[Pops]

Real numbers don't lie. . This thread is on it's 5th page with only 450 plus views......

The degrowth thread has 10 pages and 11,000 views. .

It seems like a very small fringe number of people really take this topic seriously

Actually it shows the low membership involvement, this is buried in the members only, degrowth is in the "open."

[Ibon]

Real numbers don't lie. . This thread is on it's 5th page with only 450 plus views......

The degrowth thread has 10 pages and 11,000 views. .

It seems like a very small fringe number of people really take this topic seriously

Actually it shows the low membership involvement, this is buried in the members only, degrowth is in the "open."

Thanks...yes those enlightened members keeping the integrity of the site to such a high standard!!!!!!

[Newfie]

Pops,

As usual I can’t even begin to follow your thoughts. Far too many culturally related references I don’t get, being out of the culture.

[Cog]

Pops is just angry his girl lost. Even more so that Orange Man Bad isn't going to prison as he was promised. The tears on CNN are sweet.

[Plantagenet]

Obama showed even the least engaged voter that Ds are the party of brown people and and inclusion and Rs are the party of whites.....

That kind of political analysis is literally only "skin deep."

Its sad that so many Americans now see politics mainly through the prism of race. The skin color and race of the candidate shouldn't matter more than his political views and policies, but for some it clearly does.

Cheers!

[Cog]

Pops contention is that half the country are ignorant white racists since they voted for Trump. He shares Hillary's view that such people are deplorable and irredeemable. Such rhetoric is necessary from the left, if you want an excuse to execute them.

I hate to bring the bad news to Pops but flyover land doesn't share the leftist values of the east and west coast blue states. You will just have to deal with it and man up.

[Newfie]

Pops can make his on contentions, as can you.

[evilgenius]

Pops contention is that half the country are ignorant white racists since they voted for Trump. He shares Hillary's view that such people are deplorable and irredeemable. Such rhetoric is necessary from the left, if you want an excuse to execute them.

I hate to bring the bad news to Pops but flyover land doesn't share the leftist values of the east and west coast blue states. You will just have to deal with it and man up.

I'm not looking for an excuse to execute anybody, but I see a hole in this argument. I've been saying for some time that conspiracy theory is really just a means for people to perpetuate their own guilt, by sharing their wrongs. It's the same as when an individual commits a traffic offense, to give a concrete example, and gets caught. That person will most likely share the fact they got caught with their friends, and put the spin on it that it was no big deal and the cop shouldn't have pulled them over in the first place. By doing this it is implied that they are asking their friends to come on board with this interpretation of things. This allows them to get away with not examining their own behavior, and changing the way they drive.

This is exactly what is wrong with taking the accusation of racism and disregarding it to the point where it is seen as a false accusation because it doesn't belong to you, but you are somehow aligned with those who are accused. You shouldn't see the accusation as pointed at all white people, nor at all Republicans. I have this young leftist neighbor who would disagree with me, he would accuse all of them, mostly because they are rich, but that is just as mistaken. The problem this points out, however, is not one of the left. The problem it points out is how pervasive the assuaging talk has become. The right has allowed people like Alex Jones, and Rush Limbaugh before him, to pardon their offenses.

I think the problem this sort of pardoning introduces is a communal blindness toward the fate of others. It shouldn't matter, for instance, that Ferguson, Missouri has a rampant problem with people of color getting caught up in the legal system for doing nothing but trying to live their lives. Their system became infatuated with deriving income from them with all kinds of petty fines for things it deemed offensive, and then piled it on with failure to appear warrants galore. This caused people to feel disenfranchised. Neither should it matter that people of color chose not to vote and change their system the correct way when this was taking place. Michael Brown may have deserved everything he got, but that doesn't mean that a rational person, upon discovering the background situation, wouldn't have empathy for the people in the community. Instead of the right taking the lead, and acting out of that empathy, they chose to complicate things even more by sidling up with Alex Jones and his ilk and viewing the situation as an us vs. them thing. There probably wasn't one of those police officer shoots black person incidents that hit the public consciousness that couldn't be seen as an opportunity to exercise such empathy and change the way that America operates. Instead, the right chose to say to itself that it can do no wrong. Flyover land or not, as people we each have a duty to ourselves to know the truth, even if it is hard to derive or it points an accusing finger at us. I don't see that happening in today's polarized view of things in America. It's not hard to see why.

[KaiserJeep]

EG, one point of disagreement: I know PLENTY of racists in the present day USA, and most if not all would accuse every person with white skin of being prejudiced and a racist.

Every one of these people who have pre-judged white people as guilty, as present day racists, and who hold long-standing feelings about whites going back generations, has black or at least dark brown skin. Yes I know of exceptions, very egalitarian minority persons, but they are so few in number that they stand out in my memory.

Even in my recent California neighborhood, which had a rainbow of skin colors and nationalities, we saw this happening. At the most recent Home Owners Association meeting, it became obvious that of the 38 homes, there were no longer any black people. In the SF Bay Area, blacks live in Oakland, almost exclusively, and by choice. I'm not actually sure why, but I have observed this in my 34 years in residence there.

Yeah, I know - I just said one of the 10 things you cannot say in America, according to George Carlin: Blacks are more prejudiced than Whites. (Capitalization by GC.)

[Newfie]

Humans are prejudicial by nature. That’s not to excuse it but to recognize a useful fact.

We need to be prejudicial just to function in our daily lives. No matter how pure my soul there are some neighborhoods I won’t walk at 2am. That is prejudicial. I, being an old guy, should I see a crowd of 25 young males loudly carousing up the street, will likely look for a quiet coffee shop to slip into. That is prejudicial. It touches virtually everything we do. If I have two equal length check out lines at the market, I’ll go to the one with the female cashier, they are faster. Guys will fork over a $20 while gals will dig in their purse for 5 minutes looking for the last penny of exact change. That’s prejudicial. Of course there are much worse examples.

The trick is to know that this happens, to realize that the vast majority of the time it’s no big deal, but then to alert for those times when it really does matter. That calls for a lot of personal awareness and discrimination (another tricky word) in our actions. Inevitably sometimes we fail. And then we need humility and forgiveness.

There are times when the prejudice is repeated and institutionalized and those instances need to be eradicated. But to go around and collect injustices over petty perceived failings is just as bad and it leads to the same ends.

Of course I’ve no way to make this situation improve beyond my on personal sphere of actions. Such is life.

[evilgenius]

Both KJ and Newfie make good points. What they bring to mind is the importance of forgiveness. This is important for us to consider toward others, but also to acquire for ourselves. It's never a good idea to compartmentalize our own guilt and live off of a reflection of it as it pays itself forward in our lives. It can't be that everyone has to be perfect all of the time in order for us to build a functioning society either. What do we do with our imperfections? And what about those of others?

A good place to start is the subject of reparations. You hear a lot these days about how certain groups or individuals think black people in America should be recompensed for their ancestors having been slaves. The trouble is, you can look upon a sin, and slavery was a sin, having a price to pay for it. In this case, that price was already paid, in the blood of all those who gave their lives to end slavery as an institution. Unless that price can be substituted for, there can't be any reparations.

There is, however, the additional crime of racial prejudice. Since this is a collective fascination of individuals that doesn't rise up to the same level as the institution that was slavery, it too cannot be paid with reparations. There are things that do reside in this argument that do, though. Red lining was a practice whereby the banks refused to lend money to black people. It was done by drawing red lines on maps, hence the name. It was brought about by the Federal Government. People living in those areas were, essentially, black balled. Even with a thing like that, which does rise to the level of institutional crime (you can say it wasn't illegal but that didn't help the Nazis at Nuremberg, who tried to deflect their guilt by saying it was war), only the targeted group has any right to participate in any payback. In this case that targeted group would be black homeowners, not all blacks in general. If red lining is going to cause some sort of payback to happen, then it shouldn't apply to all black people, but only to those who were harmed by the practice. Payback for that may not be easily discernible. Time has eroded the immediacy, and people have shown they could cope. But the black community was set back. It may have to go to all black homeowners in the form of some sort of interest rate rebate or something. It's just like when a construction project infringes upon the public's right to use a public roadway or something, you can't target individuals so easily as having suffered directly, but there has, obviously, been suffering. It is enough for those who are behind the project to pay a fee into the public coffers. In this case, only black homeowners form the group which has been slighted, not blacks at large.

But, then, what about our personal debt? That's not institutional, obviously. Nothing we do or say as individuals means that some practice has been encoded into law, neither by us or by some other who doesn't like us. We can insist upon perceived, or real, slights being paid, but the payment then doesn't have an easy to see redress, like getting a permit and paying the fee. Because of this disconnect those kinds of issues can linger, like in Bosnia, and come back to haunt a population hundreds of years after they actually took place. You don't even need inequality to trigger it, just the knowledge of past sins which a person or group decides they aren't happy with. All it takes is emotion. Are we the masters of our emotions? That's kind of the big question. Because all versions of the future which don't reside in racial designation or dominance require us to consider one standard, that of the citizen. To fully enjoy that future, we will have to let go of our individual slights and move forward. If anything done to you does touch upon the law, you have a case, otherwise, it's probably time to let it go.

[Newfie]

Evil,

Excellent post!

One can ask when the healing begins. I say it begins when you turn from the past and look towards the future. The future won’t be perfect either, and each day needs to be a new start. That is a LOT to ask of people. Yet the future is the only thing we can change.

Thanks.

[evilgenius]

I deliberately danced around the subject of love. Love can be a cruel master, as well as an excellent one. It's love for one's abuser, for instance, that causes a person to stick with them, and result in the abuser's pattern of behavior transferring to the one who was abused. Likewise, love can too easily exclude outsiders. Overall, love is the best answer, I think, because it forms a way forward. That way is encouraged by love's selflessness, which doesn't insist upon its own way when things get tight. And by love's ability to bolster those it is directed at, even when that doesn't seem like the sound thing. It doesn't give up. It can expand indefinitely, also, and not lose sight of its original goals. The measure of love within a given society influences that society to operate in certain ways. It can't be the basis for that society's institutions to operate, or for its laws to form, its direction is actually too vague when extrapolated to scale, but it can definitely influence the norms within a society that do have that influence.

[Plantagenet]

A good place to start is the subject of reparations. You hear a lot these days about how certain groups or individuals think black people in America should be recompensed for their ancestors having been slaves. The trouble is, you can look upon a sin, and slavery was a sin, having a price to pay for it. In this case, that price was already paid, in the blood of all those who gave their lives to end slavery as an institution. Unless that price can be substituted for, there can't be any reparations.

Thats an excellent point. I completely agree.

Another salient point is the fact that the US government ALREADY made reparations to ex-slaves after the civil war. During the RECONSTRUCTION period the federal government took over the government of all the former slave-owning states, and introduced policies to promote the fortunes of the ex-slaves or "freedmen." During reconstruction the "freedmen" made enormous steps economically and gained considerable poltical power in the south.

And perhaps the strongest argument against reparations is that it is now impossible to pay reparations to ex-slaves because they are all dead. You can't sue or go to court on behalf of your dead great great great grandfather---there is no legal basis for it in the US legal system.

IMHO blacks seeking reparations would have a better case if they put together a class action suit and sued all those southern states and the D party who promoted segregation in the south. There are probably millions of blacks who received an inferior education due to segregation. Now those people have a valid legal case for reparations, because they themselves were directly injured.

Cheers!

[evilgenius]

I deliberately danced around the subject of love. Love can be a cruel master, as well as an excellent one. It's love for one's abuser, for instance, that causes a person to stick with them, and result in the abuser's pattern of behavior transferring to the one who was abused. Likewise, love can too easily exclude outsiders. Overall, love is the best answer, I think, because it forms a way forward. That way is encouraged by love's selflessness, which doesn't insist upon its own way when things get tight. And by love's ability to bolster those it is directed at, even when that doesn't seem like the sound thing. It doesn't give up. It can expand indefinitely, also, and not lose sight of its original goals. The measure of love within a given society influences that society to operate in certain ways. It can't be the basis for that society's institutions to operate, or for its laws to form, its direction is actually too vague when extrapolated to scale, but it can definitely influence the norms within a society that do have that influence.

I was just thinking about this, and it occurred to me that the right orientation of love when we talk about such things is that is ought to be based upon decision, not emotion. We are accustomed to thinking about love as a feeling. We often throw out many things in our lives to make room for it when it comes in such a fashion. We can justify all sorts of attitudes because of it as well. Yet, time will always catch up to us if we do not also include decision along with feeling. That is the middle way. It does not discount feeling, yet it does not yield to it without consulting reason, to see if our emotions do not actually contradict what we claim they stand for. I know that's a difficult thing to ask of people. It means having to understand where our overwhelming urges come from, whether we were born that way or made. Also, whether the thing we love is only hurting us, and if we should seek something better, either of it or move on. Those conundrums remind us of the changing nature of what we call reality, and our challenge to justify our refusal in the face of it, or change ourselves. Feelings alone will not generally allow such careful self-examination. Rather they tend to breed forgetfulness of our actions, and slavery to repetition.

[dissident]

There will be no civil war in the USA. The Democrats are pulling a cultural revolution that will ultimately be used to attack "enemies" abroad. For national unity and other such shit. There is no real schism in the elites and political layers. The divisions of the sheeple can be managed. The current hysteria is a way to agitate the masses and make them more irrational. This makes it easier for the "deciders" to further their agendas.

[Newfie]

I’ve recently been rethinking this “civil war” thing and have a couple of thoughts.

I’m now starting to see the “political divide” as more of a religious conflict. The “religions” are those of the left and right. The Left has a set of ideals including (abortion rights, anti-gun, sexual inclusiveness, climate change, socialism) as their core belief system. The Right has the opposing set of values (antiabortion, gun rights, family values, capitalism, individualizing). Each has become a sacred creed that is unassailable, not open to discussion.

So there is a clear dogma, you either “belong” to one sect or the other. Each side casts the other as something deformed, demonic, unworthy.

Still not at all sure this will rise to the level of organized violence but I now do see a viable pathway to that end.What is less clear is a pathway towards de-escalation.

Pondering the “why” of this situation I noticed that we haven’t had a good blood letting war in some time. The recent actions have all be sort of sanitized and are held at a distance from the public (especially the Left) through the evolution of the all volunteer army and a “warrior class.” Maybe our collective consciousness wants it needs some bloodshed now and again, some good old outrageous hatred of a villain, to purge our souls. Finding none outside the country we have created one within.

Thinking.

[Cog]

The DSA has officially aligned itself with Anitfa now. So violence is pretty much assured at this point.

[Cog]

Democratic Socialists of America. They just had a convention. They aren't organizing against the Democratic party. They are organizing within the Democratic Party.

[Ibon]

Pondering the “why” of this situation I noticed that we haven’t had a good blood letting war in some time. The recent actions have all be sort of sanitized and are held at a distance from the public (especially the Left) through the evolution of the all volunteer army and a “warrior class.” Maybe our collective consciousness wants it needs some bloodshed now and again, some good old outrageous hatred of a villain, to purge our souls. Finding none outside the country we have created one within.

Thinking.

I think there is something to this. I stand outside this polarity looking in as I am not any longer inside the USA. Both the right and left just seem manic.

Here I am working all day, enjoying the wilderness, enjoying guests, getting along very good with the local community, our indigenous staff, etc. Everything is comparably harmonious and there is just plain good will here. I ask myself why up there in the USA is there so much damn churning frustration?

From here it just looks insane.