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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Wall Street Journal: Mr. President Trump, liquidate your business assets.
I can see the joke writing itself.
"How many conflicts of interest does Donald Trump have? All of them."
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)![]()
TBF, It is a bit difficult not to dehumanize people who dehumanize others based on things like race, sexual orientation, religion, gender, etc.
I'll admit — if someone called me a ch*** right to my face and demanded that I go back to China (never mind that I was born in America)...I'm not 100% sure I'd be able to feel empathy for them or people like them.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:10:49 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised@Cap: Racism is all about dehumanizing certain groups of humans, either for self-serving purposes or out of wild delusions. Personally speaking, I think "eye for an eye" is not an unreasonable reaction towards those who embrace such a despicable belief; if they're willing to dehumanize for no good reason, then they should be ready to suffer the same treatment by those who oppose them.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:09:14 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.@Capsase- I think the "hapless rubes" idea is coming from the "Sanders position"- the idea that white racists are just poor (in both senses), innocent people who are only prejudiced because the Democratic Party forgot about them, and if we only catered to their every need they'd stop being racist immediately.
And I'd also say that Democrats/people like myself are trying to teach them to be better by supporting civil rights and that you are opposing their being taught by buying into the idea that opposition to bigotry is some kind of elitist position.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:12:15 AM by Hodor2
The ignorance is also big.
I mean, if it was actually a zero sum game where they actually had something tangible to gain, then the logic of "well it's nothing personal but i have to look out for number one" would make some sense even if it was an absolutely heinous thing to do.
But they basically sold the minorities out for nothing. Trump is little more than a glorified charlatan. By buying into the idea that "he can't be bought" they seem to have forgotten the nature of greed: it's not a rational thing. Not to mention it flies in the face of all records of Trump's behavior, indicating he doesn't care about anything or anyone other than himself and his own fragile ego. So he isn't doing shit for them, and they'll be sitting here wondering where their jobs are.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:11:41 AM by Draghinazzo
@M84: Yes, but even for the most radical alt-right fanatics, bigotry is not the sum total of who they are. It's one part of the complicated mosaic of beliefs, experiences, and traits that define a human being.
Which goes back to the "bigotry as a Moral Event Horizon" concept. If asked to evaluated someone who thinks blacks are inferior to whites but has never committed a crime in their life against someone who holds no bigoted views but is guilty of murder, I would regard the bigot as a better person than the murderer. It's something people need to be taught to move past.
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Underlying economic conditions have a huge impact on the extent to which prejudices influence behavior, so I'm not sure what you're implying.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:12:57 AM by CaptainCapsase
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And it damns them with faint praise. Am I supposed to live in constant paranoia that white men will string me up and flay my testicles next to a burning cross because they've suffered through an economic downturn, that so long as white people are prosperous, people of color have nothing to fear? That's the essential thesis I'm getting from that line of thought.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:13:16 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."![]()
Generally, it's viewed as perfectly normal in society to judge people by the manner in which they in turn judge other people. In a real sense, we think of criminals as being bad people because they put their own interests above those of everyday citizens, and act on such impulses. Voting for Trump may not be against the law- and probably shouldn't be- but I don't think anyone can deny that a racist voter is putting their own (perceived, even so) interests above those of minorities.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:19:35 AM by Gault
yey![]()
And it's essentially correct; when times are tough, the majority will very likely turn against the minority. So we should do everything possible to avoid that eventuality, and put what safeguards we can in place to prevent that. Education being the biggest one.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:14:23 AM by CaptainCapsase
About 70% of America remains white. It's correct to say that white men aren't the majority, but that attitude undersells the agency of white women, who in aggregate indeed voted for Trump against all expectations.
Frankly, I think another issue is that people who advocate so hard for "pragmatism" in other areas take a downright Utopian view of social justice. If we need to placate the white working class to avoid a descent into fascism, doing so is a moral imperative regardless of whether there are people who suffer more, since the alternative is much worse for everyone. It's not "fair", it's not "just", but the universe is indifferent to such concepts.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:20:08 AM by CaptainCapsase
@Crimson Zephyr-
@Capsase-
So here's the thing. Talking about the white working class exclusively both ignores the fact that there are non-white working class people, and also implicitly (whether deliberately or not) buys into this white supremacist idea that there's a zero sum game in which only whites or minorities can benefit and that benefits to non-whites under Democratic administrations caused problems to whites.
Not to mention that I don't think there's any evidence that people being economically prosperous makes them less racist. The period in the 20th century in which there was the most government economic intervention and in which the economy was prospering was also one in which there was tons of racially motivated violence and economic programs were administered in a way that left out non-whites. Also, because white supremacy is obviously based on an idea that one should/deserves to be doing well, if/when conditions improve, it just supports white supremacist conclusions.
I'd also add what I think might be a more important point. Obviously not all or even necessarily a majority of white working class people are bigots so why put so much emphasis on appeasing the ones who are?
Edit-
And conversely, you who are so cynical toward pragmatism in other areas are so supportive in this one.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:21:44 AM by Hodor2
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Or we could let them live under the yoke of fascism. White people could use more existential misery in their lives.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:20:57 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."The problem is that the left's conception of bigotry and "isms" lend themselves to a much higher degree of nuance and subtlety than most people's conceptions of prejudice, which are ridiculously simplistic and one-dimensional.
For the average white person to come to understand and accept it, it often involves a process of profound discomfort where they have to seriously reconsider their past attitudes and deprioritize themselves. It requires people to acknowledge the added difficulties of other people's experiences if they aren't white or straight, while not ALSO thinking of their pains and experiences as invalid or "lesser".
Problem is that this goes against fundamental human nature, which is to avoid ideological discomfort and selectively interpret new information so as to avoid being rewired into new views, as well as the tendency to always put yourself above others.
I believe bigotry can and should be fought against, but we can only expect so much from certain people. Our best hope moving forward would be a more nuanced education about prejudice going forward, but I don't think that's very likely in the near future given that our current government is a perfect symbol of what bigotry does when left unchecked.
Is there any way to contact members of the electoral college directly to persuade them to vote against Trump in the original spirit of the EC?
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Reminder, about 40% of white people still voted against Trump. The margin of victory Trump is resting on isn't all that great. So it's not as absolute or insurmountable as you think. The real problem is staving off the collapse of democracy long enough that our work at educating the voters has time to take effect.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:27:45 AM by AlleyOop
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I think we are all going to be getting more of that soon.
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I think the best course of action is to improve education. Get'em while they are young. At the very least, we ought to be able to teach kids that blackface is not okay, even if you're trying to "honor" Martin Luther King Jr. by dressing up as him.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:24:23 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedThere was a recent hubbub over a woman getting fired for making a social media post about Obama's wife being 'an ape in heels.' Afterwards, she claimed that it wasn't meant to be racist.
Now, that sounds ridiculous on its face, but those are the kind of mental gymnastics people do when their self-identity is at stake. If we talk about people as being inherently and irredeemably evil bigots, then it's no surprise that almost no one is willing to view themselves as inherently evil. IMO, people aren't bigots, people behave in a bigoted fashion and say bigoted things sometimes.
I would really like to live in a world where we could afford to marginalize anyone expressing blatantly ignorant, self-destructive ideas, because it would mean politics has moved on to more sensible discussion topics. I'd love to be able to laugh at a climate denialist the same way we laugh at a flat earther, for example. But we can't afford to.
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.Yep. I'm not even an american, but "existential misery" has kind of been my thing in the last week or so since Trump's been elected.
My own personal issues like unemployment and poor prospects to get out of unemployment seem infinitely petty and insignificant in comparison to the sinking feeling that the world as a whole is walking towards a path of illiberal democracy for the foreseeable future.
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I don't think she or most racist people are irredeemably evil- I don't really think anyone does and that characterization is basically a strawman.
What I ma hearing though is that evidently a lot of people on the left and (less surprisingly) the right always hated the Democratic Party's support for civil rights and so when Clinton lost the election, the knives came out and that's what they said was the problem with the Party and would need to go.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:28:48 AM by Hodor2
@Hodor2: Because I've grown as a person in some ways over the course of this election cycle. I don't usually feel the need to announce that I've changed my opinions on something, I just silently do it and act accordingly.
As far as the question of racism and economics goes, it doesn't make people less racist, but it certainly makes people less willing to act on that racism in a violent manner, and to some extent less likely to act upon it in a nonviolent manner.
Onto the topic of this most recent post, there's obviously some of that going on, but I don't agree with the identification of that attitude with Sanders' and his supporters, myself included.
@CrimsonZephyr: As I said before, playing the Doomed Moral Victor accomplishes nothing beyond stroking your own ego. Work within the confines of the world you live in and do what you can, that's all you can do.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:30:54 AM by CaptainCapsase
@Alley Oop: As far as I know there's no set system in place, but this
article suggests a number of methods that could be used to try and get in touch with them, since most of them are public officials. There's also the change.org petition that has over four million signatures. As much damage as might be done by a massive electoral revolt, it's starting to look like the preferable option compared to Fuhrer Trump.
The article also points out that some of the electors have been getting a lot of harassment and threats from people, so depressingly they may not be feeling too open to discussion. But that's not to say that an empathic, reasoned argument isn't worth trying, because it just might get through to them. At this point, anything's worth trying. As people have pointed out - this is exactly the kind of situation the electoral college is supposed to prevent.
edited 18th Nov '16 10:30:40 AM by RBluefish
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

edited 18th Nov '16 10:08:10 AM by CaptainCapsase