BLM gets Divisive Again

[rjs330]

They are though...at least in some cases like the UK and Australia and New Zealand. They did the tearing down of statues of historical figures in the UK. The Maori of New Zealand are pushing for the acceptance of their cultural practices as a "kind of science".

It's a range of behavior from childish to dangerously stupid.

France, to my knowledge, has managed to suppress this before it really got a foothold. Them and other European nations, have for the first time in my lifetime, completely rejected US ideas, and academia, and culture.

It's a regression that I think should have been predictable as a result of population growth and general ignorance outpacing rational thought and enlightenment values.

It's causing a sort of chain reaction that has resulted in tribalism and infighting that we are simply too decentralized to control the way authoritarian states like China or Russia would.

It's a complex systemic problem. The solutions are pretty ugly or difficult. I've thought about it for some time now, and a stabilizing way forward without any violence is possible I think, but still pretty difficult.

Thanks for adding that info. We have one Canadian here that lives to bash America into infinity. Yet says nothing about his own country and what they did to their natives. He's living on stolen land and hasn't said a thing.

 

[IceJad]

Thanks for adding that info. We have one Canadian here that lives to bash America into infinity. Yet says nothing about his own country and what they did to their natives. He's living on stolen land and hasn't said a thing.

Who on planet earth does not live on stolen lands or more accurately conquered lands? Dig far enough into history we can all find that the "natives" that came before us were they themselves conquerors. Or at least came into conflict amongst themselves for land. Tribe against tribe.

 

[rjs330]

I just found a few things I would like to mention.

https://historycollection.com/10-at...-they-would-like-to-erase-from-history-books/

Buried Atrocities | Literary Review of Canada

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...halo-we-must-confront-our-indigenous-genocide

Mexico Report Finds “Reasonable Basis” to Believe Crimes against Humanity Committed

Slavery in Latin America - Wikipedia

7 Atrocities Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin Committed

Oh I could go on and on across the world. But no, America is the worst ever!

 

[rjs330]

Who on planet earth does not live on stolen lands or more accurately conquered lands? Dig far enough into history we can all find that the "natives" that came before us were they themselves conquerors. Or at least came into conflict amongst themselves for land. Tribe against tribe.

Absolutely! If that is the case why is America the only one that is called the bad guy by those on the left? Where is all the attacks against Canada? That's not what I'm seeing here. It's only America that gets beat up on.

 

[rjs330]

Bottom line, BLM is the divisive group that is trying to tear America apart. Set wedges between people. And too many on the left live to jump in with both feet. Yet there is no oppression in America.

 

[IceJad]

Bottom line, BLM is the divisive group that is trying to tear America apart. Set wedges between people. And too many on the left live to jump in with both feet. Yet there is no oppression in America.

Any party that pit countryman against countryman is a destabilizing factor in a nation. In Malaysia here we have NGOs & political parties that are racially and religiously aligned. All claim to protect their group from others? Who are the others they are so called protecting against if not fellow countrymen! Funny thing is these parties & NGOs are all claiming to be the "good guy". All a façade.

 

[rjs330]

Any party that pit countryman against countryman is a destabilizing factor in a nation. In Malaysia here we have NGOs & political parties that are racially and religiously aligned. All claim to protect their group from others? Who are the others they are so called protecting against if not fellow countrymen! Funny thing is these parties & NGOs are all claiming to be the "good guy". All a façade.

It seems to me that today we have two parties in America that are involved in pitting Americans against each other. Political parties have a tendency to do that anyway. But it's gotten worse over the last 20 years. The leftists in this country started it with Bush Jr. And to be fair conservatives got fed up with it and started their own campaign against leftists. Now it's a full blown war with radicals on both sides.

I do see leftists getting more and more radical and in power than right wing radicals are. We on the right are still by and large a group that's right, but leaning more to the center. While the left is leaning further left. I'm afraid that the right in America will start moving further right in order to try and stop the left. And that won't end well for any of us.

That's why we are starting to see more people bringing up the topic of civil war. I don't see that happening, but I do see more and more states getting fed up with progressive leftist ideology in their state. Take a look at the recent governor races.

 

[IceJad]

It seems to me that today we have two parties in America that are involved in pitting Americans against each other. Political parties have a tendency to do that anyway. But it's gotten worse over the last 20 years. The leftists in this country started it with Bush Jr. And to be fair conservatives got fed up with it and started their own campaign against leftists. Now it's a full blown war with radicals on both sides.

I do see leftists getting more and more radical and in power than right wing radicals are. We on the right are still by and large a group that's right, but leaning more to the center. While the left is leaning further left. I'm afraid that the right in America will start moving further right in order to try and stop the left. And that won't end well for any of us.

That's why we are starting to see more people bringing up the topic of civil war. I don't see that happening, but I do see more and more states getting fed up with progressive leftist ideology in their state. Take a look at the recent governor races.

Even if you don't bring up the points I have read and watched too many examples of radicalization of the left for myself. Regardless on the reasons many medias tried to give end result is the same, the flipped side of far right groups. Not opposites, but a mirror image. Can't stand them really. They are openly antagonistic.

They have even taken to attack people from other nations for not following their ideology especially from social culture angle. I lost mount how many times these ideologs came after Japan's society for not being woke enough. So much so that the people from the nation has been openly mocking political correctness.

Recently the US embassy has warn of racial profiling in Japan.

Nike creating ads that paint Japanese as sexist and racist people. Of cause immediate natural backlash ensues.

Ironically in an effort to stamp out racial profiling both the US embassy and Nike just did exactly that to the Japanese as a whole.

The new American left which goes by a lot of different names nowadays ("progressive", "woke", "far-left") enjoys open antagonization of everyone that have a smidgen of disagreement. Reminds me a lot of the Bible thumpers of the late 80' & early 90'.

I miss the 90' America, I miss Bill Clinton's era. Where peace and unity seem to have the highest hope of thriving.

 

[Eftsoon]

Then the concept of white supremacy wouldn't really coalesce as a legitimate concept until the early 1900s when various immigrant communities were dropping their cultural distinctions and trying to assimilate into US society, and therefore becomes decent explanation for various white Europeans to oppose civil rights during the 50s, and the general ease of central and eastern European immigrants coming to the US post WW1 and WW2...eventually waning in the political counterculture of the 60s-70s and something that really only exists in a handful of racial hate groups today.

Fair description?

Because it's rather clear that most "white people" in the US were identifying more distinctly with their ancestral lands of origin than with each other simply because they were white. The sort of white hegemony-solidarity that can be observed before then is more a result of the constant cultural contact with each other over centuries.

Is that about how you see it?



That's kind of the point of Marxist ideas. Of course they're appealing. They're appealing by design. They simply aren't tenable.



That's good.



Capitalist.



Capitalist.



This one might be Marx but it might also be Rousseau's. I can't remember.



No Marx, either didn't understand economics at all or he ripped off early capitalist ideas and passed them off as his own. Most of his critiques of capitalism come from early capitalists themselves and the problems they saw arising from capitalism and how to avoid them.

To sit and literally list, even in short form, all the ways Marx was wrong is a lot more than I care to write. It's even reasonable to consider that as a upper middle class Jewish European at the time, he was resentful of the wealth he saw above him...fearful of the poverty he saw beneath him...and fully aware he had no way to employ the little academic ability he had into a successful enterprise.

As a political theorist....he may have been aware of the ways his ideas were wrong...and deliberately concocted as a popular narrative to place himself and anyone supporting him in power.


That or he's just dumb.

The welfare state was created by Bismark to counter the effects of socialism, however, the idea of free healthcare, full employment and a social safety net are Marxist. These simply become the stanard. The welfare state as currently instantiated greases the wheels of commerce. I ought to have been far less wooly there.

Corporate regulation is Marxist in the sense that it's leftwing advocates often draw on the Marxist critique of capitalism. Leftwing corporate regulations would include things such as trade unions and laws protecting worker's rights.

Marxism was never meant to be a new system. It offers a critique of capitalism, and suggests a way to address some of its flaws. Marx was a great admirer of capitalism. This is no secret.

 

[Eftsoon]

Eh...sort of? If you describe the westward expansion that way.




I enjoy watching British parliament lob backhanded insults at each other.




Any good and peaceful people are at least 100 years dead, uncontacted and isolated, or without a home.

The westward expansion was consciously, systematically and unforgivingly brutal.

 

[BigDaddy4]

The westward expansion was consciously, systematically and unforgivingly brutal.

Do you mean the westward expansion starting with European countries like your own UK, Spain, and France, among others, who were here before the USA became its own country?

 

[Eftsoon]

Do you mean the westward expansion starting with European countries like your own UK, Spain, and France, among others, who were here before the USA became its own country?

The USA is Europe. It is a projection of Europe onto another continent.

 

[BigDaddy4]

The USA is Europe. It is a projection of Europe onto another continent.

Funny, my history book and all the maps I've seen show there's an ocean between the two.

Before USA/Europe, who was it? And who before them? And before them? etc. As another poster pointed out, all throughout the history of civilization, someone conquered someone else. Each conquest was likely "consciously, systematically and unforgivingly brutal." But I guess it's fun and convenient for some to blame America with blinders on to the rest of history, huh?

 

[Ana the Ist]

Bottom line, BLM is the divisive group that is trying to tear America apart. Set wedges between people. And too many on the left live to jump in with both feet. Yet there is no oppression in America.

It's even simpler than that. It's a group started by Marxists.

I know that doesn't mean anything to about 99% of people regardless of their politics. Few people bother to learn what a Marxist is. The two Marxists clearly know this as well. Cullors literally did an interview acting like it's not a big deal.

It is though. It tells you about their motives.

To put it simply, they don't care about black lives at all. The people marching are just a means to an end....anyone they believe can be agitated towards gaining power and wealth and status. There's no real need to solve any problem. In fact, defining the problem clearly is a problem...because it might create a sense of when it is solved.

That's why the problem shifted from racist white cops....to all cops being unconsciously racist....to the racism hiding somewhere in the system. Nobody really knows what that means or how to solve it. Perfect conditions for endless agitation.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Funny, my history book and all the maps I've seen show there's an ocean between the two.

Before USA/Europe, who was it? And who before them? And before them? etc. As another poster pointed out, all throughout the history of civilization, someone conquered someone else. Each conquest was likely "consciously, systematically and unforgivingly brutal." But I guess it's fun and convenient for some to blame America with blinders on to the rest of history, huh?

There's a deliberate mischaracterization of native American tribes that happened both before and then during the middle years of the westward expansion. The westward expansion itself is how a lot of people imagine European/native American relations. It's a very wrong and limited understanding of a period of time between the first European settlers and the creation of our current borders.

I've got no problem with explaining true history to students. I don't see any reason to replace a limited understanding of those relations with a largely fictional one from the natives' perspective.

One of the most violent and brutal tribes of all time is easily the Mexica...the central tribe of a group of culturally similar tribes known as the Aztec Empire. The reasons why they were so unusually violent were clearly religious and appear to involve the belief that blood sacrifice kept the sun rising every day. They're one of very few tribes to normalize killing and death for purely religious reasons. The Comanche didn't call themselves Comanche...that's a tribal term that means "enemy" in some other tribes' language. They're a result of the introduction of horses to the Americas. They existed as a distinct tribe for only around 100 years I think, but they conquered a lot of tribes and took over large sections of the midwest. In all tribes, being a man was in many ways synonymous with being a warrior, and the capture and enslavement of women and children was characterized as "marriage" but something we would call "rape" if done by Europeans. People characterize the westward expansion as genocide....but many tribes today have more members than they did at their point of coming into contact with Europeans. There's 6-8 million native Americans now....out of an estimated population that ranged from 6 million on the low end and 15 million on the high end.

The idea of idyllic and pacifist people isn't really true of native American tribes. It rarely existed at all. The moriori people of a few islands outside New Zealand were true pacifists out of necessity....as life was too short and harsh to spend in violence. Early contact claims they only lived around 35 years before succumbing to health problems likely resulting from a diet that's largely shellfish. They lasted arguably until the mid 1800s when they were completely slaughtered by the Maori tribes of New Zealand who believed strongly in violence and ritualized the cannibalism of enemies during land disputes. The Maori invaded....and summarily slaughtered everyone except a handful of slaves. The moriori didn't even fight back.

History is complicated and violent....and I've got no problem with it being taught accurately. It's certainly true that all conquerors tended to paint their actions in the best possible light....but so did the conquered.

 

[Ana the Ist]

The westward expansion was consciously, systematically and unforgivingly brutal.

A war campaign planned by the same systematically and brutal general that devastated the South during the Civil War. A man from the South who argued against war because of the death and destruction it caused...and fought for the North because he believed their victory was inevitable. A man whose methodology was described as total warfare with the goal of destroying his enemy's very will to fight back....or what would be described as war crimes today.

 

[Ana the Ist]

The welfare state was created by Bismark to counter the effects of socialism, however, the idea of free healthcare, full employment and a social safety net are Marxist. These simply become the stanard. The welfare state as currently instantiated greases the wheels of commerce. I ought to have been far less wooly there.

In what way did he argue for this? I can remember most of the Communist Manifesto....almost nothing of Das Kapital and only bits and pieces of his other essays and bits.

People don't really read The Wealth Of Nations which is, imo, the most brilliant economic book written. In it, Adam Smith argues for a progressive tax system and business regulation to control the economy from spiraling into vast wealth disparity.

Contrary to popular belief, Adam Smith did not accept inequality as a necessary trade-off for a more prosperous economy

I don't honestly claim to remember exactly if or how he thinks those progressive taxes should be redistributed....but it's definitely clear he intended for them to be redistributed in some way to the poorest.

That's written in 1776. The Communist Manifesto wasn't written until the mid 1800s. Adam Smith argues for the wealthiest people to pay the most taxes and the poorest people to pay the least and gain the most tax advantage. That's capitalism.

Corporate regulation is Marxist in the sense that it's leftwing advocates often draw on the Marxist critique of capitalism. Leftwing corporate regulations would include things such as trade unions and laws protecting worker's rights.

Again, as Adam Smith outlines and predicts business behaviors resulting from capitalism as "market failures" like price fixing and monopolies....he also advocated governmental regulations to avoid these problems and attempts at solving them when they do occur.

I honestly wonder how many communists would actually exist if they read The Wealth of Nations either before or after the Communist Manifesto. It's the difference between seeing a brilliant man describing what is happening and would happen with only minor changes....and a man describing some alternate version of reality that isn't just impossible, it's silly.

Marxism was never meant to be a new system. It offers a critique of capitalism, and suggests a way to address some of its flaws. Marx was a great admirer of capitalism. This is no secret.

There's a pretty good argument about Marx not actually believing in a word of what he advocated.

He is famous for the quote "I am not a Marxist" which can be interpreted several ways...but I'm inclined to think he knows he's selling a dream with no way to achieve it.

If he came up with trade unions....good for him....and it seems like an obvious modernization of older craftsmen guilds like the masons. The big contribution he made to economics is the idea of labor having intrinsic value which is demonstrably false and basically argued as such in a debate against Marx.

I tend to see Marx as a resentful man who was probably misanthropic....but smart enough to propagate an idea that is a system of political and economic dogma used to justify the overthrowing of anyone in power.

Marxism is good for building a model of popular revolution....and that's it. Once in power, revolutionaries are left without any real sense of what to do or how to make things work. They tend to start committing atrocities just to hide failures....or perhaps as genuine but misguided beliefs that the reason for such widespread and immense failures is the lack of genuine communists or subversive interlopers. It's a mad power grab, and once at the top...anyone capable of recognizing these people don't really understand what to do must be intimidated into silence or removed.

Edit- Most people today imagine capitalism as described by lassez-faire economics or lassez-faire capitalism. It's the idea that economics works best without any government intervention at all. The place and time of its propagation leads me to think of it as basically the invention of capitalists who understood that if they were to become wealthier...they had to convince people that the government should stay out of economics. Essentially a self serving model that only benefits the very wealthy. They knew supply and demand wouldn't possibly regulate the price of everything...and regulatory competition wouldn't exist in every market. Of course, if you want people to avoid the same conclusion you only teach from the front of The Wealth of Nations....never the back lol.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Lassez-faire economists are either idiots who realized they had little to add to economic theory within successful capitalist nations, or corrupted theorists working for wealthy capitalists, or desperate theorists who are a mix of both who realized they could increase GDP and satisfy both political and economic leaders by unrestrained and corrupted capitalism....or maybe they just realized the poor didn't read or attempt to really understand economics lol. I'll give Von Mises for explaining why socialism doesn't work (in markets it simply won't work) and that's because capitalism provides a vast amount of real time market information to the businesses....which allows them to adjust production and supply accordingly. Planned markets in socialism simply cannot replicate this with even the best estimates. It's only useful in markets where demand is nearly 100% like a lot of education, prison, or much of healthcare...or a monopoly or near monopoly allows for total control of supply. That's not to say later economists never did anything. Keynes and Freedman (Friedman?) added to capitalism in important ways...but imo capitalism is largely misunderstood because of its corruption in the public understanding created by lassez-faire economists and the fact that very successful capitalists are the only ones who don't benefit from competition. Students and other intellectuals love communism because it's designed to be emotionally appealing to those living in capItalist economies. Imo The Wealth of Nations is to economics what Newton is to physics. A crude but brilliant explanation for how it all works when it works. A smart economist should just rewrite it and update it to incorporate newer explanations of phenomena like globalisation....and call it social-capitalism 2.0 to make about a billion dollars in book sales lol.

 

[Sabertooth]

Why shop at black-owned stores when we can loot high-end "white" stores, flash-mob style...?
(That is even less expensive.)

Speaking Of Christmas Looting...

 

[Estrid]

Thanks for adding that info. We have one Canadian here that lives to bash America into infinity. Yet says nothing about his own country and what they did to their natives. He's living on stolen land and hasn't said a thing.

Everyone lives on stolen land.