RE: Reagan the Hero- Iran/Contra; defend it if you can, NeoCon appologist morons!

POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Monday, August 31, 2026 18:11
VIEWED: 16766
PAGE 12 of 15

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Enough with the axe throwin...

By all means Soup, don't let this derail ya, I am finding it both fascinating and informative.

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Nice high horse you got there, Frem!

________________________________________________________________________
Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets

Captain, FFF.net Grammar Police

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Originally posted by kaneman:


Are there any videos of this? I could use an update to my collection.........

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^----Hey everyone, look! A real troll!!

Chrisisall

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I agree (re: trolliness). As with many of kaneman's comments there are purposefully inflammatory statements. But there is a nugget in there that I feel needs to be addressed.

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Originally posted by kaneman:
I would only add that there is a case to be made that the liberals among us created the built in systematic racism that more people of color{as a percentage} have grown accustomed to rely on. I would say it is more of a socio-economic problem than racism though. Live in any city in the US and watch the 40oz. beers being consumed ad nauseam. Then watch motivation, parenting skills, and self respect go bye bye. Then you can listen to blame "Whitey" or "The man" while the blunts get passed.....PUFF PUFF PASS.......PUFF PUFF PASS........

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I think that you have to increase the control volume to include a wider swath of history. Why did African Americans end up living in the inner cities? Why was it necessary to destroy successful African Americans during the nadir of race relations? Why was there widespread discrimination and the limiting of opportunities? I would suggest a few brief articles to start the ball rolling:
Sundown towns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_Towns
Nadar of race relations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations
Tulsa ethnic cleansing of 1921: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Race_Riot

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
By all means Soup, don't let this derail ya, I am finding it both fascinating and informative.

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Thanks, Frem.

Admittedly, this is not my field of training but I've always been fascinated by the history of this country. Especially stuff that never made it into the history books that I was taught from in school. And some of the stuff I've learned puts a lot in perspective. I sometimes wondered why we carped on those who were like us but had become successful. By we, I'm referring to minorities. When you look at it through the lens of what happened to successful minorities in the not so distant past (they got burned out and everyone else around them got burned out) it totally makes sense that it would enforce a bunker mentality. Keep your head down. Don't look too successful. You don't want to draw attention to yourself. Don't put on airs. Don't get uppity. So not only is there discrimination coming from the top down, there is resistance from peers.

There is a tendency to point to uber-successful minorities and think that discrimination is a thing of the past, "See. So and so made it. There's no need for affirmative action." When in actuality, these are the superstars. Superstars will rise to the top no matter what. They are not the ones affirmative action helps. Affirmative action helps those who aren't superstars. By trying to get rid of affirmative action, one of the messages being sent is, "The only people like you who are allowed to be successful are those who are head and shoulders above everyone."

And with that, I might have derailed myself by going totally off onto a tangent .

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Admittedly, this is not my field of training but I've always been fascinated by the history of this country. Especially stuff that never made it into the history books that I was taught from in school. And some of the stuff I've learned puts a lot in perspective.

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As someone once told me, history is knowing what happened so it don't happen again...

I got into the study of actual versus taught history when my mother, back in the pre-computer days, sprang for a used set of encyclopedia britannica to feed her sons voracious reading appetite - which said son dutifully spent all freakin day carrying home on foot, several at a time.

And then read, cover to cover...

And became frustrated because what the schools history teacher was teaching bore no more than the vaguest passing resemblance to what he was reading...

And one day, it all came to a head - I called the teacher on a rather blatant distortion and we had us a nice row that in retrospect shoulda got me pitched from the class entire, but instead lead to an entire semester of back and forth fireworks with salvos being fired in both directions, and most of the class pitching in themselves.

Many years after it occured to me that the reason he didn't pitch me out the door was that regardless of his opinion of the subject matter he was teaching, what happened is that his students became rather passionate about the subject and dug into it, rather than just memorising the bare minimums to pass the tests.. I don't think anyone left that class without at least a B+ that year, or a good working knowledge of the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate that lead to the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

In order to argue it effectively, they had to know it, and to know it, lead to study above and beyond the normal course of education, so in his way Mr. Chester pulled a rabbit out of his hat that year, I guess you could say.

Anyhows, back on the topic, the history of racism in this country is quote shameful, but should never, EVER be hidden or glossed over, nor should the perpatuators of it be forgiven in a glossing over of that history, no matter how pure their deeds otherwise.

To do that is to demean any progess we have made since.

One form of racism that's a little less prevalent now with the advent of cellphones, is commonly practiced by employers in less skilled or unskilled jobs - and that is by phone extension.

One job I worked at for a while, had a policy to check every applications phone number, and if it started with THIS or THAT three numbers, into the trash it went, because they didn't want "Those people" working there.

As a very young man who *lived* in *that* neighborhood, once I learned that and started putting in a phone number of a friend who did NOT live there, well, whadda ya know - my applications stopped disappearing into limbo!
(quickly followed by better employment and a speedy exodus from the ghetto)

For all the progress we've made, racism still presents itself, often in ways so subtle most folk never see them.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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"Why did African Americans end up living in the inner cities?"

My statement was geared towards the "I'm entitled" mindset and the reasons why. I am just saying IMHO that the welfare state is the cause of it. So, I put forth:

Why are African Americans still in the inner cities?
Why are African Immigrants not?


They are both people of color. Difference you ask? One has embraced and then become reliant on entitlement programs, thus become stagnant as a group....the other is smarter. But don't let the truthy glazed nugget ruin your day.

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"Anyhows, back on the topic, the history of racism in this country is quote shameful, but should never, EVER be hidden or glossed over, nor should the perpatuators of it be forgiven in a glossing over of that history, no matter how pure their deeds otherwise."

Senator Byrd? You shiney little hypocrite!

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Nuttin hypocritical about it, I rever Andrew Jackson for his efforts to crush the concept of a national bank and the debt slavery that came with it, but by no means do I forgive nor forget his treatment of Native Americans either.

Not everyone's an angel, but it helps a lot if they make SOME contribution other than racial tension and discord.

And yes, that goes for some noteable politicians of color as well.

For mine own, I've never seen racism of any stripe anything but idiotic, and the kind that you espouse there, dude, is the very worst of all of it.

You try LIVING in the ghetto for a decade or so, and see if you can still spout that crap.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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"You try LIVING in the ghetto for a decade or so, and see if you can still spout that crap."

My point. Why should it take a decade to get out of the ghetto? Section8 housing? And I started by saying it's more of an economic thing. Soup turned it racial.....I think.

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Frem,

I wish I had had a classroom experience like that when I was in grade school. It wasn't until I started taking classes at the local community college that I ran into that type of high stress/high learning environment. My US History teacher was retired military (about the age for Korea) who was about as conservative as they come and his antagonist was a decked-out-in-all-black-all-the-time-young-punk who knew his shit. If the teacher had had his way, we would have all nodded in unison about the wisdom of mutually assured destruction as a foreign policy. But the clashes back and forth really did stimulate the class to start thinking about whether or not it was absurd to push for the George C. Scott theory of engagement (I'm not saying we won't get our hair messed up. But 10-20 million tops).

I hope you thanked your mom .

Your memory of the bigotry of telephone prefixes is all too common. Study after study has shown that opportunity is denied, or compensation is lessened, based on things as simple as how you spell your name. I tend to really get on my horse about race but it's impossible to separate out those inequalities from the other Big 4 inequality categories (class, gender and sexuality).

And it's not even additive. It's not like you can say, "Okay. Well, you're on the short end of the stick historically with respect to race and class so you deal with twice as much shit as someone who's on the short end of the stick with respect to class." It's a qualitatively different experience (albeit with some similarities). But fucked up either way.

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Anyhows, back on the topic, the history of racism in this country is quote shameful, but should never, EVER be hidden or glossed over, nor should the perpatuators of it be forgiven in a glossing over of that history, no matter how pure their deeds otherwise.

To do that is to demean any progess we have made since.

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It's hard to convince people, who only think of racism as a historical artifact (lynchings and cross burnings) and who have never been on the short end of racial bigotry, of the reality that millions of Americans experience daily. I often hear, "Why do you have to bring up all that old crap? It's over. Just let it go." But it's not over. And it will never be over as long as the dominant cultural group has that attitude.

I'm off to rambling now and not sure how to put all this together but... I've read sermons that talk about how blacks were subhuman and therefore fell under the, "dominion clause." So it was okay to own them. I've listened to theories that the black race was descended from the son of Noah who was cursed for mocking his father's nakedness (I think it was Ham, but my memory could be faulty). Therefore slavery was justified. We have a long history in this country of justifying the ownership of humans. Freeing the slaves didn't change those attitudes.

In order for people to think of themselves as good and still support slavery they had to rationalize it. Those rationalizations got passed down.

I look at pictures from the twenties and thirties of lynchings. Smiling crowds with children dressed up in their Sunday best. Well those children are still alive. Any bets on whether or not those experiences shaped what they passed on to their children and grandchildren? I watch news reels of angry hateful screaming people protesting school desegregation. Well, those people are still alive. Do you think they passed that hatred along?

That Rodgers and Hammerstein song from South Pacific - "You've got to be carefully taught" - nails the problem perfectly:

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from http://libretto.musicals.ru/text.php?textid=315&language=1
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught bef

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