To say I cannot imagine how stressful it must be to be in the USA right now

[amillionnamechangeslater000]

Lockdown in the uk has been awful. Scary, sad and uncertain. But... I cannot imagine going through this in the US!

Donald Trump, the awful killing of George Flloyd, the rioting. It must be terrifying.

And quite frankly if you’re BAME - so much worse.

As people have said, the US is a massive country.
I live over 1,000 miles away from Minneapolis but my city had a peaceful protest that was controlled. Less than a mile away from there, another "protest" happened where people surrounded the police and vandalized their cars and those same "protestors" moved to the main part of the city and vandalized and looted property.

At the moment, people in my state have stopped traffic in our state capital to protest. I'm okay with that. The other stuff, not so much.

As for Trump, we don't really pay too much attention to him right now.
Regarding CV19 and most issues, we are mostly affected by the decisions of our mayor, our county judge, and the governor.

We're currently watching a roomful of apparently calm (though probably somewhat stressed) Americans working, all in masks ... Space-X /NASA, getting Bob and Doug up to the ISS.

Bit I’m not remembering Spanish flu happening at the same time.

Oh, no, there was just, you know, a huge war going on the same time then, nothing stressful .

If they say 'American astronauts, American soil, American rockets' one more time I think I will scream. At least they didn't say 'American space station' or I fear that DS would have spontaneously combusted

I saw the clip where the cnn crew got arrested live on air. That was chilling.

I can’t believe the behaviour of that police officer, that poor man was clearly telling him that he could not breath!!

@highmarkingsnowbile fair point. But there wasn’t 24/7 news coverage

However I think I’ve called this wrong. I think maybe we can only process so much at a time - and also that the U.K. is so much smaller so if Tristan was happening here it would be different.

Just been watching Sky News this morning. A journalist interviewed had been shot by a rubber bullet in the chest. He said it caused a tennis ball sized purple bruise. He was white/taking photos of the riots.
The riots/protests have extended to 30 cities in the US. Coverage on Sky came from LA and Washington DC.

Also, apparently the National Guard are not in situ (not sure where) and are ordering people on their porches to go inside. Reports of them being shot with rubber bullets if they don't comply.

Apols, it's been BBC that I've been watching.

I am praying that Biden is elected in November.

Really? Given Biden’s very obvious mental decline who do you think would ACTUALLY be in charge of the country if he became the President? It is almost as if the presidency is a fig-leaf for the real power...

I feel so sorry for Americans. Trump is an unmitigated disaster, but come November they will have to choose between him and Biden, another racist. Trump is the obviously worse choice, but it must feel so hopeless to know that your best option is simply the lesser of two evils.

@whocanibe2day

If it’s the same video I saw on Reddit, they are going though a street shouting aggressively for people to get indoors even though they are allowed to stand on their porches. Then one of them says “light em up” like he’s on Call of Duty, and then then another one shoots at the person recording... it’s disgusting.

On another recording, the police are all
Lined up with guns like you see on video games where they are bobbing back and forth just waiting for some action, a couple of them are actually smirking as they appear to be getting a hard on from the prospect of shooting some folk! The person recording and the people around all point out that the police are actually smiling, and then the officers walk away. That one was really chilling.

To those who say they feel safer in the US than in the UK, may I ask what colour your skin is? Just curious.

@HoldMyLobster

TBH I feel much safer here in the US than I would in the UK.

Can you expand on that a bit? I can't imagine any comparable situation where I would think like that.

Are you thinking of crowded public transport? Surely that would be the same in New York as it is in London. Otherwise I literally can't think of anything more dangerous here in the UK.

I'm white (Irish, traditionally persecuted by the British Police) and would certainly feel safer in the UK. Fear of the unknown I suppose.

I think the difference for white people is that they can be fairly confident (judging from media coverage of real events and fictional TV programmes) that they will be treated fairly by cops. They will also be believed over black people (anecdotally). As US cops carry guns, and if I was black in the US, I'd be very fucking afraid. You just know that you're going to be judged differently. Muslims are also feared and treated differently over there. Mexican? Build a ladder and crawl back over that wall. Muslim? You're a terrorist. African American? You're guilty.

Remember the little 6 year old (?) black child who was arrested from school in the US? Florida I think? Sheer discrimination. Barbarity. In Ireland, if they had behavioural difficulties, they'd be assigned a Special Needs Assistant (SNA). SNA's provide one to one support to their assigned student. The fucking gardai wouldn't be called. It's just so insane to me in the US.

Have you watched this? 37 years he served for a crime he didn't commit.

Have you ever watched the film 'In the name of the Father'? Stars Daniel Day Lewis. Worth a watch if you haven't seen it to see how Northern Irish (Catholic) were persecuted much as black people are now.

I've had personal experience where a white British man from Kent was believed over me (Irish). We were in a house share.

A far as coronavirus is concerned, yes the US has far more deaths than the UK, but it's far less when you take the size of the population into account. That's probably not surprising given that the US is much less densely populated than the UK. The worst areas are, I believe, densely populated areas where it was easiest for the virus to spread: New York in the US, London in the UK.
Unless you're in a big city, it's probably safer there.

As far as the racism is concerned, I am white so have no direct experience to draw on but I'd much rather be black in the UK than in America. I'm not saying there is no racism here, but as far as I can tell it's nothing like it is there. The behaviour of that woman in Central Park recently is even more chilling in the light of what happened to George Floyd.

I have a friend who lives in central Minneapolis, very close to the burned police station. Not a fun place to be right now.

My family are all ok. Similar struggles to here with Lockdown business worries, loss of jobs, no loo roll ..... Family are BAME but in America there is also tensions between different ethnic groups. It’s different the racism issues we have here. Here we have a lot more integration between all in the US even in multicultural cities you still have huge areas that are not.

I know people who went to the protests in LA and it wasn’t all clashes with the police but that isn’t news worthy

And most cities in the US are sprawling so only a very very few people will live close to where the protests are and even fewer to where there had been clashes with the police

Biden's very obvious mental decline
How can it be that such a vast diverse successful country can only come up with a couple of useless old men, I don't mean to be offensive about biden but he's well past his best, and trump, well he's just a joke, a terrifying appalling joke😱
There many many very clever, accomplished, capable good people in the USA, why is the useless scum floating to the top😳
Where is the cream?

The problem with these (legitimate) protests is that antifa get involved and it turns away from what the protest was about and into violence and terrorism, look at what is going on in Chicago- it’s always white young men using the civil rights movement as a cover for violence. There’s a video of a woman police officer getting beaten by a crowd of men, and women protesters step in to protect her.

Meanwhile - the general public look at the looting and violence and shut their doors and withdraw , they connect this to ‘civil rights’ which then damages the cause.

If these white rich young men really cared about civil rights they would fight in the court room and the board room where they can really make a difference.