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Saturday, November 04, 2017

Another One Bites the Dust

[Updated to correct errors even superficial proof reading would have revealed.]

Way back in the day, 13 years of days, to be brutally honest, the Post Judd Alliance took refuge at The Daily Duck and Thought Mesh. Then the crowd consisted of David Cohen, AOG, Brit, Duck, Oroborous, Peter, Harry, Ali Choudhury; erp joined not too long after.

Since then, Oroborous and AOG just up and vanished. Ali stopped stopping by, but he pops up in Facebook regularly (in Spain this week, BTW). And like Howard, we lost Duck. Brit finally got fed up with Harry's bilious hatred that he left us, never to return.

Now Harry has stomped off, in his typical spittle-flecked and truth impaired style. In putting this post together, I had been looking at some of the longer threads over the last half dozen years. It has been a very long time, indeed, since he made an enlightening or substantive comment. So, on the one hand, his going doesn't seem much of a loss. Despite that, though, his presence here did give the rest of us exposure to progressive thinking.

During my forays into progressive blogs, I was astonished to discover that Harry isn't alone in his thinking, but rather that he is emblematic of progressives: riddled with hatred and factually challenged.

Per Harry: I quit Good [sic] Guys because of your [my] and erp's racism and fascism.

Leaving aside whether his statement has any factual basis, this raises a couple issues. First is the incontinent spewing of racist/fascist/misogynist/Islamophobe/homophobe (to avoid tedious typing, I will refer to such accusations using this ugly portmanteau acronym: RAFAMIHO) et al in response to any statement that departs from progressive pieties.

Unfortunately, that goes beyond merely amounting to "Shut up, the progressive explained." Remember Damore, the Google engineer? Progressive hatred cost him his job. When challenged, progressives had absolutely no idea what the Damore actually said, yet were perfectly happy to trash the guy.

More recently, a Boise State University professor wrote an opinion piece about the goals of radical feminists. In response, the school's Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion, Francisco Salinas wrote a litany of accusations unburdened by a single quote, and which would surely have cost the professor his job if he didn't already have tenure.

A couple quotes:

[Professor Yenor's] piece is easy enough to dismiss on logical grounds …" (which Salinas never actually bothers to attempt)



Not every person who agrees with Yenor’s piece is likely to become an espoused Neo-Nazi, but likely every Neo-Nazi would agree with the substance of Yenor’s piece.

In other words, shut up, the Director explained. Using words and fact free assertions that could have come straight from Harry's keyboard.

Which is what made Harry's presence here useful. Progressives, it seems, are astonishingly self-similar. So having one around provided an opportunity to attempt to understand progressive thinking. Unfortunately, I don't think that is possible, because there doesn't seem to be much actual thinking going on. No thinking person would recognize Prof Yenor's writing in Salinas's characterization of it, anymore than an objective observer would find anything even remotely racist or fascist in what erp or I have ever wrote.

Not that easily observable facts are any deterrent to what is, to the extent it is untrue, a vicious insult. Nor will Salinas, or Harry, wonder whether the incontinent spewing of RAFAMIHO renders their own characters suspect.

The other issue is this: what constitutes saying something RAFAMIHO?

Further down that Restating the Obvious thread I linked to above, Clovis said:

I don't think Erp is racist, but only because I met her in person. My interactions online with her in past, many times, gave me the impression of someone with racial prejudices on the other side.

I don't remember having similar impression about you in terms of race, but you are demonstrably prejudiced against Muslims.

Aside from the rather obvious problem that it is a nearly futile exercise to attempt an empty charge, what does it mean to be "… demonstrably prejudiced against Muslims"?

Sometimes, the answer is obvious. A statement such as "… Muslims in general and Arab Muslims in particular are incapable of popular self-government." clearly fits the bill for being not only anti-Muslim, but racist on top of it. Never mind being drenched in irony.

But Clovis takes the concept further: observations about Islam that lead to negative judgments about some muslims prove that I have a blinding prejudice that makes me attribute to an individual the properties of the collective.

Even if did such a thing, the conclusion doesn't follow.

No one would bat an eye if I suggested that, on observing a group of people walking down the street wearing Nazi regalia that I could reach some likely very accurate judgments about each member of that group. Similarly, if I see obviously pious muslims, I reach the very likely accurate conclusion that they believe in the divinity and inerrancy of the Quran, and, therefore, have beliefs that are antagonistic towards the individualistic, Enlightenment derived, beliefs I hold. Or, conversely, their seeing me wearing Levis and having dinner with a much younger woman who is not my wife or daughter (but happens to be my co-pilot on this trip) means they can safely conclude I hold beliefs deeply incongruous with their own.

The charge that someone is anti-Muslim (or, looked at the other way, anti-post Christian) is practically vacuous, in that it completely voids the capability to draw any conclusions with regard to certain groups, while simultaneously allowing such conclusions about other groups. That is post-modernism run amuck and self contradicting at the same time.

The same argument can be made against nearly all invocations of RAFAMIHO. They are nearly always wrong. Damore made an evidence based argument that Google's employment policies were doomed to expensive failure. That doesn't make him a misogynist, any more than noting that men are overwhelmingly responsible for violent crime makes me a misandrist.

If his evidence is fairly chosen and accurate, that makes him correct. If it isn't either or both, that makes him wrong, and better evidence will make that clear. The conclusions I draw about some Muslims based upon the evidence as I understand it provided by Islam doesn't mean I harbor some profound character flaw. To the degree my understanding reflects Islam's objective reality, my conclusions are correct. To the extent my understanding doesn't, then improved understanding should change my conclusions.

Only when I refuse that opportunity does it become possible to throw down the RAFAMIHO.

Remember, to call someone a RAFAMIHO is to charge that person with a grave moral defect. Doing so with all the incontinence of a goose having just consumed bad oysters, whether it is Harry or Keith Olbermann, on any of a nearly endless parade of examples from the left is to put oneself in the same league with those who denounced their neighbors to the KGB.

Recently, Peter said "I'm intrigued by the role ubiquitous social media is playing in the current American political distemper and its destabilizing influences on political dialogue."

Social media may well be contributing to American distemper, but not nearly so much as the vile accusations that emanate primarily from the left, and that almost never earn the disdain they so richly deserve.

Perhaps if progressives like Harry, Keith Olbermann, Francisco Salinas and ad infinitum started hating less, and thinking more, our political fever would go down.

Yeah, like that is going to happen.




208 comments:

1 – 200 of 208   Newer›   Newest»
erp said...

My racism came from the fact that I believe blacks, coloreds, Negroes (I refuse the appellation African-American both on the grounds that not all Africans are melanin enhanced and I will not tolerate hyphenation) were better off under Jim Crow than they are now.

I explained that position by saying they were better off, not best off -- meaning then they had stable communities with in tact families, their schools, while segregated, actually taught the three r's and all the other Jeopardy categories and many left the south and joined the rest of We, the People in our pursuit of happiness.

Soldiers thrown together during the war, came back with very different ideas than those they might have had about people who look and act different, remembering that in the pre-TV and internet days most people would have never have interacted with nor even met any people who didn't live in their immediate area.

In those days, black kids weren't told, as they are today, they are too stupid to learn how to speak and write grammatically correct English, nor were they told they shouldn't excel in school because to do so would be to "act white."

My other "racist" position is that those who wish to emigrate to the U.S. must want to become American, i.e., jump into the melting pot. If this is not the case, they should stay where they are or go someplace else because they are not welcome here.

I am probably the only one of us here who've had any personal interaction with ordinary, non-political, Moslem people. Albania is over 90% Moslem thanks to being under Turkish rule for over 600 years and while the Albanian community when I was a kid growing up in NYC was I'd guess less than 500 people and mostly Orthodox Christian as were the communities in other cities like Boston, many family friends were Moslem. Other than not attending church services, I saw no difference among us and since I myself hated attending church, I thought they had the better deal.

As for Harry, he stopped commenting because his arguments don’t hold water. It’s more than crystal clear that prog systems don’t and can’t work. Name calling, rioting, violence is all they got.

erp said...

I rest my case.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

Well, let's do some dirty laundry then.

I think the whole point of disagreement between us - on wether "you are demonstrably prejudiced against Muslims" or not - is quite clear in the para below:

---
No one would bat an eye if I suggested that, on observing a group of people walking down the street wearing Nazi regalia that I could reach some likely very accurate judgments about each member of that group. Similarly, if I see obviously pious muslims, I reach the very likely accurate conclusion that they believe in the divinity and inerrancy of the Quran, and, therefore, have beliefs that are antagonistic towards the individualistic, Enlightenment derived, beliefs I hold. Or, conversely, their seeing me wearing Levis and having dinner with a much younger woman who is not my wife or daughter (but happens to be my co-pilot on this trip) means they can safely conclude I hold beliefs deeply incongruous with their own.
---

Try and compare that to Erp's comment above, which I copy below too:

---
I am probably the only one of us here who've had any personal interaction with ordinary, non-political, Moslem people. Albania is over 90% Moslem thanks to being under Turkish rule for over 600 years and while the Albanian community when I was a kid growing up in NYC was I'd guess less than 500 people and mostly Orthodox Christian as were the communities in other cities like Boston, many family friends were Moslem. Other than not attending church services, I saw no difference among us and since I myself hated attending church, I thought they had the better deal.
---

Do you see the difference?

Erp, mounting on her own life experience, just "saw no difference among us".

You, OTOH, upon seeing - just seeing - "pious muslims" (whatever that is in your mind) apparenlty can instantaneously reach far conclusions about their inner souls. What the heck, even Erp, the proud dot connector, isn't claiming such super powers on this one.

And I am even more astounded by what comes next: you are even able to foresee what said "pious muslims" would think, in the most inner thoughts, about seeing you having dinner with some young beauty.

So you not only can know whatever they think about life, liberty and the pursuit of Holiness, but you also can foresee all their actions in any hypothetical setting. Hey, you are good, Skipper, very good. I wish I were that confidant in my divination powers too.

Now, I do not doubt you may find out there a number of said "pious muslims" that may fit that description. Not only muslims, I guess, for I hear both Orthodox Jews and the Vice-President of the United States refuse to have dinner out in public with young beauties.

But I wonder, how great are your superpowers in order to foresee the actions, and souls, of the 1.7 billion of muslims out there?

erp said...

Clovis:

Moslem culture is very different now than it was in the 40's and 50's of my day. Just as the left used the draft in the early 60's to agitate using the perfectly legal action in Vietnam as a pretext (Alinsky in Action) and stirred up the rabble to agitate against integration with 24/7 media coverage, so it is with modern Moslems.

Christians, Hindus, Jews and Moslems lived in relative peace until the left agitated unrest to destabilize - see the peacenik Gandhi and the mess he made and bubba secretly arming the Moslems in Bosnia to perpetrate atrocities against Christians -- yes we heard it from the horses mouth -- not the lying media.

Obama's eight years opened the door for nuclear weapons in terrorist countries and promoted Moslem terrorism because the left foolishly believe they can control the situation as they controlled their earlier efforts.

When you were here I told you about friends of mine in the area whose skin scans all human melanin levels who lived through integration here in the deep south. There was absolutely no trouble. When you asked why, I said because there were no television cameras.

I will say to you again, what you know about the US is mostly untrue as you only know the fantasy the left puts out there. This continues to this day. Only difference is the internet, camera phones, etc. Ordinary people can get the truth out there and this last election demonstrated how effective that is.

We have a shot at undoing 100+ years of lefty propaganda. If Trump can undo all the crony capitalism of using our tax dollars to fund those who want to destroy our freedoms and equality under the law, I really don't care if he's vulgar, short-tempered and uses the vernacular in his tweets.

Peter said...

Social media may well be contributing to American distemper, but not nearly so much as the vile accusations that emanate primarily from the left...

Actually, Skipper, that a pretty good illustration of the distemper I was talking about. It doesn't matter what one side does or thinks or says, the reaction is just to say how much worse the other side is.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Do you want to take back your "saw no difference among us" comment you made on Muslims up above?

For please notice Skipper is not talking about the Muslims of your time back in New York, or the Muslims in the US now - he is making a generalization over the 1.7 billions of them in the World, virtually all being people he will never, ever, meet in person.

Which goes a long way to explain his ignorance on what a 'pious Muslim' would think upon watching him having dinner with a young lady. He imagines they would think him deepily in sin against Allah - while, to a good number of Muslims, the more probable thought would be like "Lucky guy, he can maybe invite her to be one of his wives!"



erp said...

Clovis, I can only speak for myself. Skipper has been around the world many thousand times more than I and I respect that his opinions are formed by his experiences, not by some irrational hatred of Islam.

The reason I brought up my childhood is in those days immigrants came in families or small groups and wanted to assimilate, now they are designated refugees and come in large groups and don't necessarily want to give up their culture, but to change our culture to conform with what they left.

I reject that categorically and unless they are kept in refugee camps and sent back after the crisis has passed, they must assimilate or not be allowed into the country. I don't care if they are Moslem, Mexican or Martian.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Indeed, Skipper is a smart and experienced person.

And he would be justified were he only defending that Islam, in quite a few places in the world, is a force holding back progress.

But he defends instead that Islam, anywhere in the world where it is practiced, will be only comparable to Nazism if taken to its true form as posed in the Quran. Which, to be fair, is less of a problem of 'prejudice' by Skipper's part, and more of too naive a view on how religions work.

erp said...

Clovis, progress, like most things, is in the eye of beholder. I know little about the Quran other than snippets I've read here and there and those snippets are horrifying to me and the polar opposite of what I consider progress which is basically what we enjoy in the U.S., i.e., the Constitution, equality under the law ...

The situation with Moslem "refugees" in the west is not so much that they are following their religion, but that the left is giving them a by on following religious practices that are illegal here. In the U.S. Moslem students are permitted to pray in school while others are forbidden to do so. Assaults on women are explained away by the legal system and the media has being cultural, etc.

You must know that many areas in the UK are no-go zones and I believe the same is true in other parts of Europe.

Trump was elected by those of us who don't want that to happen here as well as our hope that he undo the progress of the progs who've been in power for far too long.

erp said...

Skipper, here's a well-written piece which bolsters your arguments.

Hey Skipper said...

My racism came from the fact that I believe blacks, coloreds, Negroes (I refuse the appellation African-American both on the grounds that not all Africans are melanin enhanced and I will not tolerate hyphenation) were better off under Jim Crow than they are now. 

Only someone utterly antagonistic towards logic, meaning, and syntax could label that assertion as racist. Which Harry, and essentially all other indefensibly did.

Here is a more lengthy comment that says the same thing:

I believe, wrt African Americans, the contemporary zeitgeist is almost infinitely preferable to that prevailing 50 years ago.

The fallacy is in linking things that have no inherent relationship. The rapid revelation that African Americans are fully fledged humans yields no conclusions with respect to social policies.

That is a progressive fallacy, not yours, btw.

To put it another way, we collectively took off our blinders. Then comes the obvious question: Now what?

It should be obvious from the broad spectrum of possible Now Whats that what we did was triggered, but not determined, by shedding our blinders.

Intellectual honesty demands taking into account the consequences of the chosen Now What. Progressives chose the path that led first to dependency, then disfunction, then full throated disaster.

But since progressives, by definition, are never wrong, then pointing that out = racist!


Emphasis added.

The real import — the obviousness of which is almost impossible to overstate — of your position (and Phil Robertson's, and my linked comment) is this: As bad as things were under Jim Crow, ameliorative policies made some important facets of African-American lives even worse.

Regardless of that assertion's correctness or completeness (can't ignore the "War on Drugs" and its sequelae, for instance), that cannot possibly be racist in any recognizable sense of the term. Its criticism is solely directed towards government policies that give every appearance of having, despite the best intentions, made things worse for African-Americans.

It would be a very funny sort of racism, indeed, to hypothesize a set of circumstances that would have made things much better for African-Americans.

Which is why, whenever Harry, et al, accuse people of saying racist things , they never quote what was actually said.

Olbermann, Salvinas, Harry, the Alsofa are all the same: so blinded by hate they have stopped thinking, to the point where they refuse to even so much as risk a glance at reality.

Hey Skipper said...

BTW, erp, I do use the term African-American. The descendants of slaves have been systematically excluded from the wider society so thoroughly, and for so long, that it was impossible for them to assimilate into American society as has every other immigrant group.

erp said...

... all the more reason to insist on equality of opportunity for them to assimilate fully now and to do it the old-fashioned way by encouraging each new generation to fulfill their goals and dreams through their own hard work.

Case in point: our local supermarket hires young persons to help people take their groceries to their cars. Although I am very able to load my groceries in the car without help, this past year or so, I've taken advantage of this service because unscrupulous people think old ladies are easy targets and it's fun to talk to youngsters and get their take on things.

These kids come in all sizes, sexes and skin colors. They are either high school seniors on their way to college or students at local colleges and amazingly they all speak grammatically correct English -- even the darkies.

They give me hope for the future.

:-)

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I think the whole point of disagreement between us - on wether "you are demonstrably prejudiced against Muslims" or not - is quite clear in the para below:

[Hey Skipper:] No one would bat an eye if I suggested that, on observing a group of people walking down the street wearing Nazi regalia that I could reach some likely very accurate judgments about each member of that group. Similarly, if I see obviously pious muslims, I reach the very likely accurate conclusion that they believe in the divinity and inerrancy of the Quran, and, therefore, have beliefs that are antagonistic towards the individualistic, Enlightenment derived, beliefs I hold. Or, conversely, their seeing me wearing Levis and having dinner with a much younger woman who is not my wife or daughter (but happens to be my co-pilot on this trip) means they can safely conclude I hold beliefs deeply incongruous with their own.


No, it isn't at all clear.

If you were to see a group of people in Nazi regalia marching with torches, might you, perhaps, just maybe, be able to surmise how they feel about Jews? And if not, why not?

Because, if you don't have an answer to the latter question, then by the corollary example, you must accede to my assertion.

Islam has articles of faith. Among them is that the Quran is both divine, and inerrant. Of course, even to a casual observer, the Quran contradicts itself. Islam resolves the contradictions through abrogation.

Of course, introducing abrogation also introduces subjectivity. But that isn't the escape clause you are hoping for, not only because it isn't a horse that can be mounted or dismounted at will, but also because there are diktats in the Quran that have no contradiction. For example, the punishment for apostasy is death. There is no gainsaying this, and all muslim majority countries punish apostasy.

Consequently, if I see obviously pious muslims — beard and tunic for him; abaya for her — then it would be foolish, and probably insulting, for me to conclude other than that they believe apostasy must be punished.

So, rather than delving into subjectivity (which won't get you as far as you'd like to go), start with the simple and obvious: why should societies that are based upon absolute freedom of conscience admit people who feel they are divinely entitled to punish people exercising that freedom of conscience? Note well that all muslim majority countries punish, some severely, apostasy. And homosexuality. And adultery. And proselytizing by other religions. And caricatures of Mohammed.

There is no gainsaying these facts, just as there is no gainsaying Pew polls on Muslim attitudes.

Now, presuming what I have stated has at least some factual basis, I clearly have deep reservations about observant muslims immigrating in any substantial numbers to western societies. I think recent history backs me up on this. Substantial numbers of muslims think sharia should be the law of the land.

Hey Skipper said...

And I am even more astounded by what comes next: you are even able to foresee what said "pious muslims" would think, in the most inner thoughts, about seeing you having dinner with some young beauty. 

Okay, I have an idea. Why don't you ask some pious muslims about their attitude towards men and women who aren't related to each other working and socializing together? Why don't you learn about muslim demands upon public facilities to prevent such things? It isn't as if I'm making this stuff up. And, as I have previously suggested, if you don't believe me, read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel. Take it up with her.

Unfortunately, I have sidetracked myself.

The real point here is that there has to be some distinction between invidious groupism, and legitimate distinctions. Progressives, as epitomized by Harry, are incapable of distinguishing between the two. Damore, the fired Google engineer, made sound, calm, reasoned arguments about why Google's hiring policies were doomed to failure.

He got fired.

The universal progressive response to things they'd rather not hear, or think about, is projectile RAFAMIHO. And your response is no different.

Your accusation that I am anti-muslim (or of erp being racist) means you have concluded that in those regards we are morally and intellectually deficient, and that no further regard of our arguments is worthy of consideration. Certainly, that is Harry's — and all other progressives — take.

erp: welfare entitlements have created even worse outcomes than Jim Crow.

Harry (and everyone else piling on Phil Robertson): RACIST JIM CROW LOVER!

Her hypothesis, regardless of its merit isn't about blacks, but rather the corrosive effects of dependency. But the moment Harry et al start spewing RAFAMIHO, their IQ flatlines.

But wait, there's more. Let's assume, for sake of argument, that erp is wrong, that Great Society policies either had absolutely no effect, or were even beneficial to African-Americans. Having called her a racist for making a non-racial argument, what do you think the odds are that erp won't be flying the single digit salute in the direction of every RAFAMIHO slinger? Given Harry's (and the entire crowd at Crooked Timber) reflexive defamations, why should I give even a scintilla of attention to anything they have to say, ever?

This is where I disagree with Peter. I subscribe to the NYT, WSJ, and National Review. I see their comment threads. Of course, I could be succumbing to confirmation bias, but IMHO the NYT comments are far more vituperative than anything in the WSJ and NR. Further, either of the latter is far more likely to fairly describe the other side's position than the NYT, which is about as deficient in this regard as it is possible to be.

Why? Because the NYT is almost as inclined to the IQ-killing RAFAMIHO as Harry is.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

----
If you were to see a group of people in Nazi regalia marching with torches, might you, perhaps, just maybe, be able to surmise how they feel about Jews? And if not, why not?

Because, if you don't have an answer to the latter question, then by the corollary example, you must accede to my assertion.

Islam has articles of faith.
[...]
Consequently, if I see obviously pious muslims — beard and tunic for him; abaya for her — then it would be foolish, and probably insulting, for me to conclude other than that they believe apostasy must be punished.
----

Yes, Skipper, I can safely surmise how a present day group of people in Nazi regalia feel about Jews.

It does not follow that I can equally foresee the feelings of a group of muslims in tunic and abaya fashion. (English question: I believe I should be using 'Muslims', but you are using 'muslims' - which is right?)

The difference is quite easy to point out: 1.7 billion of differences.

If you could go back to Germany circa 1936, you would find a whole country supposedly made of Nazis. Millions of them. And suddenly, your divination powers would be weaker then before! For while you would easily find people with real Nazi feelings, you would also have a lot of other people behaving as Nazis due to societal pressure, but not really buying into any of that. And many other in-between scenarios.

With 1.7 billions following a religion, you are bound to find a multitude of different views, both explicit and implicit, and all sorts of possibilities.

On top of that, you have that Muslim culture and complexity is far greater than the Nazi's relatively simple axioms.

And to top it all, comes what you apparently misses about religions: the vast majority of its followers don't really 'follow it'. You probably take the Quran more seriously than a lot of Muslims who believe to be taking it seriously. Just like it happens with Christians too.

If I were to reframe the above in a short sentence: your analogy (nazi X muslims) misses the markedly different statistical deviations in both sets.


Now, I understand you may think that only those Muslims rigidly following the Quran are real Muslims, and you may give a pass to the others who don't quite follow all its precepts - but then your problem is that you are bound to define the religion by excluding the majority of its followers. There again, just like it happens with Christianity and all other major religions.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
The universal progressive response to things they'd rather not hear, or think about, is projectile RAFAMIHO. And your response is no different.
---
And the universal response to RAFAMIHO is anti-RAFAMIHO whining. Really, your fixation on names and counter-names makes me feel back in high school.


---
Your accusation that I am anti-muslim (or of erp being racist) means you have concluded that in those regards we are morally and intellectually deficient, and that no further regard of our arguments is worthy of consideration. Certainly, that is Harry's — and all other progressives — take.
---
How about you checking that up against reality? If none of yours "further argument is worthy of consideration", how do you explain my dozens of replies?

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] It does not follow that I can equally foresee the feelings of a group of muslims in tunic and abaya fashion. (English question: I believe I should be using 'Muslims', but you are using 'muslims' - which is right?)

The difference is quite easy to point out: 1.7 billion of differences.


I am trying to use correct capitalization. I think it is Islam and muslim, but I have seen it both ways. Poking around, I see two explanations. Christian and Buddhist are capitalized because the terms derive from proper nouns (Christ, Buddha), whereas muslim isn't a proper noun, nor does it derive from one, which makes sense. Alternatively, the noun used to identify a religious adherent is inherently a proper noun, therefore they should all be capitalized, which also makes sense.

Did you look at the Pew surveys of Muslim attitudes? Or notice how many muslim-majority nations punish both homosexuality and apostasy? Or how many Christians, Jews and other believers have been killed or driven into exile from their home countries in the Middle East? Or wonder about the correlation between the muslim percentage of a country's population, and the restrictions on religious belief and observance?

In the aggregate, the differences aren't nearly as big as you assert.

If you could go back to Germany circa 1936, you would find a whole country supposedly made of Nazis. Millions of them. And suddenly, your divination powers would be weaker then before! 

No, you wouldn't find a whole country made of Nazis. Instead you would find that the percentage of Germans who were members of the Nazi was less than 10%

As you are making a corollary argument, it is well to not only keep that in mind, but also remember that the proper comparison is between a visibly pious muslim and a devoted nazi — one who was a member of the SS, wore Nazi regalia, etc.

Which makes me wonder why you can so easily arrive at conclusions about a WWII member of the Nazi party, but not be able to do so with regard to an obviously pious muslim who, by definition, believes the Quran to be both divine and inerrant. And which contains passages as vile as anything you would hope to find in Mein Kampf.

How about you checking that up against reality? If none of yours "further argument is worthy of consideration", how do you explain my dozens of replies?

Often off point, and factually weak.

The point being trying to determine whether it is ever possible to be ethically anti-Muslim, and if so, where it shades into the unethical.

So far as I can tell, you are asserting that all anti-Muslim opinions are unethical. (After all, you had equated me being anti-Muslim with erp's (mistakenly) presumed racism.)

Yet that doesn't sit very well with corollary opinions about, say, contemporary devotees of Naziism. After all, I'm not talking about 1.7 billion muslims, am I?

If I was, then you would have solid ground to stand on — possessing a specific attitude towards all muslims, regardless of how serious their beliefs might be.

But I'm not, and your responses continually fail to take that on board.

Hey Skipper said...

More on 1.7B differences.

Hey Skipper said...

I believe I should be using 'Muslims', but you are using 'muslims' - which is right?

I can't help but notice that I use it both ways in one post, and changed upper case to lower more often than I used upper case to begin with.

So, Muslims it is.

(Besides, I have concluded that muslims risks communicating underlying lack of respect. I respect Islam plenty; I just don't like it.)

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
No, you wouldn't find a whole country made of Nazis. Instead you would find that the percentage of Germans who were members of the Nazi was less than 10%
---
I pick my numbers carefully. I point out to Germany 1936, and you point out to 1933.

After a while, any German with a self-preservation instinct knew to toe the party line, or at least to be very quiet about it all. A casual observer, travelling through the country, would easily believe Hitler's support far exceeded the 10% of affiliated Nazis by the time of his election.


Which is also the reason those Pew survey of Islamic countries you point to are less significant than you think, as your link above recognizes.


---
Which makes me wonder why you can so easily arrive at conclusions about a WWII member of the Nazi party, but not be able to do so with regard to an obviously pious muslim who, by definition, believes the Quran to be both divine and inerrant.
---
Because your definition of a pious Muslim (people using Muslim clothes) is risible.


---
So far as I can tell, you are asserting that all anti-Muslim opinions are unethical. (After all, you had equated me being anti-Muslim with erp's (mistakenly) presumed racism.)
---
Am I? I guess you need to work step one too.

---
After all, I'm not talking about 1.7 billion muslims, am I?
---
No, only the 1.5 who use Muslim clothes.


---
But I'm not, and your responses continually fail to take that on board.
---
So maybe it is a good time to give that one up. You keep whining about me calling you names, while you keep me calling names, and I ignore the whole teenager tantrum - deal?

Clovis said...

Skipper,

Let me correct the lines below:

---
Which makes me wonder why you can so easily arrive at conclusions about a WWII member of the Nazi party, but not be able to do so with regard to an obviously pious muslim who, by definition, believes the Quran to be both divine and inerrant.
---
Because your *previous* definition of a pious Muslim (people using Muslim clothes) is risible.

In the very quote above you gave a better and more precise definition, but before that you went with: "if I see obviously pious muslims — beard and tunic for him; abaya for her — then it would be foolish, and probably insulting, for me to conclude other than that they believe apostasy must be punished."

Which goes to the heart of my accusation of prejudice by your part: you are looking to people out there and making guesses about their thoughts based on how they are dressed.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I pick my numbers carefully. I point out to Germany 1936, and you point out to 1933.

No, I didn't.

I picked the high point. At no time did the percentage Nazi party membership exceed 10% of the total population. Similarly, at no time did communist party memberships exceed roughly that number in either Russia or China.

Your are drawing conclusions not only in absence of evidence, but in contradiction to common sense.

The Pew surveys weren't carried out in the public square. There was no equating a response to a person. There would be no retribution from contradicting whatever the local party line might be.

So far, your responses amount to this.

Dismissing opinion surveys out of hand, or accepting as definitive appearances while ignoring them when convenient is a sop to your own preconceptions.

Because your *previous* definition of a pious Muslim (people using Muslim clothes) is risible.

Ever been to a place where women are confined to the chador?

I didn't think so.

Clovis said...

---
So far, your responses amount to this.
---

Yep, time's up, you have to pay.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote (in response to Skipper): "And the universal response to RAFAMIHO is anti-RAFAMIHO whining. Really, your fixation on names and counter-names makes me feel back in high school."

Yeah, for some reason not obvious to me, Hey Skipper is really sensitive about being labeled RAFAMIHO. I've been called so many names in my lifetime that being called RAFAMIHO hardly registers at this point, but perhaps that's because I play devil's advocate so much that it's to be expected.

And I do think that instead of worrying about what names one is being called, we just ignored it, discourse would calm down quite a bit.

I am sad that Harry has decided to bail, though.

Hey Skipper said...

Yeah, for some reason not obvious to me, Hey Skipper is really sensitive about being labeled RAFAMIHO.

A. I hate liars

B. Defamation is a perfect example of profound moral deficiency.

C. It isn't just me, I have objected every time Harry has defamed someone. That's a lot of objecting.

D. Did I mention I hate liars?

And I do think that instead of worrying about what names one is being called, we just ignored it, discourse would calm down quite a bit.

I tried that. I repeatedly asked Harry to provide evidence, which he never did. You'd think those would be opportunities enough to knock it off.

Hey Skipper said...

[Bret:] Yeah, for some reason not obvious to me, Hey Skipper is really sensitive about being labeled RAFAMIHO.

After a bit more thought ...

Let's say I accuse you here at Great Guys of paying 14 year old runaway girls for sex. Affect? Likely zero, on account of approximately 0.00000000000% of the world reading anything I write.

Now, let's say I pay a 14 year old runaway $500 to make that accusation to your local paper. Or your business partners. Or your potential customers.

Now the affect might be a heck of a lot different. Ask Phil Robertson, James D'Amore, Justine Sacco, Branden Eich, et al how that worked out for them.

The issue here isn't $500, but rather the underlying moral failure: defamation is extremely nasty business, full stop.

Bret said...

Hey Skipper,

Being accused of having sex with 14-year-old girls by someone credible is rather different than being accused of RAFAMIHO by someone not particularly credible in the heat of a debate. Besides the credibility aspect, the first is highly illegal in addition to being highly immoral. Being accused of RAFAMIHO in private life is not even vaguely illegal.

Clovis said...

Plus, the language Skipper directs to Harry is as (or more) offensive than RAFAMIHO accusations, so I guess Skipper is less innocent than he believes to be on this one.

Hey Skipper said...

[Bret:] Being accused of RAFAMIHO in private life is not even vaguely illegal.

Legal and moral are two entirely different things. To make accusations for which one has absolutely no proof (or, more accurately, abundant proof to the contrary) is immoral, is it not?

Particularly when ample opportunities are provided for retraction or explanation.

[Clovis:] Plus, the language Skipper directs to Harry is as (or more) offensive than RAFAMIHO accusations, so I guess Skipper is less innocent than he believes to be on this one.

Okay, I have provided plenty of examples, so how about citing one or more specifically?

Also, the offensiveness of RAFAMIHO is worth considering -- IMHO -- only to the extent it is untrue, and, to a lesser degree, how frequent its occurrence.

If Harry says things that are offensive, manifestly untrue, and refuses retraction or apology, what language would you suggest?

Bret said...

Hey Skipper: "To make accusations for which one has absolutely no proof (or, more accurately, abundant proof to the contrary) is immoral, is it not?"

Sure. And so?

Don't get me wrong. I don't have much respect for those who are very insulting whether or not they have justification. My style typically is usually to call them on it and move on or even just ignore it. I get that your style is different but I do have trouble understanding it - it just seems to me like a lot of energy for no gain. Maybe you find it cathartic or something.

Bret said...

Hey Skipper wrote: "If Harry says things that are offensive, manifestly untrue, and refuses retraction or apology, what language would you suggest?"

That would be plenty right there as far as I'm concerned. :-)

Hey Skipper said...

[Bret:] Don't get me wrong. I don't have much respect for those who are very insulting whether or not they have justification.

You are missing the point. Dennis Prager gets it.

Is Ben Shapiro a racist? Heather MacDonald?

Do you think it was okay, nothing worth worrying about, or scarcely mentioning, that they were forcibly shut down based upon vile defamation?

It isn't that Harry was insulting, but rather his grotesque lies, practically beyond counting (although I don't recall any pointed your direction), are just as morally repellant as the crap that Also-Fa spews out.

Not quite sure what's hard to understand about that.

erp said...

Skipper, defamation is only half the problem. The other half is ignoring the vile and disgusting stuff left-wingers do, case-in-point, President Clinton, who hangs out with that creep Jeffrey Epstein and had his Peyronie's disease surgery done at a medical facility Epstein setup on his island estate instead of at Walter Reed.

BTW - from another thread. By the time you were of age, the media had already been taken over by the left, but in my day, there were diverse opinions, so people could figure out things for themselves. I'm not as sure as you are that the only a small percentage of people in mental institutions were dangerous -- "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest" not withstanding. It's very expensive to institutionalize people and I don't see any value to anyone in doing so unnecessarily -- federal largesse wasn't what it is today either.

Bret said...

Hey Skipper wrote: "Do you think it was okay, nothing worth worrying about, or scarcely mentioning, that they were forcibly shut down based upon vile defamation?"

I'm afraid you have it backwards. They were going to be forcibly shut down because of their ideology no matter what. The "vile defamation" was just part of the shutdown package and even if they didn't bother with that, they still would've shut them down. Indeed, I think if they hadn't succeeded with the approach they used, they would've hired a hit man and had Shapiro murdered. Would've you preferred that?

But Shapiro et al are rather a different case. As far as I can tell, Harry's verbiage has no actual impact other than offending your sensibilities. Or were you fired from a job or something because of things Harry wrote?

Hey Skipper said...

[Bret:] As far as I can tell, Harry's verbiage has no actual impact other than offending your sensibilities. Or were you fired from a job or something because of things Harry wrote?

I'm struggling to understand why that matters. One of the ten commandments is that against false witness:

There are six things that the LORD strongly dislikes, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. (Proverbs 6:16-19)

I'm not about to assert that just because there is a Commandment, then QED. However, regardless of one's theology, there is a great deal of sense there. Bearing false witness isn't something that is morally inconsequential until there are consequences, any more than drunk driving is OK until someone gets killed.

None of us can predict the future. As unlikely as it might be, an Also-fa could stumble upon GG, do a little doxing, and decide its time to punch a fascist. Harry's bearing false witness is an intrinsic moral failure, driven by unreasoning hatred, regardless of what has, or has not yet, happened.

I'm afraid you have it backwards. They were going to be forcibly shut down because of their ideology no matter what. The "vile defamation" was just part of the shutdown package and even if they didn't bother with that, they still would've shut them down.

You are proposing a causeless effect. Those who shut down Ben Shapiro, Heather MacDonald, et al, are motivated by unreasoning hatred -- putting the label "ideology" on that doesn't change anything. And they continuously prove it -- just as Harry can hurl RAFAMIHO absent a single fact to back it up, the campus Mao-lings, when asked, have absolutely no idea what it is that the targets of their ire have actually said, never mind come close to demonstrating why the people they so violently oppose are wrong in what they said.

Mao-lings are bearing exactly the same false witness Harry does -- and we already know where that kind of thing can end up.

Bret said...

Hey Skipper: "I'm struggling to understand why that matters."

It matters because:
1. Harry's statements don't affect you; and
2. No matter how much you rant and rave against Harry, nothing changes: not Harry, not you, not the world, not anybody's opinion of Harry.
Therefore, there's no objective reason to bother in being so tenacious about pointing out Harry's faults such as false-statements. Therefore, the reason must be subjective and subjective only.

Don't get me wrong. When Harry says things that are false or gratuitously insulting ("gun-nuts" "Whiny Baby Donald" etc.), that does indeed make me think less of him and makes me take him and his arguments less seriously. And when you correctly point out false statements made by him, I do find that helpful if I missed the false statement or didn't know it was false.

Also, don't get me wrong. If you wish to rant and rave against Harry, I won't try to stop you. It just seems like a waste of energy to me - again, because it changes absolutely nothing. Except perhaps being somewhat counterproductive - for example, Harry doesn't comment here anymore, and he was our token lefty so I found it interesting to see what a representative of the left had to say about various things, even if a certain percentage of those statements were false.

Hey Skipper said...

Epic point missing.

This isn't about Harry, per se, but rather the universal characteristic of progressives: demonize, then ostracize.

As well, whether Harry's statements have any effect, or criticizing them will change anything, is confusing the trees for the forest. If bearing false witness is a moral failure, it is a moral failure regardless of the consequences. And your focus on the particular ignores the general. If criticism of Harry is a pointless waste of energy, then how is it that taking on college administrators or the Also-fa on exactly the same ground isn't?

Also, you miss something else. Harry, ultimately, could not take a fraction of what he was dishing out routinely. And that fraction always gave him the opportunity to justify himself, which he never did, because he never could.

Therefore, there's no objective reason to bother in being so tenacious about pointing out Harry's faults such as false-statements. Therefore, the reason must be subjective and subjective only.

Nonsense on stilts. Either Harry's statements were base upon verifiable facts, or they were vile defamations. There's nothing subjective about that. And I wouldn't give a damn, except, as my forays into progressive fever swamps demonstrated, his actions are completely diagnostic of progressivism -- it's hate all the way down.

erp said...

... as I've said repeatedly. That's all Harry's side has. There are no arguments that hold water. He can't manage to believe that he was scammed as were all the rest of the anti-war/civil rights movement protestors. He bought that they were freedom fighters, not actors in an orchestrated propaganda production as was the whole 20th C. from our entry into WWI, to the union movement, the great depression, WWII ...

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] He can't manage to believe that he was scammed as were all the rest of the anti-war/civil rights movement protestors.

I disagree with you somewhat.

Up through at least the 1960s, it was tragically obvious that American society treated both blacks and women as not quite full fledged human beings. I think it fair to say that the same kind of people who, at times courageously, fought for full legal equality then would be progressives now.

There is a critical difference, though. The quest for civil rights was inherently individualistic. And in that regard they were on the right side of history.

However, in other regards, progressives are collectivist, and as such can't possibly regard those who disagree with anything other than unreasoned hatred, due to the circular logic that underlies their worldview: they are progressive because all their opinions are progressive, which are correct by definition, which makes them progressive.

Those who disagree with them occupy one of three categories: too stupid, ignorant, or evil to accept the Truth. The first to psychiatric hospitals, second to reeducation camps, and the third get first the two minute hate, then the gulag.

erp said...

... you are, of course, correct, but as I've also said repeatedly, things were changing the right (pun intended) way, i.e., with each person individually, not by fiat. After the war when women* were drafted to do "men's" jobs and did them well and soldiers came back from fighting along side others different from themselves, things started changing slowly and would have continued to do so, but that wasn't what the elite one-worlders wanted.

They wanted to control us and keep us dumb and dominated then and are even more determined to do so now.

*I was there. As a school girl, I was told girls can't do math, asked to drop a physics course because girls can't understand physics ... Couldn't get a mortgage because I wasn't a man ... and yet it was better then because the women who did push through were better than most of the men, not because of affirmative action. Ditto blacks. Jim Crow wasn't nationwide as I'll bet many of today's citizens do not know and a lot of what is touted as Jim Crow had to do with miscegenation laws and they included not only blacks and whites, but Asians and others. It wasn't until 1967 that the Supreme struck struck them all down.

Brilliant -- he agrees with me :-) -- article in The American Thinker.

Hey Skipper said...

Ben Shapiro nails it:

When someone calls you a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe because you happen to disagree with them about tax policy or same-sex marriage or abortion, that’s bullying. When someone slanders you because you happen to disagree with them about global warming or the government shutdown, that’s bullying. When someone labels you a bad human being because they disagree with you, they are bullying you. They are attacking your character without justification. That’s nasty. In fact, it makes them nasty.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
As a school girl, I was told girls can't do math, asked to drop a physics course because girls can't understand physics ... Couldn't get a mortgage because I wasn't a man ... and yet it was better then because the women who did push through were better than most of the men, not because of affirmative action. Ditto blacks. Jim Crow wasn't nationwide as I'll bet many of today's citizens do not know and a lot of what is touted as Jim Crow had to do with miscegenation laws and they included not only blacks and whites, but Asians and others. It wasn't until 1967 that the Supreme struck struck them all down.
---

And you and Skipper really do find it is a mystery why anyone would read the above and interpret it as racist?

Those damn nasty liberals who can't see it through that only blacks far above the average should be allowed in polite society...

erp said...

Maybe your English isn't as good as I think it is if that's what you got from that statement. Read without your knee-jerk anti-American attitude in the forefront... and I won't restate it.

Only the best and smartest of the oppressed made it through the barriers proving they were as good as or better than the establishment. Polite society didn't enter into to it. It was getting into the best classes, best schools, best jobs, etc. Society would come begging after that. Making it on our own without "help" was taken away and only the most superficial part of us, like skin color, X chromosomes, social position, etc. counted, not what was below the obvious like our brains and talent.

How can that possibly be interpreted as not being allowed into polite society. You can't seem to get away from "allowing" -- "permission." We are a free people who make our own way. That's what's being taken away by these entitlements

People are being put into positions for which they may not be qualified just to fill quotas. In Skipper's line of work and many others, that could be fatal to even to kneejerk progs.

erp said...

Bret, the Captcha is popping up again. :-(

Clovis said...

Funny how my English gets better or worse on account of your moods.


Among the possible interpretations of your lines back there, it is plausible to draw the one that old times were better because it led to only the best, among women or blacks, to prosper. So while average was good enough for white men, women and blacks could by no means be just average if they aspired for equal rights and opportunity.

Is it the only possible interpration? No, but it is as good as any other, so it is upon your shoulders to write less ambiguous sentences, if you want to talk about the use of English.

erp said...

We are talking about an OPPRESSED population and the best way to integrate them into a society that has studiously kept them (us) out -- don't forget women were, if anything, more likely to be dismissed as inferior. Allowing entrance by quotas just perpetuates the idea the oppressed population needs special handling because they can't compete with white males all else being equal. Also add, that because Jews in earlier times and Asians today are more likely to score higher than average on aptitude tests, their quota numbers are limited.

This is a simple concept. It would be no different than saying there should be a quota for tall dark haired men and a quota for short blond men and vice versa on the faculty of all physics departments and then break it down further by ethnicity, latins, anglos, slavs, norsemen, Asians, indigenous peoples from the Americas, Maori's, Pacific Islanders. It's nuts.

Your arguments are not only unconvincing they aren't speaking to the points I'm making.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "Is it the only possible interpration? No, but it is as good as any other..."

Is that interpretation "as good as any other"?

I wouldn't've thought so, but given that Harry would also interpret it that way, maybe so.

It's hard to remember to consider every possible interpretation of what one writes when just jotting down a quick comment.

Bret said...

erp wrote: "...the Captcha is popping up again."

I didn't change anything and I'm not seeing it. Is anyone else?

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] And you and Skipper really do find it is a mystery why anyone would read the above and interpret it as racist?

It is a rare argument that starts with QED.

Providing a direct quote is extremely helpful, so thank you for that.

From the dictionary:

racist: a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another: the comments have led to her being called a racist.

racism: the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races: theories of racism.


Given these definitions as a starting point, instead of starting with QED, your task is to argue how what erp said labels her a racist, or how that her statement embodies racism.

Here's what I interpret what I read. It is obvious she was subjected to sexism — a belief that each member of a class (women) possess the putative characteristics of that class (women aren't smart enough to do physics). That since women aren't capable of managing money, as a woman she isn't credit worthy. (After my parents got divorce in the early 1960s, my mother was subjected to all of this.)

Before, I have asserted that racism is one variant of a type of thinking that should be, but isn't, called groupism: the attributing of a group characteristic to every member of the group.

I assert men commit essentially all violent crime — i.e., a characteristic nearly unique to men. Is noting that an example of sexism? Of course not, it is a fact which any realistic view of humanity must take on board. Now go one step further, and keep in mind this step has already been taken, and assert that men are inherently violent and all them need to be put in camps.

Hey Skipper said...

That is as pure a statement of sexism as you can ever hope to find. If I was to change the group to Muslims, or African-American, or women, there are indeed be unwelcome facts I could soundly assert about each, and denial of which would amount to rejecting reality. But citing facts cannot be cause for labeling someone Islamophobic, racist, or misogynist.

However, extending even a factual characteristic about a group to each member of the group — groupism — is a full frontal assault on logic and statistics. Men have lower voices than women, therefore the next man through the door is going to have a lower voice than the next woman? Statistics breakdown at the level of the individual. Groupism ignores that completely.

Now let's get back to what erp wrote. In order for her to seem racist, or it to be an example of racism, she must have suggested somewhere in there that members of one group (men, whites) were superior to members of other groups (women, blacks).

I can't see even a hint of that, not so much as a glimmer, or even a nod in that direction. Indeed, since it leads with personal experience of being on the receiving end of groupism, it is surprising that you can somehow extract from the rest that she advocates such a thing imposed upon others.

What I do see, loud and clear, is her personal experience used as justification for the opinion that affirmative action, in its various guises, tarnishes the accomplishments of women and blacks who succeed, because too often affirmative action didn't act in addition to merit, but rather despite lack of merit.

Either I am missing something in what she said that at least implies women/blacks are inferior, in which case you would do me a huge favor by curing my blindness, or she didn't, and you are bringing to what she writes a reaction which is your responsibility alone. (And how you get from her quote to this Those damn nasty liberals who can't see it through that only blacks far above the average should be allowed in polite society... has me completely baffled.) The words in their clear meaning and context do not support that conclusion; rather, they convey the opinion that we all would have been far better off if all the awful impediments had been removed, and people were left to their own devices.

It is entirely possible you disagree with her opinion of affirmative action, or you might suggest that she doesn't sufficiently account for entrenched disadvantages African-American face. But those are disagreements over policy, having not the first thing to do with racism.

Hey Skipper said...

Among the possible interpretations of your lines back there, it is plausible to draw the one that old times were better because it led to only the best, among women or blacks, to prosper.

Women who succeeded, absent affirmative action and despite entrenched sexism, or blacks despite systemic racism, never had to worry about their accomplishments being questioned. After affirmative action, that question is always in the background. Why? Because there are far too many cases of people achieving positions due far more to skin color than merit, and others being denied positions due to skin color far more than merit. That latter being Asians in elite colleges, btw, and stands as a perfect example of institutionalized racism.

So I indeed find it a complete mystery how you can find what she said even glancingly fits the words racist, or racism. For that matter, Harry, who applies more expansive definitions of those words — and what those definitions might be we don't yet know — would be very hard pressed to reach that conclusion.

Unless, of course, one is a racist simply by finding progressive notions racial policies profoundly misguided.

erp said...

Skipper, much as I like the idea of men being kept in camps where we can have easy access to pick out one or two we'd like to take home, I do like to have some handy when I need heavy lifting or feel a bout of heavy nagging coming on.

... BTW - thanks for the restating my position so well. The racism and all the other isms are on the left. All we want is to be left alone to enjoy what our FF gave us, a place where we're all equal under the law and otherwise left to our own devices.

BTW 2 - I could expand on my views by saying that the reason for the preponderance of black athletes at every level starting from little league is they are either much more gifted in motor skills than other races for some unknown reason or are smart enough to realize that getting a ball into a 20 foot high basket basket from across the court, hitting a smaller ball with bat ... is not subject to opinion. Either you can do it better than the other guy, or not.

I have opinions on this as well. Blacks who are the offspring of slaves have some good genes. Their ancestors survived the brutality of being wrenched by their fellow Africans, sold to Arab slavers (don't you find it ironic that they are now championing Islam), kept in captivity and in many cases treated cruelly -- yet they survived. No easy task.

IMO, if instead of being told not to act white, bright blacks kids were nurtured and challenged to excel in the classroom, we wouldn't have affirmative action muddying up the waters (and no Clovis, that's not a racist remark).

Bret said...

erp wrote "...or feel a bout of heavy nagging coming on."

LOL. Thank you erp, I needed a hearty laugh today and you provided!

erp said...

Glad to be of service. :-)

BTW - I took a screen shot of the Captcha screen. Remind how to put it in a comment, so you can see it.

Bret said...

erp, I'm not sure it's possible to put images in comments. Can you just email me the screenshot?

erp said...

aog gave me the instructions a while back, but I can't find them.

Clovis said...

Bret,

---
It's hard to remember to consider every possible interpretation of what one writes when just jotting down a quick comment.
---
Indeed, it is.

But since Skipper constantly wonder why Harry could ever think Erp is racist, I tried to point out how some excerpts of Erp's writing could possibly be seen as such.

They both are oblivious to my point, which is more about form than content, because they are oh so desperate to show how that's not the case.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] But since Skipper constantly wonder why Harry could ever think Erp is racist, I tried to point out how some excerpts of Erp's writing could possibly be seen as such.

They both are oblivious to my point, which is more about form than content, because they are oh so desperate to show how that's not the case.


Perhaps we aren't oblivious, but rather you don't have the point you say you do.

Like I said above -- maybe I'm missing something. If so, please make your point instead of starting with QED, ending with QED, and having nothing in between.

erp said...

They who Clovis? Desperate, I am not and from all evidence neither is Skipper. We have an opinion, why not speak to it. I think no one superior nor inferior to me. I despise liars, cheats, the strong who take advantage of the weak, the smart who take advantage of the stupid ...

If you think blacks and women are unable to compete without special handling, say so -- but be prepared with some facts. I have facts, not facts that Google can find written by dimwitted academics who cherry-pick "data" to present a point of view pre-approved by their peers, but what I observed around me.

We were well on our way before the cultural revolution of the 60's -- now over 50 years ago and if we're very lucky, we may actually overturn a lot of that now. Unfortunately, that won't help the almost three generations of ignoramuses turned out by the public schools, but better late than never, we must get the teachers' unions out of our schools and return to a curriculum that will turn out those informed citizen Franklin warned us we'd need in order to keep our republic.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

I will give you her quote again:

"As a school girl, I was told girls can't do math, asked to drop a physics course because girls can't understand physics ... Couldn't get a mortgage because I wasn't a man ... and yet it was better then because the women who did push through were better than most of the men, not because of affirmative action. Ditto blacks. "

So, tell me, you also think it was better then because such system ensured that the small number of women and blacks who achieved success were indeed 'better'?

For if it was better then, by all means we should place Jim Crow back again, and make women go back to their place - doing only the kitchen, laundry, and taking care of the kids - so we would be sure that the few who can rise above that are indeed good enough to deserve a position out of the plantation/kitchen.

To top it all, she gives us this:

"Jim Crow wasn't nationwide as I'll bet many of today's citizens do not know and a lot of what is touted as Jim Crow had to do with miscegenation laws and they included not only blacks and whites, but Asians and others. It wasn't until 1967 that the Supreme struck struck them all down."

Hey, miscegenation laws were not so bad, right? The State telling you who you can marry or not - based on racist laws of 200 years back - is small potatoes, for it still *was better then*, so we should go back to those good old times! Or should we not?

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
We have an opinion, why not speak to it.
---
Because you are missing the simple fact that I am not even trying to counter your opinions, which I know all too well by the way.

erp said...

... Clovis, you left out the point of my comment.

THINGS WERE CHANGING FOR THE BETTER in an organic way.

You may not understand Jim Crow is code for the KKK, lynching, the whippings that Harry is so fond of, etc. My comment was that it that wasn't ever the case in most of country and miscegenation laws were the only blatantly discriminatory law and that applied to all mixed marriages of any races.

Where did I hint that I thought we should go back to those days?

Affirmative action is anathema to a free people and trading inequalities pro for inequalities anti is not a solution. I hope you are not one of those who believe that voting FOR someone because of their race is not racist while voting AGAINST someone because of their race is racist.

erp said...

Clovis, what then are you doing?

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Where did I hint that I thought we should go back to those days?
---
You did not, but most people will assume so - just because almost everyone prefers to chosse the better situation when presented to only two options. And, there again, my point is about the interpretations your excerpt may lead to, not to what you actually think.

erp said...

Clovis -- Are you serious?????????

I don't care what people think. I do my best to present my thoughts clearly. If those who opt to read or listen to me, want to misinterpret, there's nothing I can do about it and to quote Margaret Mitchell in the persona of Rhett Butler, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn"!

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
I do my best to present my thoughts clearly.
---

Oh, you do? Like when you told me Wilson and Roosevelt were communists. I called you on the act about how you misuse the word and language, yet you didn't care either. No, Erp, you don't try your best to present thoughts clearly.

erp said...

They were communists in that they believed that we should emulate the Soviets, not give over our sovereignty and become one of their soviets. You may not believe that, but it is the case. I said it clearly and I mean it.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] So, tell me, you also think it was better then because such system ensured that the small number of women and blacks who achieved success were indeed 'better'?

Try as I might, I cannot recognize your interpretation anywhere in that quote. You cannot possibly get from "affirmative action bad" therefore "sexism/racism good". The former is a policy, the latter two instances of groupism. You aren't just skirting around non sequitur, you have leapt right into it.

And it looks very much like the same leap progressives make when faced with any criticism of any policy regarding sex, race, et al.

With regard to African Americans, it is easily verifiable that during Jim Crow, Black crime rates were lower, far fewer children were born to single mothers, there were far fewer blended families, and very many more fathers in the household, among other things.

Since the repudiation of Jim Crow, all those things have gotten worse.

It is certainly well within the realm of possibility that Great Society welfare policies were significantly contributed to those striking declines.

Which means, as a matter of brute fact, in some regards Blacks were better off under Jim Crow than since. You cannot deny that, without being delusional, and you can't accuse anyone observing this as racist because everyone, regardless of attitude, must — absent delusion — come to the same conclusion.

Therefore, asserting "Great Society bad" cannot possibly get you to "therefore Jim Crow good".

And that is, in essence, exactly what erp was saying. Affirmative action is bad, so bad that blacks and women would have been better off if the concept had never reared its ugly head.. So bad, in fact, that because of affirmative action, in some ways women/and blacks are even worse off than they were under a regime undoubtedly both grossly sexist and racist.

That isn't merely a charitable interpretation of what she wrote, it is the only one possible with the words on the page, which refer to the ill effects of affirmative action.

The clear conclusion is that erp believes women and blacks would have been better off without affirmative action. It is would be a vey odd sexist/racist indeed who opposes a government policy because of the harm it has done to women and blacks. In fact, that kind of sexist/racist would be so odd that one should very seriously consider the possibility that sexist/racist isn't actually either of those things at all.

Hey Skipper said...

As a practical matter, erp might be wrong in general, or in some details, about whether affirmative action harms the groups it is intended to help. But even if her assertion is wrong as a practical matter, you can derive no conclusion whatsoever from that as to whether she is a sexist or racist.

Yet you have done so, nonetheless.

I happen to think many Great Society programs caused a great deal of damage to Black communities, so much so that in some respects they are worse off than they were while subjected to Jim Crow. Consequently, I conclude that had we done nothing other than eliminate Jim Crow wherever it existed, and done nothing else, Blacks as a whole would be better off in many ways than they are now.

Please, and use diagrams where necessary, demonstrate to me that "Great Society bad" leads to "Jim Crow good".

You can't do it. Yet that is exactly what progressives (and Harry) did to Phil Robertson when he said essentially just that.

Consider the obverse. Progressives think "Great Society good", and, by their own definition, are not racists.

Of course, just because progressives think "Great Society good" doesn't therefore mean as a matter of objective fact that the Great Society was, indeed, good. Things aren't true merely because progressives think them.

So what if they are wrong. What if it could be conclusively proven tomorrow that the Great Society was a travesty, and indeed rubbished significant parts of Black culture. Would you go from there to progressives think "Jim Crow good"? Would you then draw the conclusion that because Great Society bad, therefore progressives are racists?

I very much doubt it. Your reading of what erp said not only demonstrates that it is not merely uncharitable, it is a complete failure to observe meaning and context, instead imposing upon it a load it cannot possibly bear.

Oh, and one other thing. It also demonstrates how vital it is, when resorting to RAMAHIFO, to quote exactly, and in context. Far more often than not, those charges vanish when faced with what was actually said, rather than what someone said someone said.

erp said...

Hilarious:

Harvard & AA

WSJ article may not open, but looks like some comeuppances are acoming!

Yippee!

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Hey, miscegenation laws were not so bad, right? The State telling you who you can marry or not - based on racist laws of 200 years back - is small potatoes, for it still *was better then*, so we should go back to those good old times! Or should we not?

A random selection of Sanskrit words would be more closely related to what erp said than that.

Now, I'm aware that per the postmodernists, there are nearly infinitely many ways to read a text. Yet some ways are far more likely to lead to sensible results than others. Your way isn't working.

erp said...

Semantics R us

Hey Skipper, I remember years ago (and probably are still at it), the MLA (Modern Language Association) was touting a new way of interpreting the written word, but can't remember the nutcase's name -- I think it began with 'D.'

In order to learn what an author really meant, one takes the first letter of every sentence and then divines the inner meaning revealed only to those initiated into the mysterious mysteries by advanced degrees in arcane and obtuse academic disciplines. I believe it was/is endorsed by the dean of the nutcases, Norman Chomsky -- be obliged, if you remember it to let me know.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

Text interpretation takes not only what is written, but also many non-explicit hypothesis on the part of both writer and reader.

Hence, it is perfectly fine I may find an interpretation of Erp's excerpt in ways you can't understand.

Often, when communication goes on for a while, many of the non-disclosed assumptions get clearer for both parts, and further understanding of the meaning of their texts is easier.

I have interacted with Erp enough to be perfectly aware of what she meant by that excerpt, and reading you dissecting it over and over is quite boring.

Instead of accusing me of conjuring up Sanskrit, you could as well thank me - if I am not crazy, I may be showing you something you can't see for yourself.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
They were communists in that they believed that we should emulate the Soviets
---
Prove it.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
Therefore, asserting "Great Society bad" cannot possibly get you to "therefore Jim Crow good".
---
Nor I did it. The possible interpretation of Erp's I pointed to was "Jim Crow better than Great Society".

And I conceded to Erp the conclusion "Therefore we should get back to it" does not necessarily follows, but it is only natural some people will take it.

Now, if you can't agree with that interpretation, I really don't care, for I never argued it was the only one, or not even a particularly good one.

erp said...

What proof do you need? Their actions are proof enough. Google has rewritten history, so find some old reference books and look it up.

Clovis said...

Very well presented arguments, Erp. I am utterly convinced.

erp said...

Clovis, as I stated above, I don't care if you or anyone else is convinced. My arguments are clearly stated -- refute them if you like, but please don't use the "your mother wears army shoes" argument.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Nor I did it. The possible interpretation of Erp's I pointed to was "Jim Crow better than Great Society".

Now as a practical, factual matter, it is possible for someone to believe that as bad as Jim Crow was, what the Great Society wreaked was so bad, it produced results even worse than Jim Crow laws did.

Regardless of whether, in objective reality, that assessment is correct, that doesn't make one holding it racist. Once again you are left with the problem of a putative racist preferring the least worst option for Blacks. After all, that really isn't praise for Jim Crow, but rather using the comparison to emphatically damn the Great Society.

Worse, though, is the nasty presumption embedded in that interpretation. (I know you are posing this as a hypothetical, so it isn't an assumption you hold; rather, in order for anyone to make it, their starting point has to be morally vile and intellectually insipid.)

And that is this: without any evidence whatsoever, to reach that assumption requires imposing upon erp a false dilemma: either the Great Society or Jim Crow. She never said that, never hinted at it, never even cast a glance in its direction.

Rather, without that vile and illogical assumption, her meaning is clear: Jim Crow awful, Great Society worse. There's no telling from that quote what she would have preferred instead of Great Society welfare policies, but to assume she thinks it is a return to Jim Crow is Harry level nasty; or, to assume for erp that she has no alternative to the Great Society except Jim Crow stands as the perfect example of a false dilemma.

So, yes, you are right that people could reach such an interpretation. But for those who bound and determined to find the worst possible reading of anything, or should that not be possible, just make it up, the moral deficiency and intellectual failure is on them.

Which, by the way is where toxic PC comes from.

--

Scene Opens. Mini market in a strip mall on Maui. Next to the mini market is a pawn shop. Out front of the pawn shop is a guy who looks suspiciously like Santa Claus.

erp stepping out of the mini market, looks into her shopping bag and exclaims "Darn. Forgot the beer."

Harry, overhearing: "RACIST!"

erp said...

Skipper, good one and if I you recall I have a Santa look-alike right here at home.

However, not to carp after all the nice things you said about my remarks, I have stated many, many times what I think would have better than Jim Crow and/or the Great Society and that was what was happening before they offed Kennedy.

After the war things were improving organically, i.e., not by government fiat. Slowly at first and then as people got comfortable with it, more quickly. I saw that with my own non-lying eyes and TV fare helped by showing more black faces in roles other than menials.

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] However, not to carp after all the nice things you said about my remarks, I have stated many, many times what I think would have better than Jim Crow and/or the Great Society and that was what was happening before they offed Kennedy.

(True. However, was referring to what the quote Clovis provided could convey.)

Peter said...

After the war things were improving organically, i.e., not by government fiat.

I'd be careful with that thinking, erp. William Buckley Jr. agreed with that "organic" theory and spent years opposing forced desegregation by the feds on the basis that it would all occur naturally and less traumatically without government coercion. He subsequently came to admit he was completely wrong.

One of the best histories I've ever read is this one. It's magisterial, but only about half is devoted to the war itself. The first part is a political history of the preceding thirty years and how the divisions and tensions grew so intense they exploded into a bloody war. What is fascinating is his account of how earlier in the century slavery was widely seen in the South as an archaic embarrassment that was well on its way to decline and extinction. That didn't happen. By the 1850's, it was widely embraced as virtuous, natural and the essence of southern identity to such an extent there were serious movements to extend it in the States and export it by arms to Central America.

Best to leave theories of historical inevitability to the left. We cons should know history is a lot messier.

erp said...

Peter, there may have been movements to expand (do you mean the compromises that allowed the U.S. to be born and later ones as new states were admitted into the union?) and export slavery to Central America -- a new one on me -- who was behind this and to what end?), but as you know, there were also many movements to abolish slavery at the time as well. Also, slavery would have ebbed as mechanical contraptions became available to do the slaves' back-breaking work cheaper and more efficiently, but even I am not old enough to have seen it for myself and I put much less trust in learned tomes than you guys do.

I did, however, see for myself that after the war our society was changing and fast, WFB's change of mind not withstanding. Perhaps if I hadn't grown up in a working class neighborhood in Queens, NY and didn't go to school with the children of immigrants from all over the globe as well as coloreds - as black were called then, I might believe what "historians" and academics have to say about it.

BTW - in those days, we were all Americans, not a hyphen in sight!!!!

BTW 2, I believe very little because I know -- having lived in an academic environment all my adult life -- that almost anything published in the last hundred years must come from the left as it's virtually impossible to get the opposite point of view in print.

The good news is the internet changed all that. The bad news is that since the teachers' unions took over the schools in the 60's, they have been brainwashing students with leftist dogma, while not teaching them the three 'rs or even how to sign their names -- cursive is no longer taught in the public schools.

What I find amazing is that anyone believes that the tragic situations in the lives of those blacks who didn't, through their own efforts "move on up" and were herded into ghettoes where they are kept in custodial care aren't worse by many degrees than they were prior to Johnson's CRA.

We've had over 50 years to prove your hypothesis that good works by government fiat is the way to improve society.

Given the evidence, do you really continue to believe that's the way to go?

Peter said...

I'm not talking about general formulas for improving society, I'm talking about ending a rank injustice, which, in the case of Jim Crow, was imposed top-down by government. You are lumping that cause in with your opposition to the Great Society, but they are hardly the same. Do you really think blacks in the South should have continued to suffer all those legal and social disabilities while white southerners slowly changed their minds under influence of TV shows from the North? The immigrant experience of your youth in Queens isn't much an indicator. I think you will find lots of examples the world over that show immigrant populations behave quite differently than homegrown minorities that have suffered long years of oppression.

Doesn't it give you pause to know you probably can't find one black American who agrees with you on Jim Crow?

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Perhaps if I hadn't grown up in a working class neighborhood in Queens, NY and didn't go to school with the children of immigrants from all over the globe as well as coloreds - as black were called then, I might believe what "historians" and academics have to say about it.
---

It is amazing how you can't see how your experience was much the exception.

How much of America, back then, was like New York?

Also, it looks pretty easy to suggest blacks should wait and see, while discriminating laws would be lifted at whatever speed the discriminators chose, given none of that affected you the least.

Clovis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
So, yes, you are right that people could reach such an interpretation. But for those who bound and determined to find the worst possible reading of anything, or should that not be possible, just make it up, the moral deficiency and intellectual failure is on them.
---

First, discussions on the internet are marked by people looking for the worst against their oratory opponents. I am almost shocked to see you haven't realized it so far in this game.

Second, taking a ride in my last comment to Erp, it is customary for people to associate indifference to racial discrimination as veiled racism. Upon seeing i) Erp making less of Jim Crow (by comparing it as better than now), and ii) defending that discriminatory laws should be lifted with no hurry, it is not really surprising that some people will conclude she is racist.

There again, I am trying to argue here why people rushing to RAFAMIHO conclusions are following some kind of reasoning, since you often looks so mystified by their behavior.

erp said...

Are blacks in Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore ghettoes without jobs, prospects, who are hopeless, unschooled, without stable families in a violent atmosphere where killing and theft are common better off or not?

Old time slaves had hope of freedom. These poor slaves of the new plantations don't even have that...

and I don't have to << find >> black Americans to agree with me. I have friends of enhanced melanin who are around my age and who grew up in the deep south as this area was before "tourism" and with whom I've had conversations on this topic and much of my thinking comes from them.

Peter said...

The ghettos of Chicago, Detroit, etc. originated because blacks fled the south and Jim Crow in large numbers. Desegregation freed them, it didn't expel them.

erp said...

... correct. Then why didn't they get educated and move up and out like the children of the other newcomers? I know why, but you may not because I doubt it is featured in any of your research materials.

Unskilled labor jobs became union fiefdoms and they blackballed coloreds, even the municipal unions. It was many years before they broke the color line and by then the custodial state was well established, families as we knew them were non-existent and those caught in the vortex were dependent on the "man" for everything.

Add to that the decline in public schools, the cool mentality of not acting white ... morph that into the current anti-American movement personified by Soros et al.'s puppet Obama and we have Donald Trump in the White House and if he pulls it off, I will publically proclaim my belief that there is a God.

Peter said...

Then why didn't they get educated and move up and out like the children of the other newcomers?

Many of them did.

Bret said...

Peter wrote: "Doesn't it give you pause to know you probably can't find one black American who agrees with you on Jim Crow?"

It may depend exactly on what's being agreed upon, but here's a quote by Thomas Sowell, a very well known black conservative economist:

"The current problems facing blacks in America owe more to the Great Society than to slavery."

I think you'd easily find a large number of conservative blacks like Sowell who think that the Great Society and the War on Poverty and various government programs were the worst thing that ever happened to blacks in this country. I'm interpreting what erp wrote (that things like the Great Society were worse than Jim Crow) to be along those lines.

Hey Skipper said...

[Peter:] I'd be careful with that thinking, erp. William Buckley Jr. agreed with that "organic" theory and spent years opposing forced desegregation by the feds on the basis that it would all occur naturally and less traumatically without government coercion. He subsequently came to admit he was completely wrong.

Unfortunately, forced desegregation hasn't worked so well, either. The percentage of black children who now go to integrated public schools is at its lowest level since 1968. (Although in the military, forced desegregation has worked quite well.)

It's the devil's own problem. Forced desegregation didn't work. Leaving time to solve the problem is the only thing left to us. But intermarriage rates, the demographic way out, are so minuscule as to be practically nonexistent, and the systemic barriers with a cold governmental efficiency almost completely unknown in any other endeavor will be leaving their marks for generations to come.

So Buckley may have been wrong, but there sure doesn't seem to be any "right" anywhere to be found.

One of the best histories I've ever read is this one.

Already one-clicked.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Also, it looks pretty easy to suggest blacks should wait and see, while discriminating laws would be lifted at whatever speed the discriminators chose, given none of that affected you the least.

I think you are reading erp a bit wrong. The elimination of Jim Crow laws (and their ilk, which extended far beyond just the South) couldn't have happened either fast or soon enough. The question is what should have happened next. At this point, and saluting hindsight, it is at least arguable that benign neglect would have been the best policy. Make the allocation of resources equitable, then do nothing else.

[Clovis:] First, discussions on the internet are marked by people looking for the worst against their oratory opponents. I am almost shocked to see you haven't realized it so far in this game.

You said it was possible to interpret what erp said in racist, ways. It isn't.

Of course people, especially on the internet, will ignore the first rule of clear thinking. But their ignoring it, or simply lying, is completely outside the meaning, syntax and context of what erp said. That quote has absolutely zero racist content, and the progressive totalitarian impulse doesn't change that.

I'm sure you remember James Damore, the Google engineer who got fired for having the temerity to suggest that, on average, women are less inclined towards tech fields, and Googles efforts to change that will be futile.

Not a single sentence he wrote was misogynist or sexist. It was a deductive argument based upon published research results. He got fired for violating Google's code of employee conduct, although Google never fussed itself to say how.

Some Google employees supported Damore’s ideas, and some defended his right to voice them. But many staff were simply aghast. “You’re a misogynist and a terrible human,” one colleague emailed him. “I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. Fuck you.”

Leaked posts from Google’s internal message boards show that some of Damore’s most vocal critics were mid-ranking managers. “It has cost me at least two days of productivity and anger, and I am not even the target of its bigoted attacks,” said one manager, declaring he would never work with Damore again. Another said: “I intend to silence these views. They are violently offensive.”


Go ahead, read the memo — it is linked in the article — and see if you can apply the first rule of clear thinking and find anything in it remotely objectionable. You won't.

Instead, this stands as a perfect example of how both how toxic RAFAMIHO is, and from which direction it always comes. Progressives will not tolerate criticism of their shibboleths, and will always seek to first demonize, then ostracize, dissenters. All discussion questioning progressive feminist bromides must be punished, objective reality be damned.

It is also worth noting that with RAFAMIHO, there is never an argument. Just as those so furious with Damore couldn't actually make their point with something he wrote, Harry could never respond when asked to justify himself.

Hey Skipper said...

[Peter:] The ghettos of Chicago, Detroit, etc. originated because blacks fled the south and Jim Crow in large numbers. Desegregation freed them, it didn't expel them.

And then northern racism re-imprisoned them nearly as badly as Jim Crow had.

Interestingly, there is a significant return migration.

[Bret:] I think you'd easily find a large number of conservative blacks like Sowell who think that the Great Society and the War on Poverty and various government programs were the worst thing that ever happened to blacks in this country. I'm interpreting what erp wrote (that things like the Great Society were worse than Jim Crow) to be along those lines.

If you listen closely, that sound you are hearing is my head slamming against the desk.

Had I remembered Sowell, I could have reduced whole swathes of typing to, well, what you just wrote.

erp said...

Peter, it might surprise you to know that many blacks moved on up even during Jim Crow when workers were needed for the war effort -- they took what they could get, even coloreds and women -- both of whom performed as well as men. That's what I mean when I say times were achanging.

Most of the blacks in the big city ghettoes are the offspring of the population who left during the war, not after the CRA. The union movement, a by-product of real communists, is more responsible for the plight of blacks than Jim Crow.

"Please stop helping us" applies to all of We, the People.

Peter said...

Why do I feel I'm being piled on by a group bait and switch? I only got into this because I took erp's comment to say that Jim Crow should have run its course organically rather than be ended by the dramatic fiat of a hostile government. If I got that wrong, mea culpa, but it hardly adds up to defending the Great Society?

Bret said...

Peter,

I did say "it may depend exactly on what's being agreed upon..." but if I baited and switched I apologize. erp wrote "Negroes ... were better off under Jim Crow than they are now" and I think Sowell would agree with that having read a lot of his writing.

Peter said...

I like Sowell too, but I'm not at all sure that is what he is saying and if he is, I don't agree with him, starting with his generalizing about historical slavery (16th-19th century New World chattel slavery was a lot more brutal than a lot of other historical examples). But look at that link I posted about the black middle class, which is quite sizeable and only started growing in numbers after desegregation. I thought the American dream was all about self-improvement and moving forward. You guys are starting to remind me of the English Romantic poets whos response to the social traumas of the Industrial Revolution was to get all dreamy about the semi-feudal rural life so many couldn't wait to leave behind.

Clovis said...

Thanks Peter, I am glad you showed up and took some of those punchs in my place.

Without Harry, it is getting tiresome to be the only dissonant voice here.

I propose Skipper, Erp and Sowell should get a 5 minutes sections of being lynched by a KKK mob, so afterwards we get back to this 'better off under Jim Crow' topic with a bit more experience at hand. Some things are way too easy to say, a hundred years after.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
I think you are reading erp a bit wrong. The elimination of Jim Crow laws (and their ilk, which extended far beyond just the South) couldn't have happened either fast or soon enough.
---

Though I believe Erp thinks so, I had no indication in his writings that's the case - it is perfectly fine to interpret her lines otherwise, and many people would.


---
You said it was possible to interpret what erp said in racist, ways. It isn't.
---
You gotta need to decide, because the Skipper of a few comments back there told me "So, yes, you are right that people could reach such an interpretation".


---
It is also worth noting that with RAFAMIHO, there is never an argument. Just as those so furious with Damore couldn't actually make their point with something he wrote, Harry could never respond when asked to justify himself.
---
Right, and though I won't take Damore's case (no time for that), I tried my best to show what I see as Harry's line of reasoning. I agree with you they are not following your first rule of clear thinking - but I am doing that job to break down what is their thinking, to you. Unfortunately, it is a job that doesn't pay very well.

erp said...

Peter, here I thought my prose was so precise. I did, after all, write handbooks, course catalogues and other expository stuff for faculty and students and acted as an editor for college publications.

I did not say that Jim Crow would run its course organically.

I said things would improve organically. A slower, but surer way for change to work to benefit all.

I didn't think I needed to say that in the process Jim Crow would become irrelevant, something like when the old white-shoe brokerage houses wouldn't hire Jews and the elite universities wouldn't admit their kids, they opened their own shops and as they say, the rest is history ... and with enough money comes clout, so ....

erp said...

There are probably more blacks being killed by other blacks in the ghettos of the large cities in one year than were lynched by the KKK over the entire span of slavery. I don't have time to look it up in my old reference books (I don't believe Google on these matters), but memory serves a number less than 200. A single lynching on is indefensible, but so is a single child killed in a gang fight while sitting in front of his home.

Clovis, be careful looking up things on Google. Their mission is to promote the narrative, not provide the truth.

Bret said...

Peter wrote: "I like Sowell too, but I'm not at all sure that is what he is saying and if he is, I don't agree with him..."

Just to be clear, the reason I joined this discussion is that I disagreed with "...can't find one black American who agrees..." with erp's statement. I'm pretty sure that's not true as exemplified by Sowell. I'm not going to argue Sowell's beliefs because they're readily available via google for anyone who's interested, but given the numerous articles and books of his that I've read, he and erp have remarkably similar beliefs.

I leave you with one more excerpt along these lines:

'As [black] George Mason University professor Walter E. Williams puts it: “The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do. And that is to destroy the black family.” Hoover Institution Fellow Thomas Sowell concurs: “The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”'

Their beliefs seem pretty clear to me and they seem to me to sound an awful lot like erp.

erp said...

Sowell is even older by four years than I am, so he's been around and seen the same stuff with his own eyes that I have. Although born in the south, he moved to Harlem at a young age and is a product of the same public schools as I.

Clovis, I don't understand your need to dispute my prose. You have the right to disagree and think things are better for blacks now. Of course, you're wrong, but it's also your right to be wrong.

Neither you nor Peter have boots on the ground on this issue.

Bret said...

erp and Hey Skipper:

It looks to me that Clovis is simply pointing out that some of what erp has written would certainly be interpreted by some people as being very racist. He's not accusing erp of being racist, instead just noting that it could possibly maybe kinda be interpreted differently than what erp intended.

In this, I agree with Clovis, and I'm surprised that y'all do not. It doesn't matter if it is or isn't objectively racist, in considering all of the people who I've ever interacted with, a large percentage would consider many statements like "I believe blacks, coloreds, Negroes ... were better off under Jim Crow than they are now." It doesn't matter the intent, it doesn't matter how the statement is objectively supported by data, and it doesn't matter that blacks like Sowell can say almost exactly the same thing and not be considered racist. It's still true that such a statement will be considered racist by a lot of people.

Hey Skipper wrote that "Only someone utterly antagonistic towards logic, meaning, and syntax could label that assertion as racist." Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but it doesn't matter. "Logic, meaning, and syntax" are only part of interpretation. Subjective experiences, assumed context, preconceived notions, mood at the moment, preferences, prejudice, etc. all play a large role (as they should in my opinion).

One of my favorite sayings when blogging is "The curse of authorship is that the information conveyed is not necessarily what the writer intended, but rather what the reader chooses to infer." In fact, at this point I'm pretty sure that virtually every bit of writing is at least partly misinterpreted by most readers. That's just how it is. Life as a blogger or commenter just isn't fair.

Bret said...

There, I think I've criticized everybody, right? Nobody should feel left out!

And on that note, Happy Thanksgiving!

erp said...

Bret, the statement you quoted was sarcasm which is to a New Yorker as mother's milk, but I should have labeled as such. I think a lot of Clovis' misinterpretation is for the same reason.

I hope this won't be misinterpreted:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL.

Clovis said...

Guys, why do you give thanksgiving, if you are atheists? Isn't it supposed to be a thanks to God or something like that? (Ok, I get you are only following your culture, but I still want to know what are your personal views of this holiday)

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
There are probably more blacks being killed by other blacks in the ghettos of the large cities in one year than were lynched by the KKK over the entire span of slavery.
---

So what? You can not ever prove that's a consequence of welfare.

I know that because, down here, blacks never had any welfare, and they kill each other (and other people) far more often than up there. Say what?

erp said...

... of course, here it's a small percentage of the black population -- just those who've been robbed of their humanity and kept in custodial care in order to keep the pot stirred (pun on Thanksgiving) and to serve as their masters' bludgeon to beat down their opponents and continue down the road to socialism.

Down your way, I don't know why.

Thanksgiving Day is my favorite holiday because it is totally American and purely sectarian and a scrumptious medley of traditional turkey and fixings and individual family favorites. Pumpkin mousse is a thing that dreams are made of.

Nothing is required except eating and good cheer.

erp said...

Last word from me on the subject of race.

After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball by being an incredibly great player, there was a problem when black team members weren't able to stay at various white-only hotels. It was solved pronto when the whole team walkd out and stayed in a black hotel. Easy-peasy fix.

BTW my girl friend and I used to take the el to Ebbets Field to see our dreamboat Duke Snyder play. Little did we know the world would be torn apart only a few years later.

Sigh. 😡😠

erp said...

Err, above, Thanksgiving Day is non-sectarian. Typing on an iPad is challenging, especially one almost as old in device years as I am in human years. Needs to be constantly restarted. Would toss it into the river except the kids use it for pictures, etc.

Peter said...

Neither you nor Peter have boots on the ground on this issue.

True for me, erp, although I'm not sure it's true for Clovis. But don't you know that it is the God-given right of all Westerners, if not the whole world, to opine openly on American politics and society in a manner we would resent deeply if you did it to us? It's you fault, you started it with all that city-on-the-hill stuff. Plus you have to realize that most of the criticism from abroad you find so irksome is inspired by your countrymen. Nobody does anti-Americanism as well as your fellow Americans. :-)

Clovis, Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. We do it too, although ours is in early October for obvious climatic reasons. The basics are the same--family get-together, turkey dinner, a little sports, etc.--but as with many things, we're more understated. For example, we don't shop as if it were our last day on earth. And one thing we don't do is clog all our airports by travelling en masse across the continent to get home. I'm always amazed at the desperate lengths Americans will go to to get home and overeat and drink for a couple of days, only to repeat the whole thing four weeks later. Anyway, please join me in raising a glass or two to wish our friends a very Happy Thanksgiving.

erp said...

Peter, I, for one American, don't find criticism irksome. I was pointing out that non-Americans (I, for one again, don't like that only U.S. citizens are called Americans because everyone in the Western Hemisphere is an American by geography, although, truth be told, I love being in the Ugly American category.

Criticize all you want, but understand that you and Clovis and almost all other critics not of We, the People mostly don't "get it."

The U.S.of A. is not a product of Catholic, read Jesuit, mentality for which I am very glad because there's little I hate more than to be told what I can and cannot do especially by those for whom I have very little respect.

We travel round the country going home for a couple of days at Thanksgiving and then repeat again in a couple of weeks for Christmas because we can. :-)

erp said...

Another take on Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. Pilgrims were the dupes and were taken advantage of by the Indians.

Clovis said...

Well, happy thanksgiving for you guys then.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I propose Skipper, Erp and Sowell should get a 5 minutes sections of being lynched by a KKK mob, so afterwards we get back to this 'better off under Jim Crow' topic with a bit more experience at hand. Some things are way too easy to say, a hundred years after.

Do have any idea how insulting that is? Seriously. Give it a moment's thought and see if that is sufficient for you to come to terms with what you are implying.

Now let's talk numbers. 3500 blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1968. That amounts to 41 per year.

During 2016, in Chicago alone, 326 Blacks were murdered. Nationwide, ~7500 Blacks were murdered, compared to ~5800 Whites.

How does 7500/year compare to 41/year? One of those numbers better than the other?


Granted, 41 lynchings per year (on average; heavily weighted towards the earlier part of the period) doesn't include all murders of Blacks. But that doesn't seem like nearly enough help. Unfortunately, within the time I'm willing to spend, the total number of blacks murdered during, say, 1920 (roughly halfway through the span of lynchings) isn't available within the time I'm willing to devote to it. Nor is the rate.

Nonetheless, I'm going to hazard a guess that throughout the predation known as Jim Crow, the Black murder rate was far less than it is now.

If that is true, and I'm betting it is, then if becoming dead matters, Blacks have been worse off since Jim Crow.

To reiterate for those unwilling to apply the first principle of clear thinking, that isn't a justification for Jim Crow; rather, it justifies* a damning indictment of policies enacted since Jim Crow. We all acknowledge — your insults aside — how bad Jim Crow was. Why is it so hard to understand that saying things are worse since something plenty awful does not amount to an assertion that Blacks are inferior?

Though I believe Erp thinks so, I had no indication in his writings that's the case - it is perfectly fine to interpret her lines otherwise, and many people would.

It isn't, and you haven't begun to demonstrate that. I challenged you above to show how her quote fit the definition of "racist" or "racism". So far, I haven't seen it.

The essence of clear thinking is to state accurately and fairly the opinions of those with whom you disagree. No accurate and fair assessment of what erp (or I) have ever written gets you even close.

Yes, "… people could reach such an interpretation", in the sense that people can leap to all sorts of stupid, baseless, conclusions. BTW, you left out the rest of my quote, which is But for those who bound and determined to find the worst possible reading of anything, or should that not be possible, just make it up, the moral deficiency and intellectual failure is on them.

Why did you leave that out?

If haters — Harry, and all progs — insist upon shouting RAFAMIHO at every contradiction, does the fault lie with erp, or them? It sounds an awful lot like you prefer to blame the victim.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I tried my best to show what I see as Harry's line of reasoning. I agree with you they are not following your first rule of clear thinking - but I am doing that job to break down what is their thinking, to you. Unfortunately, it is a job that doesn't pay very well.

I get that, just as I understand that you are acting primarily as a conduit for others' opinions, rather than having these opinions as your own.

But I think you are missing something. Harry, and, by proven extension, most progressives are not reasoning in any recognizable sense of the term. Many times I have challenged him to substantiate his defamations. Not once has he done so. Just as when I forayed into the progressive fever blog swamps did anyone actually demonstrate how Robertson was a racist, or how Damore was a misogynist. If I wanted examples of hatred on parade, I could scarcely do better than them.

That failure is completely diagnostic of a complete absence of reasoning. Not bad reasoning, not conclusions incorrectly drawn from evidence, or correctly drawn from poor evidence, but rather the leveling of noxious charges in the complete absence of evidence and reason.

Hey Skipper said...

[Bret:] It looks to me that Clovis is simply pointing out that some of what erp has written would certainly be interpreted by some people as being very racist. He's not accusing erp of being racist, instead just noting that it could possibly maybe kinda be interpreted differently than what erp intended.

I understand that is what Clovis is trying to do.

However, there is a huge gap between assertion and demonstration.

Here is how to decide what erp wrote is racist: Great Society was even worse than Jim Crow, therefore Blacks are inferior.

So, yes. One could read what erp wrote and get to racist, but only via a glaring non sequitur. There is no possible interpretation of what she wrote that leads anyone to "racist" unless they were determined to get there in the first place. People — Harry — who get to that conclusion are beyond reason and are themselves guilty of the kind of hatred they project onto others.

And it matters a great deal whether it is objectively racist, because RAFAMIHO is the basis of toxic PC: putting certain topics out of bounds. It is bullying as a means of censorship.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Guys, why do you give thanksgiving, if you are atheists? Isn't it supposed to be a thanks to God or something like that?

Excellent question.

Thanksgiving is indeed a Christian holiday. But as with many Christian ideas, (and, to be fair, similar ideas in any religion) they are worthwhile even if there is no God. For example, on the whole widespread fidelity produces better results than sexual incontinence even for atheists.

At the risk of possibly making ridiculous statements, Thanksgiving is an occasion to be grateful for blessings we did not earn.

There is scarcely a day that goes by without my being very aware that I am the beneficiary of advantages I did nothing to deserve. I didn't "earn" the good health that allowed me to pass the rigorous physical that allowed me to become a pilot in the first place, nor the luck of moving to exactly the right place later on to get me hired at FedEx. I could go on for entire paragraphs listing all the advantages I've had in life that came unbidden to me. And even for those things I did earn, it is at least arguable that I was able to earn them only because I was born with the qualities to do so.

(Which, in a couple sentences, is the moral argument for socialism.)

So, even though I'm an atheist, I do give thanks for blessing that exist whether God does, or not.

(Even though I spent Thanksgiving alone in an apartment eating Thai takeout because my wife is back in the States with her cubs.)

erp said...

Just an interjection about sarcasm again. Lots of what I write is sarcastic about stuff you guys are too young to get and Clovis for sure doesn't get, like the list of the different appellations that racists have applied to people of enhanced melanin over the years.

It's infuriating. Those who make up these rules are so anxious to outwardly show how tolerant they are, they try to make those darkies think they think they are their equals when nothing could be further from the truth.

There is nothing wrong with the word, Negro, It simply means a human being of the Negroid race originating in Equatorial Africa. Mongoloid similarly applies to some Asian* peoples and Caucasian to peoples of northern climes, North Africa to southern Asia ...

Rumor has it that we humans originated in the middle of Africa and then meandered around the globe. If I my druthers, we in the U.S. would immediately stop labeling people, stop hyphenating us, so we could all get on with living as equals under the law.

*I just read about a Supreme Court decision allowing a band to trademark the name of their band, The Slants. Imagine it had to go to the Supremes!!!!

The world has gone mad. Let's hope we're on the road back to sanity.

Bret said...

Hey Skipper wrote: "I understand that is what Clovis is trying to do."

Oh good. I wasn't sure.

Hey Skipper wrote: "Here is how to decide what erp wrote is racist..."

Here's another way to interpret erp's "...blacks ... were better off under Jim Crow than they are now": "Jim Crow laws weren't particularly bad."

Is that what erp meant? No. Knowing erp and reasonably considering the context do I think that's a valid interpretation? No.

However, if I didn't know the writer of such a statement or if I didn't carefully consider the context (and let's face it, who has time to carefully consider ever last thing spewed forth on the Internet?), and I saw that statement? I'd think it was racist. Would I care? Not terribly much and it's pretty rare for me to use RAFAMIHO insults, but I'd still think it was racist. And that's even though I know that Sowell and Williams and other black conservatives have written stuff that's essentially identical.

Indeed, I enjoy stirring the pot (in case you haven't noticed) and I might use a statement like that just to provoke accusations of racism against me, because, unlike you, such accusations don't really bother me coming from the (mostly) losers who fling RAFAMIHO about.

Anyway, you've made your point that nobody could possibly think such a statement is racist "unless they were determined to get there in the first place."

I disagree.

erp said...

... and if one read the rest of the comment, that statement would have been explained.

Bret said...

Hey Skipper wrote: "...does the fault lie with erp, or them?"

I don't think there's any fault. Somebody tried to convey information, someone else read it and interpreted it. Both are limited by experience and capability and the writer is very often misunderstood.

However, if there is fault to be assigned, it's always with the writer, in my opinion.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
Do have any idea how insulting that is? Seriously. Give it a moment's thought and see if that is sufficient for you to come to terms with what you are implying.
---
Why? I was not implying you should be beaten by force, but that you should volunteer to do so - I, for one, would feel obliged after saying Jim Crow was better than now. But that's me.

As for your whole lot of statistics on crime now, I will give you the same line I gave to Erp up above: "So what? You can not ever prove that's a consequence of welfare. I know that because, down here, blacks never had any welfare, and they kill each other (and other people) far more often than up there. Say what?"

As in America, crime rate by blacks was very low before the 70's. Very differently from America, we had never a Great Society, only a Not-Great-al-All one. Before 2003, welfare for poor black families was almost unheard of down here. And after 2003, the correlation between welfare introduction and crime statistics looks nill.

You may want to take the easy out - "Hey, this is America, such things here have nothing to do with Brazil" - but if you do, you are a coward.

erp said...

Clovis, you are making the same mistakes over and over. Life in Brazil and the U.S. is not the same for blacks, so comparing crime statistics, etc. is meaningless. Crime in black communities wasn't higher than elsewhere before welfare, not because of welfare per se, but because black communities, like the rest of the U.S. were based on stable families, with church and other local community based services and even if the schools used cast off text books and didn't have a lot of the extras schools in more affluent areas had, kids learned and were taught the same things including learning manners and courtesy.

This was confirmed for me when a friend my age who went to a segregated school here in what was a remote poor area of the south had basically the same curriculum, except for the Catholic dogma I endured in grammar school. We both memorized the same poems, one line we both remembered was, ..."shoot if you must this old grey head, but spare your country's flag she said." I was going to link to it, but true to form Google links to sites bashing the poem and the sentiment.

... and it you sensitive to insults, why do you continually quote what I said about Jim Crow as being better, i.e., less bad, not good in of itself, than what came after it without continuing to quote what I give as reasons for believing it.

Clovis said...

Erp,

I did not see you complaining about the many comparisons Skipper does, now and then, about Scandinavians and American-Scandinavians. I suspect you'll need to come up with a reason why comparisons between Africans, African-Americans and African-Brazilians is verboten.

Cultural and demographic transformations had a large role in changing black family structures. To wit, you see the same transformations in countries with wildly different welfare systems, such as the US and Brazil. So one might reasonably suspect welfare is not the primary reason - if, of course, you want to understand the phenomena, instead of advancing your ideology.

---
... and it you sensitive to insults, why do you continually quote what I said about Jim Crow as being better, i.e., less bad, not good in of itself, than what came after it without continuing to quote what I give as reasons for believing it.
---

Because I believe the main cause you attribute for it - welfare - is bogus. Instead of addressing that weakness, you just keep repeating yourself over and over.

Furthermore, I could not myself ever defend that position - Jim Crow was better - without looking to the other affected individuals in that comparison. You think (wrongly, IMHO) that Great Society led to the present woes of black communities. But I read the black population in America is 30% to 50% under welfare (depending on its definition).

Well, what to say of the other 50% to 70%? Would they be better off under Jim Crow than under the life they have now?

In the end, you are indeed trading the individual for the collective in that comparison, getting nearer the definition of racism Skipper so studiously want to have proved (please, Skipper, do not give another ultra-prolix discourse dissecting how it must not be racism).

erp said...

I don't remember Skipper saying anything pro or con about Americans of Scandinavian backgrounds????

Skipper did the heavy lifting with numbers. Even if they may exaggerated to show more lynching than I remember as in today's world all reference materials are controlled by Google, they confirm my take. Welfare is the cause of today's woes in the black ghettoes.

If after Jim Crow was declared illegal, blacks were left to their own devices, I would of course not have made that statement, but since the Great Society was immediately enacted, I rest my case.

There is now and always have been blacks in working, middle, and upper class mainstream American society. This is a big country and nothing like even half of it had any kind of Jim Crow law never mind lynchings and whippings -- Google not withstanding.

There are quite a few Haitian and African immigrants, male & female, working in the medical field in this area -- they shake their heads at the antics of BLM, etc.

I do not presume to compare what I know to be true of things in the U.S. with any other country and I wonder why you believe you know more about our history than those of us living through it when all you have to go by is one hundred years and counting of books, films, TV, etc. written and produced by those on the left whom I blame for the near destruction of the greatest country that ever existed on the face of the earth.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] In the end, you are indeed trading the individual for the collective in that comparison, getting nearer the definition of racism Skipper so studiously want to have proved (please, Skipper, do not give another ultra-prolix discourse dissecting how it must not be racism).

You started out with QED. Which is why I had to do all that damn typing.

Here is the problem before you: [Jim Crow was (fill in the blank)] AND [Great Society was even worse] THEREFORE [Blacks inferior].

In order to safely conclude what erp said is racist, you have to get to the other end of THEREFORE.

By all means, do it.

Peter said...

Please stop, everybody. You have all stated your positions on this issue many times. This is a nice little boutique blog in an era when all the rage is to insult people in 140 characters, over and over again. They're are a lot of interesting issues out there, so let's explore them.

erp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erp said...

I going to start taking it personally. I put up a cute em and two black question marks appeared? Trying again.

It's supposed to be a conspiratorial wink.

Trying thumbs up this time.

🤗

erp said...

Peter, I really try, but this keeps happening.

Hey Skipper said...

[Peter:] Please stop, everybody. You have all stated your positions on this issue many times. This is a nice little boutique blog in an era when all the rage is to insult people in 140 characters, over and over again.

And that after I have been pinged for "prolix typing".

The reason I have to keep repeating myself is this: Like I said above -- maybe I'm missing something. If so, please make your point instead of starting with QED, ending with QED, and having nothing in between.

Using erp's quote as Exhibit A, it isn't nearly enough to say it gave off at least a whiff of racism. At the very least, the Duck Test is required, yet none has been forthcoming.

And this isn't some idle itch I'm scratching. If one wishes to see what is toxic in US political culture today, there is no need to go any further. From the Unified Theory of Madness, this is exactly on point:

[Progressives] have taken a whole area of human thought, namely, everything embraced in ethics, politics, morals, economics and history, and declared it all sacred, off limits, and forbidden to be thought about.

In the memorable phrase of Sayet, they have defined reasoning as a hate crime.

By their theory, no fact and no conclusions of common sense are neutral. All are tainted by the original sin of bias and bigotry. The act of bringing up a fact is never, never an act done in the impersonal pursuit of truth. For them there is no truth, and even if there were, there is no impartiality. The act of bringing up a fact is always an act of aggression, an imposition, if not an attack.

This explains our first paradox. [Progressives] are decent and honest people. Their motive for avoiding reason is compassion, because they wish not to be tempted by hate, bigotry, or thought crime. However, once reason is forbidden, facts, common sense, and evidence, likewise are as meaningless to them as to a Buddhist to whom all the world is illusion.

It is not that they cannot reason; it is that they follow a moral imperative against reasoning on certain forbidden topics. Anything outside those topics, their rational faculties function normally. Within those topics, their sanctimoniousness and high-mindedness requires them to refuse to listen to reason.


Laughing instances of this off simply because they don't put someone's eye out is a mistake.

erp said...

Skipper, it used to be the case, outside forbidden topics, their (progs) rational faculties functioned normally. Since the Clinton's, however, everything has been politicized. It started with the White House Travel Office which no one knew even existed and went on to every word and deed down to one's choices in breakfast cereal.

Here's what a woman with boots on ground's has to say:

FTA Back in the day when I was growing up in the racially segregated South, the opposite prevailed in many cases. There was much injustice particularly toward black men, but not today. Today, too many blacks have been fed the notion that it is now “pay-back” time, and they can flaunt their lawlessness because some whites flaunted theirs during an earlier time in our nation’s history.

Although Obama and Holder no longer wield power in this country, some of their minions continue on the pernicious path of “paying back” American whites for wrongs, real or imagined. But as the saying goes, there is a new Sheriff in town and he is not guilt-conflicted. He expects fair play under law and tolerating pay-back is not part of his agenda. Black Americans, when they break the law, can no longer claim victim status simply because they are black. Those days are over.

Hey Skipper said...

Affirmative Action on parade.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
Here is the problem before you: [Jim Crow was (fill in the blank)] AND [Great Society was even worse] THEREFORE [Blacks inferior].
---

Let's try:

Jim Crow was bad for blacks AND Great Society was even worse - because giving free stuff made them lazy and dependent on the State, and led them to forfeit family and community bonds - BUT, as welfare had this effect only on Blacks (hey, welfare is given to anyone in need in America), gosh, those blacks must be a bit inferior, mustn't them?

There you have another possible interpretation of Erp's.

Clovis said...

Peter,

---
They're are a lot of interesting issues out there, so let's explore them.
---
There is Peter, but half the reason I am here is to tease Erp and cross horns with Skipper. I am, after all, not Canadian :-)

erp said...

Clovis, I sure hope your research isn't using the same logic you are using here.

Jim Crow targeted blacks; Blacks seduced by the blandishments of the Great Society & AA are worse off now than under Jim Crow.

By what logic would you expect those never affected by Jim Crow to be included in the discussion?

It's a given that the Great Society is a disaster for all of We, the People regardless of prior situations.

erp said...

Peter, what do you think of my theory that Trump is deliberately giving lefties up and down the spectrum enough rope to hang themselves? I'm enjoying it no end.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Why your focus on welfare for Blacks?

You implied before they kill each other nowadays because they got welfare. What about the other (non-black) recipients of welfare? Why are they not killing each other too?

erp said...

Clovis, I implied nothing. I stated my opinions clearly and forthrightly. In discussing Jim Crow I stated, as did Skipper, that more blacks are killed in one year by other blacks in modern day plantations where they are kept in custodial care than were murdered during the many decades of Jim Crow.

There is no comparison possible with other welfare recipients because, as I said elsewhere, they weren't victims of Jim Crow.

You have a basic misunderstanding of the issue.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Stop mumbling and answer: why welfare destroyed black family but did no such thing with other non-black recipients?

You said up above: "Welfare is the cause of today's woes in the black ghettoes. " Why *ONLY* blacks suffer such side effect?

Bret said...

Clovis,

Poor whites have also been destroyed by welfare, government intervention and various market forces. Much of Appalachia has also been in dire straits for decades and is almost completely white.

erp said...

Jeesh, Clovis. I have said 17 different ways. We are discussing Jim Crow and I have said that welfare has destroyed anyone it touched.

The original premise was and is that blacks are worse off now than under Jim Crow. Jim Crow blacks were the descendants of slaves. There are and were many blacks that weren't slaves etc etc.

I never have mumbled in my life.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] BUT, as welfare had this effect only on Blacks (hey, welfare is given to anyone in need in America), gosh, those blacks must be a bit inferior, mustn't they?

That's no help at all, Clovis. Worse, that is a racist conclusion you drew from non-racist facts. Which can only mean one thing about you. Right?

Of course not. I don't believe for a second you are a racist because you could proffer a racist conclusion where none exists.

However, I think you can see the danger in imposing upon others conclusions they never drew. That's the source of toxic PC -- which always comes from progressives -- using RAFAMIHO to put certain topics out of bounds by ostracizing whoever has the temerity to bring them up.

Questioning affirmative action, for instance, will always bring that charge, no matter how principled the dissent is.

You implied before they kill each other nowadays because they got welfare. What about the other (non-black) recipients of welfare? Why are they not killing each other too?

This could start a long discussion that will go way off topic, but here are a few reasons, to which both de jure and de facto apply:

-- Housing policies throughout the US ghettoized blacks, which concentrated poverty into sharply delineated areas

-- Lending policies prevented blacks from purchasing property as a means of accumulating wealth and passing it on to their children.

-- Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) meant that to poor women, poor men had negative economic value.

-- Lifetime entitlement to adult welfare led to generational unemployment.

There are many other factors that I could add, but these will do. The ghettoization of blacks meant that all the corrosive effects of welfare -- dependency and the breakdown of the family structure are just two of them -- were uniquely concentrated in black communities. It is one thing to grow up in a fatherless family when 75% of the families have a resident father, another thing entirely virtually none do. Since other race poverty was never nearly as concentrated as black poverty, then other races never lived in areas where family breakdown was nearly so pervasive.

And the same is true of generational unemployment.

There is plenty more, but that should be sufficient to make the point. Great Society welfare policies, no matter how well intentioned, had awful consequences. Due to longstanding, pervasive, discrimination, blacks uniquely bore the brunt of those policies, and the results are plain to see.

In 1965, Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist and, at the time, Assistant Secretary of Labor, authored The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.

Here is its thesis:

Moynihan argued that without access to jobs and the means to contribute meaningful support to a family, black men would become systematically alienated from their roles as husbands and fathers, which would cause rates of divorce, child abandonment and out-of-wedlock births to skyrocket in the black community (a trend that had already begun by the mid-1960s), leading to vast increases in the numbers of households headed by females and the higher rates of poverty, low educational outcomes, and inflated rates of child abuse that are associated with them.

Remember, that was in 1965.

He was, of course, attacked as a racist.

Clovis said...

Bret,

---
Poor whites have also been destroyed by welfare,
---

Easy to say, but can you prove it?

Clovis said...

Skipper,

Thanks for your answer.

Now do me a favor, take welfare out of all the points you mentioned, and tell me, do the conclusions no longer follow?

Take Moynihan's conclusions you quoted, and point out to me where do welfare enters?

Because, as I mentioned before, all the same things happened down here -- and remember I have a greater sample space than you -- *without* welfare: ghettoization, lack of jobs and break down of families.

How interesting, you and Erp proposes as cause something that, taken out, makes little difference. Strange notion of causality, that one.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Now do me a favor, take welfare out of all the points you mentioned, and tell me, do the conclusions no longer follow?

That's impossible to say. AFDC and lifetime entitlement to welfare were both, due to long standing systemic racism (the actual kind), uniquely pervasive in black ghettos. Those last two words are important. No other community in the US has been ghettoized and provided dependency encouraging policies such as these.

On second thought, that isn't quite true. Indigenous Americans on reservations were the victims of both ostracism, then intrusive paternalism. And their social and cultural pathologies are just as awful. (When I lived in Alaska, a friend of ours was a dentist who periodically traveled out to bush communities to provide free-to-them dental care. The stories he told were appalling.)

I can't take eliminate welfare from consideration anymore than I can the systemic racism that preceded it.

Take Moynihan's conclusions you quoted, and point out to me where do welfare enters?

Right here: Writing to Lyndon Johnson, Moynihan argued that without access to jobs and the means to contribute meaningful support to a family, black men would become systematically alienated from their roles as husbands and fathers, which would cause rates of divorce, child abandonment and out-of-wedlock births to skyrocket in the black community (a trend that had already begun by the mid-1960s), leading to vast increases in the numbers of households headed by females and the higher rates of poverty, low educational outcomes, and inflated rates of child abuse that are associated with them.

AFDC was structured in such a way that a man's contribution caused a net loss for the woman:

... the AFDC program tended to treat households with a cohabiting male who was not the natural father of the children much more leniently than those with a resident spouse or father of the children. This feature created a clear disincentive for marriage and also a clear incentive for divorce, because women who married face the reduction or loss of their AFDC benefits.

Several years ago, the Urban Institute revisited Moynihan's Report (If the Washington Post article opens behind a pay wall, open into an incognito window, instead).

The new report ... outlines some of the very same challenges to the well-being of black families chronicled back then, including acute and concentrated poverty in low-income black neighborhoods populated by underemployed and unemployed residents; crime; inequality in housing, employment, education, health care, and the criminal justice system; high rates of non-marital births and children raised in households headed by single women; and social welfare policies that undermine the role of black men. (The report also offers more context about the larger political, social, legal and economic forces that have contributed to the problems.)

Emphasis added.

Hey Skipper said...

Because, as I mentioned before, all the same things happened down here -- and remember I have a greater sample space than you -- *without* welfare: ghettoization, lack of jobs and break down of families.

How interesting, you and Erp proposes as cause something that, taken out, makes little difference. Strange notion of causality, that one.


Makes little difference? I have no idea if there was or is anything remotely like AFDC in Brazil; regardless, it is at least arguable that in the US, flooding black communities with AFDC -- all with the best intentions -- was a major factor in the near collapse of the African-American family since then. And it is more than arguable that when family breakdown becomes pervasive, very bad things follow.

But that is really beside the point here.

With regard to whether erp's quote can be in any way, other than malicious or irrational, diagnostic of racism, it absolutely does not matter if the theory welfare policies have done disproportionate harm to blacks.

I know I'm repeating myself here, but it seems necessary. Even if an omniscient being could come down and tell us that conclusion is wrong, it doesn't make erp a racist because nothing she has ever said conveyed racial animus. Plenty of animus towards policies, and political persuasions, but none for blacks as blacks.

Just as if that same omnisicient being said "Sorry, progressives, but even I, an omniscient being, can't come up with anything more destructive of blacks than what you did" doesn't make progressives racist, because they did not act with racial animus.

Either way, the contrast with actual racism -- Jim Crow laws, restrictive housing covenants, grossly disproportionate school funding, etc -- couldn't possibly be more stark.

erp said...

All of you are ignoring my assertion that descendants of former slaves weren't allowed to progress as immigrants did. First generation mostly to working class jobs with lots of exceptions, next generation to college and the professions, capital saved for small business, etc.

The CRA coincided with unions in the public sector thanks to Kennedy's EO which led to the present situation where they are now running the government and to the teachers' unions deliberately destroying the public schools with blacks suffering the most because they were herded into early examples of hive thinking, the projects -- most of them torn down now and all the other examples Skipper shows above.

All of the above happened to combat the post war organic changes in people's attitudes that scared the bejesus out of the elites and caused the upheaval from which the country is still reeling.

You laugh when I mentioned TV shows, but you can't imagine how important TV was in those days. People used to gather to watch programs like Milton Berle and Ed Sullivan at neighbors' houses on tiny 9" screens. The country was much more fractionalized before the coaxial cable allowed everyone to watch the same programs at the same time.

"I, Spy" which showed a black and white guy as equals in a spy spoof caused a sensation and was a lot of fun.

Really guys, the world didn't start when you were born.

History of blacks whose ancestors were slaves in the U.S.

1. Slavery -- Very Bad -- the Worst possible.
2. Jim Crow -- Bad -- but far Better than #1.
3. Custodial Care -- much Worse than #2, but Better than #1.

erp said...

Skipper, I disagree that the lefty policies concerning blacks are/were without racial animus. I grew up in an area without a conservative in sight and lived my adult life in academe where dodo birds are sighted more frequently than conservatives and since they all think alike and can't imagine anyone not of the same mindset, they speak their true language -- they are elitists, all manner of folk are beneath them and the only function of these lower creatures is to be used as a bludgeon to change our country into a socialist paradise where it will be easier for them to construct their ideal planet.

A joke around here when DisneyWorld was being constructed was, "It's what God would have done if he had money." The same could be said of elites.

They are dumb, but they aren't stupid. They pay lip service to the naive and gullible, but they are hardcore elitists who look down upon all the great unwashed.

While my kids were in school, I kept my mouth shut, but as soon as our youngest went out into the world, we retired to a funky little town in Florida where the cost of living is low and I never need to interact with an elitist ever again.

:-)

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "Easy to say, but can you prove it?"

No. Few things in social science are ever provable with a high degree of confidence.

Clovis said...

Bret,

Thanks, you are the most honest man in the room.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
Makes little difference? I have no idea if there was or is anything remotely like AFDC in Brazil; regardless, it is at least arguable that in the US, flooding black communities with AFDC -- all with the best intentions -- was a major factor in the near collapse of the African-American family since then. And it is more than arguable that when family breakdown becomes pervasive, very bad things follow.
---
I told you, no, nothing remotely like AFDC ever existed in Brazil before 2003. African-Brazilian families collapsed all the same.

Of course, such 'collapse' is only seen as so by ignoring history - the truth being that they hardly had same family dynamics as white people for centuries before that, as you well know.



----
I know I'm repeating myself here, but it seems necessary. Even if an omniscient being could come down and tell us that conclusion is wrong, it doesn't make erp a racist because nothing she has ever said conveyed racial animus. Plenty of animus towards policies, and political persuasions, but none for blacks as blacks.
----
The problem of arguing about 'animus' is that it is in the eyes of the beholder. I've argued in many ways why people would see such animus, even if on erp's mind there is none. You consistently defend that such interpretations are not mandatory, and I agree, but you are not realistic about human nature - and the difficulties and perils of communication - when you infer that people can only do so by "malicious or irrational" behavior. You ask of other that you can't deliver (at least not all the time) yourself.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I told you, no, nothing remotely like AFDC ever existed in Brazil before 2003. African-Brazilian families collapsed all the same.

Of course, such 'collapse' is only seen as so by ignoring history - the truth being that they hardly had same family dynamics as white people for centuries before that, as you well know.


No, it isn't only seen as so by ignoring history, particularly when you put far more weight upon "all the same" than it can possibly bear.

The Black family was besieged but relatively intact prior to lifetime entitlement to welfare and AFDC. Subsequently, its collapse has been nearly total.

Of course, welfare and AFDC weren't the only games in town. The Pill showed up at the same time, too, which appears to have lead to a near disappearance of the shotgun marriage.

The increased availability of contraception and abortion made shotgun weddings a thing of the past. Women who were willing to get an abortion or who reliably used contraception no longer found it necessary to condition sexual relations on a promise of marriage in the event of pregnancy. But women who wanted children, who did not want an abortion for moral or religious reasons, or who were unreliable in their use of contraception found themselves pressured to participate in premarital sexual relations without being able to exact a promise of marriage in case of pregnancy. These women feared, correctly, that if they refused sexual relations, they would risk losing their partners. Sexual activity without commitment was increasingly expected in premarital relationships.

It wouldn't be too much of a challenge to list a few other plausible factors -- plausible, in that correlation doesn't always mean causation, but without correlation, causation is impossible -- that could have contributed to the breakdown of the Black family.

But each of those potential causes shares a common characteristic: they were externally imposed upon Blacks.

What that means is that none of those explanations, regardless of their objective truth, poses Blacks themselves as causative.

Emphasized, because you seem to keep missing this fundamental point:

The problem of arguing about 'animus' is that it is in the eyes of the beholder. I've argued in many ways why people would see such animus, even if on erp's mind there is none.

That is exactly wrong.

From above: Here is the problem before you: [Jim Crow was (fill in the blank)] AND [Great Society was even worse] THEREFORE [Blacks inferior].

There is no intellectually or morally honest way of getting across that THEREFORE. As a perfect non-sequitor, it is an assault on reason. It is a further assault on reason because it uses defamation to suppress perfectly valid discussion about the ongoing effects of government policies. And it is a moral failure nearly unique to the left. The accusation of racism is very serious; doing so baselessly -- defamation -- is very nasty business which richly deserves getting called out every time it happens, regardless of the consequences.

Yes, I know, I just repeated myself.

But I did so, because on re-reading this thread, I don't see where you have devoted one syllable to THEREFORE.

I want to know how you, or anyone, gets to the other side of that without indicting themselves.

erp said...

Clovis, talk about proving it????

Of course, such 'collapse' is only seen as so by ignoring history - the truth being that they hardly had same family dynamics as white people for centuries before that, as you well know.

If you are talking about family dynamics in black communities during and after Jim Crow, you are 100% wrong as those who lived during that time have said again and again. Even during slavery, the family dynamic existed to the extent possible and black children weren't killing each other in gang wars as they do now routinely.

BTW which white families are you using as your model? Socialites in New York City, okies from Appalachia, mid-west farmers, lumbermen in the Pacific northwest, cattle ranchers in Texas ????? Recent immigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa usually lived together in areas of the big cities before moving out and up and there was plenty of animus toward them from earlier arrivals.

Hate to be repetitious, but you really have no idea what you're talking about.

Hey Skipper said...

Clovis, let me give you another example:

Thanks to Jim Crow laws starving Black communities for resources, their educations suffered terribly. And as bad as that was, current education policies are even worse THEREFORE [Blacks inferior].

Clovis said...

Skipper,

Good - read your points again, and suddenly you'll notice you are getting to cultural shifts, instead of an explanation overly focused on welfare.

Cultural shifts we got aplenty down here since the 60's too. A massive influx of people from the country to the cities, leading to almost exponential growth of favelas - ghettos! - and, while they would live in sparsely populated areas before and get attached to family, now it was easy to go to one woman to the next in a new place and culture (or lack of it), leaving a trail of children with no fathers, sometimes no mother either. Give it a decade, and in the 70's begun all the violence our cities are famous for now, spreading from those places.

Maybe 'benign neglect' could have worked for you guys (though I doubt so), but it surely did not work down here. Notice we also never had Jim Crow like laws (though separation was granted by social norm in many ways).

Clovis said...

Erp,

I believe we have the same opinion about the ignorance of each other, so I will leave it at that.

erp said...

Not so fast.

I am ignorant of conditions in your neck of woods and haven't ever made pronouncements about them contrary to your opinions nevermind predictions. You, however, have no problem with opinions about the U.S.

Please provide examples of my wrongness as proven by events or provide an apology for mis-speaking.

Clovis said...

Erp,

When you were a child growing up in New York, non-martial birth rates by black mothers was already 20%, roughly ten times the rate for white mothers.

The tradition of marriages as you know it - by paper and church - had a few decades among blacks by then, compared to centuries by whites. If such tradition has been getting weaker along the 20th century for whites, for purely cultural reasons, why is it any surprise it fell down even faster for black communities in big cities?

As for my venturing opinions on the US, while you can't reciprocate them for my country, there is an easy fix: try and learn Portuguese.

erp said...

Clovis, I don't know where you got that number, but I would seriously doubt it's correct. When I grew having a baby out of wedlock was a very serious matter. Girls who got pregnant were sent away to homes for wayward girls where they had the baby which was then adopted within days and many never saw the baby again. It was heartbreaking.

I plan on learning Portuguese in my next life when come back as a cute little girl who will grow up to be one of those gorgeous Ipanema bathing beauties.

This time round, I'm trying to hold on to what I already know much of which is fading fast.

erp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erp said...

The dreaded double comment just when the Captcha was conquered. I'm starting to take this personally.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Clovis, I don't know where you got that number, but I would seriously doubt it's correct. When I grew having a baby out of wedlock was a very serious matter.
---
Yep, quite clearly you grew up among whites, watching at distance a few blacks now and then.

If that number is not right, my bet is the rate of non-marital birth among blacks was higher than reported. Maybe for whites too.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] The tradition of marriages as you know it - by paper and church - had a few decades among blacks by then, compared to centuries by whites. If such tradition has been getting weaker along the 20th century for whites, for purely cultural reasons, why is it any surprise it fell down even faster for black communities in big cities?

Your numbers are correct.

It is worth noting that "... for purely cultural reasons ..." encompasses a great deal. Among them could be that, because Blacks were already poorer than whites, and earned less, AFDC and lifetime entitlement to welfare had a far greater impact on Blacks than whites.

When it comes to almost anything non-trivial, single factor explanations are almost never sufficient. However, if this was an aircraft mishap investigation, AFDC and welfare would certainly show up on the list of contributing causes.

Good - read your points again, and suddenly you'll notice you are getting to cultural shifts, instead of an explanation overly focused on welfare.

Not the point, which was a corollary argument: its structure and content are the same as erp's quote. Therefore, if a non-malicious reader can reasonably derive racism from what erp said, than the same should be true here.

Of course, if it isn't possible here, then that doesn't speak well for the notion that "racism" is somehow a valid interpretation.

Maybe 'benign neglect' could have worked for you guys (though I doubt so), but it surely did not work down here.

No telling (note that my notion of benign neglect, described above, included overtly equitable distribution of government resources). However, it is hard to see how the trillions that were spent in ways that made dependency at least a plausible consequence weren't at least wasted, if not positively harmful.

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] Skipper, I disagree that the lefty policies concerning blacks are/were without racial animus.

Just as I reach for Occam's Razor (properly understood, not filtered through Harry's hate filter), I also look to the Cockup Theory of History. Which is, when in doubt, incompetence is more likely the explanation than malice.

Given progressives entering arguments (human nature infinitely malleable; class explains everything about the individual)(among others), then Great Society welfare programs make complete sense.

Objective facts are -- well, should be -- difficult to dispute. However, how those facts get weighed relies to a great extent upon our priors. There is, in Enlightenment societies, an ongoing tension between freedom and equality: the more of one, the less of the other. So while you and I vastly prefer freedom over equality, there is no doubting that preceding inequality affects existing freedom. Just as there is no doubt that focusing on eradicating inequality tramples freedom.

Which is why I refuse to demonize progressives. I think their priors are wrong, but they think mine are wrong, too. They filter facts through their priors, and arrive at lifetime entitlement to welfare and AFDC.

I don't think that the cultural disaster afflicting African-Americans was ever progressives' hope. And to be completely fair, those who we would now call progressive were the ones pushing the hardest for complete equality before the law; not just for blacks, but for women, too. Since their priors are ultimately not about the individual, but rather all about class and society, the results are completely predictable: collectivism fails.

However, just because I don't find class and society particularly persuasive explanations, doesn't mean their explanatory power is nil. Blacks in Ferguson, Missouri face an entirely different set of barriers than whites do in Eagle River, AK.

And many of those barriers are imposed.

erp said...

I didn't grow up among whites, I grew up among people from all over the world many of whom were "of color." In my neighborhood, we didn't watch anything "from a distance." It was pretty crowded -- you know Lazarus' "huddled masses" -- we were they.

Again, you show that your idea of the U.S. comes from TV and movies. Real people weren't like those sitcoms and movies about life in the big city.

Re: Births out of wedlock, i.e., unmarried women/girls who gave birth without a husband. You have no idea what a problem that was before ADC, Planned Parenthood, the pill, etc. made it trendy -- get pregnant -- have an abortion -- or go on custodial care for life -- have kids with any number of guys -- don't worry they won't be tapped for child support.

In those days, these females were ostracized and condemned, many from church (black & white) pulpits, they didn't drive zippy new cars and have their groceries delivered from the supermarket.

I really think if you knew the truth, you would be as appalled as we are.

erp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erp said...

Skipper, you are far kinder than I. I spent an adult lifetime among the uppermost strata of progs, the faculties of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the country, and I can say unequivocally, their opinions of themselves and their erudition is in the stratosphere and they look down upon us lesser beings including blacks and jews, not among their peers are no different in their eyes than Hillary's deplorables.

Making all the great unwashed dependent on their generosity was seen as a way to keep them in power indefinitely and it almost worked.

Let's see if Trump can upset their apple cart.

Hey Skipper said...

There is absolutely nothing racist or sexist about this.

(Warning: NSFW)

NB: In case your hypocrisy meter needs calibrating, Wonkette is a source Harry frequently, and approvingly, cites. And isn't called the Alt-Left by progressives.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

Indeed, reading only the title (won't lose time with the rest), it is neither racist nor sexist. Surely not by the high standards of proof you usually ask for proving racism.

Hey Skipper said...

What about "...You Debased Redneck Motherfucker ..." do you not get?

Clovis said...

Erp,

Yes, I am ultimately ignorant of your NY reality throughout the 40's and 50's.

Yet, I am willing to bet the exact number of black friends you had then: zero.

If I am wrong, provide proof and you win the bet.

Clovis said...

What's racist and sexist about "debased redneck motherfucker"? It is sure incestuous, but racist and sexist?

Hey Skipper said...

Or ...

Was her worst act of the week when she defended her white supremacist boss Donald The Stupid after he hurled racism at Navajo code talkers ...

What did we say in the headline of this post? Oh yeah, it is go fuck yourself, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you debased redneck motherfucker.


Surely, the soul of reason.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] What's racist and sexist about "debased redneck motherfucker"?

I apologize. Your English and awareness of American affairs is so good I tend to forget you aren't actually American.

Let me makeup for that lapse. Within the American context, replace "redneck" with "nigger".

erp said...

Skipper, did the reporter report what the Navajo code talker had to say about incident. Probably not as it wouldn't have helped her narrative.

Clovis said...

Oh, I know what redneck means, Skipper. What I want is for you to show how that indicts the author as racist, as he is not implying the inferiority of Ms. Huckabee race in that phrase, is he?

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] Skipper, did the reporter report what the Navajo code talker had to say about incident. Probably not as it wouldn't have helped her narrative.

Completely irrelevant.

Here is what that nasty racist piece of work said, in effect: [Trump calls Warren a liar about her heritage] THEREFORE [Indigenous Americans are inferior]

That has to be absolutely the stupidest thing I have read in the last year, except for all the equally stupid things along exactly the same vein.

[Clovis:] Oh, I know what redneck means, Skipper. What I want is for you to show how that indicts the author as racist, as he is not implying the inferiority of Ms. Huckabee race in that phrase, is he?

Absolutely. In American prog speak, Rednecks are the lowest form of human life.

So you must not know what "redneck" implies. Like I said, try reading that replacing "redneck" with "nigger".

If that doesn't detonate your Model 9000 Titanium Racist Detector, then you are completely at sea on the basic concept.

Bret said...

Clovis,

I suppose calling a white a redneck is no more racist than calling a black a nigger. But, to me, it's not much less racist either.

Only whites can be rednecks, only blacks can be niggers. Both are hugely insulting and, to me, imply inferiority of the entire race.

Hey Skipper said...

[Bret:] Only whites can be rednecks, only blacks can be niggers. Both are hugely insulting and, to me, imply inferiority of the entire race.

Not quite, but near as probably makes no difference. Redneck is a pejorative term. In this use, it is toxic groupism. It dehumanizes every individual belonging to a disfavored group.

So it doesn't imply the inferiority of all European-Americans, but only those who suffer the genetic deficiencies of being white, Southern, and working class.

Bret said...

erp wrote: "Making all the great unwashed dependent on their generosity was seen as a way to keep them in power indefinitely and it almost worked."

I have to agree with erp here. I think that political power was a significant part of the reasons for creating the Great Society.

erp said...

Bret, words are only insulting if one takes it so.

Redneck comes from the sunburn people get when they work outside for a living, indicating they aren't among the elites. Nigger is short for negro. So what.

Other name calling like gringo (from the song the soldiers sang .. "Green grows the grass ...); wap from Italian guappo for handsome devil; Mick from a lot of Irish names begining with Mac or Mc; spic from Spanish speakers saying "no speak ...".

Sticks and stones and all that.

I've been called all kinds of names, but since I have no respect or regard for the name-callers, why would I care?

erp said...

Guys,

If you haven't spent time among the elites, you can't imagine the extent of their egomania. I don't even know a word that would encompass all it means.

erp said...

Clovis, I forgot to reply to your ridiculous comment about proving the melanin levels of my childhood friends 70 years ago. We didn't have camera phones in our pockets in those days, so we couldn't take selfies to prove our diversity for future generations.

In fact, I still don't have one of those phone, so I can't prove that my friends are diverse even to this day, although I do have proof of a friend from a different hemisphere, but don't know if that counts.

:-)

Clovis said...

Skipper,

See, it is not about my racism detector, but yours. I can't square off your requirements to prove racism is involved, to the mere utterance of "nigger" and "redneck". At which, by the way, I look to have the agreement of Erp.

Can you show me why calling someone either names is proof of racism, under your own standards?

Clovis said...

Erp,

I am not interested on real proof of your past relations, your honest word suffices: when a child or teenager, had you any black friend (more than a mere acquaintace)? Because you claim to know the numbers I gave you are wrong, and I wonder how you can be so sure, if you hardly had access to intimate matters of that many blacks while a kid.

Hey Skipper said...

racism | ˈrāˌsizəm |
noun
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior: a program to combat racism.

• the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races: theories of racism.


It is beyond blindingly obvious that Mr. Hurst considers rednecks to be clearly inferior form of human. Way above I made the proposition that the real term should be "groupism", because that is the root phenomenon: the assigning of superiority or inferiority to entire groups of people based upon some attribute putatively characteristic of that group.

Was it when she tweeted Wednesday morning about how she was happy enough to fry a squirrel ...

Because that is what dumb rednecks do when they are happy.

And she isn't just a redneck, which is already bad enough (there's your groupism), but a debased redneck.

Where there is that much hate, there can't be any thought. Just like Harry.

erp said...

Clovis, I've tried to make you aware of how things were when I was a kid. My "friends" were the children of relatives* and the immigrants who lived on my block. Most of them were Irish although people who lived right next door (remember we lived in what are now called town houses - attached houses -- on one side were Italian and after they moved, German and the other side dark complexioned Puerto Rican.

At school, there was kids of every kind of race and ethnicity it's possible to imagine. They were also my friends. There was a huge park within walking distance and we all played there together.

I didn't go to pre-school, or on play dates. I really don't know what you mean by friends. Recent immigrants pretty much socialized within their own groups and we kids played together outside, but there was little interaction with adults.

*Few spoke English and we kids who were the oldest in family like me, didn't speak English either until we went to school.

What are you trying to prove by this bizarre interrogation?

erp said...

Clovis, I said, when I'm called names, I don't care because I take it from whence it comes. The person using terms like nigger and redneck is using them in a hateful way unless talking to an intimate by a usually derogatory word as in referring to one's buddy as a redneck when one's neck is also red or black rappers using nigger in their so-called music. :-)

Clovis said...

Skipper,

So, is it "groupism" or racism? And you still did not get to the sexism part of your accusation.

As I see it, you still could not show a connection "she is a debased redneck" -> "white race is inferior". And not that it counts much, but the author looks to be white too.

And whatever else you see as obvious does not count much either. People may see as 'obvious' that Erp's positive comparisons of Jim Crow over our times is racist, and you very aptly argued how those people are ignorants, if not worse.

Having spent so many lines in this thread rejecting my arguments based on 'interpretation and context by the reader' when racism charges are involved, I do find this a perfect way to finish the topic: with you trying to get out of your own knot.

Clovis said...

Erp,


---
What are you trying to prove by this bizarre interrogation?
---
That you had little, if any, contact with inner dynamics of black families. By now I think you confirmed my point.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:]So, is it "groupism" or racism? And you still did not get to the sexism part of your accusation.

Yes.

Racism is a specific instance of Groupism.

As for sexism:

We can scarcely believe we haven’t devoted a post in our beloved series of children’s bedtime stories “Oh Go Fuck Yourself (INSERT ASSHOLE’S NAME HERE)” to Our Lady Of The Tablecloth-Wearing Lie Mouth ...

Ad hominem attack via a woman's appearance or clothing choices.

As I see it, you still could not show a connection "she is a debased redneck" -> "white race is inferior". And not that it counts much, but the author looks to be white too.

Redneck is a term used to refer to working class southerners. That the author is white is beside the point, because the author is writing as an elitist. To him, rednecks are ignorant white trash, and may be therefore despised as a group: all of their opinions and interests are de facto contemptible.

Having spent so many lines in this thread rejecting my arguments based on 'interpretation and context by the reader' when racism charges are involved, I do find this a perfect way to finish the topic: with you trying to get out of your own knot.

The only knot here is the one you have gotten yourself into.

Perhaps the real problem is that you are missing the main point: defamation is nasty business. Asserting that erp's quote is an example of racism requires a non sequitur which you have yet to spend a single syllable addressing. A non sequitur is never a valid basis for concluding anything.

In contrast, this article is prima facie groupism. It is laced through with rabid contempt for a specific group of people -- no non sequitur involved. Try replacing redneck with nigger, and see if it that makes it clearer.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

You don't need that many words, you only need to show me how the arrow follows below:

"He is a nigger" -> "black race is inferior".

"She uses tablecloths as a dress". -> "women are inferior"

I am trying to get to it using your own standards, not mine.

Hey Skipper said...

[Hey Skipper:] "She uses tablecloths as a dress". -> "women are inferior"

[Clovis:] I am trying to get to it using your own standards, not mine.


On second thought, you are right. An ad hominem attack uniquely aimed at a woman does not constitute sexism.

I'm still trying to figure out how you get across THEREFORE.

erp said...

Clovis, I said specifically that as kids we had very little to do with adults of any kind outside our immediate ethnic Albanian community which as I've said, included Orthodox Christians and Mohammadans as they were called then. I never heard the words, Moslem, Muslim or Islam until much later.

You didn't provide a link to your information that 20% of black families had children outside of wedlock in the 40's a nd 50's, so I infer that the source was not one that we would consider trustworthy. Negro families and poor whites of that time were just as conservative as white families in family structures. It's only the elites of that time as well as now who flout customary morality.

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