@FourOh-LLC
Homicide rates in Chicago in 1930s were only slightly lower than now, and surely mostly whites (gangsters, you know, Italians, Jews - recent arrivals from Europe) were shooting each other.

Then the underground economics shifted, recent arrivals from Europe, who were gangsters, moved on (having the white skin helps a lot). Now gangsters are black, so you see what you see.

The problem is that in this deeply racist country, which is desegregated mostly on paper, black gangsters will stay gangsters as long as no drastic, and unrealistic, steps (ban on gun ownership, real desegregation, universal basic income, better education) happen.
Skin colour is a mark which is impossible to escape.

Do a thought experiment. Imagine you are a black boy growing up in Chicago's Garfield Park, or some other ghetto. Think about your chances. Think how to get out. Your school there is total shit, where you cannot learn a thing. You might end up drowning yourself in the lake, so hopeless it is there.

Importantly, a boy. In a black, male-dominated gang-dominated environment. It's not for nothing that the enrollment figures of black students in universities are so crazily skewed toward females, it's like 70% girls vs 30% boys.

Dima, your post is emotionally charged and touches on real problems—but it offers no realistic path forward.

You describe systemic failure, racial injustice, and educational collapse—but your proposed solutions (like banning all guns, universal income, and total desegregation) are either politically unachievable or strategically vague. Worse, you acknowledge their improbability and offer no alternative. That’s not activism—it’s surrender dressed up as outrage.

Now, let’s address something that’s not ideological—it’s ethical.
You fly the Australian and Dutch flags. You’re not a citizen of the United States. Yet here you are, speaking to Americans with a tone of moral authority, indicting our institutions, our history, and our people.

What business do you have directing the civic discourse of a country that is not your own?
Where is your stake, your service, your risk, your ballot?

I’m a citizen. I live here. I vote here. I carry the consequences of what happens in this country.
That gives me the ethical standing to challenge what’s broken and defend what works. You don’t get to bypass that responsibility and still expect your criticisms to carry the same weight.

So yes—let’s talk solutions. But let’s also be clear:
Imported outrage without ownership is not civic dialogue. It’s noise.

Dima, let’s clarify a few things.

The First Amendment doesn’t grant anyone the universal right to be heard without criticism—it protects you from government censorship, not disagreement or accountability. Free speech, in its truest form, is a mirror: it reveals the speaker more than it protects them. You don’t invoke the First Amendment to silence critique of your own views—you invoke it to stand by what you say, even when challenged.

Second, being a university professor means something in your professional environment, but here—on the Fediverse—it gives you no special license. This is not your lecture hall. You’re a voice, like any other. The weight of your argument comes from clarity and reasoning, not title.

I’m not trying to shut you up.
I’m investing my time to see whether you’re capable of engaging outside the default narrative—to consider that maybe Trump, MAGA, and the Americans who support him are not cartoon villains, but fellow citizens making political decisions under the same Constitution you referenced.

I'm not asking you to apologize. I'm asking whether you're capable of discussing America without demanding that I do.

That’s the difference between debate and sermon. And I’m here for the former.