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Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2020 10:20 pm
by Harry Marks
ant wrote:Of course the unchecked mayhem and violence in democratic run cities is the fault of the republicans.
It's easy to blame the right for the horrible systems facing people of color. The anti-government instincts on the right, and the assumption that institutions are treating people fairly (connected strongly to white fragility), and the compounding effects of implicit bias, are part of a system enabled by the denial and pretense on the right. The dog-whistle appeals to racism, which would never have been acceptable to the Republican party before Nixon's Southern Strategy, and the natural authoritarianism that put wind in the "law and order" sails, all make the Republican party from Reagan on look like the villains of the piece, because they have accepted that role and walked hand in hand with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh playing many of the same games.

But as I think about what would really make a difference, it looks to me like the requirement is courage that the Democrats don't really have much more of. Two states have made serious efforts to integrate housing: New Jersey and Hawaii. In New Jersey's case it was driven by the courts. The country still has a pitiful record of facing up to the legacy of our racist past by simply putting affordable housing in every single suburb (looking at you, Westchester County and Marin County and Hamptons) and showing zero tolerance for intolerance. Follow up is necessary - jobs and fitting in and learning to be respectable rather than just fighting to be treated with respect are all barriers that need some assistance to get past. Human relationship is essential to helping people make those transitions. But until housing is desegregated, those personal kinds of assistance can never happen.

But instead of actually taking courage, we point fingers at the Republicans, (who are, in fact, guilty of riding the racism current,) even though the Democrats were, up until Trump, mainly doing better only in the sense that they said the right things. Now we have a President and a party pushing judicial activism to reinforce racism, and who regularly back harmful policies, so the situation is rather different. But it is still true that the real sources of our society's gross racial inequality are going unaddressed and almost unmentioned.

I wonder if a candidate like Kamala Harris, willing to let it be personal on the vulnerable side, might be what it takes.

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 10:44 am
by ant
Should museums be abolished?

CNN claims "people" are "calling for it" to happen.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/natur ... index.html

(propaganda outlet)



Reminder about the perniciousness of f so called liberalism and those who are silent and complicit in all this.

“Perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity.”
Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them
“You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”
~ George Orwell

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 12:14 pm
by ant
Why on earth would a statue of Fredrick Douglass be torn down?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/ ... -attacked/


This is turning into straight up Marxism.

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 8:24 pm
by DWill
It's not known who tore it down. The Arthur Ashe statue in Richmond was vandalized by the opposition to BLM. This could be tit for tat.

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 12:47 pm
by ant
traffic signals are racist


.
“Remember, honey,” she said to her daughter as we waited for the light to turn green, “we need to wait for the little White man to appear before we can cross the street.”
https://level.medium.com/the-unintentio ... 899c34fefb

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 2:56 pm
by ant
DWill wrote:It's not known who tore it down. The Arthur Ashe statue in Richmond was vandalized by the opposition to BLM. This could be tit for tat.

Right..

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 7:53 pm
by DWill
ant wrote:traffic signals are racist


.
“Remember, honey,” she said to her daughter as we waited for the light to turn green, “we need to wait for the little White man to appear before we can cross the street.”
https://level.medium.com/the-unintentio ... 899c34fefb
An example of over-analysis, but I wouldn't call it Orwellian.

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Thu Jul 09, 2020 4:28 pm
by Harry Marks
ant wrote: Democrats need to be held accountable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/us/b ... sters.html
So presumably Republicans need to be held accountable for these murderous, terrorist car attacks on protesters. I think I am beginning to catch on to how this "accountability" works.

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:25 pm
by Harry Marks
There was an interesting op-ed in the New York Times recently about the police accountability issue. Essentially, Bret Stephens (one of the conservatives in their commentator ranks) argues that the surge in violent crime in Baltimore and a few other cities has been due to police "holding back" on account of fear of being held responsible. I don't think he has a solid basis for concluding this, but there seems to be some suspicious sequencing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/opin ... imore.html
The main problem is that similar surges have occurred without any policing changes or reasons for police to be intimidated, and other cities have had success (meaning, lower crime) with less confrontational policing. I suspect there are actually multiple causes at work - for instance, Baltimore has had a real hollowing out of working-class jobs, as anyone who watched The Wire knows. Stephens downplays this factor, but I find his argument less than comprehensive or convincing.

The takeaway is supposed to be that bad guys get out of hand when the police back off of aggressive policing. The main problem is that these shootings don't seem to be coordinated efforts by bad guys to take over territory, make more money or dominate night clubs. Rather (from the sketchy reporting I have read, anyway) it has been about an upsurge in random violence, with punks getting their hands on guns and swaggering around until somebody provokes them (probably another punk with a gun). If police are really backing off, that could still be a result. But it could just be caused by the things Stephens doesn't want to credit: unemployment, chaotic homes, and cultures of desperation.

In general, I think it is a bad idea to try to account for such trends with either just liberal or just conservative narratives. The decline in crime over the 90s seems to have been a virtuous circle driven by improved economies, declining share of young males in the population, aggressive policing, tough sentencing (now being questioned for its toxic societal effects) and, of all things, Roe v. Wade. (Fewer unwanted children of chaos really does mean lower crime rates.)

Re: Orwellian liberalism

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 3:44 pm
by Harry Marks
Now it seems that the looting in Minneapolis was kicked off by a false flag operation, specifically a Hell's Angels white supremacist being referred to as "Umbrella Man".

https://www.startribune.com/police-umbr ... 571932272/

Hard to know who to be mad at.