Americans are being catalogged like livestock to be fleeced or led to slaughter

 Face it. All advertising is propaganda. We can be wiser, better informed consumers if we can understand that. It's in a corporation's best interest to advance sales and maximize profit for its stakeholders. A business model driven exclusively by the balance sheet isn't concerned about what's in society's best interests.

With every generation government and corporate marketers have honed their ability to gain advantages over the commoners. The fact is, there are people who want to catalog Americans like cattle so they can be fleeced for their value or led to slaughter. Sometimes both.

And make no mistake. The demarcation between corporate American and the government is a shaky one.

Take Facebook advertiser "flock safety" as an example of intrusive marketing for a product that might just be the ultimate cataloging tool: neighborhood surveillance. The pitch is simple and scary: it's not safe to live without it. And they use compelling endorsements and testimonials to convince you to buy their system, which is targeting people who live in, or make buying decisions for, home owners associations.

When you click on a display ad, you're revealing several facts about your online behavior and the specifics about their campaign that got you to click on it. In addition, they receive whatever distinguishing details about you that Facebook knows about you, based on its years of interactions with you, and which it's willing to share with advertisers for a small additional fee.

Web address: 'www.flocksafety.com/book-a-demo'
Referal Source: Facebook
Referal Medium: Online Advertising
Campaign Name: rta_flock_prospecting_20230131_na_community
Campaign Content: flock_fbig_lal1-cs-hoa-customers-plus-lal1-cs-alltimeopps_na_us_a016_all_c007_na_na_copy24_display_lp001_static_single
Campaign Term: rta_flock_prospecting_lal1-cs-hoa-customers-plus-lal1-cs-alltimeopps

Once you wind up on their landing page, you're invited to book a demo of Flock Safety's surveillance products. If you're not immediately convinced, you can scroll down for more info. There you'll see a smattering of statements purportedly given by H.O.A. board members and agents of cities and law enforcement:

Why people reach their breaking point and engage in mass shootings

Mass shootings are complex and tragic events with no single cause. While there's no simple explanation for why someone commits such an act, understanding the contributing factors can help us prevent future tragedies. Here are some key areas to consider:

Individual factors:

• Mental health: While not all mass shooters have diagnosed mental illnesses, some may experience conditions like depression, anxiety, or psychosis. These can exacerbate existing problems and impair judgment.

• Personal experiences: Traumatic experiences like abuse, neglect, or violence can leave lasting scars and contribute to feelings of hopelessness and rage.

• Social isolation: Feeling disconnected from others and lacking a support system can increase feelings of alienation and despair.

• Ideological extremism: Exposure to extremist ideologies that promote violence or hatred can fuel harmful beliefs and justifications for violence.

Social and environmental factors:

• Access to firearms: The easy availability of firearms, particularly high-powered weapons, makes it easier for someone in crisis to carry out a violent act.

• Gun violence culture: A culture that glorifies or normalizes gun violence can desensitize people to its consequences and make it seem like a viable solution to problems.

• Social media: Online spaces can echo chambers for extremist views and provide platforms for individuals to radicalize each other.

• Economic inequality and lack of opportunity: Feelings of hopelessness and a lack of prospects for the future can contribute to feelings of despair and anger.

It's important to remember that these factors often interact and contribute to a complex web of motivations. Attributing mass shootings to any single factor risks oversimplifying the issue and potentially overlooking other important contributing elements.

Instead of focusing solely on the perpetrators, it's crucial to address the broader societal issues that contribute to gun violence. This includes promoting mental health awareness and support, fostering social connection, addressing economic disparities, and enacting stricter gun control measures.

By understanding the multifaceted nature of mass shootings, we can work towards creating a safer and more supportive society for everyone.

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any further questions or would like to discuss specific aspects in more detail, please feel free to ask.

 

How it got easier for cops to shake down minorities

 In the old days, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution required police to establish "probable cause" to lawfully conduct certain searches and seizures or perform arrests.

As of 1968, police may stop you even without probable cause to believe you committed a crime. In the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Terry v. Ohio, justices formulated from whole cloth the less-than-probable-cause standard they called “reasonable suspicion,” aka "RS", which was comically and pedantically defined as the totality of specific and articulable facts and circumstances, taken together, that leads an officer to reasonably suspect a person may be engaged in criminal activity.

Cops never even need to name a specific law they think has been broken, nor do they even have to tell the “subject” the basis for the stop, unless he’s arrested or cited. The court pretended to establish some boundaries by requiring that an officer’s suspicion must be “particularized” and not generalized, that it has to be more than an “inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch.”

The Terry case all but eviscerated the Fourth Amendment in stop-and-frisk cases. We see countless viral videos that depict cops stopping people just because "we got a call" or because they're opting to make an arbitrary investigation of some sort. That's fairly telling of officers' lack of understanding of the current state of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and their own state laws.

Once an officer has established reasonable suspicion, he may briefly detain a person to investigate whether there is probable cause to make an arrest, or until his suspicions are dispelled, at which time the person would be free to go. If there’s additional “reasonable suspicion” to suspect the “subject” might be armed and dangerous, the officer can now do what’s called a “pat down” or frisk of exterior clothing for weapons, which is supposedly less intrusive than a regular search, which could entail digging into a person’s pockets.

Thank you, SCOTUS, for making it easier for opportunistic bullies to shake down people of lesser privilege just for kicks. This is, of course, a much easier job than conducting complex criminal investigations that are less likely to produce arrests and citations than these high-yielding stop & frisks.

All this is my own opinion, based on pertinent laws and relevant court cases I've read, as well as a healthy dose of videos showing cops behaving badly. Do your own work! Read laws and court cases for your jurisdiction, and subscribe to attorneys who have studied the law. Do not educate yourself by watching videos produced by people who speak as authoritative sources of knowledge. Good lawyers and journalists cite sources and show their work. Learn the difference!