Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Kaitlyn S]

If anybody else is planning to have a hissy fit if I reply to one of their posts, please let me know now so that I don't risk offending you. TIA :P

Maybe you should precede your post with a trigger warning? :D

 

BTW, I loved that one cartoon where the girl calls the guy an a**hole until she finds out he's Muslim :)

[Winstonm]

On little further thought about right-wing fanatics, i.e., the American Taliban.

 

Perhaps it is because I live in extremely red Oklahoma, nearby very red Texas, and am perhaps more sensitive because of that closeness to the goings-on in Texas, but today I read that the Texas legislature once again passed a law to make it more difficult to have an abortion, especially for the poor and lower middle classes. This time they are requiring all aborted fetuses to be disposed through either burial or cremation. This makes about 197 (I'm exaggerating on purpose) attempts to place hardships on woman and circumvent current abortion laws, each attempt thwarted by SCOTUS. Between voter suppression bills and anti-abortion bills the Texas Republicans have shown themselves to be if nothing else relentless in their attempts to circumvent law and impose their morality as state-sponsored mandate.

 

Their relentless pursuit - unabated by repeated losses - is like a hoard of locusts - a plague, if you will, and as such not a group that can be reached by appeals to reason or even cajoled, but a pestilence to be eradicated before the world as we know it is devoured.

 

I understand that this kind of talk will not sway their minds - but I have yet to see a locust change its mind.

[jonottawa]

Their relentless pursuit - unabated by repeated losses - is like a hoard of locusts - a plague, if you will, and as such not a group that can be reached by appeals to reason or even cajoled, but a pestilence to be eradicated before the world as we know it is devoured.

 

I understand that this kind of talk will not sway their minds - but I have yet to see a locust change its mind.

 

I've watched Hoarders many times but I've never seen a hoard of locusts.

 

Anyway, given what I'm normally called around here, I will take 'locust' as a compliment, thank-you. :P

 

As for your post, what it lacks in logic it more than makes up in enthusiasm.

 

Between voter suppression bills and anti-abortion bills the Texas Republicans have shown themselves to be if nothing else relentless in their attempts to circumvent law and impose their morality as state-sponsored mandate.

 

Requiring voter ID is not 'voter suppression'. It's what every civilized democracy on earth does, including very poor countries like India and Mexico.

 

As for circumventing law, I'm not sure how passing laws circumvents laws. It would be just as accurate to say that Democrats have been relentless in their attempts to impose their 'morality' as state-sponsored mandate.

 

[onoway]

One example of an attitude which helps bridge the gaps and makes the world a better place for everyone

https://www.facebook.com/CBSEveningNews/videos/10153003404704073/ so refreshing to see someone doing something positive for others less fortunate in life for whatever reason.

 

There was another video as well the other day about a white policeman who responded to a suicide call from a young black teenager. When he got to know the situation he went well out of his way to make the young man's - and his family's - life better. When the policeman was asked why he said " because I could". Those are probably way more typical of most police than the ones running scared and/or trigger happy and it's nice to see those videos getting shared. The video about that has apparently prompted people from all over to voluntarilly send donations, nobody was asked for anything, they just wanted to help out.

 

That's the America that Trump can't touch because those people are generous, confident souls who don't need to hide behind the shallow skirts of skin color as in any way denoting value as a human being. And I believe that that is the world that most people would prefer to live in. How to get there are just details, but Trump definitely has the wrong playbook.

[jonottawa]

... That's the America that Trump can't touch ...

Correction:

 

That's Trump's America. If you wish to join us, that's up to you.

[Al_U_Card]

If anybody else is planning to have a hissy fit if I reply to one of their posts, please let me know now so that I don't risk offending you. TIA :P

The beauty of diverse opinions. They help illuminate issues from both sides. Thanks to all that express their positions in thoughtful and not abusive ways. It really helps to provide perspective. Abandoning the exchange is most unfortunate as it limits one to one's own viewpoint. Thanks for keeping the discourse civil, as hard as that may be.

I see that Trump is looking at another vampire squid alumnus for Treasury... not my favorite origin but I'll wait and see the direction taken before forming an opinion.

[mikeh]

Maybe you should precede your post with a trigger warning? :D

 

BTW, I loved that one cartoon where the girl calls the guy an a**hole until she finds out he's Muslim :)

Of course you would.

 

Imagine that same cartoon with the word 'Muslim' replaced by the word 'Christian'.

 

Is it still as funny? Why not?

 

Islam and Christianity are very similar. Most of the beliefs of the one are found in the other. Details differ. Christians have had different notions, over the centuries, as to the divinity of Jesus and, even when taken as divine, the nature of the relationship between God the father, Jesus the son and that weird Holy Ghost thing. Islam accepts that jesus wsa divinely inspired: he is the second holiest human, being the penultimate prophet of god.

 

Women and gays are both treated with contempt in the foundational documents of Islam and Christianity, as with their common source, Judaism (which in turn is based on earlier superstitions and beliefs, and so on, ad almost infintum). Women are property in both religions, and gays are to be killed in both.

 

So the attitudes that are set out in your cartoon, and attributed to the guy being muslim, are precisely the attitudes held by a non-trivial number of proudly American Christians.

 

If you still find the cartoon funny, when substituting 'Christian' or 'Jew' for 'muslim' then maybe yoy aren't racist. Try it and see.

[Al_U_Card]

Substitute funny with pathetically typical and have a fill in the blank for the creed in question.

The issue was the hypocrisy of the individual that allows their opinion to be molded by the label being used. That was the real humor and the interchangeability of the operators makes that pretty clear.

[Kaitlyn S]

Of course you would.

 

Imagine that same cartoon with the word 'Muslim' replaced by the word 'Christian'.

 

Is it still as funny? Why not?

I can't answer that last question because the answer to the first question is "Very."

 

The whole cartoon is about the indignant woman that all of a sudden becomes apologetic when she thinks she might be being politically incorrect. The actual religion makes little difference, although TBH fewer people would "get it" if you replaced Muslim with Christian... I just happen to be one of those fewer.

 

And personally I find it very unChristlike how these supposed Christians treat gays. What ever happened to "Love thy brother as thyself"?

[mikeh]

I can't answer that last question because the answer to the first question is "Very."

 

The whole cartoon is about the indignant woman that all of a sudden becomes apologetic when she thinks she might be being politically incorrect. The actual religion makes little difference, although TBH fewer people would "get it" if you replaced Muslim with Christian... I just happen to be one of those fewer.

 

And personally I find it very unChristlike how these supposed Christians treat gays. What ever happened to "Love thy brother as thyself"?

 

As to the last: the bible wasn't big on masturbation either

[onoway]

double post

[onoway]

Correction:

 

That's Trump's America. If you wish to join us, that's up to you.

I find your posts - those few I have forced myself to struggle through - idiotic, trite and thoroughly boring when they aren't being hysterical..and not in a funny way. Like fleas on a dog,or woodticks in spring, I wish you would just go away. Your attempts to hijack threads are juvenile and thank goodness I'm not forced to read any more of them, I can just scroll past to get to a post from someone who actually has something original to say. This one is that last of yours I will read or answer. If you really thought what you claim to think, then you are not doing your cause any favors by being so dense and irritating.

 

I am eternally grateful that Mikeh and Mycroft are around to demonstrate that not all Canadians are like you, indeed few of us are, but being as you all like to yell and scream and try to get attention any possible way you can it would be reasonable to think that more of us are emotionally and intellectually dishonest and slow than is the truth.

[y66]

From I Am a Dangerous Professor by George Yancy:

 

Those familiar with George Orwell’s “1984” will recall that “Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought.” I recently felt the weight of this Orwellian ethos when many of my students sent emails to inform me, and perhaps warn me, that my name appears on the Professor Watchlist, a new website created by a conservative youth group known as Turning Point USA.

 

I could sense the gravity in those email messages, a sense of relaying what is to come. The Professor Watchlist’s mission, among other things, is to sound an alarm about those of us within academia who “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” It names and includes photographs of some 200 professors.

 

The Watchlist appears to be consistent with a nostalgic desire “to make America great again” and to expose and oppose those voices in academia that are anti-Republican or express anti-Republican values. For many black people, making America “great again” is especially threatening, as it signals a return to a more explicit and unapologetic racial dystopia. For us, dreaming of yesterday is not a privilege, not a desire, but a nightmare.

George Yancy is a professor of philosophy at Emory University, the author of “Black Bodies, White Gazes” and “Look, a White!” and a co-editor of “Pursuing Trayvon Martin.”

[Winstonm]

R-E-L-A-X WINSTON

 

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER :)

 

Mike,

 

You and I experienced the Republican Revolution in the 90's that brought a Republican Congress and President - and you and I know that it was nothing like this. This is something outside our collective experiences: this is granting intolerance and hate a voice and accepting those voices into the mainstream of American politics and life. It is unacceptable, but we have to survive it somehow.

[Kaitlyn S]

Mike,

 

You and I experienced the Republican Revolution on the 90's that brought a Republican Congress and President - and you and I know that it was nothing like this. This is something outside our collective experiences: this is granting intolerance and hate a voice and accepting those voices into the mainstream of American politics and life. It is unacceptable, but we have to survive is somehow.

Serious question. What do you think it is that is creating this aura of open intolerance and hate that barely existed before?

 

I hope I get a couple of credible answers before MikeH comes on here and says I'm too ignorant to be discussing these issues and causes others to ignore me.

[Al_U_Card]

Serious question. What do you think it is that is creating this aura of open intolerance and hate that barely existed before?

 

I hope I get a couple of credible answers before MikeH comes on here and says I'm too ignorant to be discussing these issues and causes others to ignore me.

The guilt mind-set. Being middle-class,with a liberally educated and progressively oriented experience, we are led to feel badly for the under-privileged and ashamed of our advantages. This creates an intolerance to those that celebrate their privilege or accept as given the fate of the less fortunate. They are no less charitable nor more misogynistic, but that different approach just "feels" wrong and from the prism of perception, it must rightly be castigated.

It takes a lot of openness and tolerance to accomodate and appreciate. Some of us are just not able to see our way through it, is all.

[hrothgar]

The guilt mind-set. Being middle-class,with a liberally educated and progressively oriented experience, we are led to feel badly for the under-privileged and ashamed of our advantages. This creates an intolerance to those that celebrate their privilege or accept as given the fate of the less fortunate. They are no less charitable nor more misogynistic, but that different approach just "feels" wrong and from the prism of perception, it must rightly be castigated.

It takes a lot of openness and tolerance to accomodate and appreciate. Some of us are just not able to see our way through it, is all.

 

I wouldn't say that I am ashamed of the fact that I have a pair of upper middle class university professors as parents rather than being being born in a village in Ethiopia or Bangladesh,

Rather, I appreciate the fact that luck has a hell of a lot more to do with where I ended up in life than does anything else.

[Winstonm]

Serious question. What do you think it is that is creating this aura of open intolerance and hate that barely existed before?

 

I hope I get a couple of credible answers before MikeH comes on here and says I'm too ignorant to be discussing these issues and causes others to ignore me.

 

Simple - infiltration of politics by religion. I would trace it back to Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. Now there is no longer a MM group but the entire entity has been assimilated into the Party itself. When I have called the far right "The American Taliban" it has not been "snark" but a genuine assessment of how inflexible they are in their beliefs.

 

When an entire political party preaches a black/white worldview with no room for negotiation, it invites other types of intolerance into its midst. Now, with a leader who both needs and welcomes all those intolerant voters, they have a voice they never had before.

 

Hate and intolerance have always been with us - but this election has legitimized them. That is a tragedy and travesty.

[hrothgar]

Serious question. What do you think it is that is creating this aura of open intolerance and hate that barely existed before?

 

 

I think that the aura of open intolerance and hate has always existed.

 

The major difference now is that that the intolerance and hate isn't just directed at minorities.

[Winstonm]

I don't mean to sound overly dramatic, but I think it is critical we all understand how close this kind of intolerance of open exchange of ideas can lead to state-allowed excesses such as McCarthyism, and if left unchecked even worse state-run excesses, such as the HY in 1930's Germany.

 

That these kinds of groups feel empowered to operate openly and without fear of reprisal is a serious warning sign we should heed. We can never allow intolerance and hate to become our normality.

[mikeh]

Serious question. What do you think it is that is creating this aura of open intolerance and hate that barely existed before?

 

I hope I get a couple of credible answers before MikeH comes on here and says I'm too ignorant to be discussing these issues and causes others to ignore me.

Hey, I love you too!

 

However, had you read what I have posted, you'd know that I am happy to discuss and debate value judgements, so long as the underlying facts are real and not memes, or urban myths. I don't care for such myths whether they be right or left wing....the problem I have had with you is that your myths are almost always right wing and, far more importantly, demonstrably false.

 

But to your question...being value based and being based on what is undoubtedly a high level of intolerance and hate, it is a valid topic, altho I suspect that you are overstating your assertion that this 'aura' hardly existed 'before'.

 

However, we need to define some terms. Where is this aura?

 

On a petty level I suppose maybe it is here in the WC. If so, then as (I assume) one of those you see as responsible for the aura, then it really isn't my place, nor does it makes sense, for me to debate the issue. I've made my position clear and if you see me as intolerant, I have already explained the basis for that intolerance. I don't like intellectual laziness. I don't like bigots.

 

I suspect and hope that you are talking about a broader aura...perhaps the one separating liberals and conservatives in the US.

 

This is, imo, multifactorial and I am no social scientist, but here is my take on some of the main factors.

 

The first is cable television, which created the first massive splintering of media audiences. As individual network audiences shrank, networks began to focus on maintaining their core audience rather than seeking to appeal to everyone.

 

Television news was always in part about selling advertising, about being entertainment but in the 1970s (when I was a young adult) the Big 3 at least tired to have their National News be a serious attempt at journalism. I think that they prided themselves on being descendants of Edward Murrow. Think of the esteem in which Walter Cronkite was held.

 

With the advent of cable, and the growth of Fox News, which was and remains blatantly dishonest in its reporting, audiences became isolated from each other. It wasn't and isn't just a different slant on the news...the differences extended to what news was published.

 

Two examples spring to mind, one recent one a number of years ago. When a republican congressman got into trouble for exchanging lewd photos with male interns, Fox did report it in a timely fashion and named the congressman and showed his photo...over a legend that identified him as a democrat.

 

More recently, when the infamous pussy video came out, Fox was, shall we say, slow to broadcast it. They preferred to air criticisms of HRC's emails and to cover Hurricane Mathew. When forced to cover it several guests defended the comments, and some even said that the actress in the purple dress had it coming because of the way she dressed.

 

Now, I am not suggesting that only conservative media lie. Bill Maher, for one, is someone I find as mendacious and smarmy as Hannity.

 

My point is we experience reality on a small scale through direct experience and we rely on others to provide us with the big picture. The picture one gets depends on where you go looking for it, and cable created multiple sources, increasingly with a specific agenda.

 

The internet has magnified the problem.

 

My sense is that you are a decent person, who means well and sincerely sees herself as moderate. My sense is that the most left wing of those of your friends with whom you are comfortable talking politics would appear to me to be an intolerant right wing idiot.

 

Because the world you believe to exist is not the world I believe to exist.

 

In my world, whether something is true depends on the evidence. In your world, it is a matter of opinion, and the evidence of an ignorant politician, media celebrity, preacher or fake journalist is entitled to as much respect as the collective opinion of thousands of PhD specialists on the topic.

 

Hence, in your world, global warming 'may' be happening, and maybe humans play a role in it, but, you know, we can't be sure and meanwhile we can't and shouldn't do anything about it that might require higher taxes.

 

In my world, in which each of the last 3 years has been hotter, around the world, than any other in history, and each year worse then the year before; in which viruses previously unknown in temperate zones are spreading north and south; in which polar ice and Greenland glaciers have been literally melting away and not coming back for more than 30 years (you can watch videos online compiled from satellite imagery....this is real!); in which there is clear evidence that we are in the midst of an epic extinction event...in my world global warming should be the number one priority for all governments.

 

So we live in different worlds and the differences make it very difficult to discuss values. I suspect that there is a good chance that if you lived in my world, you'd be as outraged at the anti-science idiocy of the US conservative movement as I am. I also suspect, much as I hate to admit it, that if I lived in your world, I'd be as lazy as you and parrot the same bullshit that you do, because to me, as to you, those truthy facts are so much nicer than those harsh, intolerant facts.

 

There are other hates and intolerances alive in the world, of course.

 

In the US, as an example, racial tensions are high due to BLM and the police shootings. However, maybe you recall the summers of the late 1960s and the riots that devastated urban black areas. Maybe you recall the anti war demonstrations and the murder of 4 student protestors in Ohio, by the National Guard.

 

I am too young to really remember the stories of the Civil Rights struggle in the US, especially as a schoolkid in the UK, but I am pretty sure that there was a lot of hate and intolerance in the US then...and of course, Sessions, about to head the Federal Justice Department, spoke favourably of the KKK in the 1980s, as a federal prosecutor.

 

What about hatred and intolerance of gays? There is a lot of it around these days and likely to be more now that Pence, who believes in torturing gays to make them straight (I am not lying...look at his support for gay conversion therapy, including electroshock treatment) is going to be the VP.

 

So I am not sure what you mean when you refer to an aura of hate and intolerance so much worse that used to exist.

 

In fact, the only explanation I could come up with for why you think things are worse now than before is that you belong to a class that is accustomed to being respected and accepted no matter how bigoted your views are. Now, you are realizing that many, many people hold your views in disdain, and you are so upset that you aren't being allowed to babble nonsense without being challenged on it. How horrible it must be for you.

 

Nothing like this was tolerated back when America was great. Blacks knew their place (as janitors, maybe bank tellers for the nice ones) and gays kept their horrible behaviours out of sight. Heck, it wasn't that long ago that one could enjoy a nice lynching or two. No...there never was an aura of hatred or intolerance in the good old USA like there is today!

 

Btw none of these historical issues were unique to the US...the UK in its colonial days was no better. Canada even now wrestles with racism pf many forms, most notably against 1st nations people. We're all far more alike, in our good attributes and our bad, than we are different.

[onoway]

Unfortunately Canada does have issues with race as well, I remember hearing somebody on a call in show years ago saying " I'm not at all prejudiced, I just don't see why they have to come into town, they've got the reserves." OTOH I was proud to hear that a bunch of Canadian Veterans are going to join the protesters at Standing Rock.Apparently about 2000 US Veterans are also going to go support the protesters. And still nothing happening according to mainstream media as far as I've seen.

 

An article in the Huffington Post said that originally the pipeline wasn't even supposed to be going anywhere near the reservation, but the people in the town near where it was originally supposed to go, said they didn't want it there, so they figured they'd just run it through the Sioux territory instead, no problem.

 

no racism here, everyone is treated equally, nothing to see, move along folks.

[kenberg]

I wouldn't say that I am ashamed of the fact that I have a pair of upper middle class university professors as parents rather than being being born in a village in Ethiopia or Bangladesh,

Rather, I appreciate the fact that luck has a hell of a lot more to do with where I ended up in life than does anything else.

 

I not only agree with this last sentence, I would like to emphasize it. Honestly, it starts at conception with the genetic structure you are given. I have known people whose bodies, if their bodies were cars, would have been recalled. At 77 I have decent health and, while I don't behave totally irresponsibly, nobody would accuse me of being overly careful. And I was born in the U.S. in the twentieth century. You don't have to claim the U.S. is exceptional (I make no such claim) to realize that there are many worse places and many worse centuries to be born into. As to choices, you can bid and play a hand perfectly and go down because of weird distribution, you can be off the wall and survive with luck.. I have made good choices and I have made bad choices, but here I am.

 

Gratitude for and recognition of good fortune is highly appropriate.

 

How does this translate? Most people, not every person but most of them, deserve our respect and our restraint in judging them. "Watch where you're going, step light on old toes" as Bob Seger put it. "Faith hope and charity, but the greatest of these is charity" as Paul put it in his letter to the Corinthians.

 

Recognizing luck in our own lives in no way negates the importance of effort and good judgment. But luck plays a far larger role than it is generally given credit for.

 

Reading this over, it sounds a little corny. I'll post it anyway.

[Al_U_Card]

I not only agree with this last sentence, I would like to emphasize it. Honestly, it starts at conception with the genetic structure you are given. I have known people whose bodies, if their bodies were cars, would have been recalled. At 77 I have decent health and, while I don't behave totally irresponsibly, nobody would accuse me of being overly careful. And I was born in the U.S. in the twentieth century. You don't have to claim the U.S. is exceptional (I make no such claim) to realize that there are many worse places and many worse centuries to be born into. As to choices, you can bid and play a hand perfectly and go down because of weird distribution, you can be off the wall and survive with luck.. I have made good choices and I have made bad choices, but here I am.

 

Gratitude for and recognition of good fortune is highly appropriate.

 

How does this translate? Most people, not every person but most of them, deserve our respect and our restraint in judging them. "Watch where you're going, step light on old toes" as Bob Seger put it. "Faith hope and charity, but the greatest of these is charity" as Paul put it in his letter to the Corinthians.

 

Recognizing luck in our own lives in no way negates the importance of effort and good judgment. But luck plays a far larger role than it is generally given credit for.

 

Reading this over, it sounds a little corny. I'll post it anyway.

Philosophy is only naive if it is inaccurate. :) Why we have been so phenomenally "lucky" begs the question of what to do with such good fortune. ( The term "creme de la creme" comes to mind concerning our variance with the mass of humanity.) Guilt is not an effective response as is taking that cream and dispersing it such that it loses its characteristics. The parable about the talents relates a similar conundrum.

[blackshoe]

Not all of the students killed or wounded at Kent State were protestors. Some were simply passers-by.

 

From the wikipedia article on Kent State, quoting, apparently, a public statement later by ... somebody ... "The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the university of an order to ban rallies and an order to disperse." When I read this, what came to mind was "“Disperse Ye Rebels, Ye Villains Disperse”, an order given by Major John Pitcairn, Royal Marines, at Lexington, April 19, 1775.

 

One idiot's "solution" to what happened at Kent State was "don't give any bullets to the National Guard when they're dealing with students". A better answer would be "don't use the National Guard". These days, though, the answer would probably be to give them tanks. Then we could have our own Tienanmen Square.

 

For the record, not that it matters, I was company clerk in A Company, 1st Battalion, 81st Armored Regiment, 1st Armored Division, at Fort Hood, Texas, on May 4th 1970. A month and a half later I was a civilian student at Cornell University. There were protests and "riots" there that summer and fall, in which I didn't participate. There was tear gas (which was amusing to watch from a nearby rooftop, as many protestors had gas masks), but afair, nobody got shot.