US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8859

On September 27 2017 13:37 LegalLord wrote:
In actual usage, "internalized racism" and the like seems to be used in a manner that is awfully convenient as if to say "any of our kind that isn't in on our crusade is a shill for the enemy." I don't deny that the phenomenon is real, but I wonder to what extent the phenomenon is oversold as to presume that solidarity with a certain viewpoint is a necessity. I guess that's something we could check by trying to apply it to a similar concept like "Jews against Israel."

On September 27 2017 13:24 LegalLord wrote:
It honestly sounds like Trump wasn't really into the candidate he endorsed and campaigned for.

On September 27 2017 13:37 LegalLord wrote:
In actual usage, "internalized racism" and the like seems to be used in a manner that is awfully convenient as if to say "any of our kind that isn't in on our crusade is a shill for the enemy." I don't deny that the phenomenon is real, but I wonder to what extent the phenomenon is oversold as to presume that solidarity with a certain viewpoint is a necessity. I guess that's something we could check by trying to apply it to a similar concept like "Jews against Israel."

On September 27 2017 13:50 Danglars wrote:

It's just like his insouciance at what kind of Obamacare repeal bill ended up on his desk!


You've stumbled upon one of the main tenets on today's war against racism. You pick some term that has a legitimate origin to describe a true phenomenon, then stretch it to apply to as much of the current battleground as possible. Finally, disparage the opposing side as much as possible with it, and withdraw to the nugget of truth whenever questioned to it's applicability. Rinse repeat for years. Dissemble when appropriate.

On September 27 2017 13:50 Danglars wrote:...
You've stumbled upon one of the main tenets on today's war against racism. You pick some term that has a legitimate origin to describe a true phenomenon, then stretch it to apply to as much of the current battleground as possible. Finally, disparage the opposing side as much as possible with it, and withdraw to the nugget of truth whenever questioned to it's applicability. Rinse repeat for years. Dissemble when appropriate.

On September 27 2017 13:25 Wegandi wrote:


Dude, I've been against police abuses way before any of this BLM stuff started. As much as people on the "left" hate the Ruby Ridge, Waco, stuff, there is still a decent part that never bought into the police lionization crap. "Left" and "Right" have plenty of common ground against the Government, if they were to stop shouting at each other for a second and accusing each other of being the devil (even I, a person who hates communists with a passion, can work with them on an issue if it moves toward liberty for instance).

On September 27 2017 13:42 GreenHorizons wrote:


No, this is completely wrong. I have said and pretty much any black person familiar with the concept will tell you they deal with internalized racism regularly. Of course there's people of all kinds too proud to be imperfect too.

Please stop.

On September 27 2017 13:57 Aquanim wrote:

I am not objecting to the fact that you personally believe this. However, making this assertion in the thread without anything to justify it is not in the spirit of what this thread is supposed to be.

Therefore, I think that you should either substantiate this claim or retract it.

On September 27 2017 14:48 Wegandi wrote:


There is some of this "If X or Y black person doesn't share my perspective or political leanings, they're a traitor" sort of language. It happens with people like J.C. Watts., Walter E. Williams/Thomas Sowell, and Larry Elder. I think LL wasn't denying that those sort of people do exist (like the black folks who think Bedford Forrest was a good Southerner, etc.), but that not everyone that's black that shares opposing views is "working for the white man to oppress his own race" rhetoric. Blacks are in charge of those cities I mentioned and then we started talking about this. I mean, they're literally in charge - at the head of the Government. What white person in power are they helping to oppress their own people? Why is that a more compelling argument than the socioeconomic one which seems much more plausible. These people in charge of these cities aren't poor. They don't need the poor to win elections. Or are you saying, that even when in charge of the Government, they're still beholden to the white population to oppress other blacks lest they won't vote for them anymore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore#Population ; blacks make up 63% of baltimore for instance)? That just seems implausible. Why would ostensibly racist white people vote for a black person in the first place? If your argument is that they're unconsciously racist until say, police reforms come up and then they remember they're racist so they won't vote for the person who institutes independent review bodies, changes force of use continuums, institutes community outreach, etc. seems like an awful stretch to me.

As for your other post. I'm well aware, that even among libertarians there are few who are truly principled people. It's why I loved Ron Paul so much (that guy that people called racist because of a newsletter he never wrote, but was always for positive impacts for the black community when it came to justice/policing), and my company tends to be the "hardcore" types who never compromise principle. It's why when I see people levying invective against people like Thomas Woods, I can't help but laugh. The guy does not have a racist bone in his body. As for "the general right" outside of libertarian circles, I'm well aware how schizophrenic they are. Honestly, it's more to do with partisanship than race and people believing that if you work with the "other" that you've compromised yourself (on areas of agreement). I used to go to all sorts of Anti-War rallies in the mid 2000s and was always given shit about it. Then Obama came around and all the "lefties" vanished while the same shit was going on. So, it's both sides hyper partisanship that's a problem.

On September 27 2017 15:15 GreenHorizons wrote:


I honestly don't have the patience at the moment to deal with the first part beyond black faces on systems with structural racism doesn't remove the structural problems. I don't know how many other ways to say it besides that society will tolerate injustice against PoC in their face and be relatively unmoved. So despite resolving it for white people, that in no way ensures it will be resolved for PoC. But there is no way society will tolerate this stuff only happening to white people. So make sure it's not happening to PoC first and I assure you, you'll solve both problems.

It's a weird relationship, we'll agree on many problems, but have radically different solutions and interpretations. Whether it's more partisanship or more racism the racism part is what we're focused on, but that doesn't mean we're not also fighting the bigger battle.

It's on folks like yourself to step up and soften the language if you must, but get through to people like your parents, make them see their errors, and don't blame us for them not listening. Blame them.

On September 27 2017 15:15 GreenHorizons wrote:


I honestly don't have the patience at the moment to deal with the first part beyond black faces on systems with structural racism doesn't remove the structural problems. I don't know how many other ways to say it besides that society will tolerate injustice against PoC in their face and be relatively unmoved. So despite resolving it for white people, that in no way ensures it will be resolved for PoC. But there is no way society will tolerate this stuff only happening to white people. So make sure it's not happening to PoC first and I assure you, you'll solve both problems.

It's a weird relationship, we'll agree on many problems, but have radically different solutions and interpretations. Whether it's more partisanship or more racism the racism part is what we're focused on, but that doesn't mean we're not also fighting the bigger battle.

It's on folks like yourself to step up and soften the language if you must, but get through to people like your parents, make them see their errors, and don't blame us for them not listening. Blame them.

On September 27 2017 15:33 Wegandi wrote:


On one axis sure, it's weird, but on another, it's not so different. "Libertarians" (Classical Liberals) were the first to come up with Class Analysis, then Marx came along and had a different interpretation, with obviously different solutions, and since we've not been relevant in politics in a while, people then tend to forget the previous so it looks weird when they're confronted with a person like myself. Same on issues of war (previously the "right" was the staunch anti-war bastion), policing, and a long host of other issues. I make my previous points to just highlight that there is a long history of many sides holding agreement on problems, but having radically different solutions. Like, we can both agree that healthcare is fucked up, but we come to that in completely different ways and thus have different solutions. Where I see the lack of the market and a billion different government interventions ranging from mandates, insurance schemes (we call Medicare,Medicaid, etc. insurance in the biz), protectionism/patents/etc. (pharma) and non-sense FDA restrictions that all artificially raise rents/prices. I think healthcare highlights the biggest departure, but most people on "my side" would agree with a number of solutions to police abuse (getting rid of "qualified immunities", instituting personal insurance/no longer paying out violations from taxpayer $$, changing FOU continuums, ending Drug War, etc.) since I'm under no delusion that competing justice services is anywhere near a reality.

My folks aren't racist at all, so I don't need to get through to them about racism, but they do have an authoritarian bent so showing them the rise of police abuse and that yes, it can effect them too, is the important part. It's much harder to refute what's before their eyes. Honestly, just show any white person the Kelly Thomas video, and only psychopaths will say there isn't a problem in police accountability and policies. Like I said, you keep bringing up the police subject like it's only blacks that are effected. If we can come together as Americans and address the out of control militarized police we'd get this shit done a lot faster, than alienating a majority of the country. (Don't take this as diminishing the instances where blacks are disproportionally effected by the police/law, but it is overblown and the black community tends to just ignore/not recognize most other instances of abuse - it really shouldn't be hard to come together to fight police abuse and not make the entire argument centered on blacks)

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: So, one of the reasons that integration was so successful by court order in the South was the South tends to operate countywide school systems. And that meant that white parents wanting to flee desegregation couldn’t just simply move into a white town to get away from these orders. But what we’re finding in Alabama, and really across the country, are white communities, wealthier white communities, wanting to pull away from these regional or countywide school districts and form their own racially isolated, much more wealthy school districts. And that’s happened in Jefferson County, Alabama.

The reason I looked at that case, in particular, is, most of the time when white communities want to—they’re called school district secessions. When they want to secede from a larger school district, there’s very little scrutiny, and we don’t actually get to see their motivations. But the school system that this town, this suburban community called Gardendale, wanted to split off from was under a desegregation order, so they actually had to go to trial, and there was discovery. And in that discovery, the racial motivations of the white people in that community became very clear. So it provided an unusual opportunity to actually explore why communities who say they want to break off from local control are often motivated by race.

AMY GOODMAN: That trial is fascinating, that you write about. And in it, the judge actually reads from Brown v. Board of Education. Especially for young people who don’t even know what that is, more than half a century ago, explain what happened then and why it applies now, and why this judge found it important to recite it in court.

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: So, Brown v. Board of Education, of course, is the landmark Supreme Court ruling that found legally mandated school segregation unconstitutional.

AMY GOODMAN: Back in 1954.

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Back in 1954. Prior to that, we operated under the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine, which said segregation of black citizens was legal and constitutional as long as it was equal. Of course, it was never equal. But Brown doesn’t actually deal with that. It deals with citizenship. And it’s basically saying that the separation of black students from white denies them their full citizenship.

The way that we kind of commonly learn this history, though, is the Supreme Court makes this ruling, and then we all agree segregation was bad, and we integrate our schools, or we tried really hard. But actually what happened was there was massive resistance, both in the North and the South. And it takes a very long time for school desegregation to occur, where it occurred at all, largely because of these court orders.

What was so fascinating about this trial, though, is many federal judges have basically taken the position that these court orders, some of them 50 years old, have gone on too long and that there’s no more segregation for them to deal with. But Judge Madeline Haikala, who was appointed by President Obama, has been one of the rare federal judges who is taking these rulings very seriously. And I was reading through the court transcripts. There was just this amazing moment where she’s interviewing the superintendent that the all-white school board of Gardendale appointed, and found out that he—on cross-examination, it came out that he had never hired or worked with a black teacher in his career, even though he was coming down to, basically, Birmingham, Alabama. And so, I think—she declined to be interviewed for the story, but it’s clear that she calls a recess, she goes and gets copies of the Brown ruling and begins to question him about had he ever read the ruling, and then reads parts of it, particularly the parts about how segregation demeans black students, aloud. And it was amazing moment. I’ve written about school segregation for more than a decade. I’ve sat in on these trials. I’ve read transcripts. I’ve never seen a judge do that before.

On September 27 2017 13:40 Nyxisto wrote:
This has actually been measured in a recent study about how people respond to race in the context of welfare policy

On September 27 2017 12:27 xDaunt wrote:

Here's an easy way to see how insipid his point of view is. Just take a look at how all of the little acolytes to his world view have been responding to Wegandi, Danglars, me, et al. They really don't know how to deal with us and the points that we're making. This framework of theirs is so damned narrow and vapid that they can't contemplate why their chosen terminology and method of framing the issue are so self-sabotaging.

On September 27 2017 13:57 Aquanim wrote:

I am not objecting to the fact that you personally believe this. However, making this assertion in the thread without anything to justify it is not in the spirit of what this thread is supposed to be.

Therefore, I think that you should either substantiate this claim or retract it.

The majestic, though vulturous, California condor is once again soaring above the wilds. It was on the brink of extinction 30 years ago when the last 22 giant birds were captured in a desperate effort to breed them in captivity. There are now an estimated 450 condors, with 270 freely swooping and scavenging in California, Arizona, Utah and Mexico.

The condor population could not have rebounded if the California Legislature had not bucked the National Rifle Association and passed an enlightened bill to control what experts found to be the main threat to the condor’s existence — the use of toxic, lead-based ammunition by hunters. It’s a lesson in resistance that lawmakers in Washington should learn.

The state banned lead ammo near condors’ nesting grounds in 2008 because, there and elsewhere in the country, tons of fragments were poisoning millions of animals like the condors that fed off gunshot carcasses.

That success is to be followed in 2019 by a ban on the use of lead-based ammunition throughout California. Other states have partial controls on lead ammo, but California is the first to enact such a sweeping environmental protection in the face of the powerful gun lobby.

In contrast, the Trump administration, beholden to the N.R.A., quickly overturned a regulation the Obama administration had issued that would have banned lead ammunition and fishing tackle in federal wildlife refuges.

Even when it comes to measures that can harm humans, Republican representatives tend to be equally servile toward the gun lobby. In the House, they are selling what amounts to a marketing favor for the gun industry, proposing to repeal controls on the sale of gun silencers to civilians. Silencer controls were enacted as a public safety precaution in the gangland rat-a-tat of the 1930s, when law enforcement officials wanted to make it harder for killers to escape detection. The nation at that time also cracked down on easy civilian access to machine guns and hand grenades.

Sponsors are intent on making silencers more available to firearm enthusiasts as vanity “quiet gun” products to protect a shooter’s hearing, despite warnings that readily available silencers pose a heightened threat to public health and safety. In the “active shooter” era of modern America, police departments in dozens of cities and towns have been using new technology to track the sound and location of gunfire so police officers can quickly be deployed to trouble spots.

The proposal is expected to be voted on in the coming weeks as part of an omnibus “sportsmen’s heritage” bill. The measure would also make it more difficult for federal regulators to control armor-piercing bullets — a particular threat to police officers wearing bullet-resistant vests, far from the hunting grounds of sportsmen.

California stood up to the gun lobby and protected the condor. It’s pathetic that Congress can’t muster similar wisdom and courage on behalf of police officers.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was the beneficiary of at least one of the Russian-bought political ads on Facebook that federal government officials suspect were intended to influence the 2016 election.

Other advertisements paid for by shadowy Russian buyers criticized Hillary Clinton and promoted Donald Trump. Some backed Bernie Sanders and his platform even after his presidential campaign had ended, according to a person with knowledge of the ads.

The pro-Stein ad came late in the political campaign and pushed her candidacy for president, this person said.

“Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein,” the ad reads. “Trust me. It’s not a wasted vote. … The only way to take our country back is to stop voting for the corporations and banks that own us. #GrowaSpineVoteJillStein.”

The ads show a complicated effort that didn’t necessarily hew to promoting Trump and bashing Clinton. Instead, they show a desire to create divisions while sometimes praising Trump, Sanders and Stein. A number of the ads seemed to question Clinton’s authenticity and tout some of the liberal criticisms of her candidacy.

There is no indication Stein, Sanders or Trump was aware of the advertisements, which were described to POLITICO by people with knowledge of them.

Facebook declined to comment on the specifics of the advertisements but noted a previous statement: “The vast majority of ads run by these accounts didn’t specifically reference the U.S. presidential election or voting for a particular candidate. Rather, the ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.”

U.S. officials are investigating whether about 3,000 ads purchased on Facebook by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency might have been part of a larger Russian government scheme to meddle in the 2016 election.

...

On September 27 2017 22:08 Danglars wrote:

Observations and assertions make up the bulk of this entire thread. If you're actually reforming and encouraging others to do so, more power to you. I'll continue discussing what I find to be true about the debate and within the debate. And you can keep on beginning your posts with "I don't think" and "I would say" if you'd like.

On September 27 2017 13:37 LegalLord wrote:
In actual usage, "internalized racism" and the like seems to be used in a manner that is awfully convenient as if to say "any of our kind that isn't in on our crusade is a shill for the enemy." I don't deny that the phenomenon is real, but I wonder to what extent the phenomenon is oversold as to presume that solidarity with a certain viewpoint is a necessity. I guess that's something we could check by trying to apply it to a similar concept like "Jews against Israel."