Help me - I'm confused by racial labels
POSTED BY: pizmobeach
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 16:59
VIEWED: 9570
PAGE 11 of 15
Quote:Really? Am I taking away your free speech? Privacy? Jury trial? Due process? What freedoms am I taking away from you, exactly? (And why aren't you bitching about GWB?)
No, you would like to curtail freedoms for EVERYONE.
Quote:What I think you're saying here is that I can either enjoy the rights given to me by the Consitution or I can hole up in my home. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the phrasing.
I'M saying that YOU, singular, are free to NOT participate in a world, which is enjoying the rights given by the Constitution, if that is how you wish.
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Quote:
(I could go on a long rant about this, and why I believe liberals and Democrats are just as, if not more, racist than conservatives. But maybe later.)
I wanted to say as a member of a visible minority, that this notion to me is nonsense. I've heard a few right-wingers espouse it now. No, I personally have only seen and felt the real, vicious, malignant racism coming from the right - and nothing similar from the left.
The left irritates me a bit sometimes on race, in my view trying to ascribe too much insidiousness and guilt to things, being over politically correct etc. - but you know, this is legitimate political disagreement. I haven't experienced much in the way of 'racist left-wing condescension' either, though maybe I've been lucky. I don't tend to see racism everywhere, lurking behind every bush (though I'm intolerant of it when I see it). Where I have seen it practiced, tolerated, has been on the right.
Heads should roll
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Frem
I can't even remember the number of times when you have straw-manned me about my supposed belief that human nature is evil and needs laws to keep it in check.
But when DT was making that very argument and I was arguing against it ---- where were you ? Giving DT hell for it ? FINALLY agreeing that maybe I DON'T believe what you keep claiming I do ?
No -- YOU WERE SILENT !
Dude, your BS doesn't fly. YOU are the most egregious holder of double-standards, not replying to the post but to your biases about the poster.
JUST exactly the same way Wulf, who claims to not be biased, is the greatest slinger here of demeaning group stereotypes, caricatures, and slurs ... and not just racial ones, either.
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Silence is consent.
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Quote:
Frem
I can't even remember the number of times when you have straw-manned me about my supposed belief that human nature is evil and needs laws to keep it in check.
But when DT was making that very argument and I was arguing against it ---- where were you ? Giving DT hell for it ? FINALLY agreeing that maybe I DON'T believe what you keep claiming I do ?
No -- YOU WERE SILENT !
Dude, your BS doesn't fly. YOU are the most egregious holder of double-standards, not replying to the post but to your biases about the poster.
JUST exactly the same way Wulf, who claims to not be biased, is the greatest slinger here of demeaning group stereotypes, caricatures, and slurs ... and not just racial ones, either.
Excuse me, but first, before I just say WTF?!?!?
Seriously, Kathy, did you just overdose on cobra venom, 'cause we might have a cure for that.
Quote:
human nature is evil and needs laws to keep it in check.
Um. Have I ever supported either idea? No, I don't think so. I don't believe in law. I think that it gives power over many to few. I believe in individual intervention, which is why I applauded Pirate News' twitter story.
Why do I believe in individual intervention? Because the vast majority of the people will do the right thing.
Furthermore, I've consistently maintained that people who do *evil* on a large scale are overwhelmingly convinced that it is *necessary* for a greater *good*, they just happen to be mistaken.
The problem, IMHO, with our society, is that we have an overarching legal structure which prevents the majority of people from intervening and doing the right thing.
Like the issue with the destruction of black neighborhoods. The overwhelming population opposes the idea, especially the overwhelming population at the site of demolition, that being the black people whose homes or neighbors homes are being destroyed. This is identical to how palestinians feel in Gaza, and rightly so.
But what stops them from intervening is the law.
No, I disagree with your premise. Humans are by nature animals, and they will act in a survival based manner, but they are far more likely to help one another out than to screw each other over, and if they do the latter, then someone will get their comeuppance.
Yes, I said "Cats eat mice." People need to understand that life is NOT a fluffy flowers and bunnyrabbits peaceable kingdom. But that is a very long distance from the position that humans are innately evil and need laws of an overarching authority to keep them in place.
Here's another little example. Brazilian ranchers went into the rainforest and started clearing trees. The indians killed them, with poison darts. This was effective. Then the law came in with machine guns, and stopped this, because murder was a crime, and deforestation was not. The ranchers were after profit. Do you think that citizens would become soldiers to protect the profits of the ranchers at the risk of their own life (some of them died too) I don't. Do you think that the Indians were wrong? I don't. Those darts, by the way, are incredibly potent. Ranchers had to resort to setting fires.
I don't know why you're dragging me into this one.
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DT_ Your quote formatting is garbled. In that last post portion, are you quoting? If so, who?
KPO_ Thanks for that comment on so-called "left-wing" racism. Good to hear from real-life experience.
WULF_ I'm still wondering... WHAT freedoms, exactly, am I taking from you and everybody?
RUE_ Yes, as best as I recall, Frem has consistently misrepresented - or misunderstood- your argument on human nature.
Not to take the thread TOO far off-course... Well, how 'bout a quick detour?... I see laws as not necessary to keep human nature in place as to keep human societies in check. The one thing that Frem and DT have not seem to have grasped (yet) is that human societies are MORE THAN the average -or even the sum -of their parts. 100 people do not behave like a thousand people, or a million people. The levels of interaction, the feedback loops which are possible, the types of structures which can be maintained, the achievable technology, living standards, effect on the environment, potential levels of inequality and height of heirarchies... all vastly different. Expecting "monkeysphere" politics to effect feedback in a system where the vast majority of people never even SEE each other... 
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
DT_ Your quote formatting is garbled. In that last post portion, are you quoting? If so, who?
KPO_ Thanks for that comment on so-called "left-wing" racism. Good to hear from real-life experience.
WULF_ I'm still wondering... WHAT freedoms, exactly, am I taking from you and everybody?
RUE_ Yes, as best as I recall, Frem has consistently misrepresented - or misunderstood- your argument on human nature.
Not to take the thread TOO far off-course... Well, how 'bout a quick detour?... I see laws as not necessary to keep human nature in place as to keep human societies in check. The one thing that Frem and DT have not seem to have grasped (yet) is that human societies are MORE THAN the average -or even the sum -of their parts. 100 people do not behave like a thousand people, or a million people. The levels of interaction, the feedback loops which are possible, the types of structures which can be maintained, the achievable technology, living standards, effect on the environment, potential levels of inequality and height of heirarchies... all vastly different. Expecting "monkeysphere" politics to effect feedback in a system where the vast majority of people never even SEE each other...
Two words. Linux Community. Many people operating in small groups semi-independently, but still communicating and impressive amounts of progress being made because there is no organizational bureaucracy.
But, I'll give you one thing. It is very difficult to meet people and to organize, I think, and small scale politics probably have difficulty affecting anything but small-scale issues.
One thing that myself, Frem, and I think Dream have in common is that we LIKE the small scale as a standard mode of operation. Everything is easier to manage. That's the social system we like to propose.
Or at least I think so with DT, I've talked with him over e-mail some about various ideas, he's said something about trying to promote small, self-sufficient communities. Even tried to establish some, but a problem he keeps running into is that many of the people he's gotten to join in have been encumbered having to still work jobs, pay bills.
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DT
Just to refresh your memory:
There was more than one thread where I addressed the changeable 'nature' of 'human nature', citing bonobos, chimpanzees, peaceful baboons, courtly dolphins, civilizations without wars or slums like Caral - and you countered:
People coerced the baboons to behave that way and/ or fraudulently reported their behavior b/c it could never happen.
Caral never existed and never could exist in the way described b/c your cousin studied a different culture and it ALWAYS turns out to be the way you say it does.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=39771
"People will always vie for power."
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=39866
"There are interesting conclusions that you can come to from the actual data, but they don't support that human nature is egalitarian or peaceful ..."
"Reality is that we're a pack of rats, and we just can't bring ourselves to face up to it."
I'm not taking these out of context. That is the whole sum of your argument - you know what primate nature is, and what human nature is, and nothing different from what you think could EVER happen ... therefore, it never did anywhere, at any time, despite what the evidence shows. You made the argument that it is human nature to never be any different that whan we are now.
Meanwhile, I was the one arguing that intelligently chosen social inputs would lead to thriving, peaceful societies, and people.
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KPO
I would agree with you among the voting block, though I think it depends which group you're a member of. Particularly the right has been shepherded unto racism against arabs and latinos recently.
I think that the Democratic Party, as an institution in power, is probably responsible for more institutional racism, a problem I had with many of the democrats I mentioned. I think Clinton was more racist than Bush.
But mostly, this isn't very partisan an issue: Most people view the other side more negatively because they get their information from filtered sources:
We read news sites, go to blogs, and communicate with peers, who share our political viewpoints, and this gives us a filter. Nik recently made a comment about land project corruption being a republican or conservative thing, when I was talking about the NY dems and their new anti-black plan. If you get your news from the left, then you probably heard less about Kelo vs the city of New London, probably the biggest land corruption scam ever to come out of the supreme court, and it was definitely a party line issue.
This isn't new: Republicans were up in arms about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki decades before the left picked it up with the ban the bomb movement.
It's just that we don't scrutinize our own side. People talk about media bias, has anyone noticed that the media has been consistently biased against asians for decades? Our wars in asia have always had this quality to them... It's all over this society.
So sure, racist groups against someone might gravitate towards one side because they think it will protect them, or someone might stir up attitudes against latinos.
But things are definitely not what they seem. The left attitude of pick up the white man's burden is racist, as is their view of the third world. A lot of people on the right seem to me to have a more open mind about things like outsourcing.
I used to live in Kentucky, and the NY attitude about KY was that this was a bastion of racism, and it wasn't. In fact, the real racism I saw came from NYers who were there, made me embarrassed. These people probably were racist in NY, they came down to KY, and thought that their racist ideas would be accepted. So, it's really hard to generalize. I live in a rural, once all white community, and people of various ethnic groups moved in, I don't think anyone batted an eyelash, there are a fair number of black people here now, some phillipinos and some iranians. There's so little discrimination that the only time I think I've ever evidence that people were different races was one black guy who came in assuming that people who discriminate against him, as if he was perpetually on the lookout.
Populations are just different. I think there's an culture, environment, and attitude that develops over time that effects the way people react. If this place were like where Wulf grew up, where it was black against white, you would see something different. But this place was monoethnic and relaxed, and people started moving in from the city, (there was more reaction to that then race actually, but people got over it.)
Anyway, I probably come across as a defender of Ahmedinejad on this forum. Part of that is probably that I see Iranians every day. They're not some little enclave, they're an integral part of the social environment, in fact I have an email right now. Interesting perspectives too that you get, this from a Kurd living here in town: "I think Khameni is a good guy. He tries, he has such radicals to deal with, he may be the only thing keeping the lid on extremism in Iran." <--- not an attitude I ever heard in our press, and this coming from someone who had fought for the islamic revolution, and then against it, for kurdish independents. We also have non kurds, it's a relaxed environment. To me, when I see these attitudes towards Iran in the press, or from people of either party, it just strikes me as totally absurd, on the level of the "french fry/freedom fry" thing.
Oh, and yes, we have rabinical Jews. They hang out wit
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Rue
Firstoff, don't try to shine me, lady - time and time again your arguments for Government acting as a check against abuses, Religious, Corporate or what have you (and not completely without merit) DO wander into that territory.
As for DT making that argument, there's many a time I don't comprehend the essence of his posts enough to even comment intelligently, and I have had a bit less time to waste on such things as of late, I'm human and my time and mental efforts are finite, a defense you seem to reserve exclusively for yourself and have been called on by others as well.
And now you really misinterpret my entire concern because of YOUR own biases.
What I said, and you didn't hear, is that because your recent posts contained a level of bitterness and resignation I feel to be out of character for you, that I was concerned about you, Rue the person, not Rue the poster or political entity, cause something like that is usually indicative of an offboard or personal situation someone is struggling with - which ain't my business and I was trying to respect your privacy while hinting that it was showing, ok ?
Remember, I backed offa even Rappy when I saw the signs of impending breakdown, and when I see fracture lines in someones pysche I *DO* become concerned, no matter what you fervently wish to think of me personally, true or not.
You wanna flame me, flame me for what I *DID*, not what you would rather believe I did.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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The answer is pretty simple: severe, unrelenting back pain which has escalated over the last few months into stratospheric levels.
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Silence is consent.
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