In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
Can we all agree that this is probably the worst take on houston we'll see? Article is here : www.slate.com
With the debilitating rain in Houston fell a rain of inspiriting images. Everywhere on Twitter, in the papers, in internet slideshows, we saw Texans improvising rescue canoes and gathering scared dogs in their arms, bearing them away to safety. First responders waded into the water-choked arteries of the city and dragged people out of cars. Uniformed men hoisted grandmothers on their backs (like Jason fording the river with the goddess Hera on his shoulders) while, elsewhere in the country, beer companies filled cans with fresh water and celebrities spearheaded donation drives.
The flood, the animals: It all felt so mythic. In coverage of Harvey, the word hero is almost as ubiquitous as the stills of intrepid reporters, their rain slickers swirling like capes, and hunky National Guardsmen in life jackets. During a speech to the press on Monday, President Donald Trump noted that crisis showcases “the best in America’s character—strength, charity, and resilience.” (This was a reprieve from his popcorn-gobbling tweets about Harvey’s unprecedented, riveting destruction.) The Washington Times echoed Trump with a piece spotlighting the many Clark Kents and Diana Princes vaulting into action: “Hurricane Harvey Brings Out the Best in America.” There is an adage that “adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.”
But does catastrophe illustrate, or does it transform? What if America is less a glorious nation of do-gooders awaiting the chance to exercise their altruism than a moral junior varsity team elevated by circumstance? In her book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit argues that emergencies provoke from us a conditional virtue. They create provisional utopias, communities in which the usual—selfish, capitalistic—rules don’t apply. “Imagine a society,” Solnit writes, “where the fate that faces [people], no matter how grim, is far less so for being shared, where much once considered impossible, both good and bad, is now possible or present, and where the moment is so pressing that old complaints and worries fall away, where people feel important, purposeful, at the center of the world.”
The point here is obviously not to diminish the bighearted men and women who rose to the occasion when Harvey, a “once-in-a-lifetime” storm with a spiraling death toll, slammed into Texas. But it is misleading to characterize Houston as an exhibition of the “best of America” when what it represents is a contingent America, a “paradise” specific to the “hell” around it. These waterlogged suburbs have become zones of exemption, where norms hang suspended and something lovelier and more communal has been allowed to flourish in their place. Disaster scientists have repeatedly punctured the myth, perpetuated by Hollywood and the media, that cataclysm awakens our worst selves. Rather, disruptive events loosen our mores just enough to permit new kinds of compassion. As Slate reported in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, researchers at the University of Colorado–Boulder discovered “that panic is not a problem in disasters; that rather than helplessly awaiting outside aid, members of the public behave proactively and prosocially to assist one another; that community residents themselves perform many critical disaster tasks, such as searching for and rescuing victims; and that both social cohesiveness and informal mechanisms of social control increase during disasters, resulting in a lower incidence of deviant behavior.”
These findings put a frame around the cooperative society that has lately emerged in Houston: It is a beautiful anomaly, a liquid note of silver momentarily liberated from its sheath of rust. The inverse of such a phenomenon is the bystander effect, by which individuals might walk past someone prone in the street without offering aid. We rarely feel responsible for a stranger’s suffering if others around us seem unmoved or if we can comfortably assume that some nearby person will step in to help instead. Humans may possess inherent goodness, but that goodness needs to be activated. Some signal has to disperse the cloud of moral Novocain around us. Some person, or fire, or flood, has got to say: now.
No. We can't all agree. I like the take.
I mean, it's less an issue of being wrong than of being bad timing, no? It's kinda like LL saying "looks like it's not that bad" while the storm is still going on. He's probably (no guarantees) right thst this won't be as bad as Katrina, but said at this specific moment, it comes across as diminishing the suffering of those affected, even if that's not his intent.
I don't think there's anything truer or more real about the virtues unveiled during national emergencies. It's not about people's true stripes, people are just different in different contexts. A guy that might cut me off on the freeway in one context might pull me from a burning building in another, but they're both the same guy. That said, while he's pulling me from a burning building is a shitty time for me to say "yeah, but any other day you'd probably cut me off on the freeway."
Can we all agree that this is probably the worst take on houston we'll see? Article is here : www.slate.com
With the debilitating rain in Houston fell a rain of inspiriting images. Everywhere on Twitter, in the papers, in internet slideshows, we saw Texans improvising rescue canoes and gathering scared dogs in their arms, bearing them away to safety. First responders waded into the water-choked arteries of the city and dragged people out of cars. Uniformed men hoisted grandmothers on their backs (like Jason fording the river with the goddess Hera on his shoulders) while, elsewhere in the country, beer companies filled cans with fresh water and celebrities spearheaded donation drives.
The flood, the animals: It all felt so mythic. In coverage of Harvey, the word hero is almost as ubiquitous as the stills of intrepid reporters, their rain slickers swirling like capes, and hunky National Guardsmen in life jackets. During a speech to the press on Monday, President Donald Trump noted that crisis showcases “the best in America’s character—strength, charity, and resilience.” (This was a reprieve from his popcorn-gobbling tweets about Harvey’s unprecedented, riveting destruction.) The Washington Times echoed Trump with a piece spotlighting the many Clark Kents and Diana Princes vaulting into action: “Hurricane Harvey Brings Out the Best in America.” There is an adage that “adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.”
But does catastrophe illustrate, or does it transform? What if America is less a glorious nation of do-gooders awaiting the chance to exercise their altruism than a moral junior varsity team elevated by circumstance? In her book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit argues that emergencies provoke from us a conditional virtue. They create provisional utopias, communities in which the usual—selfish, capitalistic—rules don’t apply. “Imagine a society,” Solnit writes, “where the fate that faces [people], no matter how grim, is far less so for being shared, where much once considered impossible, both good and bad, is now possible or present, and where the moment is so pressing that old complaints and worries fall away, where people feel important, purposeful, at the center of the world.”
The point here is obviously not to diminish the bighearted men and women who rose to the occasion when Harvey, a “once-in-a-lifetime” storm with a spiraling death toll, slammed into Texas. But it is misleading to characterize Houston as an exhibition of the “best of America” when what it represents is a contingent America, a “paradise” specific to the “hell” around it. These waterlogged suburbs have become zones of exemption, where norms hang suspended and something lovelier and more communal has been allowed to flourish in their place. Disaster scientists have repeatedly punctured the myth, perpetuated by Hollywood and the media, that cataclysm awakens our worst selves. Rather, disruptive events loosen our mores just enough to permit new kinds of compassion. As Slate reported in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, researchers at the University of Colorado–Boulder discovered “that panic is not a problem in disasters; that rather than helplessly awaiting outside aid, members of the public behave proactively and prosocially to assist one another; that community residents themselves perform many critical disaster tasks, such as searching for and rescuing victims; and that both social cohesiveness and informal mechanisms of social control increase during disasters, resulting in a lower incidence of deviant behavior.”
These findings put a frame around the cooperative society that has lately emerged in Houston: It is a beautiful anomaly, a liquid note of silver momentarily liberated from its sheath of rust. The inverse of such a phenomenon is the bystander effect, by which individuals might walk past someone prone in the street without offering aid. We rarely feel responsible for a stranger’s suffering if others around us seem unmoved or if we can comfortably assume that some nearby person will step in to help instead. Humans may possess inherent goodness, but that goodness needs to be activated. Some signal has to disperse the cloud of moral Novocain around us. Some person, or fire, or flood, has got to say: now.
No. We can't all agree. I like the take.
I actually agree with the point raised by the quoted author in the article. Volunteerism and disaster shouldn't be elevated to some romantic story. It's essentially as screwed up as romantic accounts of war. When private citizens who are not trained have to rescue people out of swamped houses people should instead ask what went wrong beforehand for this to be necessary.
Can we all agree that this is probably the worst take on houston we'll see? Article is here : www.slate.com
With the debilitating rain in Houston fell a rain of inspiriting images. Everywhere on Twitter, in the papers, in internet slideshows, we saw Texans improvising rescue canoes and gathering scared dogs in their arms, bearing them away to safety. First responders waded into the water-choked arteries of the city and dragged people out of cars. Uniformed men hoisted grandmothers on their backs (like Jason fording the river with the goddess Hera on his shoulders) while, elsewhere in the country, beer companies filled cans with fresh water and celebrities spearheaded donation drives.
The flood, the animals: It all felt so mythic. In coverage of Harvey, the word hero is almost as ubiquitous as the stills of intrepid reporters, their rain slickers swirling like capes, and hunky National Guardsmen in life jackets. During a speech to the press on Monday, President Donald Trump noted that crisis showcases “the best in America’s character—strength, charity, and resilience.” (This was a reprieve from his popcorn-gobbling tweets about Harvey’s unprecedented, riveting destruction.) The Washington Times echoed Trump with a piece spotlighting the many Clark Kents and Diana Princes vaulting into action: “Hurricane Harvey Brings Out the Best in America.” There is an adage that “adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.”
But does catastrophe illustrate, or does it transform? What if America is less a glorious nation of do-gooders awaiting the chance to exercise their altruism than a moral junior varsity team elevated by circumstance? In her book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit argues that emergencies provoke from us a conditional virtue. They create provisional utopias, communities in which the usual—selfish, capitalistic—rules don’t apply. “Imagine a society,” Solnit writes, “where the fate that faces [people], no matter how grim, is far less so for being shared, where much once considered impossible, both good and bad, is now possible or present, and where the moment is so pressing that old complaints and worries fall away, where people feel important, purposeful, at the center of the world.”
The point here is obviously not to diminish the bighearted men and women who rose to the occasion when Harvey, a “once-in-a-lifetime” storm with a spiraling death toll, slammed into Texas. But it is misleading to characterize Houston as an exhibition of the “best of America” when what it represents is a contingent America, a “paradise” specific to the “hell” around it. These waterlogged suburbs have become zones of exemption, where norms hang suspended and something lovelier and more communal has been allowed to flourish in their place. Disaster scientists have repeatedly punctured the myth, perpetuated by Hollywood and the media, that cataclysm awakens our worst selves. Rather, disruptive events loosen our mores just enough to permit new kinds of compassion. As Slate reported in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, researchers at the University of Colorado–Boulder discovered “that panic is not a problem in disasters; that rather than helplessly awaiting outside aid, members of the public behave proactively and prosocially to assist one another; that community residents themselves perform many critical disaster tasks, such as searching for and rescuing victims; and that both social cohesiveness and informal mechanisms of social control increase during disasters, resulting in a lower incidence of deviant behavior.”
These findings put a frame around the cooperative society that has lately emerged in Houston: It is a beautiful anomaly, a liquid note of silver momentarily liberated from its sheath of rust. The inverse of such a phenomenon is the bystander effect, by which individuals might walk past someone prone in the street without offering aid. We rarely feel responsible for a stranger’s suffering if others around us seem unmoved or if we can comfortably assume that some nearby person will step in to help instead. Humans may possess inherent goodness, but that goodness needs to be activated. Some signal has to disperse the cloud of moral Novocain around us. Some person, or fire, or flood, has got to say: now.
No. We can't all agree. I like the take.
I mean, it's less an issue of being wrong than of being bad timing, no? It's kinda like LL saying "looks like it's not that bad" while the storm is still going on. He's probably (no guarantees) right thst this won't be as bad as Katrina, but said at this specific moment, it comes across as diminishing the suffering of those affected, even if that's not his intent.
I don't think there's anything truer or more real about the virtues unveiled during national emergencies. It's not about people's true stripes, people are just different in different contexts. A guy that might cut me off on the freeway in one context might pull me from a burning building in another, but they're both the same guy. That said, while he's pulling me from a burning building is a shitty time for me to say "yeah, but any other day you'd probably cut me off on the freeway."
Or maybe it's an opportunity to rethink utopia instead of just juxtaposing rah rah American heroics with petty resentment.
On August 30 2017 06:14 KwarK wrote: [quote] It's not complicated. We were all raised in a society that treats people differently based on the colour of their skin. That's something we all learned. Same as we learned to treat boys and girls differently, and learned about boy jobs and girl jobs and so forth.
Nobody expects you to treat everyone the same all the time. That's an unreasonable standard. Nobody expects you to feel as emotionally invested in issues that impact people you don't relate to as you do issues that feel closer to you. Nobody expects you to understand what it feels like to have a different skin colour to your own.
Literally the only requirement is for you to want to try and treat other people with respect. That's it. That if someone says "hey, that thing you just did, it was pretty racist" you reflect on it and try to do better. That you spend a minute thinking about the issues that matter to you and ask yourself "would these priorities be the same if my skin were a different colour?"
The problem is that some people seem to treat this very benign and entirely self evident claim that racial biases exist as an insult and attack on their character. But the issue isn't that they have the biases, it's that they refuse to think about their own biases and instead double down, turning those biases into a part of their self identity.
The country isn't divided between racists and aracial superhumans who are free of bias. It's divided between people who don't want to be racist and people who don't want anyone to call them racist.
It's actually pretty complicated when you arrive at comparing reflexive Trump voters to worse than the KKK (because at least the KKK aren't moral cowards in your rubric). You see, for ordinary Americans that is a logical leap. So you connect it with all these logical twists and turns involving racist not being an insult, and it's just like instructing boys and girls (sickening condescension if you ask me) to not hate people with different skin color.
When you move to the adult world, it's Kwark swapping between calling half the country racists, and telling them that it's okay that they're racists only try not to be as racist as you are. It doesn't jive with the history of using the topic as a political divide to incite Democratic support among minorities etc. Once you've heard the demagogues do "Vote for me, because these people hate you," then Kwarkian logic that racism is just a dialogue on treating people with respect vanishes. It's a very adult topic, and pretty harsh if it's the first exposure. You walk up to people that respect their neighbors, contribute their income to the needy, but thought Romney was the better choice. When Kwark comes along saying how numerous were the people that didn't vote for Obama out of racism, they obviously react with ire. It isn't true in their life and it isn't true universally. I'm sorry that the nuance has gotten lost and you usually jettison your logic to sound bites after a short countdown, but that's the truth as I see it.
If you reread my response to the article you quoted I actually completely disagreed with his premise. His premise was that people voted for Trump (and Sessions, and the rest of the disparate impact crew with their policies) because they were upset about being called racists. I don't think that's why they did it. I think that argument shows an unbelievable level of contempt towards the American voters, it implies that they're not genuinely in favour of policies that disproportionately impact minorities but that they will support those policies if they think it'll spite someone who called them a racist.
Regarding what I said about a member of the KKK having more courage. If we were to compare someone who genuinely believed the racist nonsense and was voting as a logical consequence of those beliefs with the hypothetical individual the author of that article created, who did not believe in racist nonsense but still voted for the same policies as the KKK member as a way of getting back at the other side for calling him racist, I think the latter is worse. The former is ignorance, the latter is malice. Ignorance is more easily excused, and more easily fixed.
But again, I don't think that the right supported policies with a disparate racial impact out of malice. I disagree with his entire premise. My point was just that if they did, that'd actually be even worse.
You're not wrong to say that there is a problem of language. This is what GH attempted to get into a while ago when he started putting a y in the middle of the word racist to show what he was talking about. People didn't want to play that game with him though.
I'm sure there are ideological reasons to swallow the bitter pill that is Trump. Where you lose me is when I ask myself whether the issues were weighted in a colourblind fashion.
Let's say you have a voter who doesn't think he's racist and the most important issue to him is liberty from tyranny and the spectre of government oppression. A good, constitutional, patriotic American who really loves the second amendment. Trump's rhetoric on the second amendment was better than Hillary's, therefore he voted for Trump. That makes sense so far.
The problem emerges when you consider the interplay between his stated starting point, opposing government oppression, and the outcome. Because second amendment rights aren't the only thing to consider there, not when the DoJ is reporting that local police departments are actively oppressing African Americans. Now maybe he sat down and asked himself "is Trump having a supreme court nominee who protects the second amendment worth justice department endorsement of systematic civil rights abuses?" And maybe he did his very best to understand the issues involved and consider how he would feel on both sides before casting his vote.
But I'm not sure our hypothetical voter did in this instance, because I'm not seeing how things like actual current voting rights limitations can be outweighed by the incredibly remote chance that Hillary would seize all the guns. I worry that the reason he voted the way he did was because he weighted the thing that impacted him (and people like him) far, far more heavily than the thing that impacted people who don't look like him.
Nah, you launched into your own pet attacks on interracial marriage disapproval. You literally couldn't even faithfully portray his own two theories without half of it being your own inclusion.
Clearly this is untrue because clearly racism couldn't be that popular in America because... After all, it's been 20 years since interracial marriage disapproval passed below the 50% mark. Ancient history.
Apparently written in invisible ink in the article.
Trump supporters are so tired of being called racist that they support racist policies because the racist at the top doesn't call them a racist. This proves they're not racist because they're only doing the racist thing to get back at people for calling them racist and that makes sense somehow. Because if you're okay with supporting racism but only to get back at people for calling you a racist then clearly that wouldn't imply that you're a racist.
Author Kwark can't grasp a reaction where voters resent being regarded as racist idiots. His only intellectual contribution is pretending a positive support of racist policies is identical to a backlash from resentment.
There are two main theories of Trump's support. One is that a large minority of Americans -- 40 percent, give or take -- are racist idiots. This theory is at least tacitly endorsed by the Democratic Party and the mainstream liberal media. The other is that a large majority of this large minority are good citizens with intelligible and legitimate opinions, who so resent being regarded as racist idiots that they'll back Trump almost regardless. They may not admire the man, but he's on their side, he vents their frustration, he afflicts the people who think so little of them -- and that's good enough.
The actual breakdown from the article. Kwark is entirely in the first camp, but isn't as much calling them idiots than saying racists just need to be trained like children. He cannot mentally engage with good citizens with intelligible and legitimate opinions, because in his mind they only support racist policies.
You want to move on to some more ideological reasons, and why they're wrong, but I'm unwilling to go on that tangent with someone who quotes one sentence and says its "judging conservatives for racism is basically racism." Basically, the man with a fondness for one-liners and snipping out single sentences from larger posts has enough troll qualities to limit my time spent and sometimes wasted. My only interest is seeing if you will support a larger view of humanity's intricacies than reductive blathering. I happen not to think half the country are these racists that hate minorities, and it's in keeping with an understanding that you push and prod and call people evil long enough that they'll resent your behavior and legitimately discard your candidate (if you intentionally put such a despicable candidate up there, as was done). We can come back to the variety of opinions of your good fellow citizens that can speak intelligently and are concerned with the good of their families and society, or we can reduce to the dumb "it ends in racist policies, throw all the antecedents in the garbage I don't want to hear them." Which is your argument.
You haven't learned a thing. You're back to the equivalent of "vaccines cause autism" here.
This was legitimately funny and I salute you.
who so resent being regarded as racist idiots that they'll back Trump almost regardless. They may not admire the man, but he's on their side
If the woman who called you a racist is running against the man who says you're not a racist but plans to put Sessions in charge of the DoJ, you call the woman a bitch and you vote for her anyway.
Right and wrong don't change because one side hurt your feelings. That's my issue with the article. The author seems to genuinely believe that Americans know the difference between right and wrong but will choose wrong if it hurts the opposing team. "They may not admire the man" is an admission of as much. They know the issues with him as a candidate, but because he's on their side whereas the mean lady called them names, they can look past those issues.
I think more of the American public than that. I'd sooner believe ignorance than malice.
You usually alternate between trolly one liners and actual addressing substance with hours between. Which is why I thought it was funny I said I wasn't going to write more because you pick and choose when you'll actually respond.
Which made your trollish one-liner funny.
Sorry, but if we're going back to substance now, do you have anything to add, or should I just tell you some version of "lol snarky lib can't take what he dishes."
You didn't respond to anything I wrote.
The article you quoted presented two rival theories. The first, that Trump supporters are racists, and the second, that Trump supporters will vote for a racist platform if the guy at the top of it is on their team. I addressed that at length. There were a multitude of issues with it, from the weird tangent into how the Democrats must hate democracy if they believe that lots of Americans can be racist, the inexplicable advocating of voting for the guy you don't admire because he's on your team, the conflating of KKK racism with "I'm fine with the status quo" racism, and a whole bunch of other shit. But I've already spoken about that at length, you just ignored everything I wrote and decided to go a different way with it.
Unless you stop and take a minute to understand what it is I am trying to communicate here you won't have the basic level of understanding needed to engage. That's why I dismissed it by comparing it to an anti-vaxxer line. If you make no effort to understand what you're talking about you'll not get the kind of response you want.
Woah, now. It was funny when I stopped my post early because of your one-liners ... and you responded with a one-liner.
But now that you're done with the joke (quite funny). Let's hear a little addressing of the criticism. Because you haven't addressed a damn thing and didn't try to. Your original quoting of the two sides misrepresented each viewpoint. Own up to it?
I pointed it out, you stayed silent. I talked about humanity being a little more variegated than racist-or-supports-racist-policies, and you've tripled down on your reductive logic. Sorry, Kwark, humanity is not like that and I pity you indeed if you can't see that point in all it's glory. So we're basically at an impasse with that, because it does nobody any good to respond to my points with "You didn't respond to anything I wrote" by saying "You didn't respond to anything I wrote." You are incapable of learning the problems with one-dimensional thinking and hate racists (half the country) a lot more than you're owning up to. If you can't see my argument and how it addresses yours, I've wasted my time reading yours and typing this. I can't keep playing "Kwark goes on a related tangent" when you don't read articles, don't read nor understand responses, and fire back that I haven't addressed your points. Shape up, or get out. You might not merit responses to a single thing given your obtuseness.
But three things are clear: First, identity politics on the right is at least as corrosive as identity politics on the left, probably more so. If you reduce the complex array of identities that make up a human being into one crude ethno-political category, you’re going to do violence to yourself and everything around you.
Second, it is wrong to try to make a parallel between Black Lives Matter and White Lives Matter. To pretend that these tendencies are somehow comparable is to ignore American history and current realities.
Third, white identity politics as it plays out in the political arena is completely noxious. Donald Trump is the maestro here. He established his political identity through birtherism, he won the Republican nomination on the Muslim ban, he campaigned on the Mexican wall, he governed by being neutral on Charlottesville and pardoning the racialist Joe Arpaio.
Each individual Republican is now compelled to embrace this garbage or not. The choice is unavoidable, and white resentment is bound to define Republicanism more and more in the months ahead. It’s what Trump cares about. The identity warriors on the left will deface statues or whatever and set up mutually beneficial confrontations with the identity warriors on the right. Things will get uglier.
And this is where the dissolution of the G.O.P. comes in. Conservative universalists are coming to realize their party has become a vehicle for white identity and racial conflict. This faction is prior to and deeper than Trump.
Can we all agree that this is probably the worst take on houston we'll see? Article is here : www.slate.com
With the debilitating rain in Houston fell a rain of inspiriting images. Everywhere on Twitter, in the papers, in internet slideshows, we saw Texans improvising rescue canoes and gathering scared dogs in their arms, bearing them away to safety. First responders waded into the water-choked arteries of the city and dragged people out of cars. Uniformed men hoisted grandmothers on their backs (like Jason fording the river with the goddess Hera on his shoulders) while, elsewhere in the country, beer companies filled cans with fresh water and celebrities spearheaded donation drives.
The flood, the animals: It all felt so mythic. In coverage of Harvey, the word hero is almost as ubiquitous as the stills of intrepid reporters, their rain slickers swirling like capes, and hunky National Guardsmen in life jackets. During a speech to the press on Monday, President Donald Trump noted that crisis showcases “the best in America’s character—strength, charity, and resilience.” (This was a reprieve from his popcorn-gobbling tweets about Harvey’s unprecedented, riveting destruction.) The Washington Times echoed Trump with a piece spotlighting the many Clark Kents and Diana Princes vaulting into action: “Hurricane Harvey Brings Out the Best in America.” There is an adage that “adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.”
But does catastrophe illustrate, or does it transform? What if America is less a glorious nation of do-gooders awaiting the chance to exercise their altruism than a moral junior varsity team elevated by circumstance? In her book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit argues that emergencies provoke from us a conditional virtue. They create provisional utopias, communities in which the usual—selfish, capitalistic—rules don’t apply. “Imagine a society,” Solnit writes, “where the fate that faces [people], no matter how grim, is far less so for being shared, where much once considered impossible, both good and bad, is now possible or present, and where the moment is so pressing that old complaints and worries fall away, where people feel important, purposeful, at the center of the world.”
The point here is obviously not to diminish the bighearted men and women who rose to the occasion when Harvey, a “once-in-a-lifetime” storm with a spiraling death toll, slammed into Texas. But it is misleading to characterize Houston as an exhibition of the “best of America” when what it represents is a contingent America, a “paradise” specific to the “hell” around it. These waterlogged suburbs have become zones of exemption, where norms hang suspended and something lovelier and more communal has been allowed to flourish in their place. Disaster scientists have repeatedly punctured the myth, perpetuated by Hollywood and the media, that cataclysm awakens our worst selves. Rather, disruptive events loosen our mores just enough to permit new kinds of compassion. As Slate reported in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, researchers at the University of Colorado–Boulder discovered “that panic is not a problem in disasters; that rather than helplessly awaiting outside aid, members of the public behave proactively and prosocially to assist one another; that community residents themselves perform many critical disaster tasks, such as searching for and rescuing victims; and that both social cohesiveness and informal mechanisms of social control increase during disasters, resulting in a lower incidence of deviant behavior.”
These findings put a frame around the cooperative society that has lately emerged in Houston: It is a beautiful anomaly, a liquid note of silver momentarily liberated from its sheath of rust. The inverse of such a phenomenon is the bystander effect, by which individuals might walk past someone prone in the street without offering aid. We rarely feel responsible for a stranger’s suffering if others around us seem unmoved or if we can comfortably assume that some nearby person will step in to help instead. Humans may possess inherent goodness, but that goodness needs to be activated. Some signal has to disperse the cloud of moral Novocain around us. Some person, or fire, or flood, has got to say: now.
No. We can't all agree. I like the take.
I actually agree with the point raised by the quoted author in the article. Volunteerism and disaster shouldn't be elevated to some romantic story. It's essentially as screwed up as romantic accounts of war. When private citizens who are not trained have to rescue people out of swamped houses people should instead ask what went wrong beforehand for this to be necessary.
That's a very bleak outlook to take. I disagree completely.
Can we all agree that this is probably the worst take on houston we'll see? Article is here : www.slate.com
With the debilitating rain in Houston fell a rain of inspiriting images. Everywhere on Twitter, in the papers, in internet slideshows, we saw Texans improvising rescue canoes and gathering scared dogs in their arms, bearing them away to safety. First responders waded into the water-choked arteries of the city and dragged people out of cars. Uniformed men hoisted grandmothers on their backs (like Jason fording the river with the goddess Hera on his shoulders) while, elsewhere in the country, beer companies filled cans with fresh water and celebrities spearheaded donation drives.
The flood, the animals: It all felt so mythic. In coverage of Harvey, the word hero is almost as ubiquitous as the stills of intrepid reporters, their rain slickers swirling like capes, and hunky National Guardsmen in life jackets. During a speech to the press on Monday, President Donald Trump noted that crisis showcases “the best in America’s character—strength, charity, and resilience.” (This was a reprieve from his popcorn-gobbling tweets about Harvey’s unprecedented, riveting destruction.) The Washington Times echoed Trump with a piece spotlighting the many Clark Kents and Diana Princes vaulting into action: “Hurricane Harvey Brings Out the Best in America.” There is an adage that “adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.”
But does catastrophe illustrate, or does it transform? What if America is less a glorious nation of do-gooders awaiting the chance to exercise their altruism than a moral junior varsity team elevated by circumstance? In her book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit argues that emergencies provoke from us a conditional virtue. They create provisional utopias, communities in which the usual—selfish, capitalistic—rules don’t apply. “Imagine a society,” Solnit writes, “where the fate that faces [people], no matter how grim, is far less so for being shared, where much once considered impossible, both good and bad, is now possible or present, and where the moment is so pressing that old complaints and worries fall away, where people feel important, purposeful, at the center of the world.”
The point here is obviously not to diminish the bighearted men and women who rose to the occasion when Harvey, a “once-in-a-lifetime” storm with a spiraling death toll, slammed into Texas. But it is misleading to characterize Houston as an exhibition of the “best of America” when what it represents is a contingent America, a “paradise” specific to the “hell” around it. These waterlogged suburbs have become zones of exemption, where norms hang suspended and something lovelier and more communal has been allowed to flourish in their place. Disaster scientists have repeatedly punctured the myth, perpetuated by Hollywood and the media, that cataclysm awakens our worst selves. Rather, disruptive events loosen our mores just enough to permit new kinds of compassion. As Slate reported in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, researchers at the University of Colorado–Boulder discovered “that panic is not a problem in disasters; that rather than helplessly awaiting outside aid, members of the public behave proactively and prosocially to assist one another; that community residents themselves perform many critical disaster tasks, such as searching for and rescuing victims; and that both social cohesiveness and informal mechanisms of social control increase during disasters, resulting in a lower incidence of deviant behavior.”
These findings put a frame around the cooperative society that has lately emerged in Houston: It is a beautiful anomaly, a liquid note of silver momentarily liberated from its sheath of rust. The inverse of such a phenomenon is the bystander effect, by which individuals might walk past someone prone in the street without offering aid. We rarely feel responsible for a stranger’s suffering if others around us seem unmoved or if we can comfortably assume that some nearby person will step in to help instead. Humans may possess inherent goodness, but that goodness needs to be activated. Some signal has to disperse the cloud of moral Novocain around us. Some person, or fire, or flood, has got to say: now.
No. We can't all agree. I like the take.
You know, I was wondering what angle you would take and then
Or maybe it's an opportunity to rethink utopia instead of just juxtaposing rah rah American heroics with petty resentment.
and I smacked myself in the head for not realizing that's where it would go right off the bat. Maybe the fact that it takes a natural disaster and incredible destruction to bring out this side of people should disabuse us of the idea of utopia in a free and prosperous society.
Edit: it's possible that after a long day I'm misreading you, but given past statements...
Edit2: The % of conservatives that like or value Brook's opinion is probably in the single digits.
Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
On August 30 2017 01:51 Nevuk wrote: This seems like a stupid move
I tend to like this move honestly (with some caveats). Comedians and other artists should stand by their work, even if they think they cross the line like own your work your job is to push the boundaries and lines.
That said claiming something is not offensive or not over the line is not owning it either and just as bad as apologizing for it really. So instead of calling the controversy BS is kind of a cop out still.
On August 30 2017 17:04 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
Actually the one thing that isn't weird in this case is that it is the US. The US generally has a tendency to "hero-ify" people. And then usually dismantle them, given time. Not to mention that they're also very excitable people, part of the reason why those cancerous Televangelists and Megachurches exist nowhere but in the US.
I don't mean that in a demeaning way, but it is what it is: i don't find it weird at all that this is in the US.
I tend to like this move honestly (with some caveats). Comedians and other artists should stand by their work, even if they think they cross the line like own your work your job is to push the boundaries and lines.
That said claiming something is not offensive or not over the line is not owning it either and just as bad as apologizing for it really. So instead of calling the controversy BS is kind of a cop out still.
Or perhaps she's just a dumbass.
Yeah, i'd go with that too. Although that could be simply personal, i absolutely dislike her.
On August 30 2017 17:04 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
Actually the one thing that isn't weird in this case is that it is the US. The US generally has a tendency to "hero-ify" people. And then usually dismantle them, given time. Not to mention that they're also very excitable people, part of the reason why those cancerous Televangelists and Megachurches exist nowhere but in the US.
I suggest you take a look at Brazil... US is definitely not alone in throwing money at snake-oil peddlers. There's also plenty of televangelists in Africa.
Oh, and Europe still has the mother of all megachurches. It just has a 1500 year headstart.
On August 30 2017 17:04 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
Actually the one thing that isn't weird in this case is that it is the US. The US generally has a tendency to "hero-ify" people. And then usually dismantle them, given time. Not to mention that they're also very excitable people, part of the reason why those cancerous Televangelists and Megachurches exist nowhere but in the US.
I suggest you take a look at Brazil... US is definitely not alone in throwing money at snake-oil peddlers. There's also plenty of televangelists in Africa.
Oh, and Europe still has the mother of all megachurches. It just has a 1500 year headstart.
Which one's that? I'm actually not aware of one, might've been wrong then.
On August 30 2017 17:04 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
Actually the one thing that isn't weird in this case is that it is the US. The US generally has a tendency to "hero-ify" people. And then usually dismantle them, given time. Not to mention that they're also very excitable people, part of the reason why those cancerous Televangelists and Megachurches exist nowhere but in the US.
I suggest you take a look at Brazil... US is definitely not alone in throwing money at snake-oil peddlers. There's also plenty of televangelists in Africa.
Oh, and Europe still has the mother of all megachurches. It just has a 1500 year headstart.
Which one's that? I'm actually not aware of one, might've been wrong then.
On August 30 2017 17:04 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
Actually the one thing that isn't weird in this case is that it is the US. The US generally has a tendency to "hero-ify" people. And then usually dismantle them, given time. Not to mention that they're also very excitable people, part of the reason why those cancerous Televangelists and Megachurches exist nowhere but in the US.
I suggest you take a look at Brazil... US is definitely not alone in throwing money at snake-oil peddlers. There's also plenty of televangelists in Africa.
Oh, and Europe still has the mother of all megachurches. It just has a 1500 year headstart.
Which one's that? I'm actually not aware of one, might've been wrong then.
You don't think the Vatican is a megachurch?
Nah, i actually don't, even without a shred of "faith", i don't. And i stand corrected, Africa actually does have Televangelists too. I forgot the poo poo guy.
On August 30 2017 12:44 Kickstart wrote: To me it is much easier to address policy issues / institutional racism than people's own biases. Trying to convince people that they may hold views that are racist isn't productive UNLESS they are willing to take that criticism and address it. I don't think this is ever going to happen in a political context. Perhaps between friends and family, but it is infinitely more difficult to get someone from across the political isle to listen to you when you say 'hey this view you have is problematic and moreover it is racist'. I think the way to go is to argue specific policy and its effects, such as felon disenfranchisement. Focusing on just policy aspects is the way to go in a political context. Combating actual racism in people is more difficult, I think its something people have to grow out of more than be convinced out of.
That said, I think confronting racism or prejudice in day to day life is needed and a good thing, my only point is that in a political context I question how fruitful that can even be (as far as convincing political opponents that they hold racist views).
The problem is that in a democratic society, institutional racism and individual racism are inevitably linked. Institutional racism leads people to be brought up in a society where people of certain races experience certain privileges or advantages simply due to the historical/structural flaws of the system. This then leads to a sentiment that they deserve these privileges (and come up with arguments of varying validity to justify this), and attempts to change these structural flaws are viewed as cultural attacks against them.
On August 30 2017 17:04 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
Actually the one thing that isn't weird in this case is that it is the US. The US generally has a tendency to "hero-ify" people. And then usually dismantle them, given time. Not to mention that they're also very excitable people, part of the reason why those cancerous Televangelists and Megachurches exist nowhere but in the US.
I don't mean that in a demeaning way, but it is what it is: i don't find it weird at all that this is in the US.
I do agree that this answer is funny though.
Well heroifying is overly praising people with accomplishments for said accomplishments. Sometimes it goes too far for sure but it can have good effects to inspire people at least. (megachurches is a whole other discussion)
Saying one of Trumps outstanding characteristics is humility is just lying and brainwashing though, not heroifying. Coming straight from the counselor to the president.
On August 30 2017 17:04 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
In all of U.S. history, there’s never been a storm like Hurricane Harvey. That fact is increasingly clear, even though the rains are still falling and the water levels in Houston are still rising.
But there’s an uncomfortable point that, so far, everyone is skating around: We knew this would happen, decades ago. We knew this would happen, and we didn’t care. Now is the time to say it as loudly as possible: Harvey is what climate change looks like. More specifically, Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn’t want to take climate change seriously.
Houston has been sprawling out into the swamp for decades, largely unplanned and unzoned. Now, all that pavement has transformed the bayous into surging torrents and shunted Harvey’s floodwaters toward homes and businesses. Individually, each of these subdivisions or strip malls might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but in aggregate, they’ve converted the metro area into a flood factory. Houston, as it was before Harvey, will never be the same again.
Source Does anyone really think policies are going to change because of this? Will pruitt get some clue and let the EPA do it's job? Will we get senators to take a long hard look at some policies that need to be put in place? Will we get some president down the road that puts back into place what trumps and co are trying to take away?
On August 30 2017 17:04 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Kellyanne Conway when asked what characteristic about Donald Trump stands out in her mind, answers 'his humility'. Another piece of DPRK level of bullshitting and cult of personality building. It's so weird that this is the US.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://i.redd.it/74tr41lvyriz.jpg)
