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What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

nytimes.com

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Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#101

Post by lavamantis »

njharman wrote: post #78
waterlesscloud wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As compared to exactly which other government? Anywhere?

Comparisons are a Red Herring. The point is people erroneously "believe" in their government. That it does only the most necessarily evil and then only to bad people. Such beliefs are manifestly dangerous. They result in things such as Drug seizure laws, PATRIOT act, militarization of police, demonizaton of whistle blowers. DON'T trust authority, DON'T give authority powers assuming they will only be used for good, D…

What people '"believe" in their government'? Do a search for "poll americans believing in government". Most polls will show I agree with your last statement completely. The trick is to get people to get knowledgeable (or even care) about history and what is happening in the country. Right about now, it seems to be we're more tending towards "Brave New World" than "1984". If people could just turn off 30 minutes a day of their "Real Housewives" and focus on learning something new, about anything, we'd start fixing the problems.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#102

Post by Mandatum »

rglover wrote: post #56

Something that's always confused me about the world and people as a whole. Why are so many people hell bent on implementing some "moral standard" that everyone needs to follow? Honestly? There's this bizarre projection of the individual and his/her motivations onto every living being that fails to make any logical sense. Is there any psychological premise for why we feel the need to dictate the behavior of others suc…

Personally I think it's more motivated, at least in the beginning, by said person wanting them to be "better". Said person feels they should act this way, as it's "better" and tries to force it on them.

Similar to how you'd feel towards people getting payday loans. Don't do it. Because X, and X is a valid reason to me to not do it. So you shouldn't do it.

At least personally, not giving advice that's isn't asked for is really hard at times because I think I usually have good advice. But that's exactly how "those" people feel.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#103

Post by Demiurge »

dllthomas wrote: post #88
Demiurge wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Reality is not a moral construct."

I suppose the Demiurge should be expected to have much to say on the nature of reality as a construct. If the Gnostics have it right, I don't know if we could trust it to tell the truth though.

We do, at least, know, that voting on this particular matter is futile :)

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#104

Post by eksith »

mkempe wrote: post #85
[deleted] wrote: post #62

[deleted]

Do you realize that it was Democrats, the "left" in US politics, who were opposed to MLK's message of equality and freedom for all? that the battle for Civil Rights was won thanks to Republicans, against Democrats? that it was Democrats who were the anti-abolitionist party?

The Democratic part before the civil right era was vastly different. After the passage of the Civil Rights bill in 1964, the political climate of the party changed drastically, especially in the south[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Democrats

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#105

Post by ceejayoz »

mkempe wrote: post #85
[deleted] wrote: post #62

[deleted]

Do you realize that it was Democrats, the "left" in US politics, who were opposed to MLK's message of equality and freedom for all? that the battle for Civil Rights was won thanks to Republicans, against Democrats? that it was Democrats who were the anti-abolitionist party?

> the battle for Civil Rights was won thanks to Republicans

It was more a North-South divide than a party divide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#By_par...

(Signed into law by a Democrat, incidentally)

> that it was Democrats who were the anti-abolitionist party?

And France had a Napoleon (III) at the helm, but that hardly means a thing today.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#106

Post by aaronbrethorst »

zabuni wrote: post #69
[deleted] wrote: post #62

[deleted]

Rather. Hackers political values, as stated in the jargon file, have politics: "Formerly vaguely liberal-moderate, more recently moderate-to-neoconservative (hackers too were affected by the collapse of socialism). There is a strong libertarian contingent which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. The only safe generalization is that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritarian; thus, both paleoconserva…

esr's definition of hackers' political values, curiously, always seem to match esr's current political values.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#108

Post by xaver »

[deleted] wrote: post #62

[deleted]

Make things. Don't engage in primate coalition building, that never helps. Having descended from a long line of hominids you should be more suspicious of your brain when it comes up with ideas that it can rationalize as "making the world better" and just coincidentally happens to correspond to "seeking power and status."

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#109

Post by lavamantis »

thisjepisje wrote: post #83
wuliwong wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that is funny?

It's like they want to be offended or something, don't you think? Isn't it pretty obvious that when someone says "Americans are silly people" they don't mean that literally every single American person is silly?

I'm not sure it's all that obvious. That's pretty much the entire foundation of the very popular practices of "stereotyping" and "racism".

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#110

Post by comrade1 »

smm2000 wrote: post #99
comrade1 wrote: post #52

This was in the 1960s. Imagine the projects being conceived now for targeting individuals and population subsets to change opinion, mood, etc. using things like social media, targeted communications, etc. The US then and now was totalitarian and authoritarian. Some of you, especially here on hn, may not fall into those mind-sets but it doesn't matter - you've lost - you're barely scraping by, working 60 to 80 hours a…

Chill out and pick different audience. Most people on HN are not just "scraping by" unless making >$100k first year after college is now called scraping by. I would say overall HN audience benefits much more from current political, economic and financial situation than suffer from it. It's probably not true for reddit so you can find more receptive audience there.

By scraping by, I mean working 60+ hours per week for those wages. Here in Switzerland we work a normal workweek (45 hours) for an average wage 2x that plus a better quality of life.

Germany and London pay much less though but experienced developers can get decent wages.

Edit: also, when I lived in the u.s. and ma"de significantly more than 100K I still felt like I was scraping by. Taxes in the u.s., especially California, are high, expenses are high, and plus I had no time to spend my money anyway. If take a couple weeks off to travel every now and then but would have to at least answer emails while traveling. No more of that.

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