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Oh my I KNEW it was Howard you were going to be discussing…

After thoroughly enjoying your article on Medium, I delved into the comments. While not making my way through all of them, it became increasingly clear that there was one person who was belligerently and emphatically convinced that Rittenhouse was an irredeemable hideous racist and any black person would have been shot on sight that night.

And yep - here we are…listening to Howard rail against white people for being white and black people for being victims inevitably as police kill ‘10,000 a year’. Jesus. What to say in the face of such blind ignorance and hate?

I agree that Kyle should not have been on the streets of Kenosha that night with a rifle. I also agree that officials sanctioned terrible violence against small businesses by doing nothing or by explicitly telling police to stand down. If my community was so threatened, I honestly don’t know what I would do. But I certainly don’t believe that misguided efforts to judge America from afar without a firm understanding of why we have a 1st and 2nd amendment makes a ton of sense.

And Howard? I think your response of ‘why are you like this?’ says it all.

Why do you carry this burden of festering hate. What does it give you? Does it justify the way you treat the people around you? Are they guilty based on the stain they carry from the color of their skin? And how does that make the world better?

We all share the burden of lifting each other into a better space where we can value our respective talents and honor our individual perspectives. Seeing skin color is a flat out rejection of what I see as the principal path toward a better shared community of fellow humans.

So I won’t indulge a Howard beyond a simple question: ‘why are you like this?’

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author

"I agree that Kyle should not have been on the streets of Kenosha that night with a rifle. I also agree that officials sanctioned terrible violence against small businesses by doing nothing or by explicitly telling police to stand down. If my community was so threatened, I honestly don’t know what I would do."

I really wish more people had the empathy and the honesty to admit this. I would bet my life's savings that most of the people talking about how evil and racist the militia was, would have been grateful for any help they could get if it were *their* homes and businesses being destroyed by looters.

I completely agree with you, Rittenhouse absolutely shouldn't have been on the street that night. But the fact that he was, was one point of failure in a long line of failures stretching back at least two days. It's ridiculous to ignore all of that context and pretend everything would have been fine if he'd stayed home.

p.s. 😅 Well remembered on that, "Why are you like this?" comment. I was genuinely bewildered after the 10th comment or so.

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“I swear, the biggest problem we face today is the absolute certainty with which people are wrong.”

Or as Mark Twain said, it ain’t the things you don’t know that get you in trouble, it’s the things you know for sure that just ain’t so.

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I love that quote. It's bittersweet knowing that these flaws in our thinking aren't anything new, but worrying that they seem to be getting stronger as the years pass.

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"Being absolutely right and being spectacularly wrong feel exactly the same." -Scott Adams

I think that many people fail to consider that when they present their assumptions as timeless truth.

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Exactly. There's nothing wrong with having your beliefs, and we're all capable of making mistakes. It's just the absolute conviction in what are basically guesses that's the problem.

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Jan 10, 2022Liked by Steve QJ

Your posts are the best, Steve. You tell it like it is AND you make me smile. (Testing that cap lock thing!)

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author

Thanks Ruth! In your case, the caps lock key only adds to your point.😁

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Here's an idea: Why don't we blame 'male supremacy', since white, black, brown, or all of the above, men are the group that commit the lion's share of the violence.

Yes, I'm being facetious. Too bad we can't stick to the facts, and not layer it with everyone's race obsession.

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Jan 12, 2022·edited Jan 12, 2022Author

Haha, ah yes, the all-pervasive patriarchy. And honestly? I'd have much less of a problem doing this by sex than by "race". At least there are actually behavioural differences between males and females that can be attributed to the effects of testosterone (I wonder how much longer I'll be able to state this simple fact before I get cancelled😅).

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Is Howard the same person as Howard J. Eagle

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author

Haha, ordinarily I wouldn't confirm or deny who these conversations are with. I don't want to create any internet drama with these posts. But as you say, Howard does have a particularly...distinctive style of writing.

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It seems even more unlikely that there would be two writers with that style who were both named Howard.

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I wouldn't be surprised if he was.

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I would be surprised if he wasn't. Mr. Eagle has a very recognizable style

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deletedJan 11, 2022Liked by Steve QJ
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😄 It's crazy how difficult it's becoming to get an accurate picture of events. Glad I could help.

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