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The Fourth of July

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Re: The Fourth of July

#281

Post by jessaustin »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #274
jessaustin wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't assume that Democrats ever consider the best interests of "black neighborhoods". There's very little evidence that's the case. The most they can really claim is that they are often less overt in their racism than the other face of the status quo party.

> Please don't assume that Democrats ever consider the best interests of "black neighborhoods". There's very little evidence that's the case. That's kind of my point. The black vote has gone disproportionately to Democrats for many years and what they get for it is not the change they're promised even when their party controls the government, it's lip service and rage propaganda like "police murders" which can't poss…

I don't care about dog whistles. I do care that many Republicans have gone to great lengths to prevent black people from voting. That they have dressed up their racist disenfranchisement efforts with concerns about nonexistent problems impresses me not at all.

https://theintercept.com/2020/05/28/pennsylvania-voter-rolls...

https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-vot...

Of course Democrats are also implicated in another source of disenfranchisement, inadequate facilities provisioning and maintenance. Even on that topic, Republicans are more to blame in e.g. Wisconsin.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/07/829091968/long-lines-reported...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/...

https://apnews.com/eb8c216987916586cf0b5f68c38871fa

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873054620/long-lines-voting-m...

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-03/californ...

Re: The Fourth of July

#282

Post by pvg »

rayiner wrote: post #265
geofft wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an attention to argue that the founding principles of this country are open to legitimate debate and that people who love America can hold that some of them were simply wrong without loving America any less. What I don't get is this newfound attempt to argue that what we once called the Great Experiment is immune from criticism, to portray the success of America as an inevitable result of the holy prophets who…

> It is an attention to argue that the founding principles of this country are open to legitimate debate and that people who love America can hold that some of them were simply wrong without loving America any less. So you agree that it's an attempt to attack the founding principles. > What I don't get is this newfound attempt to argue that what we once called the Great Experiment is immune from criticism, to portray…

And they warrant more deference than the kind of arguments Parsa is making.

The argument is practically an anodyne American political discourse cliché and you're treating it as some kind of important and concern-worthy attack on the foundations of the US social order. How is that warranted? Here's an example from a comedy movie of the early 90s, itself set in 1976:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lMOL7GaPWI

Re: The Fourth of July

#283

Post by charlescearl »

noworriesnate wrote: post #245
charlescearl wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you fail to understand how so many Indigenous and Black people of this country view it with such contempt, I would recommend a few reads. But first I would ask you to consider that whatever greatness it can claim lies not in it’s continued founding myths, but in the many unheralded acts of sacrifice and resistance that so many of it’s marginalized citizens made and continue to make down to this very minute. James…

Black lives do matter, but BLM the organization gets a lot of flak because they're unfortunately hijacking the concern of black lives with a Marxist political agenda. Here's one of the founders discussing this in an interview about BLM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCghDx5qN4s&t=423s It's sad to me that we can't have a conversation about police brutality without having Marxists inject themselves into the conversat…

If you have come to a point of discomfort in seeing Marxism discussed within the context of Black Lives Matter, then you are where you need to be. Sit with it.

It is a radical movement, the larger goal of which, discussed in [1,2], is the complete dismantling of white supremacy. What would a United States look like in which all life was equally valued? We don’t know, none of us has experienced that world, and that is why (I would contend) there is an urgent need to consider all options. The movement is not just about anti-Black policing, it is about bringing about a United States (a world?) where Black life (or the life of any marginalized person) is as valued and as treasured and held as sacred as any other.

You might also consider that Black radicalism has a long intellectual history [3,4,5].

In sum, I am saying to take a moment to understand the long historical context that birthed this movement. Sit with the discomfort that goes along with the process that will bring that world into being.

[1] “When they call you a terrorist: a black lives matter memoir”, Patrice Khan-Cullors, Asha Bandele

[2] “Stay woke: a People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter”, Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, Candis Watts Smith

[3] “The Black Jacobins”, C.L.R. James

[4] “Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition”, Cedric Robinson

[5] “Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880”, W.E.B. DuBois

Re: The Fourth of July

#284

Post by tptacek »

pvg wrote: post #282
rayiner wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is an attention to argue that the founding principles of this country are open to legitimate debate and that people who love America can hold that some of them were simply wrong without loving America any less. So you agree that it's an attempt to attack the founding principles. > What I don't get is this newfound attempt to argue that what we once called the Great Experiment is immune from criticism, to portray…

And they warrant more deference than the kind of arguments Parsa is making. The argument is practically an anodyne American political discourse cliché and you're treating it as some kind of important and concern-worthy attack on the foundations of the US social order. How is that warranted? Here's an example from a comedy movie of the early 90s, itself set in 1976: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lMOL7GaPWI

He could believe the sentiment has reached some kind of popular fever pitch, though it'd be hard to reconcile that with the Long Hot Summer of '67. When the red dots on JPEGs turn into political assassinations, it'll be easier for me to see this moment as somehow uniquely disruptive.

Re: The Fourth of July

#285

Post by acdha »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #278
acdha wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are separate concepts: we should not condemn children for their parent’s crimes but that doesn’t mean that we should forget that those crimes happened. In this case it’s especially important because those children were treated very differently from their siblings: a slave owner’s fully white children had full status in society and lived in relative luxury but those borne by slaves inherited their mother’s statu…

> we should not condemn children for their parent’s crimes but that doesn’t mean that we should forget that those crimes happened. But then what do you propose to do about it? All of those people are dead. We can't bring them back to life and punish them. > In this case it’s especially important because those children were treated very differently from their siblings It was no doubt a very important distinction to th…

It’s not always 7 generations ago - there was a guy living here until a couple years back whose father was born in slavery - and it didn’t end instantly with the Civil War, or the demise of Jim Crow, or the Civil Rights movement — things like redlining ran into the 1970s and police violence and job discrimination never really stopped. White people can say it ended in the civil war era but there are plenty of people who know they still have to spend time thinking about risks their white peers do not.

Re: The Fourth of July

#286

Post by cookie_monsta »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #275
cookie_monsta wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm... let me guess: You got where you are 'cause you were the smartest and worked the hardest and won the race amongst equals?

Don't do that. Don't attack the speaker instead of the arguments. You don't know anything about me.

It's nothing personal, merely an observation of the phenomena that it's hard/ uncomfortable to see the unfairness of a system of which you are clearly a benefactor.

The idea that everybody's equal starting... now! is lovely if you can ignore the fact that some people have a 500 year head start.

Re: The Fourth of July

#287

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jessaustin wrote: post #281
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please don't assume that Democrats ever consider the best interests of "black neighborhoods". There's very little evidence that's the case. That's kind of my point. The black vote has gone disproportionately to Democrats for many years and what they get for it is not the change they're promised even when their party controls the government, it's lip service and rage propaganda like "police murders" which can't poss…

I don't care about dog whistles. I do care that many Republicans have gone to great lengths to prevent black people from voting. That they have dressed up their racist disenfranchisement efforts with concerns about nonexistent problems impresses me not at all. https://theintercept.com/2020/05/28/pennsylvania-voter-rolls... https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-vot... Of course Democrats are also im…

We hear this all the time too, but then you look and the black voter turnout in any given election is the highest or second highest of any racial group. So if there is some widespread conspiracy to suppress the black vote it apparently isn't very effective.

It's also doesn't seem reasonable to characterize asking for ineligible voters to be removed from the rolls as voter suppression. There is a consistent narrative that voter fraud doesn't happen, as if that's a result of nobody having any incentive to do it instead of a result of groups constantly fighting against it, as though we could just stop taking any measures to try to prevent it and there still wouldn't be any.

If a demand to remove ineligible voters is also removing eligible voters then the problem is the people processing the request removing eligible voters, not the people making the request to remove ineligible voters.

They're also being incredibly disingenuous in claiming that proposed measures to detect voter fraud are unneeded because we haven't detected much voter fraud -- as if you can justify not replacing a bad smoke detector because it isn't detecting smoke.

Re: The Fourth of July

#288

Post by jessaustin »

realityking wrote: post #193
082349872349872 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The occupation both gave the german language a word: "Amokläufer", and caused the US army to switch from .38 to .45 caliber sidearms.

Do you have a source on the relation of “Amokläufer” to the Spanish-American war? All the sources I can find claim it originates from Malay/Indonesian culture.

There was an interesting discussion of the word "amok" with Vincent Bevins on "The Red Nation" podcast last week, starting about 32:30 from the beginning. [0] Surprise! It was largely colonialist bullshit, even in Indonesia.

[0] https://soundcloud.com/therednationpod/the-jakarta-method

Re: The Fourth of July

#289

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #286
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't do that. Don't attack the speaker instead of the arguments. You don't know anything about me.

It's nothing personal, merely an observation of the phenomena that it's hard/ uncomfortable to see the unfairness of a system of which you are clearly a benefactor. The idea that everybody's equal starting... now! is lovely if you can ignore the fact that some people have a 500 year head start.

> The idea that everybody's equal starting... now! is lovely if you can ignore the fact that some people have a 600 year head start.

Except that nobody is claiming that, and even if they were, you would then be having a class dispute rather than a race dispute anyway.

Re: The Fourth of July

#290

Post by cookie_monsta »

darawk wrote: post #268
cookie_monsta wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like an odd place to put this comment. Nobody's talking about Filipino vets on this sub-thread, much less how they should feel or who is bad or wrong or should be mad. Am I missing subtext?

It seems to me that the thrust of this sub-thread is a debate over narratives. One narrative is "America is basically good, but it has serious problems, and we're working on fixing them". Another narrative is "America is basically bad, we should burn it to the ground and start over". Neither of these narratives are right or wrong, because all narratives are false. But I think one of them is more useful than the other…

And can I argue against your strawman as well, or will that disrupt your momentum?

This subthread started with "Well, ACTUALLY, if you look at the statistics, state sponsored/condoned violence against black people in the US barely exists and all this kerfuffle is an overreaction"

That's not admitting a serious problem, and calling it out as revisionist BS is not saying we should burn the country to the ground.

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