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Mark Shaw
@mnshaw
Retired engineer. Dogsports fanatic. Eccentric.
Pronouns: the normal ones.
Allen, TX
Joined March 2009
460 Following
121 Followers
539 Posts
@FitFusion__ Turn the damn water off, what's wrong with you!
Folks, I'd like to get my two cents in on Karmelo Anthony. This is a long one -- pretend it's an editorial.
“He put his hands on me. I stabbed him.” Why does a boy spontaneously justify stabbing someone on so thin a pretense? And why do so many Black Americans see his 35-year prison sentence as racist?
I think the answer to both questions takes us to Scotland, Ireland, and northern England.
At a track meet at Kuykendall Stadium in Frisco, Texas in April of last year, Anthony sat down under a team’s tent. Anthony was neither on the team nor a student at its school, and an unwritten but widely known rule is that only team members are permitted under a team tent. Multiple student witnesses – and not just “whitenesses,” as several were Black -- testified about what happened next. Anthony was told several times to leave the tent but refused, including a profane epithet, culminating in warning “Touch me and see what happens.” Team member Austin Metcalf shoved Anthony, who pulled a knife out of his bag, stabbed him in the chest, threw the knife into the stands and ran away. Caught by the police, he immediately admitted to the stabbing, reportedly saying “He put his hands on me. I stabbed him.” Metcalf died in his twin brother’s arms.
There is no reason to think Anthony was trying to kill Metcalf. He was trying to hurt him severely, putting him in the hospital, for shoving him, as he indicated in at first saying "He's not gonna die." Also, claims such as prosecutor Bill Wirskye’s that Anthony meant “Touch me and see what happens” as a provocation are based on a misreading of Black English. “Touch me and see what happens” is not a command to touch. It means “If you touch me, you will find out.”
The question is why Anthony thought being pushed justified sinking a knife into Metcalf’s body. The answer is the culture of “disrespect” in young Black male culture, documented by many (including black sociologists). His calculus was "If he even touches me, I am disrespected, and will respond in destructive kind." The idea is that being dissed merits what we might phrase as cutting someone a new one.
There is no reason to suppose that this is due to Black people having some inborn propensity to violence. The Black economist Thomas Sowell has traced the “disrespect” culture to the whites from the “Celtic Fringe” – an area comprising parts of northern England, Scotland, and Ulster County in Ireland -- who migrated to the South starting in the 1700s and established plantations (or worked on them as indentured servants). Black people, often enslaved, worked alongside and around them and their American-born descendants. At this time (although certainly not now), whites from the Celtic Fringe area had the same tripwire response to being dissed – “touchy pride” -- as well as many other traits now commonly associated with “gangsta” Black culture.
In his classic study of early migrants to America “Albion’s Seed,” the historian David Hackett Fisher referred to the oppressed people of this northern borderland region, encompassing Scotland, northern England and Ulster County in Ireland, as “some of the most disorderly inhabitants of a deeply disordered land.” “Manliness and the forceful projection of that manliness to others – an advertisement of one’s willingness to fight and even to put one’s life on the line – were at least plausible means of gaining whatever level of security was possible in a lawless region and a violent time,” Sowell notes.
Hundreds of thousands of people from this region migrated to America starting in the early 1700s, eventually migrating to the South. Many establishedplantations and bought enslaved Black people to work on them. Referring often to the scholarly and sympathetic study of this “cracker” culture in America by the historian Grady McWhiney, Sowell notes that they manifested “a touchiness about anything that might be even remotely construed as a personal slight, much less an insult, combined with a willingness to erupt into violence over it.”
The step is short between that and “He put his hands on me. I stabbed him.” It is hard not to see the parallel between the “cracker” culture and the sociologist Elijah Anderson’s study of late twentieth century Black culture of “the streets,” where “respect is viewed as almost an external entity that is hard-won but easily lost, and so must constantly be guarded. (...) Many of the forms that dissing can take might seem petty to middle-class people (maintaining eye contact for too long, for example), but to those invested in the street code, these actions become serious indications of the other person's intentions. Consequently, such people become very sensitive to advances and slights, which could well serve as warnings of imminent physical confrontation.”
Sowell argues that enslaved Blacks would have internalized these norms from the whites they worked with and lived around. It might seem hard to imagine whites and Blacks sharing a culture on the kind of plantation familiar from dramatic depictions, where legions of Black people worked in the fields while whites were their owners and overseers. However, in reality, relationships between whites and Blacks, while fraught and founded in pitiless domination, allowed for degrees of interchange and familiarity. Plantations varied massively in size, and white children and Black ones grew up playing together, even influencing one another’s speech.
Black sociologist W.E.B. DuBois’ survey of Black Philadelphia in the 1890s, as well as studies afterward, shows that until the 1960s, the “cracker” inheritance from whites was largely confined to the least advantaged and segregated Black people. However, for the past several decades, aspects of the “disrespect culture” have had influence even among middle-class Black people.
For one, the Black middle class vastly increased after the Civil Rights victories of the 1960s, and therefore, for most middle class Black people, poverty remains only a few generations back. Culture does not always change in lockstep with income. Add to this that in the 1960s, many Black people rejected the old idea that our goal was to assimilate to mainstream (i.e. white) norms. Rather than engaging in what is often called respectability politics, many Black people embraced the idea of a separate Black identity – and one aspect of that was the chip-on-the-shoulder style.
This all meant that these days, a Black boy hardly needs to grow up in the ‘hood to internalize aspects of what Sowell calls “redneck” culture. This includes the tripwire sensitivity to being “disrespected.”
This informs how so many black commenters on the trial and sentence seem to not quite process the horror of Metcalf’s murder. Representative Jasmine Crockett thinks the length of the sentence is racist – as if a white boy shivving a Black boy to death would only get a slap on the hand -- focusing on the fact that the knife was not especially large and that Anthony only stabbed once. Martin Luther King’s daughter Berenice King opines that the main lesson from the episode is racial disparities in the justice system. Many online revile that none of the jurors were Black. But it is reasonable to think that they would have liked that a representative number of jurors would pardon Anthony as representing his “disrespect culture,” and thus less culpable than a teen of any other race in America? If so, they are less progressive than retrograde, if we are really to get past race. Dr. King didn’t die demanding that whites make excuses for us.
What’s missing in these opinions is thoughts that would occur readily to the outside observer. How about if Anthony hadn’t been carrying a knife at all? How about Anthony just getting up and leaving, or just shoving back rather than hauling out a weapon? But under the “disrespect” culture, even in the background as a tacit sentiment, the idea that Anthony could simply have done what he was told seems an almost unreasonable expectation based on respectability politics. And frankly, I venture that there another resonance in the air: that on a certain level we are supposed to see Anthony’s deed in the light of slavery, Jim Crow and George Floyd, and other disrepectings upon us as a group.
Karmelo Anthony drank in this way of thinking subconsciously in the way that we all grow into the culture we are born into. He doubtless incorporated countless elements of Black culture that are positive or even just neutral. But one of them was this notion of what it is to be a man, which made sense in some upper reaches of what we now know as the United Kingdom centuries ago, but doesn’t work in modern American society.
The sports journalist Jemele Hill advises “We need to be having conversations with our young black boys about emotional regulation and decision making and discernment and wisdom.” Black women often give their boys “The Talk” about obeying what cops demand. But that talk needs to come with a second one – there need to be “The Talks.” Young Black men need to be told not to fall for the idea that being dissed justifies physical violence. That, and not the persistence of racism, is what Karmelo Anthony’s fate should teach us.
If you did, thanks for staying with me until the end!
Heh.
"HASTA LAS LAGRIMAS"
Por este video de una japonesa nativa emocionada por la participación de su país en la copa del mundo.
Jeff Metcalf is giving me an exclusive interview here tonight, 8pm central.
Jeff can now say everything that he has kept to himself for the past year. He will have the floor. Tune in.
Black Americans should be deeply ashamed for racializing this case and demanding Karmelo Anthony’s release.
If a White boy had stabbed a Black boy in the heart at a school track meet, there would be nonstop marches in the streets, riots, viral outrage, and endless calls to ‘end racism.’
But when the races are reversed — a Black teen brings a knife to the event, escalates, and fatally stabs an unarmed White teen — suddenly it’s all ‘self-defense’ and excuses.
This hypocrisy has to stop. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. Justice shouldn’t come with a skin color. No more two-tiered standards based on race.”
#JusticeForAustinMetcalf #NoMoreHypocrisy #EqualJustice
Body language. This is an abused woman.
A message from my wife Amy:
Almost no one knows the full story of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.
In 1847, during the Mexican War, a young Lieutenant Grant served as an obscure regimental quartermaster. Robert E. Lee, already famous, served on General Winfield Scott's elite staff. They crossed paths once. Lee did not remember it.
Eighteen years later, they met again.
April 9, 1865. Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee arrived first, in an immaculate gray dress uniform, red sash, embroidered gauntlets, and a presentation sword with a jeweled hilt. He looked like an emperor walking to his coronation.
Grant rode up an hour later, alone, splattered head to boot in Virginia mud, wearing a private's field blouse with no sword, no sash, and no insignia except the dirty shoulder straps of a lieutenant general. The first thing he did was apologize to Lee for his appearance.
The surrender happened in the parlor of a farmer named Wilmer McLean. McLean had fled his old home near Manassas because the first major battle of the war had literally been fought across his front yard in 1861. Four years later the war followed him 120 miles and ended in his front parlor. He later said he could have wallpapered his house with the war.
Before any terms were discussed, Grant tried small talk. He asked Lee if he remembered him from Mexico. Lee politely said he did not. Grant said he had remembered Lee perfectly for almost twenty years.
Then came the terms, and they stunned everyone present.
Officers could keep their sidearms and personal horses. Enlisted men who owned their mounts could take them home for the spring plowing. No prison. No trials. Every Confederate soldier would be paroled and allowed to walk home, on his honor, unmolested by U.S. authority for as long as he kept his parole.
Lincoln had asked for leniency. Grant gave him more than he asked for.
When Lee mentioned, almost in passing, that his men had not eaten in days, Grant ordered 25,000 rations sent across the lines from his own supply trains that same afternoon. The Union army fed the army it had just defeated.
As Lee rode back to his lines on his old gray horse Traveller, Union batteries began firing celebratory salutes and Grant's men started to cheer. Grant rode out himself and shut it down on the spot. "The war is over," he said. "The rebels are our countrymen again, and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to abstain from all such demonstrations."
He later wrote that he felt "sad and depressed" the rest of that day, not triumphant. He could not bring himself to rejoice over the downfall of a foe who had fought so long, so well, and had suffered so much for his cause.
Then came the chapter history almost forgot.
Two months after Appomattox, a federal grand jury in Norfolk indicted Robert E. Lee for treason. The penalty on the books was death by hanging. Lee wrote a single letter to Grant, citing the parole he had been given.
Grant was furious. He went directly to President Andrew Johnson and told him plainly that if the indictment moved forward, he would resign his commission as commanding general of the entire United States Army. He had pledged his personal word to Lee at Appomattox, and no civilian politician was going to break that word while Grant still wore the uniform.
Johnson backed down. The indictment was quietly killed.
The man who beat Lee in war saved him from the gallows in peace.
Twenty years later, Grant was dying of throat cancer in a cottage on Mount McGregor, racing in agony to finish his memoirs before bankruptcy and death caught up with his family. He won by four days. The book sold 300,000 copies and made his widow rich.
At Grant's funeral procession in New York in August 1885, his pallbearers walked side by side: Union generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan, and Confederate generals Joseph E. Johnston and Simon Bolivar Buckner. The same men who had spent four years trying to kill each other carried the coffin together through a million and a half mourners lining the streets.
Six years later, when Sherman himself died, the old Confederate Johnston traveled to New York again to serve as a pallbearer for his former enemy. It was a freezing February day with cold rain. Johnston, 84 years old, stood through the entire outdoor ceremony with his hat held over his heart. A friend pleaded with him to put his hat back on. Johnston refused. "If I were in his place," he said, "and he were standing in mine, he would not put on his hat."
Johnston caught pneumonia that day. He died a few weeks later.
That is the real ending of the American Civil War. Not at Appomattox. In the rain, at a funeral, with an old Confederate refusing to cover his head out of respect for the Union general he had spent his youth trying to destroy.
Hey @BernieSanders -- I need your help.
Seriously. I have a student. Young man, just graduated, earned his welding certifications, 18 years old. Knows how to do real work, produce a real product, contribute something tangible to this country. Good kid.
His family kicked him out the day he graduated. Homeless. No safety net. Just his certs and whatever he could carry out the door.
Now, Senator, YOU are the guy I always hear talking about this. You have built your ENTIRE career on the idea that when someone has more than they need, and someone else has nothing, the people with excess have a moral obligation to help. Government redistribution. Take from those who have, give to those who are in need. You have said this for FORTY YEARS.
So I am coming to you. Sincerely. This kid needs a roof.
You own three houses, Senator. One in Burlington. One beachfront property in North Hero, Vermont. One in Washington, D.C.
He needs ONE.
You believe in this, right? This is literally the core of everything you preach. A skilled young man -- someone who will actually WORK, who actually PRODUCES something, unlike people whose career highlight is naming three post offices -- has nothing. And you have three properties sitting there.
So here is where I get a little confused, Senator.
See, I thought maybe you would just... hand him one. Lead by example. Be the change. But then I remembered you just spent $221,000 in a SINGLE QUARTER chartering a Bombardier Challenger 604 -- that is $15,000 AN HOUR -- to fly around the country on your "Fighting Oligarchy" tour. Because, as you so eloquently put it when asked about it: "You think I'm gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United?"
No apologies.
So let me make sure I have this right. The government should redistribute wealth to help people like my student -- but YOU personally, with three houses and a private jet habit, are too important to inconvenience yourself. Got it.
Quinn's Law Twenty-Five. Go look it up. I'll wait.
You are not a champion of the Proletariat, Senator. You are a SNOLLYGOSTER of the first order -- a cacafuego who has built a career selling a product he has never once used himself. A gascon. All promises, no precipitation. Cloud without rain for forty years running.
Socialism does not lift people out of poverty. It never has. What it DOES produce -- reliably, historically, every single time -- is people exactly like you. Three houses. Private jets. No apologies.
We call those people oligarchs, Senator. I believe you have used that word yourself. Recently. From a $15,000-an-hour airplane.
But what do I know -- I am only a science teacher whose student is sleeping on someone else's floor tonight while the self-appointed champion of the working class decides which of his three vacation homes to visit next.
IF you agree:
LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it.
SHARE this.
COMMENT below -- Do you think Bernie is obligated to offer this kid a room? Tell me. 👇
JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube.
@JoJoFromJerz @GuntherEagleman @catturd2
#MAGA #Veterans #Trump
@CartelWatchNet Kensington.
@SydneyLWatson Good girlie!
I am bleeding my pockets dry paying astronomical prices for a half broken internet connection just to read what the outside world is saying. And let me be honest, it is absolutely infuriating to see how completely disconnected so many of you are from the actual mood of the people inside Iran.
Do not lose your nerve. Do not be afraid.
The narrative you are seeing right now is a complete illusion.
The voices currently being amplified online are fake, manipulated, and engineered by the cyber army of this cannibalistic regime.
They have locked us in a digital prison and severed our connection to the world specifically so they can control the narrative and project a false sense of fear and submission.
We are not cowering in the dark. We are watching a dying terrorist syndicate thrash in its final days.
Do not judge the resolve of the Iranian people based on the fabricated noise of our captors. Wait until these walls come down. Wait until this internet blackout is broken and you can finally hear the unfiltered, undeniable roar of a nation that has been stripped to the bone.
You will see exactly what an unstoppable force looks like.
Hold the line. Level the playing field and we will finish the job.
As an Iranian who stayed connected through Starlink during the total internet blackout, I want to wholeheartedly confirm what President Trump just said:
"The Iranian people want to be free. They have lived in a world that you know NOTHING about."
For 47 years, my people have endured systematic torture, rape, murder, humiliation, anxiety, suppression, and grief under the Islamic Republic. It’s been a long, grinding suffering — punctuated by brutal spikes like the January protests, mass executions, and now war. The world has no idea of the scale or depth of these horrors. Only when this evil regime finally falls will the full truth pour out — in quality and quantity that will shock humanity.
We have now reached a point where almost no cost is too great if it rids us of this regime. Because the cost of it staying in power is infinitely higher.
If you’re reading this and you can’t understand how any Iranian could feel relief at their own country losing a war and getting bombed… I envy you. You have never lived what we have lived. You have never watched your people, friends, family, and loved ones get tortured, raped, or killed almost daily and over half a century. You have never seen an entire nation slowly but brutally suffocated like this.
We tried every alternative imaginable: massive protests, dissent, peaceful reform, negotiations — everything. None of it worked. The regime’s answer has always been bullets, gallows, and more terror.
Now, less than 24 hours before Trump’s deadline, I write this with a heavy heart from inside Iran:
Whatever happens next — if there is still an Iran left to save and this regime is gone — the Iranian people will be happy with the result. No matter the cost. Because the cost of the regime remaining is higher, and for many of us, death itself is preferable to another day under this nightmare.
This is the true sentiment of the majority of Iranians — the voice of a people who often have no internet, no platform, and no way to be heard.
The world will soon understand why we say:
Anything to be free. Anything to end this evil.
#IranMassacre
#IranRevolution2026
@MarioNawfal Segal didn't leak the story; he reported it. In the US he'd be safe from prosecution. In Israel he might be compelled to reveal his source - i.e. the actual leaker.
Historically, the two deadliest mass murdering ideologies on Earth have been Islam and Communism... together responsible for more death, destruction, and human misery than anything else in recorded history.
And right now, the Democrats have gone all-in on both.
They’ve wrapped themselves in the blood-soaked banners of these twin evils like it’s some kind of flex.
The party of tolerance is proudly platforming the two most intolerant, freedom-crushing death cults humanity has ever known.
Say what you want about the Democrats, but they’ve got impeccable taste… in totalitarian nightmares.
JUST IN: Democrats in Pennsylvania withdrew a resolution to honor March as national women’s month after a Republican asked them what a woman is
You cannot make this up 🤣🤣
Imagine throwing a “No Kings” protest after your party refused to hold a primary, coronated Kamala without a single vote, sued to keep RFK Jr. off the ballot, and attempted to remove Trump from state ballots only after your illegal lawfare scheme failed.
If there was a modern day monarchy in America there would only be one party you could point to.
The Democrats.
😂😂😂
Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada spoke about the contradictions of human nature:
“Some people dream of having a swimming pool at home, while those who have one hardly ever use it. Those who have lost a loved one feel a profound sense of loss, while others often complain about their living relatives. Those without a partner long for one, while those who have one often don't appreciate it. The hungry would give anything for a meal, while the satiated complain about the taste of their food. Those without a car dream of owning one, while those who have a car are always looking for a better one.”
The key to happiness is gratitude: truly seeing and appreciating what we already have, and understanding that somewhere, someone would give anything for what we take for granted.
Just damn!
A very special moment that will never be forgotten.
Alexander Dugin is not “obscure.”
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