Yes, I'm arguing that they'd still be racist, since there really has been no argument to the contrary. I'm not arguing that the fact that they would still be racists is a reason not to try to improve the economic situation of poor and working class white people who happen to be racist, and really don't see how I could have been clearer about that.
The idea that we should try to help out economically distressed people because doing so will somehow make them better people strikes me as bizarre nonsense. We should try to help out economically distressed people because poverty sucks.
I really do get the idea that, despite fulminations about inequality, leftists don’t actually have a problem with white racists having a bad time.They enjoy the opportunity to see bad people be punished, and to rub those bad people’s noses in just how bad they were and how they absolutely deserve to be where they are now.
As opposed to right-wingers, who always... well, usually... well, very occasionally refrain from arguing that poor people are poor because of their horrible choices, pathological culture, and generally being a bunch of lazy moochers, takers and "welfare queens" who lack any sense of "personal responsibility".
Except "race" doesn't have some fixed, objective meaning that makes it clear that the issue here has "nothing to do with race". I mean, it might not be, but an appeal to them both being "Caucasian" makes for a very weak argument.
Some such people can probably never be swayed but insisting that none of them could be strikes me as a dodge, and maybe a tacit admission that the cosmopolitan progressive side of this debate doesn’t have an answer either.
I just don't see evidence that the plan is a useful argument. I suppose it might be possible that successfully implementing that kind of plan would help undermine the sentiments fueling the rise of Trump et al., but that's very different from persuading anybody.
Depends on how you define racism, I guess. I tend to view it narrowly as thus: “a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits”.
Maybe I'm biased by being Jewish, but European and American anti-semitism often overlaps heavily with racism, and is usually targeted at people who look totally white. (There are lots of Jews who don't look white, but they're a pretty small minority of a pretty small minority in the US and Western Europe.)
Now, maybe you're right about the case of the British and Poles, but I don't think the argument you used to support it is correct.
Why is the fact that they're both Caucasian relevant to the question of whether it's racism? It's not like the racial categories and classifications that racism is built on top of are somehow objective and eternal.
That racism is wrong can and should be part of the message, but that message also needs to include a plan for how those people are going to have a decent economic quality of life and a stake in the government.
I think it's interesting that our answer has to have that, when the people we're talking about are generally flocking to movements and candidates who don't have anything resembling a plan to address those interests. Boiled right down, Trump doesn't have a plan for anything. Where's the evidence that such a plan will be a persuasive argument?
I can think of dozens of reasons why we'd want to have and implement that plan, of course, but I don't see any reason to believe articulating it will shut down the racist sentiments.
Why wouldn't "capitalism" be an acceptable shorthand for "American style capitalism"? Capitalism has had aggressive and powerful political defenders in the US for most of its history, it's a very wealthy country and it has a high degree of political stability and ranks quite low in every reporting of political corruption. The US should be damn near a best case for capitalism, and by excluding it, it makes me wonder what exactly you're talking about.
Second, defenders of capitalism rarely refrain from citing the successes of the US economy as benefits of capitalism, in terms technological innovation, productivity enhancements, wealth creation, better and cheaper consumer goods, and the like. Without this record of success in the real world, it seems like the argument for capitalism becomes much weaker, but if you want to keep it, I think you have to take the good with the bad.
I'm not exactly sure what it means that I knew who /u/GayLubeOil was before reading that article, except that I make bad choices about what to read online.
It seems like it what only yesterday that @notme was complaining bitterly that Obama's unwillingness to confront ISIS was placing us all at grave risk.
Probably because he was literally doing that yesterday.
I think part of the problem is that ISIS is more difficult to define than we had hoped.
This only appears to be the case if you enter this conversation with the assumption that combatting ISIS effectively would have prevented the Orlando attack, which, based on what we do know about Omar Mateen--like that he'd previously been a big fan of Hizbollah--seems pretty damned unlikely.
On the other hand, individual hate-filled wretches picking up guns and murdering the objects of their hate in an attempt to alleviate their wretchedness is a thing that happens pretty frequently in the US, without any mention of ISIS. I'm not sure why Mateen's pledge to ISIS is tremendously more important than John Hinckley's desire to impress Jodie Foster.
One of the reasons that the argument that the attack was all the fault of Islam has salience is that a (presumptive) major party nominee is using it as a major rationale for his candidacy.
The shareholders' "punishment" in this instance is simply that their shares are less valuable because the employees of their company made awful decisions. That's... basically just part of being a shareholder, right?
I disagree. If the latter is true, we could protect ourselves from this happening again by destroying ISIS.
Of course, the long history of disgruntled American assholes deciding to go out and kill a bunch of people without needing ISIS to provide inspiration suggests that this is a false hope.
Alternatively, he knew it would scare people more, as he would go from being a violent, hate-fueled individual asshole to a representative of broader movement. "You may kill me, but others out there are like me and they will insure this keeps happening."
Will H.:
From a guy who just scored a 345 out of a possible 350 in a graduate-level Conflict Management class, and having covered the constructive/destructive conflict material in a Negotiations class, as Case Competition Chair of my chapter of the Society of Human Resource Managers, I can say:
If you paid money for any of that training, you shouldn't be saying anything but, "I demand a refund."
Seriously, physician, it's time to heal thyself:
This is definitionally a toxic conflict.
[...]
And I’m fairly certain that’s why the men I know who love wearing women’s clothes residing in Texas and Florida never had as much trouble as you do in Boston doing the same thing.
Evidently the pattern is college kids who are disproportionately likely to be members of a minority get a, "This is irresponsible!" for mistaking one kind of white robe for another and sending out anxious tweets about it, while cops who mistake a wallet for a gun and shoot somebody a dozen times get a, "Well, you have to understand...."
No, let's. The idea that professionals, which is what Couric purports to be, are helpless in the face of short-term incentives, is absolutely pernicious.
The dad. He may have accomplished his goal of keeping his kid from being appropriately punished, and now he is being publicly shamed for it. Given that the father accomplished his goal by acting shamefully in public, there is a small measure of justice in this.
I think I may want to bet that bottle, not because I think it's at all likely that Trump will win, but simply because if he does manage to win, I'm really gonna want to have a bottle of whiskey close at hand.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “How Brexit Turned Into an Immigrant’s Nightmare”
Yes, I'm arguing that they'd still be racist, since there really has been no argument to the contrary. I'm not arguing that the fact that they would still be racists is a reason not to try to improve the economic situation of poor and working class white people who happen to be racist, and really don't see how I could have been clearer about that.
The idea that we should try to help out economically distressed people because doing so will somehow make them better people strikes me as bizarre nonsense. We should try to help out economically distressed people because poverty sucks.
As opposed to right-wingers, who always... well, usually... well, very occasionally refrain from arguing that poor people are poor because of their horrible choices, pathological culture, and generally being a bunch of lazy moochers, takers and "welfare queens" who lack any sense of "personal responsibility".
Pull the other one.
"
Except "race" doesn't have some fixed, objective meaning that makes it clear that the issue here has "nothing to do with race". I mean, it might not be, but an appeal to them both being "Caucasian" makes for a very weak argument.
"
I don’t see why it *wouldn’t*.
Because having a plan that would work is an entirely different thing from convincing people that you have a plan that would work.
"
Some such people can probably never be swayed but insisting that none of them could be strikes me as a dodge, and maybe a tacit admission that the cosmopolitan progressive side of this debate doesn’t have an answer either.
I just don't see evidence that the plan is a useful argument. I suppose it might be possible that successfully implementing that kind of plan would help undermine the sentiments fueling the rise of Trump et al., but that's very different from persuading anybody.
"
Depends on how you define racism, I guess. I tend to view it narrowly as thus: “a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits”.
Maybe I'm biased by being Jewish, but European and American anti-semitism often overlaps heavily with racism, and is usually targeted at people who look totally white. (There are lots of Jews who don't look white, but they're a pretty small minority of a pretty small minority in the US and Western Europe.)
Now, maybe you're right about the case of the British and Poles, but I don't think the argument you used to support it is correct.
"
Why is the fact that they're both Caucasian relevant to the question of whether it's racism? It's not like the racial categories and classifications that racism is built on top of are somehow objective and eternal.
"
That racism is wrong can and should be part of the message, but that message also needs to include a plan for how those people are going to have a decent economic quality of life and a stake in the government.
I think it's interesting that our answer has to have that, when the people we're talking about are generally flocking to movements and candidates who don't have anything resembling a plan to address those interests. Boiled right down, Trump doesn't have a plan for anything. Where's the evidence that such a plan will be a persuasive argument?
I can think of dozens of reasons why we'd want to have and implement that plan, of course, but I don't see any reason to believe articulating it will shut down the racist sentiments.
On “Second and Main”
Why wouldn't "capitalism" be an acceptable shorthand for "American style capitalism"? Capitalism has had aggressive and powerful political defenders in the US for most of its history, it's a very wealthy country and it has a high degree of political stability and ranks quite low in every reporting of political corruption. The US should be damn near a best case for capitalism, and by excluding it, it makes me wonder what exactly you're talking about.
Second, defenders of capitalism rarely refrain from citing the successes of the US economy as benefits of capitalism, in terms technological innovation, productivity enhancements, wealth creation, better and cheaper consumer goods, and the like. Without this record of success in the real world, it seems like the argument for capitalism becomes much weaker, but if you want to keep it, I think you have to take the good with the bad.
On “WAFB: Man shot by BRPD multiple times to chest, back”
If black cops shoot other blacks more often than they shoot whites are they being racist?
...Possibly? Is there some reason this possibility is so self-evidently absurd as to be dismissed with a rhetorical question?
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2016.06.27.M}”
I'm not exactly sure what it means that I knew who /u/GayLubeOil was before reading that article, except that I make bad choices about what to read online.
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2016.06.16.Th}”
It seems like it what only yesterday that @notme was complaining bitterly that Obama's unwillingness to confront ISIS was placing us all at grave risk.
Probably because he was literally doing that yesterday.
On “Read President Obama’s Speech Criticizing the Muslim Ban — Time”
I think part of the problem is that ISIS is more difficult to define than we had hoped.
This only appears to be the case if you enter this conversation with the assumption that combatting ISIS effectively would have prevented the Orlando attack, which, based on what we do know about Omar Mateen--like that he'd previously been a big fan of Hizbollah--seems pretty damned unlikely.
On the other hand, individual hate-filled wretches picking up guns and murdering the objects of their hate in an attempt to alleviate their wretchedness is a thing that happens pretty frequently in the US, without any mention of ISIS. I'm not sure why Mateen's pledge to ISIS is tremendously more important than John Hinckley's desire to impress Jodie Foster.
"
One of the reasons that the argument that the attack was all the fault of Islam has salience is that a (presumptive) major party nominee is using it as a major rationale for his candidacy.
On “Morning Ed: Money {2016.06.15.W}”
I really don't get your objection at all.
The shareholders' "punishment" in this instance is simply that their shares are less valuable because the employees of their company made awful decisions. That's... basically just part of being a shareholder, right?
On “Read President Obama’s Speech Criticizing the Muslim Ban — Time”
Is it quite so precious to believe that who we bomb might be influenced by elections?
"
I disagree. If the latter is true, we could protect ourselves from this happening again by destroying ISIS.
Of course, the long history of disgruntled American assholes deciding to go out and kill a bunch of people without needing ISIS to provide inspiration suggests that this is a false hope.
On “Terror, Community, and Blood — Updated”
Alternatively, he knew it would scare people more, as he would go from being a violent, hate-fueled individual asshole to a representative of broader movement. "You may kill me, but others out there are like me and they will insure this keeps happening."
"
If you paid money for any of that training, you shouldn't be saying anything but, "I demand a refund."
Seriously, physician, it's time to heal thyself:
"
Why would they do that? It's not like Reddit has a history of spreading damaging misinformation following terrorist attacks.
"
Thanks for reminding us who the real victim is, @dand .
On “Who is Afraid of the Ku Klux Klan?”
I don't, which is why I appealed to likelihood.
"
Evidently the pattern is college kids who are disproportionately likely to be members of a minority get a, "This is irresponsible!" for mistaking one kind of white robe for another and sending out anxious tweets about it, while cops who mistake a wallet for a gun and shoot somebody a dozen times get a, "Well, you have to understand...."
On “Katie Couric Lied So You Could Feel Good about Your Opinion — Paradox”
But let’s not lay the blame fully on Couric.
No, let's. The idea that professionals, which is what Couric purports to be, are helpless in the face of short-term incentives, is absolutely pernicious.
On “Brock Allen Turner: The Sort of Defendant Who is Spared “Severe Impact””
The dad. He may have accomplished his goal of keeping his kid from being appropriately punished, and now he is being publicly shamed for it. Given that the father accomplished his goal by acting shamefully in public, there is a small measure of justice in this.
On “Can We Please Not Spend the Next Five Months Pretending This is Going to Be A Close Election?”
I think I may want to bet that bottle, not because I think it's at all likely that Trump will win, but simply because if he does manage to win, I'm really gonna want to have a bottle of whiskey close at hand.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.