My health is good, thx. I hope you're doing well, too.
It was very clear that you were talking about culture. Whining about Brer Rabbit amid this watershed racial reckoning moment (though I'm not convinced yet) shows a damning level of tone-deafness that is all too common and one that I've frankly had enough of. Splash Mountain is having a makeover! Boo hoo. It's not a big problem, as you say. This isn't even the end of Brer Rabbit, though I find it hard to believe that anyone gives a hoot about the stories of our furry friend. I think you're just arguing against the left, as usual.
I've been reading and enjoying your posts for more than 10 years, since long before you learned to remain calm and dress up your views in lawyerese. FWIW, you're every bit as full of $hit now as you were 10 years ago. But that's cool. Some things are just baked in.
I agree with you that police departments should have to keep and make available ALL relevant statistics on how they conduct their jobs, not just on things relating to race. There should be a national standard that police unions have to adhere to whether they like it or not. I think police should be subject to even stricter rules of conduct than regular citizens and when they egregiously overstep or become corrupt, they should be severely punished.
I could just as easily argue that people getting upset over Splash Mountain's Song of the South roots at this, as you said, watershed moment, is even more silly. I'm also not convinced it's a true watershed moment as I see so much energy being spent on absolutely absurd things like syrup bottles and animatronic rabbits. Those sort of "victories" are easily achieved and ultimately meaningless.
There's an analogy I've used before and find it appropriate here. Suppose you're walking down the street at light and see someone searching the ground under a street light. You ask them "what are you looking for?" They respond "My car keys." You then ask "Did you drop them here?" They respond "No, I dropped them on the other side of the street." You ask "Why are you looking here then." They respond "The light's better".
This example demonstrates people's natural tendency to try to do the easy thing with low payoffs rather than the hard thing with serious returns. Combating racism is difficult. Changing peoples minds is difficult. Pressuring a corporation to make a symbolic change? That's easy. It doesn't actually help fight racism but it sure is easy.
So people get their symbolic victories, it mollifies them, and the true evil remains.
As for Brer Rabbit, my opposition to Brer Rabbit being tossed aside isn't tone deaf at all. BLM is trying to be a movement and trying not to become a mob. When a movement becomes a mob the movement has lost. A movement needs direction and intelligent hands at the wheel. Mobs descend to the lowest common denominator. Movements accomplish goals, mobs simply sow destruction.
A movement would address the issue of Brer Rabbit intelligently (if it engaged the issue at all). It would attempt to strip away the problematic bits, retake ownership of the stories, and spread them for new generations to hear. A mob would see the problematic parts and scream for the destruction of everything associated.
Is Splash Mountain trivial? Of course it is. It being changed does nothing but make a nostalgic part of me a little sad. However it's a great example of the problem when mob mentality starts to hijack a movement.