Trump to win?

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

Sure. You and Santa can raise race as a club and that is legitimate. Anyone who uses it to counter, is illegitimate.

i don't recall raising race "as a club." please remind me how/when/where i did that.
also please explain how your remark about "white" was "to counter."
thanks

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

Right after you kiss my white Scots-Irish ass.

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

Right after you kiss my white Scots-Irish ass.

you're such a knowledgable and thoughtful guy. it's disheartening to lose respect for you. i try to have a civil conversation in the hope of learning something, and you return an insult. if we can't have a decent conversation here, with intelligent people who've come together in a community of interest, what hope do we have?

[santafe2]

Re: Trump to win?

you're such a knowledgable and thoughtful guy. it's disheartening to lose respect for you. i try to have a civil conversation in the hope of learning something, and you return an insult. if we can't have a decent conversation here, with intelligent people who've come together in a community of interest, what hope do we have?

Thank you jk. I will own my part in letting this conversation get out of hand and when I asked for a discussion of issues it was likely too late and came from the wrong contributor. My deep concern with this election is that the racist white community in the US has found a 21st Century George Wallace. We can argue about which candidate is 10% more dishonest than the other, and it's likely that close but we can't disagree on which candidate made their money as a slum lord. Which candidate will show us their tax returns and which candidate will make excuses. Which candidate will show us their doctor's health assessment and which candidate will fake it. Which candidate is willing to build a bridge and which will build a wall...but only with our brown cousins.

I have sometimes criticized one issue voters but for me there is only one issue. I would like to see racism and possibly sexism subdued in my lifetime. Black folks are 91% for HRC and 1% for Trump. I'm voting with the black community. I'm not a fan of HRC and I understand we'll have to work hard to monitor her but I despise Trump and every 19th Century racist platform he supports.

Black voters are aligned nearly 100:1 against Trump. Trump supporters are nearly all white. How can any other issue be more important? This is the American issue. It's one we fought to overcome 150 years ago but are really only beginning to deal with today. I'd like to not lose the ground we've gained with the current president.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Trump to win?

Shelby Foote is looking down from a high mountain, and Grant is actually down there in it. Shelby Foote wasn't there. Neither were any of those guys who fight Civil War re-enactments. Grant was there, but he was off leading his army. He only wrote about it all once it was over. If you want to know what it was about, read the daily newspapers from that time from both the North and South. You'll see things that you won't believe. There is just too much to go into here, but it's nothing like what you read in the history books. It's way more deadly and hateful.

There doesn't seem to be anything heroic or honorable about it at all. It was suicidal. Four years of looting and plunder and murder done the American way. It's amazing what you see in those newspaper articles. Places like the Pittsburgh Gazette, where they were warning workers that if the Southern states have their way, they are going to overthrow our factories and use slave labor in place of our workers and put an end to our way of life. There's all kinds of stuff like that, and that's even before the first shot was fired.

The North just wanted them to stop slavery, not even put an end to it – just stop exporting it. They weren't trying to take the slaves away. They just wanted to keep slavery from spreading. That's the only right that was being contested. Slavery didn't provide a working wage for people. If that economic system was allowed to spread, then people in the North were going to take up arms. There was a lot of fear about slavery spreading.

The United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn't give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that's what it really was all about.

This country is just too fucked up about color. It's a distraction. People at each other's throats just because they are of a different color. It's the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn't want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can't pretend they don't know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day.
It's doubtful that America's ever going to get rid of that stigmatization. It's a country founded on the backs of slaves. You know what I mean? Because it goes way back. It's the root cause.

Bob Dylan

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

It truly is astounding to watch it happen in one's own country and in one's own time.

Reading the primary sources, the first person accounts, even the better secondary narratives, that's sufficient from a cold academic standpoint. But to see actual living humans in the process of doublethink, to see goodthinking in action. Well it has to be understood as a privilege in the traditional sense.

And to be tried and convicted of thoughtcrime by the likes of Santa and JK, enforcing orthodoxy through thuggish accusations of racial animus, what an opportunity that is! Doubleplusgood.

You the self-appointed good cop and bad cop in our local thought police precinct here are quite a pair. That I'm convicted by two little lily-white liberal swishes with the moral development of Joseph Goebbels and Trofim Lysenko, well what's an old Confederate to do but let out a barbaric rebel yalp!

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

thuggish accusations of racial animus

i asked you to point to my own, if they indeed exist, so that i could reflect on them. you refused.

two little lily-white liberal swishes

so now to "accuse" me of being homosexual because i refuse to descend into invective? no true man would refuse to exchange insult for insult, i suppose. and such a terrible thing to accuse me of! i, too, grew up with those attitudes, and still feel a bit of their pull. otoh, i've met many homosexuals who are really good people, worthy of respect, so it's not such an insult to me. this is another insult which i doubt you truly believe in. that you resort to it, nonetheless, is a measure of your desperation. i must be getting close.

with the moral development of Joseph Goebbels and Trofim Lysenko, well what's an old Confederate to do but let out a barbaric rebel yalp!

as i've said before, you're better than that, as your "barbaric" testifies. if i truly thought you had "the moral development of joseph goebbels and trofim lysenko" i wouldn't bother to engage with you at such length. i feel very saddened by the thought of giving up here - not giving up re clinton v trump, but giving up on being able to discuss things with you.

the last time we had one of these prolonged [not this prolonged!] exchanges, in which i finally managed to get a rational and direct response by asking "worse than slavery?", you sort of thanked me for hanging in, and kind of apologized. not in so many words, of course, but you said something along the lines of "if you can believe it, there are actually people who like spending time with me." i do believe it, woodsman.

you must truly be in despair to be behaving in the way you have been. that's my best theory, and it's certainly more likely, i think, than the possibility you really are the racist you like to portray in some of your posts. you seem to want to make believe you're the worst kind of trump supporter, in order to provoke an argument that will justify bringing your anger and despair into this community.

i suggest it would serve you, and all of us, better to share those feelings with us than direct them at us. believe me, i - at least- do share them. that would open up the possibility of more discussion. i understand your desire to blow up the system, and agree. i'm just scared that trump is the wrong instrument, too dangerous and extreme an instrument, and could blow up far more than just the elite-driven, revolving door, exploitative and rigged system we've devolved into.

maybe you could convince me he's not as dangerous as i think, although of course i doubt it. nonetheless i'd like to have that discussion. my fear here is that you've convinced yourself that he's less dangerous than whatever instrument might come next, not with clear analysis but because you're just so upset. i don't know that. only a real discussion would let me get closer to an answer.

you are free, of course, to insult me right now, to say that i am effeminate for daring to discuss what i hypothesize are your feelings let alone discuss my own feelings. you can call it cheap psychologizing if you wish: anything, i guess, rather than share and discuss what is actually so upsetting to you.

this discussion feels very sad to me. [i know, "poor me"] but it does. i really like you and deeply respect your knowledge. i can understand how angry you feel at what has happened to our society and our polity in particular. i share those feelings. we've come to different conclusions about what might be best for our country at this juncture, but good people can disagree.

[santafe2]

Re: Trump to win?

And Taibbi weighs in: If you think the white-guy grievance movement will die after Donald Trump's likely landslide defeat this November, think again. There will be plenty of filterless, self-pitying dunces to carry the torch in Trump's place. Schilling is a leading candidate.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...-trump-w435754

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

"Swish" means "posh" unless I say it, and then it means "homosexual." And "lily-white" means "innocent or immaculate" but when I say it or the word white generally, it means "white supremacist."

So long as folks like you and Santa are picking the good from the bad, yes, isn't it wonderful how "good people can disagree." Now the bad, if they disagree, you can say anything you want about them because you're good and they're not.

And the doctor never plays doctor unless he does and then of course, he's only playing or being a sweetheart of a guy - but not sweet in any gay way. Unless of course it is in a gay way, and then that's great too. Anything other than mocking his profession and its ethics - never mind rhetoric and epistemology - which he would never do and no one who matters would ever notice anyway.

So yes, I refuse. Dueling doublespeak with the doublethink twins is not interesting to me.



I'll post if something is interesting, but if I want liberal psychodrama fueled by propaganda and class signaling, they serve that up for free over the public airwaves.

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

i think all human beings assess and interpret the emotions of those they have dealings with. the only advantage of my profession is that i have more practice in not being swept up by others' emotions.

and i still don't know how i am committing doublespeak- which is to say and believe 2 opposites. i have said i consider hillary the lesser of 2 evils. no contradiction that i can see.

[DSpencer]

Re: Trump to win?

i don't recall raising race "as a club." please remind me how/when/where i did that.
also please explain how your remark about "white" was "to counter."
thanks

I won't pretend to understand Woodsman or speak for him and I think he may be unfairly lumping you and santafe2 into the same group. However, I'm guessing he's part of a group that is fed up with the "you're a racist!" smear campaign. The new culture where somehow it's not contradictory to claim to be anti-racist while simultaneously using someone's race as an insult. Look at the nonsense santafe2 is saying in this thread:

You’re a bunch of angry old white guys who no longer control the country. For that, the rest of us are thankful.

If someone said "You're a bunch of angry young black girls who don't have any power. For that, the rest of us are thankful", would they not rightfully be called out as being overtly racist? In order to avoid the cognitive dissonance that results from such an absurd contradiction people are actually trying to redefine language to make themselves not racist. This is why you're starting to hear statements like "racism is prejudice plus power". They are literally redefining racism so that it can be applied selectively.

So it's hard not to feel like we are living in a bit of 1984 scenario where 2+2 is sometimes five and racism is only racism when it suits the person making the charge.

I have sometimes criticized one issue voters but for me there is only one issue. I would like to see racism and possibly sexism subdued in my lifetime. Black folks are 91% for HRC and 1% for Trump. I'm voting with the black community. I'm not a fan of HRC and I understand we'll have to work hard to monitor her but I despise Trump and every 19th Century racist platform he supports.

Black voters are aligned nearly 100:1 against Trump. Trump supporters are nearly all white. How can any other issue be more important? This is the American issue. It's one we fought to overcome 150 years ago but are really only beginning to deal with today. I'd like to not lose the ground we've gained with the current president.

I'm tired of racism too. It's mostly subjective, but I'm part of the group that doesn't feel like we have seen any improvement in race relations since Obama's election. I'm hopeful that time will change things for the better. I think my generation is less racist than past generations, but maybe I'm delusional. But if you think electing a certain politician can magically change racists into non-racists, you're delusional.

Speaking of delusional: "I'm not a fan of HRC and I understand we'll have to work hard to monitor her." That's comedy gold. If we don't want corrupt politicians, we have to not vote for them. Thinking that you can "monitor them" is a joke. She wants your vote and your money. Once she has your vote, she does not give a damn what you think or what you write on the internet. Unless you have the money to buy the laws you want, which is self-defeating if you want someone who isn't corrupt.

I'm so tired of people claiming to dislike the person who they vote into the nation's highest office. And the pompous attitude that we should be grateful for people that elected an evil candidate because they spared us from an allegedly more evil candidate. Voting for someone you actually believe in will have far more political impact in the long term than maintaining the two party status quo.

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

:
Speaking of delusional: "I'm not a fan of HRC and I understand we'll have to work hard to monitor her." That's comedy gold. If we don't want corrupt politicians, we have to not vote for them. Thinking that you can "monitor them" is a joke. She wants your vote and your money. Once she has your vote, she does not give a damn what you think or what you write on the internet. Unless you have the money to buy the laws you want, which is self-defeating if you want someone who isn't corrupt.

I'm so tired of people claiming to dislike the person who they vote into the nation's highest office. And the pompous attitude that we should be grateful for people that elected an evil candidate because they spared us from an allegedly more evil candidate. Voting for someone you actually believe in will have far more political impact in the long term than maintaining the two party status quo.

i get hung up on whether if ralph nader hadn't run, president gore would have invaded iraq.

[DSpencer]

Re: Trump to win?

i get hung up on whether if ralph nader hadn't run, president gore would have invaded iraq.

But you are fine to vote for someone who authorized the Iraq War? Someone who seems to be the favorite of military contractors over the alleged warmonger?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...clinton-227336

I'm not trying to continue the personal attacks that are all over this thread. I really just don't understand it. How can you have the "Socialism for the rich! Capitalism for the rest" signature and cast your vote for a candidate who gets paid $225,000 to chat with LLoyd Blankfein and Co.? And she won't release the transcript of what was said? Even if she did release the transcript, we all know what is going on. She gets paid ludicrous fees to buy her loyalty.

Everyone I talk to that says they might vote for Hillary always says the same thing: "It's because of Trump! He's crazy, racist, dangerous, unpredictable, etc. If the Republicans had nominated someone else things would be different!" Personally, I think it's all rationalization. If it was Romney, McCain, Cruz, Kasich, or Ryan they would all find some justification for voting for Hillary all the same. It's the same on the other side too. "I don't like Trump, but if Hillary wins then..."

Most "independents" are only independent in between the 4 years where they reliably vote for the same party they always do.

[shiny!]

Re: Trump to win?

Shelby Foote is looking down from a high mountain, and Grant is actually down there in it. Shelby Foote wasn't there. Neither were any of those guys who fight Civil War re-enactments. Grant was there, but he was off leading his army. He only wrote about it all once it was over. If you want to know what it was about, read the daily newspapers from that time from both the North and South. You'll see things that you won't believe. There is just too much to go into here, but it's nothing like what you read in the history books. It's way more deadly and hateful.

There doesn't seem to be anything heroic or honorable about it at all. It was suicidal. Four years of looting and plunder and murder done the American way. It's amazing what you see in those newspaper articles. Places like the Pittsburgh Gazette, where they were warning workers that if the Southern states have their way, they are going to overthrow our factories and use slave labor in place of our workers and put an end to our way of life. There's all kinds of stuff like that, and that's even before the first shot was fired.

The North just wanted them to stop slavery, not even put an end to it – just stop exporting it. They weren't trying to take the slaves away. They just wanted to keep slavery from spreading. That's the only right that was being contested. Slavery didn't provide a working wage for people. If that economic system was allowed to spread, then people in the North were going to take up arms. There was a lot of fear about slavery spreading.

The United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn't give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that's what it really was all about.

This country is just too fucked up about color. It's a distraction. People at each other's throats just because they are of a different color. It's the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn't want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can't pretend they don't know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day.
It's doubtful that America's ever going to get rid of that stigmatization. It's a country founded on the backs of slaves. You know what I mean? Because it goes way back. It's the root cause.

Bob Dylan

Gonna have to disagree with Dylan on this point. Sweeping generalizations are a handy tool of propaganda. My great-great grandparents in Scott, Louisana* owned slaves. After they freed them, most of them returned within the year and asked for their old jobs and homes back. My gg grandparents didn't have much in the way of cash to pay them, but they provided housing, food (room and board in today's lingo) and medical care. Am I justifying slavery? No! Am I responsible for the fact that my ancestors owned slaves? No!

Now before someone slams me for the sins of my fathers (and mothers), I'm also part black, but none of these facts define me! The actions of my ancestors don't make me what and who I am today. The choices I have made, the things I have endured, survived, accomplished and learned in my own lifetime are the things that make me what I am. Anyone who is so obsessed with race that they would categorize me as either a victimizer or victim because of things that happened 150 years ago is using labels as a substitute for thinking; using their "cause" as a convenient hook upon which to hang their resentments.

*Scott, Louisana is a hub town of Lafayette. Like most of the whites in the Deep South until recent years, the whites in Scott believed in segregation. But they also believed in education for both blacks and whites. Before they built a school for their own children, the whites in Scott pooled their money to build a school for the black children of the community. They organized horse-drawn wagons to collect the children from their far away farms, drive them into town every day for school, and return them home after school. This is considered to be the first organized school bus system in the country.

[shiny!]

Re: Trump to win?

Thank you, DSpencer. You're speaking my thoughts exactly, only I'm not articulate enough to say it as well as you did.