tries to silence others by telling them they need to keep quiet. This is him using his entitlement to try to restrict the ability of others to express themselves, or just blatantly attacking them without having any sort of reasoning for doing so.

Even when it comes to police brutality, I highly doubt that you have a ton of cops that are like "lets go out there and kill us some black people". It is so much more subtle than that, and a lot of it is probably unconscious. If I were to state that African Americans make up somewhere between 13%-20% of the countries population but account for 50% of the murderers, then use that as a reasoning as to why police kill African Americans at a higher rate... this would probably make most black people angry. Certain things have actually been demonstrated in scientific studies. People have more unconscious fears of black people and being assaulted/mugged than other races. This translates to cops as well and is probably very dependent on the higher crime rates that African Americans are prone to. Then you can ask questions as to why do African Americans commit crimes at such a high rate... poverty, being raised by single mothers, legal prejudices(black people are more likely to get higher prison sentences than white people), historical reasons, etc.... I mean everything plays into the big picture. If we can't actually discuss these things then we have no hope at all of ever solving the discord and the social imbalances which exist. We shouldn't be discouraging people from stating their opinion, we should be encouraging it and asking them to elaborate on it. This goes for both sides of the aisle. I don't believe Brees should have apologized for what he stated yesterday, I think he should have came back, elaborated on everything he believes in regards to the issue and try to get people to see things from his perspective. He should have also been open to receiving criticisms on those perspectives that he offered up. We live in this society where it is so easy for people to communicate ideas with each other technology wise, yet for some reason it is as if we are system overloaded or something and can't filter things and have real, intricate conversations. If we can get people to elaborate more, we can look at two people's opinion and see the roots in which the juxtaposition sprout from. If we can establish those roots, we can look at it from a deeper analytical perspective and find ways to get people on the same page.

Beastmode

Lebron has a HS diploma. He knows basketball. Nothing more. He's ignorant on every single topic on the planet unless he reads it on social media which makes him even more ignorant.

hitta

I don't disagree that he is an idiot on most things. TBH I think half the **** that comes out of his mouth is him just trying to do something that set him apart from MJ. He plays to the movements and **** to get people to get on his side. I think he does some charitable things like pay for people's scholarships and stuff though cause he's actually experienced poverty. That doesn't make him an intelligent person though, I just think somewhere under his ignorance is a heart.

Rugby Saint II

Why would someone who disagrees with Drew loot, steal and burn property?

I don't understand the concept of looting to get your point across. If anything it defeats the idea that their lives have much value. How does looting the corner grocery store spread the message that you have been done wrong?

I may get flamed for this but I'm going to say it anyway. White men fought to end slavery. That was good. When we refused to educated blacks so we could keep them down we created a feeder system where the uneducated are generally a burden on society.

There is a reason more black men are in jail than whites. They don't have the same opportunities that an educated man has to improve his life conditions. The way to end this inequality is to educate everyone for free where we could all be on a level playing field.