A lot of things came together this week – and one of them is the absolute end of my patience and grim toleration/indulgence of certain intellectual trends and racial sub-groups in our society. Curiously, this comes during a period of the mourning for and burial of the late sovereign Queen Elizabeth II, which in combination with some other news elements initiated this particular train of thought. My toleration of certain elements in our society has reached a critical point; to whit, I am done with black racism … and yes, black racism is an existing and very poisonous thing, as much as enablers and perpetuators of that variety of racism deny it, and our National Establishment Media try and sweep it under the rug, denying the very evidence of our lying, racist eyes. Some brutal and egregious rape-murder-kidnapping-assault happens in a city like New York, Memphis, St. Louis, Atlanta, a mass punch-out all-hands brawl in a fast-food restaurant, an amusement park or on a cruise ship, an organized mob loots a retail outlet … if there are no pictures initially of the perpetrators of such outrages against civic good order … well, everybody knows.
Everybody knows that an elderly person of white or Asian ancestry is more apt to be knocked out in the street by a male thug of color. Everybody knows that schools in urban black majority areas are snake pits of venomous disorder, places which well-meaning teachers flee. Everybody knows that the Black Lives Matter mass movement set a new land-speed record in going from cause to racket, materially benefiting only the original organizers and their subsequent investment in pricy real estate in upscale neighborhoods. Everybody knows, or at least suspects that reported racist incidents, such as Jussie Smollett, the BYU Volleyball imbroglio, the noose garage pull-down at NASCAR – all ballyhooed in the national media will eventually turn out to be self-aggrandizing fakes. The initial offence is headline news. But the apologetic walk-back is usually reported on page whatever. Huh. Imagine that.
I’d also suspect that there may have been actual incidents of white-on-black public racism in the last decade or so – but the well of credibility has been so poisoned that very few thinking persons will credit them. There are only so many times that ‘wolf!’ can be cried, before anyone outside of the Racial Industrial Complex has any credibility. I do feel genuine sorrow for neighbors of mine, for fellow service personnel, (to include commanders and NCOICs) who are of – as one of my friends once put it – a dark year-round natural tan color – who are also good and responsible neighbors, family-oriented, law-abiding, and patriotic, in spite of their community being victimized by casual racism, general bigotry and Jim Crow laws and practices a lifetime ago … but that was then. For most of us under the age of receiving Social Security, it’s like World War Two. Something that we have heard about, seen in documentaries and heard our elders reminiscing about … but which we have never actually experienced in real life. But the grievance woobie is clung onto by the Racial Industrial Complex like a tantrum-prone toddler who can’t let go of their security blanket … because? Well, they wouldn’t be special any longer.
The criminal element among the black community – estimated to be about 4% of the population – is also estimated to be responsible for about half the violent crime in the United States. That is poisonous enough, but in a lot of ways, it’s a self-limiting phenomenon. Black offenders with a penchant for violence will eventually encounter a final come-uppance: other offenders in open gang war, law-enforcement once they have pushed too far and too openly, even eventually vigilante action, should the black criminal element venture too far away from their protected turf. Vicious predators in the back country eventually run into a terminal 3-S solution.
No, the ostentatious black activists who have finally breached my personal wall of toleration for intellectual idiocy are so-called intellectuals, people like the professor at Carnegie Mellon, who wished that the late Queen Elizabeth had experienced an agonizing death. To my mild surprise, the author of those wishes is an authentic Nigerian American. Usually, it’s the native-born Americans of color in the activist community, academia, or in media who combine that degree of malice with vicious historical ignorance. Tolerations and patience among ordinary citizens already appear to be running out when it comes to the black criminal class; might it be running out for the antics of the black activists and the lunatic intellectual racists as well? Not that I think there will be any overt demonstrations, such as there would have been early in the last century; any actions taken will be more along the lines of quiet shunning and physical avoidance. Comment as you wish.
Tucker has been noticing that this is the basic elements of civilization,
You speak the truth, Sgt. Mom. But how to start rolling back all those (false) accusations of racism?
I have an idea! Let’s insist that Major League Baseball & Basketball & Football teams (Hell! Even throw in soccer teams, as if anyone cared) all have to “look like America”. Let’s see the ancestry mix of those teams exactly match the ancestry mix of the United States. And let’s use the real ancestry mix, including all those Central Americans that are pouring in across the border. After all, to do anything else would ipso facto be “racist”.
Now, now. Nancy Pelosi stated explicitly that anti-Asian violence is the result of white supremacy. She wouldn’t lie, would she?
I’ve thought for a few decades now that open racism would re-emerge in new . . . robes, if you will. I’m a Memphis native and spent my working life mostly on campus, and both in the streets and in the classrooms there are very bad omens.
In my estimation, something like 10-15% of B/blacks and 5-10% of W/whites have a murderous hatred for the Other, and both fringes are closer to using violence now than they have been in my lifetime. I think the numbers differ because of historical experiences more than any inherent proclivities, FWIW. It could be 1 – 1.5% and .5 – 1% in reality but either way it could get very ugly very quickly.
A while back while I was with a previous employer we had a staff meeting for which the entire agenda was DEI and featured an especially charming harangue from the regional HR director. While I went into defense mode by tuning out and claiming later that I was unable to participate due to I was probably suffering a focal onset seizure (which only seemed to happen when HR was present), I did remember her talking about anti-Asian hate and the prevalence of “assault weapons”, no doubt both being indicative of white supremacy
A while after that as my exit from the company drew nigh, I was out with several co-workers who while of mixed ideological company were people that you could converse with in a somewhat honest manner. I brought up that DEI staff meeting and what the HR staffer had said, specifically about “assault weapons” and anti-Asian hate. Then I went into a little story.
Back in the early 1990s during the L.A. riots, I remembered a picture of several Koreans perched on a rooftop with AR-15 variants. Soon after the police withdrew and the riots went full force, a number of local residents decided to settle some long-standing grudges by going to sack Koreatown. Given that the police had withdrawn, the only thing stopping that part of L.A. from going up in flames and the residents brutalized were those guys on the rooftop and other similarly armed and motivated. Several years later at a party in Phoenix I ran into young man with a Korean surname and after finding out he was from the L.A. area I asked him about that time and he told me that without a doubt that if push came to shove those guys on the rooftop would shoot to kill. As it was, you can go on You Tube and find clips of them firing warning shots.
As I explained to my coworkers those barbarians coming to Koreatown to inflict their racist hate were not white or brown but black. I then related the Crown Heights riot and the rise of Al Sharpton. I do remember telling my former co-workers that they could draw what lessons they wished from those historical events, but that there was something existant in them that could not be explained by that HR director.
I do not know what the answer is for this, only that black racism and the inability of our society (let alone blacks) to deal with the issue is wrapped up in other social pathologies that seem to infantilize segments of our society by absolving them of responsibility for their actions
I also know that the answer cannot come from me given both my status and the color of my skin. Any approach by me along those lines, especially to young men, is answered by “you cannot talk to me like that, I’m a man” but perhaps that retort lies the path to redemption. Perhaps what is needed, as opposed to the racial grifters of BLM and Al Sharpton, is a black John Wesley or Jordan Peterson who can help address these toxins among the young men in the black community
Mike: “Perhaps what is needed, as opposed to the racial grifters of BLM and Al Sharpton, is a black John Wesley or Jordan Peterson …”
That would be great. But the practical answer while waiting for such a giant to appear would be to terminate welfare and re-institute orphanages — very well-funded orphanages. Removing pregnancy as a career choice for young women of all races would bring great societal benefits — although it would take about 2 decades for those benefits to really accrue.
Noticing Sgt. Mom’s mention of the BYU racial slur hoax, 2 points come to mind:
First, anti0Mormon bigotry is socially acceptable among large parts of our society. Witness the brats at the Oregon-BYU football game hurling profane slurs. While it is the credit of U Oregon for denouncing those actions, those reprehensible swine certainly felt comfortable enough to shout such vile crap. Will Oregon launch an investigation to get to the root of the issue? Perhaps determine if there is a dark spot on it soul for such an action? To ask the question is to answer it.
The Church of LDS plays a number of important roles, not only in our society but in our history. You cannot write the history of the West, especially of the Mountain West, without acknowledging the important contributions of Mormon pioneers. Also that history and how they ended up in the West is linked to shameful episodes of anti-Mormon, religious bigotry of 19th Century burnings and lynchings.
Catonsville is a nice, yet smug town over by Baltimore; nice streets , pretty houses. In town, you see a lot of cars with bumper stickers stating “No hate in 21228” A while back I had the chance to talk to a resident who had such a bumper sticker and we got to talking about the town and when I asked if there was an LDS chapter house nearby she rolled her house and said “No and thank goodness, we don’t want those people here.”
The other point is a common one and it’s how the press treated the BYU racial slur allegations. If you noted the stories revolved around allegations made by the player and her godmother, the lack of an immediate response by BYU to those allegations, and the response of others to those allegations including the cancellation of South Carolina basketball games. At no time were any attempts by anyone outside of BYU to actually ascertain whether the allegations were actually made. You would think after the national Jussie Smollett scandal and other hoaxes that the media would be careful in reporting unverified allegations but not only such allegations in general too good to pass up they’re doubly too good when they involve Mormons.
With ever present racial and religious bigotry, I am reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s quote “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.” Perhaps it is that point, forgotten by so many that claim to be our social betters in our post-Christian world, that best explains the battles of our age
My apologies but the above quote by “Anonymous” is actually me, I wouldn’t wish for anyone, especially the anonymous, to take any blame for my thoughts
I do hope it’s not too late and the hysteria hasn’t already gift-wrapped the country for genuine white supremacists in the long run through a combination of alarm fatigue, the association fallacy, and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Korora, I think you can probably count the number of genuine white supremacists on the fingers of several hands … less those who are actually agents provocateurs from some law enforcement agency or other. What will be seen, I think, are people quietly judging – are these persons of color regular joes, working or middle, just trying to get by, not asking for handouts or allowances; in which case, OK, our sibs from another mother. Flaming abusive racists, grifters, violent criminals … the cold shoulder, minimal courtesy and consideration. Frozen out, socially shunned and avoided.
Many years ago, likely before the turn of the century, I happened to read a piece on the industrial revolution. The authors advanced the argument that one reason why it happened in England and not France was because England didn’t have to deal with the endless violence that France suffered from. They had pictures of English manors from the pre-industrial era, which had windows that looked like windows, and pictures of the French equivalent, which had windows that were quite obviously arrow slits.
I think of that, whether I want to or not, whenever the topic of the endless black crime wave happens to come up. It seems to me that roughly every American city and its associated metropolitan area has been twisted and warped by the efforts of the population to avoid the black criminal element. Civilized people of all backgrounds flee American cities, leaving them to fall into ruin, to one degree or another.
This imposes an enormous cost upon American society which other nations do not have. I’m always amazed whenever I see video from Japan or China, because they have cities which not only aren’t filled with ruins, but also aren’t dangerous to walk around in.
So, anyway, who do I vote for to end this? The democrats won’t, because they love murderers and personally identify with criminals of all sorts. The gee ohh peee is- as always- nowhere to be seen.
What can I do?
“If you noted the stories revolved around allegations made by the player and her godmother, the lack of an immediate response by BYU to those allegations”
Actually part of the problem was that BYU immediately acted as if the allegations were true. They even announced they had banned some poor random guy, giving them credence. If they had said, “we are investigating these claims”, and been able to within hours say that they were completely without merit, it MIGHT have squashed the story.
First, noting that YHS is Asian in ancestry [Chinese], born and raised in this country. Also noting, largely because of Democrats, that under United States Federal law, that from the 1800’s Chinese were specifically defined as not being human beings, not covered by the Constitution, and not able to become a citizen unless born here. Which, incidentally, was why until the 1960’s it was damn hard for Chinese women to immigrate to here because any children born to them here would be citizens.
We had no protection under the law. We could be murdered at will, robbed, or anything. The only reason this did not blow up was that Chinese coming here were not intending to take anything over, but to just live peaceably and make a living with honest work. We believed what was taught about this country formally and in legend. My dad was the son of a middle class peasant in South China. The family owned some land, and sharecropped some land. My grandfather [who I never met] counted up land, and sons. He did not have enough land to divvy up where each son could support themselves. My dad, being the youngest, missed out on the land. Instead, my grandfather arranged for him to come to America, “the mountain of gold”, on his own. Something I am truly grateful for especially given what happened in the old country.
Now this was not like traveling today. My dad was TWELVE YEARS OLD, alone, and did not speak a word of English. He traveled steerage on a freighter from Hong Kong to New York Harbor. And no, not anywhere near Ellis Island. He was met by a member of our Tong [the clan kind, not the Triad/Mafia kind] and taken to a restaurant in Chinatown where he had a pallet to sleep on and worked 7 days a week and learned the restaurant business. Cutting out some family complications, fast forward to 1943. By that time my dad had learned food service with a vengeance [and also to speak, read, and write English well], and despite not being legally a human being was one of the food service supervisors at Lowry Army Air Force Base in Denver.
At the same time, about 100 miles to the southeast there was Pueblo Army Air Force Base. There they trained pilots and crews to fly and fight in B-24 Liberator bombers. There was a training detachment of Republic of China Air Force crews based there learning to fly and fight alongside Americans against the Japanese. Nationalist China being an American ally.
35 miles west of Pueblo was/is the city of Cañon City. Which happened at the time to have the state HQ of the KKK, which made sense since a former governor of Colorado lived there and he was KKK. Pueblo Army Air Force Base was one of the largest, if not the largest concentration of Chinese in Colorado since the KKK burned down Chinatown in Denver [where the Colorado Rockies ballfield is today] and chased out all the Chinese from Denver a few years before my dad came to this country.
So the Klan took it into their heads to attack the Chinese based in Pueblo. And did. The Nationalist Chinese government did not take kindly to that, pointing out they were there learning to fight alongside Americans. And that if Americans did not want them there, the Chinese government could bring them home.
The American government did not want that, so after negotiations the US government had Congress repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and all extensions of it, made Chinese legally human beings here protected by the law and Constitution, and theoretically eligible to become American citizens. That, and they sat on the Klan in Colorado.
In passing, even though my dad was overage, in what was classified as vital war work, and not covered by the draft, as soon as he was legally a person he enlisted in the Army even though he was a Chinese citizen. Without going into details, he was granted citizenship for his service after the war.
After the war, he married, they had me, and he opened his own restaurant. I was born at the tail end of the Korean War, the Cold War was getting serious, and incidentally we lived in Wichita not far from the Boeing plant where they made B-52’s. And there were not really all that many Chinese in Wichita.
Walking alone to and from school in kindergarten and first grade, gangs of kids would follow me yelling racial insults and throwing rocks at me. When I finish going bald, there will be scars.
You would think that as a minority here who was so attacked on the street for epicanthic folds and slightly darker skin, that I would be full of rage and seeking vengeance. Did not work out that way. My dad defended this country. I wanted to do the same, but as a career. However, as soon as I found out what a Navy was [I was in the middle of freaking Kansas. Very few ships on the Arkansas River.] I wanted a Navy career.
Wichita was not my last encounter with racism though. Eventually, my dad bought a larger restaurant in a nasty, evil, small town in Nebraska. We moved there from Colorado over Chinese Lunar New Years in 1968. In Vietnam [which war was still going full bore] they use the Lunar calendar, but their word for New Years is Tet. Yeah, we moved there during the Vietnamese Tet Offensive.
I was the only Asian in the high school. Mind you, I was a straight-A student, my career goal was to be a Navy Officer [one thing that the move did was screw up my chance to get into Annapolis as I had my senator in Colorado willing to send me if I could pass the tests. And I could, without doubt.], and I was very pro-military. Two days after I got to the school they had an all-school mandatory pep rally in the gym. It was to dedicate one day a week in PE class to “Toughen you up to go kill Cong”.
I was the closest thing, ethnically, that they had in the school. Things got unpleasant. My response was different than in kindergarten. I acquired a pistol, modified the ammo in uncouth ways, and convinced those threatening me that fewer would reach me than started out and asked who was first. It worked.
I went back to finish high school in Colorado at the end of the year, and tried to first get back on track for Annapolis, and when that fell through to seek another route to a commission. As it turned out, I had too many things physically wrong with me for the military to take me.
I’ve been every job in restaurants up to and including chef of my own kitchen, a lumberjack, a hard-rock miner, and for 28 years a Commissioned Peace Officer. I’m married, and have raised a passle of kids and now have grandchildren.
BUT, the key point is that I have had up close and personal contact with racial discrimination. I have the knowledge of Chinese here in the past being abused for being Chinese. I have every excuse to be as full of hate as those committing “urban violence”, including knowledge that my fellow Asians are considered free-fire zones in cities and considered expendable by urban law enforcement.
And yet, I think I have lived a productive and law abiding life. Why the difference? Might I suggest there are two causes. First, culturally we are not prone to random violence. Our culture is family centered even more so than European culture. Second, Asians know that if they commit crimes, they WILL be punished according to the law. We do not have half the body politic trying to make excuses and save us from punishment. It is not everything, but it is a start.
Discuss.
Sgt. Mom, there’s still the hanged-for-a-sheep-as-for-a-lamb and association fallacy aspects.
Hysteria can often create or aggravate the very evil it fears. I’ll give a silly example: If you explain away honest doubts about findings or means as a sure sign that someone is a swamp dweller, a substantial number of people will choose to become swamp dwellers.
And as for the association fallacy: First, one of the surest ways to discredit something good (like racial equality) is to work all manner of destructive insanities in its name. Second, the whole any-means-necessary approach can taint the way the cause in question is perceived. As Tolkien put it in one of his letters: “Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained ‘righteous’, but self-righteous. … Thus while Sauron multiplied [illegible word] evil, he left ‘good’ clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil.”
Subotai, you appear to have been a much more useful American than I. We have both been LEOs, albeit, you did it for twice my time. I have read your posts for years, and you have always impressed me as a man of intelligence, honor, and wit. I am very grateful that you are One Of Us
Subotai — the tale of your life is one to make us all stop and think. So glad you hung in there.
Something that struck me long ago was that many of the Chinese brought to America in the 19th Century were here to work on building the railroads — hard, dangerous work. But when they died, it did not matter. They were contract laborers — if one dies in a work accident, simply get another one. That contrasted with the Africans brought as slaves — brought, bought, and paid for. Slaves were valuable property. Certainly, some foolish slave-owners treated their slaves (their assets) badly. But generally African slaves were treated better than Chinese contractors.
It is sad to see that the reward for Americans of Chinese ancestry for the generations of struggling to get on in the world is now to face racist exclusion from the Temples of the Left, such as Harvard.
Life for most immigrants into the US in the 18th & 19th Centuries was hard. Think of the Scottish Highlanders who were “persuaded” to immigrate by having their homes burned. No one group has any special claim for sympathy today.
I have some photos of my father with some of his fellow B-25 pilots (381stSq/310thBG(M)) at the Pyramids in 1944 or 45. He lists the names, including Wong, clearly what we used to call an Oriental. I never had a chance to ask him about that, or many other things. (My father was the son of German immigrants to the Southland; like most first-gen natives a fierce patriot.)
Great story and a great family, S.B. Enjoy your achievement for as long as you can.
Grew up in a really small town in Nebraska. Small as in one tiny cafe only my mom worked at for a while.
The closest we had to a minority were migrant workers from Mexico, some of whom stayed and settled in the area. From what I could see, they were accepted, their children dated local children, the children who did well in sports were local heroes.
Did have a couple of blacks who stopped by the cafe and asked if they could order food.
When told that as long as they paid for it they could order anything they wanted off the menu they turned around, went to their car, and drove off.
No idea why the NE subcultures varied so greatly that SB had the troubles he had, and I’m very glad I was no where close to a place like that.
Professor Uju Anya ranted about the “genocidal war against the Ibos” in Nigeria (she being an Ibo). She means the civil war which resulted from the Ibos attempting to secede (after their takeover of the national government failed). You may recall seeing pictures of starving children in “Biafra”, the secessionist state. What you probably don’t recall is that the Biafran government turned down food relief offered by international charities. Their excuse was that the Nigerian government insisted on inspecting the food shipments for smuggled military supplies, and the “Biafrans” claimed the Nigerians would poison all the food. Their real reason was that they thought pictures of starving children would turn “world opinion” against Nigeria, and force Nigeria to concede independence.
I would also note that Ibo tribal leaders were heavily involved in the slave trade; they delivered hundreds of thousands of slaves to the barracoons where the slave ships loaded up. The city of Benin collapsed economically when the slave trade stopped. I’d guess that like most Nigerian-Americans, Uju Anya’s Nigerian family is upper-class there, which means descended from those slave traders. Is she ready to pay reparations to American black descendants of her ancestors’ victims? I doubt it.
“Everybody knows that an elderly person of white or Asian ancestry is more apt to be knocked out in the street by a male thug of color.”
Of one particular color; “of color” means “not white”. The category includes South Asians and East Asians, Micro/Mela/Poly-nesians, American Indians, Australian aborigines, and Inuits, as well as the usual suspects.
Do you think when people settle Mars or beyond that this filter will leave behind the severity of the division of people into us & them?
It is clear that the “others exist to be looted and killed” can be lessened over time—at least if you believe Pinker. People were astonished that apparently modern Germans suddenly reverted to pre-civilized behavior. That astonishment means at least they thought people could choose competitive cooperation over slaughter-n-steal.
seems to have shifted north,
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/09/21/diversity-15-arrested-in-multicultural-britain-after-muslim-hindu-sectarian-riots/
I was researching the backgrounds of many of the officers involved in that civil war, many were sandhurst or mons trained, however that makes little difference with their tribal impulses,
All this Racism(TM) BS is intrawhite dominance games. It’s a way for liberal/”high-class” whites to keep conservative/”low-class” whites down. That’s why trash like Mitt Romney and people who still pretend to like that vapid fool love it just as much as any liberal.
I’ve seen it stated that at “elite” schools something like 90%+ of the black students are first or second generation immigrants. Like Obama. Like Kamala. None of this crap actually benefits Americans. Of any race. None of these people care about the war zones they’ve abandoned inner-city residents to, or the nightmarish prisons the kids trapped their have to attend (to say nothing about the nightmarish actual prisons in this country–look up recent stories about Riker’s Island sometime).
What to do about it? Well, we can check out, I guess, but that doesn’t change the fact that DEI has infested everything. Unless you have your own small business, you have to deal with HR Karens who want to force it on you. Even if you do, you probably have a state agency that wants to. It seems unfair to place the burden on non-white conservatives to try to stop it, but I think unfortunately that’s probably what’s going to happen. When enough Hispanics vote GOP, especially working class Hispanics, the game will end, because when they’re told “You’re racist!” they won’t cower in fear, they’ll just say “Yeah, so?”
I have read several times an interesting statistic – that of the gun violence in the US if you take away the top 6 or 7 offending cities, we would be not near the top, but 139th or thereabouts.
“Funny” that the BLM movement has never been concerned with the black on black violence in those cities
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/08/04/cities-with-the-most-gun-violence/
“Do you think when people settle Mars or beyond that this filter will leave behind the severity of the division of people into us & them?”
Assuming that it’s possible for humans to settle Mars, and that’s not yet determined and an argument for another place, that will only hold true if it’s Americans doing the settling. It certainly wouldn’t be true if China were to beat us to it.
As far as I can tell, foreigners in China today have no rights the Chinese government feels bound to protect. There is no racism involved, they are equally, if not more, hostile to non Chinese Asians although they do seem to have a special antipathy for Africans. They have been engaged for the last few years in a campaign to encourage non Chinese to leave.
If China were to settle Mars, there would be us and them because there would be no them.
Pseudo-intellectuals like Uju Anya and Robin DiAngelo are actually black supremacists. I’ve heard DiAngelo say that even lighter-skinned black people need to check their prejudice against darker-skinned black people. So her view is that darker is better. Talk about skin deep!
Remember that week two years ago when we were all instructed to start capitalizing the word black? The justification was that Americans descended from 19th-century African slaves had lost their original ethnicities and thus their ethnicity became “Black”; yet the same could be said of Americans descended from 19th-century non-Africans – should they then be called “White”? The black supremacists are playing with fire there.
Much of this black supremacy madness strikes me as a marketing ploy by the “leadership” of the black community (and their fellow-travelers in academia, non-profits, governments, and HR departments across the land). Black folks are no longer the largest minority in America, so this is a way to keep attention focused on those of distant African descent rather than those of more recent Latin American or Asian descent. Gotta keep those vote-buying dollars flowing, not to mention ineffective government programs and their associated bureaucrats and grant recipients.
As Ayn Rand said: “Don’t bother to examine a folly – ask yourself only what it accomplishes.”
“We” are not at fault; our country is full of energy and has been remarkably inclusive. Still, I winced when I saw a Brit’s response to some complain or other about Queen Elizabeth’s death and the sorrow of the English. It was something along the lines of – “You spend a year of nightly burning down buildings, attacking police and vandalizing stores to honor a felon who died of a drug overdose and who had held a gun at a pregnant woman’s belly; we have been mourning a woman who spent over 70 years representing us, doing her duty, with little ego and much dignity.” When I was little I loved the royals (we didn’t have television, but I remember the pictures of her wedding and then her coronation – when I was 7 or so. Sure, I prefer our American ways, but the last few years have not always shown us at our best.
I’m sorry Subotai Bahadur about your experience; I left town in 63 but I don’t think our teachers would have let such bullying go on. We were more likely to think of anyone different as exotic. I suspect the many reactions to Viet Nam may have arisen in the years after I’d left – I hope none of them were that ugly but don’t know. One of the kids a few years younger did bomb the ROTC (I think) building at UNL; strangely his father was the local John Bircher. My youngest daughter married a guy who grew up in a small town close to mine; he was the product of the war in another way – his mother was Thai and his father Nebraskan. His mother left the father with 3 young children – which probably came from bullying on his part though that seemed more a familial trait than racism. Our son-in-law was a high school star athlete and the town sent him to Boy’s State, but the family was, well, more dysfunctional than I could imagine a family could be. Their marriage seems a happy one; I guess in the end it worked out though I don’t think he lived up to his potential.
Interesting thread here.
The BYU thing was an obvious hoax from the start. Obvious. Everyone has cell phones and you are basically being videotaped and recorded everywhere you go outside of your domicile. When there was no evidence, anywhere, of anything besides some hyperventilating student saying something, that is all I needed to know. I always ask myself this question “so you expect me to believe…”. Same with the Smolett hoax. “So you expect me to believe…”
We had our own hoax here in Madison when a woman said four white frat boys tossed lighter fluid on her and set her alight inside a car. A huge investigation ensued by the feds and locals, with no evidence of anything besides yes, she got burned. It was and is my opinion that she was doing flaming shots (I saw a guy get burned in this fashion in college). Like the BYU hoax, this person in Madison was not punished in any way. Which is ridiculous.
As far as BLM goes, their records and tax forms are a shambles and it was an obvious money grift from the very beginning. The only real question is if anyone will ever be prosecuted. I have a feeling that the eye are ess will likely target one or two of the most egregious offenders, but that many others will just get away with it.
There was a bit of pushback on the usual suspects who did exactly as I predicted and talked about colonialism and reparations when the Queen died. I saw more than one Brit explain that yes, reparations should be paid out by the African countries who’s kings rounded up their own people and had them ready and waiting on the beach for whoever wanted to come pick them up and to the thousands of British familes whos relatives died on the open seas fighting and dying to make the slavers stop. That was probably the first pushback I have seen in quite some time to some of the network folks.
People are far too quick to ascribe anything and everything to racism. No matter how they have to twist it. Just one example occurred when I was a restaurant manager. A black man walked in and sat at the bar. Everyone, including other guests, could immediately ascertain that he was already drunk. When he ordered a drink the bartender (a young white lady) told him she didn’t feel comfortable serving him for that very reason. He began to create a scene and accused her of being a racist. I approached him and told him it had nothing to do with race and asked if I could call him a cab. I even offered to pay for it. He went into a tirade, quickly taking note of the open kitchen and the fact that most of the kitchen staff was black. Then he accused me of being a racist and thinking he had me, snidely asked why all the black people were in the kitchen.
I said, “Because that’s the job they applied for.” He dismissed my answer with a huff, but soon left of his own accord.
Roughly 90% of homocides in Pennsylvania are perpetrated in two counties, Philadelphia and Allegheny (Pittsburgh). Homocide is so rare in the other 65 counties that it averages out to about one per county per year. Yes, there are small hotspots here and there in small Democratically controlled cities, but those areas are bordered by counties wherein most years there are zero homocides. The Appalachian County I live in hasn’t had one for more than a decade. We are more than 99% white and about 75% Republican. Gun ownership is about 80% of households, yet we don’t shoot each other. The crime rate is near zero. I have lived here for 44 years, having moved here at age 32 from Philadelphia. I have never met a white supremacist here. Not one in 44 years! Where are they? Yet I hear from liberal acquaintances in Philadelphia that what ails America are areas like mine. Astonishing.
Since 2014 the members of the democrat party have walked away from that membership .
so called blm was susan rosenberg’s way of funding insurgency through the kellogg foundation, remember she actually bombed the capitol building in 1984, and guiliani charged for 58 years, but clinton sprung her in his last day in office,
Mike: “Perhaps what is needed, as opposed to the racial grifters of BLM and Al Sharpton, is a black John Wesley or Jordan Peterson …”
We have had those. Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Larry Elder, etc. The racial grievance industry has worked overtime to make sure that their constituents refuse to listen to those sorts of folks – they’re “acting white” according to the old phraseology. In current terminology they are the “black face of white supremacy”.
The problem is twofold: (1) as a society we treat one group of people like toddlers or exotic pets when it comes to personal responsibility, responsibility for others, self-discipline, and self-control. (2) Too many people in that group have embraced the lower standards reserved for them.
The problem with teaching learned helplessness to a group of people for the entirety of their lives is that it eventually leads to self-alienation from society, self-pity and loss of self-reliance, lack of ambition, lack of respect for self or others, resentment, jealousy, simmering anger, and its own form of race-based bigotry.
Taken together, it becomes the “itch that can’t be scratched.” A constant chip on the shoulder, simmering until some perceived slight occurs – then it boils over into violence that – when compared to what supposedly “triggered” it – is often wildly disproportionate and over-the-top, as all those videos do attest.
Things will only change when the two-part problem gets a two-part solution. As a society, we need to stop holding blacks to the toddler/exotic pet standard, and instead demand that they raise their standards to those of society as a whole. And within that group, they need to stop accept being treated by condescending white racists like they are sub-humans, stand up for their own dignity and self-respect, and demand of each other to observe the adult standards of everyone else.
It won’t happen in my lifetime, I’m afraid. The current separate-and-unequal system of personal and social accountability is too well-entrenched and if anything is getting worse. But no amount of government spending, DEI indoctrination, and tip-toeing around the problem will ever solve it.
because the purpose is to destroy the country, make it a satrap of another powerful hegemon,
athens fell to phillip of macedon, and the romans, the romans fell to the huns and the vandals, and a 1,000 years later there was a recovery, of course I could circle back to nineveh and tyre, babylon and thebes, but what would be the point,
“….many of the Chinese brought to America in the 19th Century were here to work on building the railroads…”
The former Southern Pacific’s Donner Pass line is a testament to their work.
soviets knew certain things even in the first years of their existence, stalin as much as lenin, they saw the nationalities question as the czars authority was chipped away, they knew the regular bourgeosie and some of the working class, could not be bought, so they searched for a vanguard, among those indoctrinated elements of the former, and aspiring members of the latter, they had no love for the African American, look at how they treated them even in Brezhnev’s day, but they were a useful lumpen, and a potential nationality, so they sought about creating a black bloc, had slavery been the only impediment they wouldn’t have a chance, but jim crow, gave them an opportunity, it’s no coincidence that web dubois talented 10th had a similar structure, because he drank of german philosophy, there was little love for the common people, so he also shared sanger’s views on ‘improvements’
the civil rights movement, served this purpose, as noble as dr king’s vision was the highlander school had other ideas, it also served the purpose of making students think that all American institutions were equally noxious, it’s not a coincidence that SDS bigwigs like tom hayden were at the edge of that effort,
but it would take a certain extra step, the mind arson of constructivist education, which is deeply seeded in soviet models for the death blow, you know one version as common core, but that was only version 2.0, CRT DIE and the next thing stem from the same poison tree
“The initial offence is headline news. But the apologetic walk-back is usually reported on page whatever. Huh. Imagine that.”
I had a DESRON commander who was insistent we always get to the CVBG commander first with our cut/brief on any issue. His approach was, ”First one to the chalkboard wins.”
Thucydides put it as:
“Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.”
which is kind of funny coming from thucydides, who if the late donald knox can be credited, was as much a shaper of yarns as anyone,
I don’t know if anyone’s read anything about this “scandal”, but the owner of the Phoenix Suns is basically being forced to sell the team because over his 17 year ownership tenure he “On at least five occasions “repeated the N-word when recounting the statements of others.””
So it’s possible according to this that 15 years ago he told someone else someone called him “the N-word” a few times. And for that he has to be banished.
And today there’s a big brouhaha that the Celtics are going to suspend their head coach for having an affair with “a female member of the franchise’s staff”. Presumably because they don’t want to get hit with a colossal sex harassment lawsuit (another claim against the Suns owner was he “Engaged in instances of inequitable conduct toward female employees, made many sex-related comments in the workplace, made inappropriate comments about the physical appearance of female employees and other women”–given how much they blew up the other stuff, sounds like he was a saint). And what’s the big reaction? Care to guess? If you said, “that’s raaaaaacist!” then you win the prize.
Who would want to play this game? One of these days someone will punch back against these lunatics, instead of groveling and begging forgiveness from these pitiful little vipers.
As an American diplomatic brat raised in Mexico I can attest that the issue is less about race than the human tendency to divide the world in to US and THEM. It was “Pinche grinog, gabacho cabron and Yankee go home” all the time. So I came home right after High School, courtesy of the US Navy.
The Marxist Mafia has been beating the race drum since the 1920’s as part of their plan to foment violent revolution. I notice that a lot of American blacks bank on their untouchable status under complaints of racism. On the other hand Nigerians, Jamaicans, etc seem to do pretty well.
Following the successfully fortified 2020 election the Marxist Mafia thought they had it all, just that gaining legitimacy and holding on to it has turned out to be less of a certainty. Seems to me that they are tuning up for the Great Bugaloo, believing that they are the meanest SOBs in the valley. Hard lessons will be learned, among them that in the absence of law and order a whole lot of infractions unexpectedly become capital crimes with instant justice.
But generally African slaves were treated better than Chinese contractors.
A friend of mine spent time on the medical faculty of U of Alabama. One of the other guys was from a family of Confederates, He told my friend how they used to ship cotton before the Civil War. They would load wagons with big bundles of cotton that weighed about 200 pounds, The slaves would drive the wagons to the river and then push the bundles over the bluff above the river. To catch the bundles and load them on the river boat, they used Irish men. Slaves were too valuable for that dangerous work.
On black philosophers, Thomas Sowell said, “I am so old that I remember when most racists were white.”
I notice that a lot of American blacks bank on their untouchable status under complaints of racism. On the other hand Nigerians, Jamaicans, etc seem to do pretty well.
Most of my black medical students were West Indian, many Jamaican. The Nigerians who do well are almost all Igbos, the current term for Ibos. Affirmative Action is a welfare program for black immigrants or their children (Like Colin Powell or Kamala Harris)
Sgt. Mom, are you aware of the “Woman King” frufru?
Celebs Defend Inexcusable Revisionism of ‘The Woman King’ From an Angered Black Community
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2022/09/20/auto-draft-87-n630166
The movie ahistorically tries to paint black people as innocent of slavery, by “whitewashing” one of the worst black offenders in all of history. The Dahomeys were at the very heart of the African Slave trade — the first damned segment of it, before white people ever got involved.
But it was written by two woke feminists, and that makes it “ok”, apparently.
Mike:
As I understand it, when you rank “immigrant groups” by their nation of origin, by median income, I forget who is first, but French-Americans were second (at the time I read about it), and Nigerian-Americans ranked third.
This had a lot to do with the fact that the Nigerian-Americans had one of the highest incidences of Master’s degrees in any group.
One more datum destroying the notion that there is some “big conspiracy” of “systemic racism” holding black people back.
Actually, there is a big conspiracy of systemic racism holding black people back.
It’s called Democrat Plantation Liberalism, and the viciousness of its adherents shows that they may feel a tide turning.
He lists the names, including Wong
If there had been two of them, then it would have made a wight…..
ducking and running….
Oh, I know about the Woman King controversy, and about the part played by the kingdom of Dahomey in the slave trade. I am following that particular foofarah with interest – especially as it’s being painted as one of those “stronk! Wimmin” narratives.
But generally African slaves were treated better than Chinese contractors.
Slaves were valuable capital assets. The really dangerous work often went to Chinese or Irish immigrants.
Indeed, Jonathan – they were luxury goods, and even as relatively unskilled field laborers – were extremely valuable commodities. Skilled slaves were even more valuable. Reading contemporary accounts of slave markets in the US is … eye-opening, to say the least.
Value of a slave: the only figure I can recall seeing was in a book about Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had been a slave dealer before the Civil War. In those days, a slave cost about as much as 8 horses. Slaves were indeed highly valuable assets.
Perhaps modern revulsion at the very idea of the ancient practice of slavery — with every culture throughout history having been at various times both slaves and slave-owners — has muddied the waters, making it very difficult for us to get an accurate picture.
Undoubtedly, future generations will look at today’s heavy human cost in distant countries of mining minerals and manufacturing batteries & solar panels for Westerners — and quite rightly judge us very harshly.
there is a certain convergence between the zombie executives, don’t call them woke, who are all about self flagellating their own country, and their willingness to source materials from a blood soaked hegemon like china, with indentured servitude type rules,
Gavin – one of the figures that I have seen is that a healthy field worker went for $1,500 and up. And that was in 1830s-1840s dollars. There is one account of a huge estate sale, when two large plantation holdings were liquidated in a widely-advertised event – where a field worker up for bidding was reported to be absolutely and demonstratively thrilled as the bidding for him went higher and higher. This was proof of his value in the grand scheme of things, it seems.
I really have to finish with the current ghost-writing project and get back to my Civil War novel, I think. There was lots of interesting information folded into the pre-war abolition campaigns with interesting and sometimes startling nuggets of information regarding the “peculiar institution’ of antebellum slavery…
Fanny Kemble, a famous British actress, married an American, Pierce Butler, and lived with him on his Georgia plantation. Contrary to her husband’s assurances that she would learn to look favorably on slavery, her experiences strengthened her anti-slavery views. In a letter, she said:
“Though the negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freeman—the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will—are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them. Ask the thousands of ragged destitutes who yearly land upon these shores to seek the means of existence—ask the friendless, penniless foreign emigrant, if he will give up his present misery, his future uncertainty, his doubtful and difficult struggle for life, at once, for the secure, and as it is called, fortunate dependance of the slave: the indignation with which he would spurn the offer will prove that he possesses one good beyond all others, and that his birthright as a man is more precious to him yet than the mess of pottage for which he is told to exchange it because he is starving.”
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/55632.html
After the couple divorced, Pierce spent all of his considerable funds, mostly on gambling and stock speculations, and most of his property–including slaves–was sold by trustees. More than 400 were sold in a single auction.
https://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/reform/jb_reform_slaveauc_1.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Slave_Auction
and across the pond, it isn’t much better,
https://www.frontpagemag.com/charles-in-charge/
I would hate to argue that American slaves were somehow better off because the British treated their Irish subjects worse. The British were admirably ecumenical in how they treated all of their foreign subjects whether white, brown or black and whether they occupied Ireland, Asia, Africa or Australia. While the late Queen mostly presided over the final dissolution of the Empire, I expect that a widely distributed number of individuals have, at best, mixed emotions at her passing. Some probably attended her funeral.
Slavery in America had many gradations of badness. The condition of slaves in Tidewater Virginia or the Border States was relatively benign considering that as chattel, that benignity was totally at the discretion of their owner. The conditions for field hands in the Mississippi Delta were hardly better than Jamaica or Brazil, with survival in the low single digits. Being “sold down the river” was a dire threat indeed.
Of course, almost all of this ended more, often much more, than 100 years ago. The whole notion of reparations is just the latest grift from the likes of Jackson and Sharpton. They have magnanimously offered, actually insisted, on taking charge of this money since anyone’s real relationship with slavery is moot. Surely, a president that can forgive a trillion dollars of student debt with a stroke of a pen can find a few trillion more to atone for one of the great injustices of history. Not that it would be more than just the first payment.
If I could discover where my Confederate ancestors buried all their vast ill-gotten wealth, I’d be happy to split it 50/50 with the descendants of any slaves they may have owned.
IIRC, generally a slave was considered to have served his purpose after seven years in the Sugar Islands. There was some rock-face iron mining in antebellum Stewart County TN where comparable calculations were made.
As with all human institutions, slavery was unpredictably messy and varied from place to place and over time. The colonies of British North America are the only places where the slave population increased steadily without large numbers of enslaved newcomers to replenish. Make of that what you will.
Long-dead Fanny Kemble: “ask the friendless, penniless foreign emigrant, if he will give up his present misery, his future uncertainty, his doubtful and difficult struggle for life, at once, for the secure, and as it is called, fortunate dependance of the slave”
Ms Kemble, like her modern counterparts, was glad to speak for the wretched poor while herself living in luxury. If she had bothered to talk with those poor immigrants, she might have asked them how people living in poverty could afford the high price of a two-week trans-Atlantic crossing? In reality, many of them were little better than slaves, having signed themselves into indentured labor for a period of years to pay for the trip.
So which would you rather be…an Irish immigrant doing dangerous work as an indentured servant for 7 years
or
A slave, with no hope of freedom, forbidden to learn to write and read, with the very real possibility of being sold at any time and thus separated from everyone you know?
Neither option is very attractive, I’ll grant…Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor argued that most people would choose the second option.
I suppose a lot of the “vast ill-gotten wealth” was the nominal value of the slaves. The overall value seems a little bubble-like, even accounting for the increase in population.
It is certain that some proportion of the “migrants” rushing the southern border will find themselves in an indeterminate indenture that differs from slavery only as far as you might trust the coyote that smuggled them across the border to account honestly their indebtedness. In actuality, they will be bound some brothel or sweat shop until their cost exceeds their value, they escape or they die. This follows just as inevitably as the hundreds that die crossing the desert as well as however many are simply murdered or die on the way. This blood and stink is on the hands of all the “open border” crowd for creating this attractive nuisance.
Not quite sure what most of the recent discussion has to do with the original post.
Basically I think there’s two main issues:
First, the “urban” or “inner city” problem–American cities have completely imploded over the past 60 years ago. Anyone who could leave has long since left. That includes any blacks with the ability to flee, leaving a small remnant that is dominated by violent criminals. It is a national tragedy that these communities have been allowed to rot, and that American children have to try to live in these war zones.
Second, the university problem, where the “intellectual class” who runs the country gets told that the root of the problem above is how terrible racism is, and middle and upper class blacks tell middle and upper class whites that they were able to get out thanks to affirmative action, despite the brutal circumstances they had to overcome.
Dan:
This is what you are talking about:
Don Lemon Squeezed Into Lemonade By British Woman
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/don-lemon-squeezed-into-lemonade-by-british-woman/
We need far more people whacking assholes like Lemon across the side of the head.
}}} We have had those. Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell,
Especially THOSE two. Not only were/are they erudite and intelligent, they are explaining their positions from the status of men who grew up with actual anti-black racism prevalent in society, and both understand how economics, and the choices [black] people make, produce the results that are blamed on racism.
}}} Reading contemporary accounts of slave markets in the US is … eye-opening, to say the least.
Anything online you can point to? Might be useful.
}}} a book about Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had been a slave dealer before the Civil War. In those days, a slave cost about as much as 8 horses. Slaves were indeed highly valuable assets.
Well, I believe there has been a strong suggestion in the various fictional media — for decades, not just recently — that slaves were of less value than horses. I believe a casual survey of beliefs would confirm this impression among most people.
}}} and quite rightly judge us very harshly.
What do you mean “We”, kemosabe?? :-D
I’ve been ripping “Greens” on them playing “peekaboo” with the pollution in china for a good part of a decade. I rip them at every opportunity about PV, turbine windings, (and now Li-Ion batteries) being not even vaguely “green”.
This morning I was reading a story about yet another plaque being removed because the person it was dedicated to had some unfortunate eugenical ideas about dealing with blacks in the post-Civil War era.
It struck me that we are dismantling large pieces of our heritage, including re-naming military bases, to mollify 12% of the population. And what is our reward? Skyrocketing murder and assault rates, flash mob store heists, BLM riots, cities aflame, etc., ad nauseam.
However much white America backpedals from what it has accomplished — the creation of the freest, most technically advanced nation on Earth — it’s not enough. Apparently, it will never be enough.
I think we should stop renaming things and tearing down monuments until we get some sort of commitment from black America that they will somehow bring their radical, criminal elements in line. Put the onus on them to solve this problem, or we stop bending over to placate them.
More and more, I think Charles Murray out his finger on the problem in his book The Bell Curve. We have a significant chunk if the population that cannot successfully integrate with a modern, highly technical First World nation.
“Put his finger on it,” not “out his finger.”
Going back to the original post, a stream of consciousness that started yesterday
As I was coming back from up north I passed Gettysburg and since no one home back West would understand if you didn’t stop in such a place every time I went and spent a little time by the Angle. From there I could look northwest of town to where Howard’s XI corps was crushed on the first day, you know the XI corps? The Flying Dutchman? A lightning rod of anti-German racism existant since the mid 18th Century.
How about your family history when the first person married someone outside the ethnic group? One family I knew had a son who married a Japanese woman; the grandfather was livid (he was a WW II Marine) but he calmed down when his wife reminded him that at least his grandson wasn’t marrying an Italian. After a business meeting we went out to a bar and the out-of-town guy introduced himself by name and birthplace, with a name starting with “Mc” and from West Virginia he was immediately identified as Scots Irish. The black guy at the table was curious as to the difference believing all Irishmen were papists who celebrated St. Patrick’s Day.
All pretty familiar if you are white, probably the only thing that would change would be the particular ethic group(s) in your particular story. Except they were not seen as ethnic groups, but seen as particular races. Along those lines I lived by a community that had a large population of African immigrants. As I lived by and not in that area I was familiar with various goings-on but not intimately so. When I mentioned that population to a black co-worker he went off on a 5-minute rant on how Africans looked down on native born blacks, saw them as their cultural inferiors. When I would run into people who had emigrated from Africa and strike up a conversation with them, a major fear that kept coming up was that their children would assimilate, primarily through school, into the native black population
Going a little further afield, this morning I saw at Compact a book review concerning the ramfications of a post-Apartheid South Africa for America dealing with its own racial history. I have found it odd that with our own racial turmoil that we don’t spend more time looking at South Africa. The reviewer, who is Afrikaaner, called out the author on her over simplification of the social situation by ignoring the class element that creates the possibilities for cross-racial alliances. I would take it a step further and argue that the racial perspective should also be viewed in terms of tribe, both white and black. The recent rioting in South Africa though centered around certain political figures masked the fact that those politicians themselves were leaders of various tribal elements.
We have all seen the growing trend over the past 5-10 years of what some may call the developing of consensus regarding social issues, what others would the over-simplification, to what I would call the repression of competing voices. Acceptable conversation regarding issues such as racism and other black social issues, climate, Covid have been narrowed so that it can be attached to political agendas. The crushing of any discussion outside of those very narrow, politically convenient, confines is what endangers the welfare of not only society but the Republic.
I am sure that you know, as well as I do, a lot people who thought voting for Barack Obama would be the way for American society and the black community at large to come to a form of healing. Instead the opposite has happened and BLM and Kendi stand in direct refutation of the legacy of Obama himself.
So a larger question, did Obama in how he portrayed himself in 2008 as an avatar of racial healing (whether he actually intended to perform that function or not) was the last, best hope of resolving this racially-based morass or did he by cynical, self-serving manipulation of both this and other Progressive memes drive us further down that pit? The issues may have their roots over hundreds of years and there are other trends as well (the escape of post-modernism from academia), but timing o the rise of Obama, the hopes that were pinned on him, and the result that we seem today do not seem coincidental
“did Obama in how he portrayed himself in 2008 as an avatar of racial healing (whether he actually intended to perform that function or not) was the last, best hope of resolving this racially-based morass or did he by cynical, self-serving manipulation of both this and other Progressive memes drive us further down that pit?”
There is consistent and repeatable polling that shows very, very clearly that white liberal attitudes towards America and white Americans completely fell off the cliff starting in 2008. No other group in the country, and probably the entire world, exhibits such in-group hostility. White liberals really, really, really don’t like white people. And the timing of when it happened shows quite clearly that that the reason is that the great and divine Obama was rejected, and the evil and terrible Orange Man was elected.
I’m a bit confused by Brian’s chronology and timing comment (2008–Obama was accepted, not rejected) but can’t argue with his overall point. I knew a lot of W/white people who voted for Obama in ’08 to prove to themselves they weren’t racist, that they were better than those others . . . And some are openly, scornfully racist of conservative or traditional B/blacks.
The value of slaves is an interesting study in pop culture. Key and Peele have a few sketches on the theme–funny as hell of course–but the Slave Auction turns reality on its head, with bids for able-bodied males of $8.00 (eight) and the like, when in truth a hundred times that, or more, was closer to reality. They do at least acknowledge that the enslaved wanted to be expensive for their own reasons.
The slave economy WAS a bubble economy, and the wealthy plantation owners were almost always in debt to the factors and financiers of NYC and other places. Not to shed a tear for them, just to point out that they too were caught in the worldwide web of cotton, which was bigger than they were.
My first-gen father married into a Scots-Irish/Anglo clan (Confederate branch) and had four sons. I know that his mother, my Oma, who long survived him and his sister, hoped that one of us at least would marry one of the suitable German or German-descended girls in her immigrant circles, but that was not in the cards.
One of my good friend’s aunts fell in love with a NYC Italian Catholic guy when he was here training in the Navy in WWII. The older generation–some of them–commented that she “might as well have married a N-word.” They lived happily in Fishkill, NY after that.
Eddie: Yes, He was elected, but then too many people refused to obey, they stood in His way and they prevented Him from bringing about paradise on Earth. And so He was failed, by Them, those filthy deplorables, who must be purged. Because of Them, He was not able to fulfill his mission, because We allowed it to happen, We failed Him, We all must do better.
}}} Anyone who could leave has long since left.
This isn’t even vaguely true. This is America. You can leave the place you are in any day of the week, and never ever go back again.
The is the America of the 21st century. You can not only hop a bus to anywhere you choose to land, you can arrange ahead of time for some kind of assistance in that location towards finding a job and having a place to crash — if only a cot in a dormitory room — until you can get on your feet.
This notion that anyone is “trapped” anywhere, in a bad place, with nowhere to go, is a hoary lie fed to people unable to actually think for themselves to the contrary.
No, not saying it’s easy, by any measure. But the support systems out there, esp. for someone looking to better their lives and the lives of their children by earning a living — are phenomenally greater than that of virtually every one of our ancestors who led us here a century and more ago.
Most of America is founded by people who looked around at their “old place”, said, “This place sucks! I need to go find a better place!” and thus took the main chance at grasping for the brass ring. Many were ground under by things, but their children prospered and did better for themselves. And their grandchildren better still.
America is hardly perfect, but the mobility entrenched in our systems is vastly greater than that of almost any, if not every, other nation on Earth.
It is part of what makes the USA actually an exceptional place.
OBH: Yeah, I’ve heard all that before. It was especially notorious and despicable from the pen of Kevin Williamson.
Yes, it is literally true that some 80 year old in East St. Louis could have left decades ago. Crapping all over an innocuous sentence that “Anyone who could leave has long since left.” is still vile and contemptible, and is supposed to accomplish what exactly?
well obama was a protege of not only reverend wright in philosophy, but derrick bell in what he described as law, but marxist philosophy and bill ayers in pedagogy, I guess one could come up with a more noxious brew, but one would be challenged,
east st louis was blighted 40 years ago, thats where they filmed the exteriors of escape from new york, charles murray has had an evolution from his criticism of mere welfare dependency, in losing ground to more critical analysis with falling away about the formation of white underclass, do to deindustrialization I don’t put that much stock in the inherent iq wars sparked by the bell curve,
Nelson Mandela’s influence was not benign in South Africa’s evolution, but the likes of Zuma who took over the Zulu leadership were worse, the respectable one is supposedly Maraposa, but that’s only in relation to that firebrand Malemba is, who is pushing for Zimbabwezation
sorry this guy,
https://irr.org.za/media/ramaphosa-says-he2019s-a-socialist-2013-believe-him-rational-standard
it was not inevitable that mugabe win, over muzorewa, but the British foreign office, though it was necessary, as did MI 6’s man in salisbury, so according to accounts of the selous scouts, they targeted the most moderate candidate,
When I mentioned that population to a black co-worker he went off on a 5-minute rant on how Africans looked down on native born blacks, saw them as their cultural inferiors.
Oh, I think this is true. Most of the immigrants from Africa are Ibos and they are very successful. I have met some from other places and cultures though and they are also successful. One of my black medical students was from Eritrea and a refugee. Her parents got her out to South Africa where she was safe. Eventually, she ended up living with a grandmother in LA and was so poor she could not afford a computer. Medical students no longer use microscopes but laptops. In spite of her difficulties (I loaned her my instruments for physical exams) she did fine. Another black student in that group, American born with a local family, flunked out.
When examining military recruits, I met a kid from Uganda who had his whole future figured out. He was joining the Army, then college on GI Bill, then medical school. I’ll bet he makes it. The African immigrants avoid the American blacks.
Mike K…”Medical students no longer use microscopes but laptops.”
How does that work? Is there some sort of optical attachment to the laptop which allows microscopic examination of actual specimens, or are they just using the laptop to look at pre-stored images?
For those who criticize others as being ‘prejudiced’, I point out that the lamb is prejudiced against the wolf as is the chicken against the fox. This does not mean that the wolf will always attack the sheep. But, saving one’s life may depend on betting that way. This does not mean that either the fox or wolf is evil, but to bet otherwise is to put one’s life at the mercy of another.
Prejudice is not judgement, it is survival by recognition of threat. I am going out to dinner tomorrow night, and I expect everyone in the restaurant and on the town will act in a civilized manner. But will I have my concealed carry on and my head on a swivel? You bet!
To bet otherwise is to wind up like Sweden, which believed it only needed to show love and acceptance to a rabble of medieval savages. Oops.
How does that work? Is there some sort of optical attachment to the laptop which allows microscopic examination of actual specimens, or are they just using the laptop to look at pre-stored images?
This may not apply to all medical schools but the one where I taught for 15 years and graduated in 1966, no ,longer uses microscopes for students. They all have laptops and look at images that are online. We sometimes did the same but mostly made our own slides or looked at slides made of cases we knew. The Gross Anatomy course no longer dissects a full cadaver. Lots of changes that I am uneasy with.
Mike…sounds like a bad idea to me. Isn’t there a certain amount of skill involved in making slides and adjusting microscopes to get a good image?
Seems kind of similar to teaching a physics course by using simulations of experiments rather than actual physical experiments. Which I understand is actually done in a lot of places.
yes thats ridiculous, you need to have contact with a live organism,
I’m sure as hell not a doctor, so set me straight if I’m wrong. My impression is that doctors, unless they’re pathologists, rarely, if ever, have a use for a microscope. Even pathologists don’t make the slides, that’s all done by techs.
Of course, there is the idea that you can dispense with the doctor altogether and just shovel all the numbers from all the test done by all the techs into a computer and get the diagnosis and treatment plan automagicly. And then, replace the techs with robots. Oddly, the same bunch that can’t turn your headlights on more than two thirds of the time they should, failed miserably at this in their last attempt.
To belabor the bleeding obvious, what a doctor needs to know has been an unanswered question since before Galen. As long as medical education remains about two thirds hands on, the good ones will see what they don’t know and fix it. It’s the ones that think the real world is just another multiple choice quiz that you won’t want to use. Good luck where the clinic model treats doctors as just another interchangeable cog in the system and you’ll never see the same one twice.
It’s hard for me to imagine a doctor today making a slide and looking at a microscope. What possible situation would that involve? The average doctor today is the front person for a huge corporation, they’re not “doing medicine” in any real way, as far as I can tell.
I’m infinitely more worried that very few doctors, pediatricians especially, spoke out against either the vaccines for young kids or even against school closures, etc. But given that the uptake has been only a few percent for the youngest kids, and the new “bivalent” “booster” is seeing roughly the same, it’s clear that there was at least some quiet resistance building over the past year or two.
I guess you could say that the airline pilot today is the front person for a huge corporation, and also also for the vast network of resources on which he depends, including air traffic controllers, navigational facilities, and much more. But I’d still much rather have a pilot who has a deep understanding of how airplanes fly, and of the characteristics of his particular plane…a Airman rather than just an Airplane Driver.
As far as doc opinions on vaccines (and other medications), my impression is that the average doc does not get much training in statistics and statistical reasoning, important if you want to go beyond anecdotal evidence.
I think the better analogy is a pilot who would know how to fly a 50s era plane. Or a photographer who knows how to develop film. What does making slides have to do with modern medicine?
I’m sure as hell not a doctor, so set me straight if I’m wrong. My impression is that doctors, unless they’re pathologists, rarely, if ever, have a use for a microscope. Even pathologists don’t make the slides, that’s all done by techs.
All very true but real slides can be moved around under the microscope. It’s not just “the best view.” My partner in practice, another surgeon, had been a lab tech in the Air Force, stationed in Tunisia for four years. He was the local expert on parasites since so few are found in Orange County CA. I had a collection of slides from my own surgical cases. I could tell students the clinical story behind the slide. It’s like the fact that autopsies are no longer done in hospitals. I used to take my student group to the Coroner’s office to watch autopsies. When I was a student we did that every week. Now, if they are lucky, they see one a year.
. What does making slides have to do with modern medicine?
No more than seeing or doing autopsies. Or dissecting a whole cadaver. The only doctors who know anatomy anymore are surgeons. Some of the GPs who were faculty would ask me to teach their students surface anatomy. When I was doing my cardiac surgery training, we had a cardiologist ask us to “take a look at the aortic valve” while we were replacing a mitral valve. He had no idea of cardiac anatomy.
The central question for medical education, professional education or any education is what to teach and how to teach it. No course of study can cover more than the high points of what you’ll need before considering changes in practice and knowledge over time during a reasonable of study. Then there’s the matter how much sticks.
It’s from the sticky stand point that the difference between preparing a slide and bringing it into focus under a microscope compared to just looking at another picture on a screen or in a book makes a difference. Once the knowledge is fixed, a skilled practitioner can glance at a picture and quote chapter and verse without a second thought. It’s fixing that knowledge in the first place that’s the problem.
The same is true with rigging a pulley system versus looking at a diagram. Computer systems that have you click and drag the various components into place occupy a space in between but probably not nearly as close to handling the actual components as their advocates claim.
I’ve spent big chunks of my life working with metals that have a reputation for difficulty. All it takes is a few minutes wrestling with mending something with the sewing machine I inherited from my mother to appreciate how much easier it is to deal with something that just sits there while you cut or abrade it versus flopping all over the place. This is especially true when the material is living tissue. I want anybody doing that to me or mine to have lots of experience in the real world, computer simulation be damned.
After I posted above, I noticed that I left a word or two out. As I’m wont to say, if that’s the biggest mistake I make today, it’ll be a good day. If I had pretensions of being a professional writer with layers and layers of fact checkers this would mortify me to no end: “although at this point it seems unlikely that either scenario is unlikely.” From:
https://gcaptain.com/port-houston-a-big-winner-from-west-to-east-cargo-shift/
If the schools are doing as good a job teaching CRT as they do teaching English, CRT isn’t what we need to worry about.
“As far as doc opinions on vaccines (and other medications), my impression is that the average doc does not get much training in statistics and statistical reasoning, important if you want to go beyond anecdotal evidence.”
It doesn’t require a graduate degree in statistics for a pediatrician to have realized that they weren’t seeing any seriously ill kids, and that the “public health authorities” saying “oh sure the vaccines cause myocarditis, but it’s only minor heart inflammation and totally won’t cause any long-term effects” was complete and total insanity.
}}} OBH: Yeah, I’ve heard all that before. It was especially notorious and despicable from the pen of Kevin Williamson.
Yes, it is literally true that some 80 year old in East St. Louis could have left decades ago. Crapping all over an innocuous sentence that “Anyone who could leave has long since left.” is still vile and contemptible, and is supposed to accomplish what exactly?
Brian, you’ve been around this place to know that
1 — sneering condescension is hardly an argument.
2 — mindless naysaying is also not an argument.
Sometime, when you want to actually address the points by making a legitimate challenge that has any kind of factual argument or assertions about my comments, feel free.
Until then, you’re no different from every other Leftist idiot trying to score virtue points by claiming everyone in bad straights is a helpless victim unable to do anything for themselves.
Some, perhaps, are, but that does not apply to 90% of those in actual bad situations. They’re just too lazy or stupid to actually do the ONE THING ANYONE CAN DO, which is find someplace better than where ever the eph they are.
AGAIN: I am not saying it is EASY. But the notion that everywhere in America is just as good or bad as anywhere else is the sheerest of balderdash, and only a total fool would even ATTEMPT to make that argument HERE.
“1 — sneering condescension is hardly an argument.”
Are you joking, or are you seriously this laughably lacking in self-awareness?
}}} Nelson Mandela’s influence was not benign in South Africa’s evolution
But it should be noted that his physical manifestation in the Real World, while he was incarcerated so wrongly, was as bad as it gets.
Winnie Mandela is known for personally “necklacing” people opposed to her. You don’t get much less benign than that. And she never even attempted an apology, nor did Nelson ever make any efforts on her behalf. They just ignored her actions.
David Foster:
It’s an electronic imaging system, just like a camera, with an optical zoom component, just like an actual microscope — it’s just designed to use the CCD for the image rather than an eye, and feeds the info to the computer.
https://www.amazon.com/computer-microscope/s?k=computer+microscope
They run from US$1000 to as little as 30 bucks.
}}} “1 — sneering condescension is hardly an argument.”
Are you joking, or are you seriously this laughably lacking in self-awareness?
Brian, you are an asshole. GFY.
Nothing I said was sneering or condescending. People in bad straights can do things for themselves to get out of them. PERIOD. It helps if you have some personal support while doing so, but it’s not absolutely required.
Either make a case for your counterargument, or Go Straight To Hell. I don’t care.
I’ve been defacto homeless for 4y out of the last 20, in two 2y segments, due to extended unemployment — this despite having decades of experience with computers. Partly/mainly due to recessions.
I was able to depend on friends, so I never went onto any of the various government support systems, partly because I did not need to, partly because I did not need to, and chose not to burden the system.
So I know exactly how it feels to be in a bad situation as a result of no error on your own part.
In both cases, I worked my way out of that situation.
Not the least reason, there are a hell of a lot of absolute fools running HR, and they have far too much sway over hiring people. They create a Chinese Restaurant menu of skills needed, such that the only people who can pass them are generally ex-employees. Most of the time, either those ex-employees are tired of the company’s shit, or the company is tired of their shit. Then the HR flacks whine about having no ability to find someone “eligible” for hiring.
Once you hit 40, HR flacks aren’t competent enough to grasp that, while skills can be dated, the experience and capabilities are not. It takes me far less time to learn new skills because I already have the natural talent and understanding of how things work. As one former supervisor noted, “I know how to break things”, and that is why I am a better software tester than most… Particularly younger people with limited experience with computers. Having been a dev in the past, I know what errors devs make.
But getting past the idiot HR flacks, just to INTERVIEW with someone who can tell that I Know My Shit, has been an issue multiple times in the past.
The ONLY way I got out of being unemployed, and back into having my own place, was because **I** did what was needed to make it happen. No one else could do so.
You have to gain a skill, and then learn how to sell it to people who want good workers. Sometimes that means doing something entirely irrelevant to actually doing much with that skill — such as taking computer classes at a local CoCo and impressing the professors. You may not have needed the class knowledge in any way, BUT that gives you contacts into the industry that gets you the interview where you can sell yourself.
For others it can mean moving from a bad place to live to a place that is much better to live in — which CAN mean giving up everything you know to make a leap forwards into the unknown — giving up proximity to family and friends…
You know, just like those ancestors did.
Except WE have the capacity to prearrange for a soft landing, if you’ve got sense and determination, which can up your odds of succeeding quite a bit.
Now, if you have any kind of a valid counter to my two sets of comments, feel free to do so.
Otherwise, I repeat: GFY. You’re no better than any whining idiot Lefty who wants people to STAY “victims”.
LOL. I assume your post isn’t going to stay up, but it’s pretty funny. Get some therapy, dude.
}}} Crapping all over an innocuous sentence that “Anyone who could leave has long since left.” is still vile and contemptible, and is supposed to accomplish what exactly?
BTW, to make the point even more clear:
“Anyone who could leave has long since left.” is ANYTHING but “innocuous”.
It’s a complete abandonment of personal responsibility. It is expressly saying “I can do nothing of my personal bad situation”. And yes, that is offensive as hell, because IN AMERICA THIS IS NOT NOW, HAS NEVER BEEN, and, God willing, never WILL BE true.
You can ALWAYS go somewhere else in the USA, barring some radical shift in State and Federal laws. YES, it may be a very hard thing to do, as it can mean losing the immediate contact of family and friends, but it is and has always been POSSIBLE.
And if it is the only way to improve your lot, because you’re in some obnoxious liberal hellhole where no one can succeed who isn’t already a success, then that is the only option you have.
And it is thusly YOUR choice to make, no one else’s.
You can continue with your life, as “comfortable” as it is due to being something KNOWN, or you can take that Leap of Faith which anyone EXCEPT a former “African Slave in all ancestors” has ancestors who have taken it at some point, just to be here in the USA.
Even the Amerinds had a relative who long ago walked thousands of miles across that ice bridge looking for something better.
So, no, the statement is not “innocuous”. It is a blatant assertion of mental foolishness at best. Of lazy, whining, victimology more than likely. And yes, an admixture of both is certainly possible.
}}} LOL. I assume your post isn’t going to stay up, but it’s pretty funny. Get some therapy, dude.
Yeah, there’s only one person who needs help. It’s not me. You have yet to make any case whatsoever for your whiny BS. You’re as worthless in this thread as Pengy.
They’re just too lazy or stupid to actually do the ONE THING ANYONE CAN DO, which is find someplace better than where ever the eph they are.
Mm-hmm. I admit I’m not Brian, but as I also find this idea viscerally offensive, allow me to retort.
Kevin Williamson comes into this because of a piece he wrote years ago attacking the people of a small city in New York because they hadn’t moved somewhere he liked better.
I recall reading it then and it made me immediately despise Williamson.
He’s a globalist shill and his story was a nasty attack on Americans who haven’t benefited from the endless globalism espoused by the people who paid him to write it.
I found it especially offensive because almost every single person I’ve known or worked with has moved for a job, traveled for one, or still travels. And, also, quite literally tens of millions of people in the US have even moved here from another country, for one reason or another.
I’m pretty sure our globalist masters know all about this- but they also know this has drastically reduced any motivation any given American has to move somewhere else, because odds are some foreigner will already be there and likely be willing to work for much less, too.
Again, Americans still move and travel for work. But if the job you can get somewhere else in America doesn’t pay any better than where you are now, why move?
Globalists, angry that Americans have noticed the above, respond by shrieking that we are lazy and stupid- and also they pay bootlicking shills like Kevin Williamson to write hysterical attacks against us.
MCS, I humbly suggest you notice this too. This isn’t 1950.
MCS, I humbly suggest you notice this too. This isn’t 1950.
My apologies, especially to MCS, because this wasn’t him/her.
ObloodyHell,
You just listed a swarm of reasons why the country is going to blazes, from your own experiences.
Do you think no one else has noticed? Do you think other people might just be deciding, F this, I’m not playing this losing game?
Bluntly, it looks like you’ve been screwed hard by the folks who’ve been busy running the US into the ground- and you want to defend them?
You sure about that?
Comments are getting a bit heated for here. Many of us have been in serious trouble, maybe not homeless but not comfortable. As to leaving bad places, I would love to get my sister out of Chicago. She is 80 and her husband, a retired cop, just died. She has a small but comfortable home in Beverly, which used to a neighborhood as elegant as South Shore where we both grew up. Now there is serious crime within a few blocks of her. But she has children and grandchildren to whom she is very attached. She will not leave but I worry.
Mike, I worry like heck about my sister, her husband, her kids, and my Mom, who is disabled and lives with her. In a relatively nice neighborhood in Pasadena … but my daughter has noted on previous visits, that my sister is extremely reluctant to drive much outside of a tiny orbit. My daughter also noted that the last time she arrived for a visit by Amtrak – she arrived in daylight, and the disintegration of downtown and the homeless camps everywhere were purely awful to look at from the train. Of course, I know from traveling on trains here and there, that one doesn’t see the best of a city, arriving on rails … but still.
My daughter and Wee Jamie are going to visit in the spring of next year – mostly to give my sister and family a break, and to show off Wee Jamie to the family. And I worry also. My brother in law had a chance a couple of years ago for a job in Houston. I so wish that it had come through for him – for various reasons, it didn’t.
I basically said to Penny what OBH said to me and it was deleted almost immediately. Oh well.
like an andromeda colony, progs have befouled many areas, can we agree on that point, our red county is solid, but we’re near the singularity of orange and osceola, where a Soros zampolit holdes court,
“Brian, you are an asshole. GFY.”
So this is acceptable discourse here now?
Keep it civil, guys.
Edited to add: Chicago Boyz comments policy.