Political Discussion

Hemotep said:
This is not what I said.

If the racism was the bigger issue then Obama wouldn't have won twice, or been likely to win again if he could have run a third time. This is exactly what people claimed when he ran the first time and said he could never win in America. Yes, there are a ton of racists and they aren't dying off like many love to claim. But it's not the major driver of the economy or politics, but they are of it. The order these things happens in is important and can be traced genealogically to the American colonies when race was first being used as a wedge to destroy solidarity between poor white people and poor black people by plantation owners.

And economic anxiety is not what I'm taking about here. It isn't about what the middle class thinks their economic situation is. It's about the consequences of what happened to the class as a class. What was destroyed more than anything else by these policies was not people's pay (although that was too) it was the entire system of public goods and benefits that the class enjoyed. The education system, health care, the environment, food systems, and the list goes on. Neoliberalism shattered the progressive tax system. People who grew up in the 60s and 70s were convinced that racism was dying off because life was getting better for most people despite how painfully slow it was. But once you create a system that really blows up the difference between the haves and the have nots, by destroying the public goods they could all enjoy no matter their pay, you need to find ways to fragment the have nots so that they don't take over and make the haves pay. Racism has been the main tool they've used to do that for centuries in America. It was still in the national conscious even if it was kind of repressed for a brief period, but yes, it is a symptom. No one is inherently or naturally racist, but they do give in to prejudice and discrimination very easily when their life starts to suck.

This is like saying Hitler rose to power because of antisemitism. But no one says that now because it would ignore everything we know that happened to Germany in the aftermath of WWI as punishment by the allies. Hitler used antisemitic sentiments to exploit the despair of the Germans, and they were all too willing to make antisemitism a core belief to get theirs. Then WWII ends and they were willing to reeducate themselves and confront the antisemitism by fixing the economic conditions that gave birth to it and demanding reeducation. Soon after the war many Jews repatriated to West Germany and were welcomed back, even by those who were pro-Nazi when Hitler was in power. Antisemitism didn't go away entirely because some were real believers, but a lot of them were just like Americans: shitty people who overlook horrible things happening to others so long as it isn't them.

And if that's too academic then it's too fact based and I'll absolutely fuck off from here because I'm not about that kind of anti-intellectual claim and ignoring of the facts. I really try not to be an elitist or a dick just because I study this for work, but if I'm going to get that response just because you want to believe what you want to believe just because you believe it then there's no point in talking to each other.
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I just want to say that I too would love to share a case of beers with you over a long chat. 1000% to everything you said and I appreciate the ease with which you articulate it.

What do you for a living (since its been alluded to).

Edit- Also, I want to throw in that Bush Jr wrecked havoc on our public school systems which is just now coming to fruition via a lack of critical thinking and inability to read.
 
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Indymisanthrope said:
Gonna take a break from the substance of the discussion for a moment to apologize for my post conveying that sentiment. That’s not my intention, and I hope a previous history of conversing in good faith is enough to extend some benefit of the doubt if I was inartful in how I expressed myself.

I think — and I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, just trying to articulate my understanding of what you’ve said thus far — we’re disagreeing only in the sense that you’re looking at a macro-explanation of long term forces and their consequences, while I’m focusing more on the proximate cultural milieu of the 2016 election.

When I used the phrase “too academic” I meant not to suggest an anti-intellectual interpretation, but in the sense that this analysis stands at a somewhat clinical remove from the lived experience of those who were subjected to the hatred of white nationalism over the last several years.

I appreciate you here and on the forum in general, and if anybody should take a break from it, it’s me. No hard feelings?
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No hard feelings. And sorry for reacting so strongly to that part. It's just something I hear from conservatives with too much frequency, so it bristles.

And I want you to know that I'm not discounting that lived experience. I lived it too. I'm just a white dude but two of my younger sisters are Black and one is Asian, and I'm a professor (@DownIsTheNewUp) at a majority Black university. I've seen it hurt a lot of my loved ones. And I've seen that poison the minds of a lot of other people I used to love. So I'm not discounting that the racism is real. But the reason it spread from something we shunned people for to something they got emboldened to say is really important, because if we don't fix that the racism will keep coming back.

That is what scares me and makes me afraid for the future. I don't want to keep watching good people suffer and others turn bad. And at the same time I'm freaked out about how our world is literally cooking us alive while we're still fighting about whether skin color makes someone good or bad.

It's little wonder that we're all a bit on edge and angry. But I honestly love all you folks on here for whatever that's worth, and I hope we're all proved wrong and the future is better than it looks like it's gonna be.
 
DownIsTheNewUp said:
I just want to say that I too would love to share a case of beers with you over a long chat. 1000% to everything you said and I appreciate the ease with which you articulate it.

What do you for a living (since its been alluded to).

Edit- Also, I want to throw in that Bush Jr wrecked havoc on our public school systems which is just now coming to fruition via a lack of critical thinking and inability to read.
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No child left behind and common core wrecked so many things in this country. The chickens really are coming home to roost.
 
Hemotep said:
No hard feelings. And sorry for reacting so strongly to that part. It's just something I hear from conservatives with too much frequency, so it bristles.

And I want you to know that I'm not discounting that lived experience. I lived it too. I'm just a white dude but two of my younger sisters are Black and one is Asian, and I'm a professor (@DownIsTheNewUp) at a majority Black university. I've seen it hurt a lot of my loved ones. And I've seen that poison the minds of a lot of other people I used to love. So I'm not discounting that the racism is real. But the reason it spread from something we shunned people for to something they got emboldened to say is really important, because if we don't fix that the racism will keep coming back.

That is what scares me and makes me afraid for the future. I don't want to keep watching good people suffer and others turn bad. And at the same time I'm freaked out about how our world is literally cooking us alive while we're still fighting about whether skin color makes someone good or bad.

It's little wonder that we're all a bit on edge and angry. But I honestly love all you folks on here for whatever that's worth, and I hope we're all proved wrong and the future is better than it looks like it's gonna be.
Click to expand...
Probably not but this is a step in that direction:
uk.news.yahoo.com

Wait, Did Trump Just Admit He Lost the 2020 Election?

One thousand three hundred eighty-eight days after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump appeared to tacitly admit that he lost to Joe Biden.Almost four years of denials gave way to one seemingly innocuous throwaway line, made while Trump held a press availability Thursday about...
uk.news.yahoo.com uk.news.yahoo.com
 
Hemotep said:
This is not what I said.

If the racism was the bigger issue then Obama wouldn't have won twice, or been likely to win again if he could have run a third time. This is exactly what people claimed when he ran the first time and said he could never win in America. Yes, there are a ton of racists and they aren't dying off like many love to claim. But it's not the major driver of the economy or politics, but they are of it. The order these things happens in is important and can be traced genealogically to the American colonies when race was first being used as a wedge to destroy solidarity between poor white people and poor black people by plantation owners.

And economic anxiety is not what I'm taking about here. It isn't about what the middle class thinks their economic situation is. It's about the consequences of what happened to the class as a class. What was destroyed more than anything else by these policies was not people's pay (although that was too) it was the entire system of public goods and benefits that the class enjoyed. The education system, health care, the environment, food systems, and the list goes on. Neoliberalism shattered the progressive tax system. People who grew up in the 60s and 70s were convinced that racism was dying off because life was getting better for most people despite how painfully slow it was. But once you create a system that really blows up the difference between the haves and the have nots, by destroying the public goods they could all enjoy no matter their pay, you need to find ways to fragment the have nots so that they don't take over and make the haves pay. Racism has been the main tool they've used to do that for centuries in America. It was still in the national conscious even if it was kind of repressed for a brief period, but yes, it is a symptom. No one is inherently or naturally racist, but they do give in to prejudice and discrimination very easily when their life starts to suck.

This is like saying Hitler rose to power because of antisemitism. But no one says that now because it would ignore everything we know that happened to Germany in the aftermath of WWI as punishment by the allies. Hitler used antisemitic sentiments to exploit the despair of the Germans, and they were all too willing to make antisemitism a core belief to get theirs. Then WWII ends and they were willing to reeducate themselves and confront the antisemitism by fixing the economic conditions that gave birth to it and demanding reeducation. Soon after the war many Jews repatriated to West Germany and were welcomed back, even by those who were pro-Nazi when Hitler was in power. Antisemitism didn't go away entirely because some were real believers, but a lot of them were just like Americans: shitty people who overlook horrible things happening to others so long as it isn't them.

And if that's too academic then it's too fact based and I'll absolutely fuck off from here because I'm not about that kind of anti-intellectual claim and ignoring of the facts. I really try not to be an elitist or a dick just because I study this for work, but if I'm going to get that response just because you want to believe what you want to believe just because you believe it then there's no point in talking to each other.
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You know you’re wrong because this discounts everything the Romans did.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
I didn't realize there was a new episode of John Oliver last weekend and watched it last night, because they put up the banner saying new episodes September 8 the weekend before. A week to early.

Anyways, my point John Oliver brought up Hung Cao

What a piece of work this guy is. Is crazy nut job the qualifications for running for the GOP these days?

www.businessinsider.com

GOP Senate candidate Hung Cao warns of 'witchcraft' happening in California: 'We can't let that happen in Virginia'

Cao, who was the GOP nominee against Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton in 2022, also said he was "African-American because I grew up in Africa too."
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com
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Wait you watched that episode of John Oliver and went with this guy instead of the dude that wants Trump to take a shit on stage?
 
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