Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
I do have a problem with the racist, anti-all-but-one type agenda put forth by the president, yes.
What agenda are you referring to as racist?
It is based mostly on lies and fear
Mostly? Whatever lies, or characterizations as lies, to which you refer, and whatever fear is supposedly invoked, those are standard fare in political agendas. Tools of the pernicious trade. I don't see Trump being more egregiously guilty of using those tools than were other run-of-the-mill Presidents.
It has emboldened many lousy segments of our country.
Political agendas tend to do that. Agendas to very generously help the poor encourage many to feel entitled, many to the point of being emboldened to seek forms of welfare rather than working, or to augment their income with government assistance rather than adding a part-time job, or to out and out cheat the system such as getting food stamps they don't need and selling them for profit.
Agendas to "invest" in education encourage many who aren't really college "material" to use government grants to waste the money and their time before dropping out, having lost the time they could have spent seeking employment suitable to their "skill sets."
Agendas that try to racially equalize incarceration and arrests, especially by criticizing law enforcement, embolden criminal elements and those who promote the notion of victimhood such as Black Lives Matter.
Agendas that weaken or attack our basically capitalistic economic system embolden groups like Wall Street Occupiers, or Antifa.
Agendas that weaken immigration enforcement embolden illegal immigrants.
Agendas that weaken parental control in raising children in favor of state regulation of child care and promote children's "rights" embolden children who have not yet experienced enough life and learning to "identify" as some preferable sexuality or gender.
Etc.
Everybody is not supposed to think like me, but luckily this forum isn't about everyone sharing how they feel and each of us patting each other on the back. Calling b.s. is what has been done for eons. I understand why a law and order person gets upset that the bigot aspect gets tied in to the discussion. The Republicans would have fixed the problem if it was just a law and order issue. They can't because their ranks are split and the law and order segment cant pass what is acceptable to them and the far right nuts will never get there agenda through. Stalemate. Some like to pretend the narrative is perpetually about racism, when racism isn't part of the story. It is part of the story.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
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Is it part of the problem that when a city, like Detroit, which is overwhelmingly Black, fills the Council seats with Blacks? Fills the highest civil service positions with blacks? Is it a problem when a district is populated predominantly with Latinos that the elected politicians and board members are all Latino? Is it a problem when racial "minorities" dominate their turf and don't want to give up their domination?
Is it a problem when Asian countries or African countries, or Middle Eastern countries are dominated by their nominal races and strive to maintain that domination.
Or is it only a problem when "white" populations dominate their turf?
Where is that "part of the story" resolved the most? Can it ever be resolved? Which dominant race has ameliorated that part the most? When does that part cut both ways, or all ways?
My wife and I this past Sunday went to a Chautauqua community in Ohio. It was a great place to visit. A grand old 19th century hotel on the lake where we had a fabulous brunch and could see Lake Erie on the veranda. A beach where people swam and sunbathed and children frolicked, and off of which people boated and fished. It was a beautiful mix of mostly old and really old, but also newer architecture and expensive houses and lots of places to visit and shop. And this one is fairly "liberal." Our host was very Progressive. On the tour of the neighborhood, one of the houses had a sign in front which I had time, as we were driving by, to read only two of a list of politically correct things: "There is no illegal human being," and "Black Lives Matter." Do you know how many Blacks I saw boating, sunbathing, frolicking, shopping or just living there? ZERO.
What percentage of your population in that great Progressive North East is black?
I know, I know, you are not racists there. You are "liberal." You are Progressive. Skin color is not part of the problem with you. I'm not going to ask you the impertinent question, "how happy would you be if 80 to 90 percent of your population was black?" I know that you would resoundingly say that you would be perfectly happy. You are not racists. But what if the question were "How happy would you be if that 80 to 90 percent black population always voted for Republicans of the "conservative" stripe? Voted for all the things you think are stupid, foolish, and destructive of what you think made America great, destructive of your notion that the Constitution is a living breathing document that can be "interpreted" by personal opinion of what is good and right and voted for those who would appoint textual originalists?" And I certainly won't ask you if it would be a good and happy thing if your culture of "whiteness"--restaurants, movies, music, clothing styles, low crime rates, whatever, were replaced by a Detroit state of mind.
These are embarrassing questions. They can put people ill at ease. We like to think of ourselves as good people. We feel we harbor no ill will toward others who are different. We are egalitarian.
Are we really? Some white guys 250 years ago wrote a governing system that would create a country in which everyone is equal before the law. But they had no pretension that we are all equal in any other way.
Trying to achieve outcomes of equality in any other way besides before the law is not only destructive of that old governing system, it is destructive of actual individual rights and individual differences in favor of those ever conflicting group rights. That "part of the story," racism, is exacerbated, enlarged, and made impossible to solve at the collective or tribal level. We can far more easily live peacefully and productively together as individuals than we can as different tribes.
That old piece of paper, that never breathed a breath nor lived a life, but was always merely and fully law gives us the blueprint for the union of individuals, all equal before it, and under it, and abolishes the problem of race.