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Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

aeon.co

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#51
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH in many places in the US you still have regular shootings, and bullets also do get into homes. Residential homes are also built way more crappily now than the log cabins of old times. So nothing much changed about the shooting part. Compare it to Europe which has deweaponized itself.

Europe! Deweaponized! HAH! Compare the murder rates of Detroit MI, Cheyenne WY, London, and Shanghai, and then tell me which city has a weapon problem and which city has a culture problem, or both!

Murder rates (per 100k people): Detroit: 38.8 (2018); Cheyenne: 3.1 (2018); London: 1.84 (2019); China: 1.0 (2011);

Not sure where you are going with this, but I'd say the answer is Detroit??

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#52
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe! Deweaponized! HAH! Compare the murder rates of Detroit MI, Cheyenne WY, London, and Shanghai, and then tell me which city has a weapon problem and which city has a culture problem, or both!

Murder rates (per 100k people): Detroit: 38.8 (2018); Cheyenne: 3.1 (2018); London: 1.84 (2019); China: 1.0 (2011); Not sure where you are going with this, but I'd say the answer is Detroit??

I’m confused by this comment too. Why Detroit? It has the third highest rate of any US city in 2017. Was that the point?

For comparison the US national rate in 2019 was 5 and NYC (more comparable to London and Shanghai) has a rate of 2.8.

Yeah, look ... I like the 2A too and don’t think guns cause higher murder rates. But there is no data to support the narrative that Europe and other countries are more dangerous in some way because they don’t have guns.

Edit: To be clear, there is no evidence that they are more dangerous. They look safer.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were presented in my education, though mine wasn't a public education.

They were presented in mine, though New York being the center of Loyalist America probably had something to do with it.

Interesting! I wonder how it has influenced political parties etc. to the present?

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#55
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murder rates (per 100k people): Detroit: 38.8 (2018); Cheyenne: 3.1 (2018); London: 1.84 (2019); China: 1.0 (2011); Not sure where you are going with this, but I'd say the answer is Detroit??

I’m confused by this comment too. Why Detroit? It has the third highest rate of any US city in 2017. Was that the point? For comparison the US national rate in 2019 was 5 and NYC (more comparable to London and Shanghai) has a rate of 2.8. Yeah, look ... I like the 2A too and don’t think guns cause higher murder rates. But there is no data to support the narrative that Europe and other countries are more dangerous in…

I think "culture problem" is code for something else given that one of the other cities was also US.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#56
post #31
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once described the caste system as “racism invented by people who look alike” and my girlfriend from Madya Pradesh (Central Indian Province) thought that was very apt. Humans are great, until you let them form groups, once that happens you’ll get tribalism and prejudice almost every time as far as I can tell. Even sports’ fans will beat eachother up sometimes.

I'm increasingly hearing the idea (from Hindu nationalists?) that the caste system was the invention of the British, not anything indigenous. If anyone's in the know, I'd be curious to hear what's broadly accepted among historians nowadays.

The scholarly opinion of this question has been quite dynamic over the last century.

Nowadays, the consensus seems to be that Caste was definitely a thing before the Raj took over, but it was more fluid and regional, and was not the centralized, static hierarchy it is today. There were other power structures (feudal, religious, etc) that were not colored by caste, and competed with caste to triangulate people.

The British Raj took calculated steps to centralize, formalize, and entrench the caste system, shaping it into a form that is recognizable today, where it is strictly tied to opportunity and wealth.

It’s worth noting that is a common pattern of colonialism: to divide the colonized people against themselves along arbitrary, existing lines and elevate an arbitrary group, aligning the interest of that group with the interests of the colonizers. It’s a timeless and tragic human story.

I’ve only started researching this subject, so if anybody would like to correct or qualify anything I’ve said, I welcome it.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#57
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH in many places in the US you still have regular shootings, and bullets also do get into homes. Residential homes are also built way more crappily now than the log cabins of old times. So nothing much changed about the shooting part. Compare it to Europe which has deweaponized itself.

This isn't true. Shootings are very, very rare. And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting. Gun murders in the U.S. are a very low percentage of deaths (0.39%) and preventable deaths (~1.1%, there's some disagreement about what's "preventable"). That's 0.0036…

> And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting.

I said "many places" not "all places". Indeed, shootings are concentrated to a few areas with high crime rates. Doesn't mean that people living in those areas don't have to watch out. I replied to an anecdote about people living close to such a tavern having to watch out.

As for gun murders being a rare death cause, indeed if you average over all age ranges they are. However, for younger people they are a major concern. CDC data [0] lists homicides in the top 4 reasons for death for age groups from 1 until 35. Which weapons are used for these homicides? A different statistic tells us most times it's guns [1].

And yes, focusing on falls, car accidents and diabetes would be awesome. But preventing gun deaths is important too.

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...

[1]: 6.4k murder victims in 2019 from handguns, 3.3k from unspecified firearms, 1.5k from knives or cutting instruments, all other causes below 1k. https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in...

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#58

> By 1775, however, sporadic rioting and violence in and around taverns transitioned into outright war when a group of ‘minute men’ gathered at the Buckman Tavern in Lexington, Massachusetts on 19 April 1775, just before murdering more than 70 British troops. Murder of the British is a strange take on the events of Lexington and Concord. The author appears to be scraping. Is the assertion that the taverns caused publ…

> As is still so often the case when white, powerful men felt threatened, they banded together to create, and separate, the other . What, this is a behavior specific to white, powerful men? What went down in and around Lexington and Concord was a more serious crime than murder, it was an act of rebellion. The author appears committed to a particular affect which seems out of context with the history he presents.

It's odd how many people who share this anti-Whitism express this sentiment in the very same breath in which they denigrate, demonise or humiliate Whites.

Either they don't actually believe it and are just zealously taking the opportunity to revel in their socially-acceptable racism, or they're supporting this trend I'm seeing of Whites becoming ethnically conscious and collectivising in the face of the hostility they are being exposed to.

It's probably the former, but the latter is the effect regardless.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#59

Incidentally, if you think all this moralistic hand-wringing was centuries ago, famed SF nightclub DNA Lounge was in 2009 charged with, and I quote, "running a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals". https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/02/13.html (Note: jwz doesn't like HN referrers, so c&p into a separate tab)

> famed SF nightclub DNA Lounge For those not familiar with the DNA Lounge story: - jwz was an early programmer at Netscape who made several million - he wanted to get into entertainment, but when you buy a bar in SF, it comes without any permits, so you essentially have to rebuild and re-permit everything - the SF Police doesn't want to bother policing bars, so the Chief fights you tooth and nail at every city counc…

My first thought was NIMBYs as I used to live somewhere where people started buying properties near the college bar scene and then trying to find ways to get them shut down, but this makes sense as well.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. Shootings are very, very rare. And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting. Gun murders in the U.S. are a very low percentage of deaths (0.39%) and preventable deaths (~1.1%, there's some disagreement about what's "preventable"). That's 0.0036…

>. And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting. And even then they are basically concentrated around illegal parts of the economy. Drug traffickers, pimps, etc. can't use the courts and the police so when it comes to settling disputes they have to DIY their ow…

This is an interesting thought. Sounds correct to me. It seems like ending the War on Drugs would be a conceptually simple way of fixing most of this.
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