Things that are so obvious and ingrained that no one even thinks about them.
Here’s a few:
All US americans can go to Mexico EASILY. You’re supposed to have a passport but you don’t even need one (for car/foot crossing). Versus, it’s really hard for Mexicans, who aren’t wealthy, to secure a VISA to enter the US. I’m sure there are corollaries in other geo-regions.
Another one is wealthy countries having access to vaccines far ahead of “poor” countries.
In US, we might pay lip service to equal child-hood education but most of the funding pulls from local taxes so some kids might receive ~$10000 in spending while another receives $2000. I’m not looking it up at the moment, but I’m SURE there are strong racial stratas.
Treating the usian "founding fathers" as democracy-loving freedom fighters
Their deification in general gets on my nerves. Everything they've ever said or written is treated as infallible words of god and nobody may ever dispute them.
I suppose the British considered them to be rebels, insurrectionists, or maybe even terrorists. It's all a matter of perspective isn't it?
The British press and government explicitly called them terrorists.
But the other side of it is just as laughable. Whenever the framers of the constitution wrote about what they were trying to do, they would endlessly hand-wring about how bad it would be for everyone to have a say in government. They thought only rich land-owning men had proved themselves worthy to hold power. You know, them and all their friends. The american "revolution" had more in common with a coup than any sort of real liberatory movement.
It's like Bezos and Elon being the "founding fathers" of an independent US West Coast, nothing revolutionary about it.
Well it was still a step in the right direction, distributing power a bit more locally instead of living as a colony under a monarchical foreign power. You may also recall that initially they went too far in decentralizing power before the Constitution replaced the articles of confederation. Even then voting rights were mostly decided by each state, some allowing non land owners and even free black men (though sometimes later removing that right) to vote pre 1800s. Whatever they may have discussed, voting and ability to participate in government was enjoyed by over half of the citizens, which is a significant improvement over the foreign tyrant they had previously. But regardless of how the British tried to label colonial rebels, and regardless of how much the rebels didn't get right, I'm on the side of the historical revolutionaries.
I would love to know your opinion of the CPC within this context. You have made it clear that you support American revolutionaries if only because their system was ostensibly better than the one that came before. What about Chinese revolutionaries?
Hmm, interesting question. That depends if you think that the society they have now is better than the one preceding? The two situations aren't entirely analogous since one involved separation from a foreign power while the other involved dismantling of the old culture and society in order to make a brand new one. I think that China is more powerful now than they would be otherwise, had they not gone through their cultural revolution, but it came at a great cost where centuries of culture was destroyed. I don't think it was worth it, but that's also easy for me to say because I don't live there and because my perception is certainly skewed by Western perspectives. I think they lost something of great value with how the cultural revolution played out and the Chinese people are irrecoverably different as a result. Makes me a little bit sad, but we can't change the past, so it doesn't really matter.
You think "destroying centuries of culture" outweighs abolishing extreme poverty, ending feudalism in a country of more than a billion, redistributing land to the peasantry, taking the country from a cycle where every few years millions would die in a famine to being an economic super power, leading the world in space age scientific progress?
I couldn't even be bothered to engage once they tried to imply that the Chinese revolution didn't involve separation from a foreign power. what was the Shanghai International Settlement? they sure don't know, maybe it was a floor wax or a dessert topping.
Parenti quote about evaluating how a country is before and after a revolution, but a bizarre messed up version where he decides Cuba was better off as a colony with no self determination.
Also the environment was devastated and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) died. Also how do you feel about China's current treatment of indigenous Tibetans? Maybe you should take off your red colored glasses and look around.
The environment being devastated is mostly a fair criticism. China is making huge efforts toward sustainability today, but maybe too late to make enough of a difference.
Hundreds of millions died, yes, that's what happens when 80 years go by in a country of hundreds of millions. I don't see your point.
How do I feel about their treatment of indigenous Tibetans? I think China did a heroic thing by ending slave labor in Tibet. I'm not sure if they took the best path toward liberating Tibetan slaves while also not erasing their culture. I don't know if such a thing was possible, and my personal opinion is that if it wasn't, it's preferable for them to be free and not keep a reactionary culture than keep their slave state intact, the same way I don't care about preserving Confederate monuments in the US despite their cultural importance.
All in all, for a real, existing country, China has a really good batting average.
not really. it's an entirely disingenuous criticism used by the imperial core to deflect deflect deflect.
China was years ahead on the Paris agreement while America was years behind on it. And America imports ~19% of its total annual imports from China lately. Meaning America is relying on Chinese commodity production (and Chinese emissions) for its economic needs, while failing to meet its climate agreement benchmarks. American citizens have a way higher per capita carbon emission than Chinese citizens. China is trying to prepare for climate change by reducing emissions. America is preparing for climate change by scapegoating China and militarizing its border, and enabling genocides in Israel and Yemen.
I agree that in the context of what's going on worldwide, China is doing much better for sustainability than the rest of the world. So, in a sense, criticism is invalid because it would be better directed at the countries with higher emissions per capita, as you say. Criticism doesn't exist in a vacuum and we should steer clear of anticommunism and sinophobia.
On the other hand, there's no way China should keep its level of industrial growth and usage of fossil fuels indefinitely in the face of world threatening climate change. I think it's a fair criticism to make when trying to assess how future socialism should look. In other words, China may be doing very well for itself by keeping per capita emissions very low relative to the rest of the world, but even still, it burns amounts of fossil fuels that are fundamentally at odds with trying to prevent climate collapse. Is that mostly due to Western capital? Yeah, pretty much.
I agree. That's the scariest part of all of this. If any country decreases its industrial output, it decreases its ability to wage war, which means it increases its chances of getting invaded by a less principled country who continues to increase its industrial output. So all nations basically see decreasing industrial output as letting their guard down and opening themselves up to invasion. And if they get invaded/annexed by more powerful nations who don't care about the climate, their industrial output will still increase, just under a new regime imposed from the outside. So there's a global prisoners' dilemma here. I don't foresee anyone letting their guard down by decreasing industrial output. Significantly below international agreements which already aren't being followed anyway.
Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, died directly as a result of the Chinese cultural revolution and Mao's great leap forward and I don't think it should just be brushed off as an unfortunate side effect of a necessary revolution. But I generally agree with the principle behind the rest of it.
How many millions were dying in China in the famines that would happen every few years, in no small part due to the colonialist status quo? It doesn't justify all the excesses of the revolution, but it doesn't help anybody to keep looking for a nuanced position absent of context.
I agree
How many people did the American revolutionaries kill in their pursuit of manifest destiny after forming their own nation?
The PRC ended feudal theocracy and slavery in Tibet
Calling the founding fathers ”revolutionaries” belongs in this thread.
I always get a kick out of how silly they were and how bad at designing governments they ended up being. Like you pointed out their first attempt was a shitshow, and when you read the federalist papers he outright says the entire plan is for there to be no political parties, if we get those it won't work and we'll all be fucked.
And yet as soon as King George relinquished the presidency we had a two party system, in fact the Constitution more or less makes a two party system inevitable. And it has no provisions for the legislature being unable to legislate etc, basic stuff that the British had already had to solve with their Parliament.
And yet they're supposed to be these incredible architects of a genius system of intricate checks and balances.
Makes you wonder if our success as a nation had more to do with explosive growth, immigration, and opportunity. Or maybe the system worked well under those conditions, but now the whole environment is steady state and it doesn't work quite as well.
I consider them both to be colonialist, genocidal freaks deserving only of a pit
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Most of the world never did settler colonialism you genocide apologist
Many civilizations came and went over the ages, displaced by integration into other civilizations or straight up genocide. Most of these we have little record of, other than a few shards of pottery or other artifacts. I'm not advocating for that approach, but you also can't look at history through some kind of idealistic lens, acting like people were any different back then.
yes I hold all cartoonishly evil slavers, colonialists, genocideurs, imperialists and capitalist exploiters to the same standard of deserving to be overthrown by the people they abuse
CW: Depiction of a slave getting whipped and a dog getting hanged on orders of George Washington
You do realise some states do this more or less, right?
I'm not assuming you're being intellectually honest by claiming every civilisation has practised genocidal colonialism, I have complete confidence that you pulled that factoid out of your arse.
This is true. I wonder what the Iroquois thought of George Washington
if I hold you in chains and whip you for not picking cotton fast enough for me, would that just be a "matter of perspective" you smug liberal?
Lol what are you even talking about? How does that relate to my comment?
since you're confused let's trace the entire context of the conversation from the thread title down to here.
Since the hegemonic perspective of the founding fathers in the US is that they're democracy-loving freedom fighters, it doesn't really matter what the British thought. We're discussing the normalized racism and chauvinism of worshiping a bunch of slave owning proto-bourgeois settler-colonialists. It's not just a matter of perspective. The shit they did to people had real material consequences. Hence my question to you which you didn't answer: if I hold you in chains and whip you for not picking cotton fast enough for me, would that just be a "matter of perspective" you smug liberal? That is. If you were actually treated by me the way the founding fathers treated people, would it still be this vague "matter of perspective" or would you be justified in despising me?
If I were a slave, I would probably be less concerned about who exactly is holding the whip, and more so the fact that I was getting whipped. Whether the colonists were considered terrorists or some kind of freedom fighters would be largely irrelevant to me in that case, despite that perspective mattering a great deal to the rest of the world at the time and even still to this day.
John Brown, Nat Turner, and The Haitian revolutionaries would tell you that those two concerns are identical since the latter concern provides you with your target in regards to how to bring about a real material change in the former concern. If you are a slave, and you want to stop being whipped, you run away. But if you want everyone else to stop getting whipped as well, you fight the slave owners. That is how slavery ended in the United States after all. War with the slave power.
So do you think that slavery would have ended sooner if the American revolution never happened? Do you think there was any net benefit to humanity as a result of the American revolution? Is it possible for good men to do bad things or does bad things make them bad people?
Considering the British Crown ended slavery in its colonies in 1833, a full 3 decades before an independent America ended slavery with a civil war? Yes! But that's neither here nor there. I'm not arguing nor have I argued against the American "revolution," though I will say it was a bourgeois nationalist independence struggle waged by the colonial ruling class against the ruling class in the mother country because the ruling class in the mother country taxed the commercial profits of the ruling class in the colony too much and wouldn't let them expand west against indigenous people as quickly as they wanted to. That's not really a "revolution." War of Independence is a lot more accurate. What happened in Haiti in the 1790s and 1800s was a revolution, and it involved the oppressed class, the slaves, rising up against the ruling class, their masters. Interestingly the American "revolutionaries" for all their talk of "freedom" and "liberty" and "revolution" and "refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (Jefferson quote) never supported that revolution. In fact they were highly in favor of crushing it (along with Daniel Shay's rebellion), because they were slave owners. And they were in favor of forcing that enslaved people to pay reparations, amounting to most of their annual national GDP, to their former masters, for the better part of 2 centuries. A tax far more tyrannical and impoverishing than anything the British leveled against the likes of the American tobacco planters. And now they are blamed for being poor and underdeveloped despite those absymal economic conditions that was enforced by America and France jointly. Two "democracies" shaking hands as they make sure a state of liberated slaves is in permanent debt.... very interesting how these things are framed.
Ask an indigenous American that question. No. In general I don't think it was a "net benefit" to humanity. And I'm an American. I live here. I am part indigenous but being indigenous is more about culture than blood quantum. I wasn't raised in that culture, which was decimated long before I was born.
Yes it's possible for good men to do bad things and vice versa. But I don't think they were good men in the first place. I think they were bourgeois slave owners who liked to wax poetic about "Freedom" and "Liberty" as though they were the ones who invented these concepts. That's a big part of the American civil religion. The idea that these men somehow invented the representative republican form of government. Like it was some kind of innovation they brought to the table. Their "net benefit to humanity" as you said earlier. But they didn't invent that. They were a bunch of Rome revivalists attempting to resurrect ideas from classical antiquity, which is why America loves the fasces and the marble statues and the ionic columns and the latin phrase mongering. And even if they had somehow invented these concepts, they were still realizing these concepts in a completely hypocritical and incomplete way that was obvious to every abolitionist even back then.
While there is certainly some truth to what you are saying, I feel that your interpretation of events and motivations is way too cynical. But regardless, it's pretty tough to argue that the US has not provided a net gain to humanity, given the advancements in technology, medicine, arts, and so on that could not have occurred in a different society.
I certainly don't have any good reason to feel optimistic about the past, present, or future of this imperialist, settler-colonial, capitalist nation which would rather start WW3 than give up a shred of its post WW2 hegemony.
What supernatural qualities does the United States have such that, were it removed from history, a bunch of "technology, medicine, arts and so on" would have never been invented? Take the nuclear bomb for example. An American invention. Had America never existed, it still would have been invented, eventually, just somewhere else. Splitting the atom would have occurred to some physicist eventually. Using it as a weapon would have occurred eventually. I'm a staunch materialist about these things. America is just a geopolitical construct. Everything invented in America, by Americans, could have been invented somewhere else, by someone else, under similar circumstances. Technology comes about because a need/desire for it arises, and the materials to create it are available. Not because of the supernatural qualities of the nation.
Oh yes, and there'd be a whole lot less ignorance like this because a whole lot more settler bastards would've been turned into mulch about a hundred-fifty years sooner, with less destruction of the Black and Indigenous. There was no net benefit to humanity; only to the coinpurses of British nobility who were sick of being taxed by their crown.
real shit JAQoffs like this only make me think that neither John Brown nor General Sherman went NEARLY far enough.
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whewwwwwww chile do you smell that caucazoid apologia? who let this settler (try to) cook???
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I don't discuss geopolitics or world history with people who talk like settlers; move along, thank you. You don't want my answer to that JAQoff second question, either. 🤓 ass
If the guy whipping me was deified and seen as a paragon of a man I'd be fucking livid
Sometimes it's more about what that person symbolizes. Take George Floyd for instance. By almost any metric he was not a good person, but he didn't deserve to die, and the way that he died became a symbol, a representation of an entire people who have seen injustice at the hands of the police. George Floyd is practically a saint in the eyes of many, despite all his flaws as a person. So why not the founding fathers?
The founding fathers owned people. Bought and sold them. Denied them basic comforts and dignities. Bred them and then tore apart their families. Raped them and brutalized them.
They engaged in the genocide of native americans. Killing as many as they could and displacing the rest. All so that they could move lines on a map.
To compare these monsters to the progeny of their atrocities is racist. It is unquestionably cruel and unfeeling. Know that I have no respect for you. Know that if I learned we shared any opinion it would cause me to question it.
You want me to ignore all this for America? The country that orchestrated the genocide of native americans? The country that built its bones with the flesh of black people? The primary inspiration for Nazi Germany? The warmongers behind the korean and vietnam war? The country that supported and enabled genocides in bangladesh and indonesia? The country that invaded iraq for oil money? The country that is currently engaged in genocides in both palestine and the congo?
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The only people I dehumanized in that post were slavers. Are you really offended over slavers? Is that worth it to you? George Washington wore dentures made out of the teeth of his slaves, Jefferson was a serial rapist who sold his children into slavery.
You accuse me of tribalism for deriding those who used their race to exploit others. What of their tribalism? Of race and class? Gender? They thought that nobody besides landowning white men should have rights, and you think me hating them for it makes me tribal.
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Yeah, I don't respect you. You compared a descendant of slaves to a slaver. But I haven't dehumanized you. I don't think you understand what dehumanizing is. I don't have any desire to deny you healthcare, basic needs, safety. I don't want to hurt you physically. I haven't compared you to an animal, or objectified you. My disrespect is based entirely your dehumanization of George Floyd. Something you can control. Something entirely based in your consciousness, something human. Opinions can change.
Please justify the things you say. Nothing you say is supported by any logic or reasoning. Telling me I have "blind" hatred for the founding fathers despite listing the reasons why I do, without addressing those points, is just a waste of time.
How are my political beliefs more tribal than that of the racist and sexist founding fathers?
Are you my enemy? All I did was say I disrespect you for dehumanizing george floyd and excusing slavers. We're just talking. My enemies are defined by material reality, not anger. You could just be another worker. Exploited for the same reasons I am. We could be comrades if you let go of the racism.
Lastly hexbear shows pronouns right next to the username, don't use "guy" when addressing me.
Yeah sorry about that, can't keep track of everyone so I went back to assuming everyone on the internet is a guy. Anyway, do you deny that George Floyd has become larger than life, symbolic and important in a way that is bigger and more pure than he ever was in real life, despite his shortcomings as a person?
Are you going to answer any of my questions?
George Floyd's criminal record is not comparable to owning hundreds of chattel slaves. They are different leagues. The fact that you are trying to force this comparison is deeply racist, just like I said like 5 comments ago.
Even if we entertain your line of thinking I still disagree. George Floyd represents the fight against the white supremacist cruelty of the American police state. The founding fathers represent an America that exists to serve landowning white men. If you want to somehow make that seem like a good thing you have to answer for America's crimes which I listed like 5 comments ago.
The founding fathers do not represent an America that exists to serve landowning white men, at least not to the majority of the country. To many people, they symbolize something else entirely that is bigger and better than the men that they actually were, something noble, independent, freedom-loving, bold, courageous, and all that. Again, regardless of how true it is, they serve as an idea at this point.
But for you they serve as the opposite sort of symbol, one of oppression, greed, selfishness. The founding fathers were both of these, and what they represent to different people depends on perspective and world view.
If it wasn't for the constant propaganda that Americans are exposed to far fewer people would think that the founding fathers symbolize that. People believing in lies doesn't make the crimes of the founding fathers acceptable. And believing those lies causes people to blind themselves to the reality of America and its crimes. When people believe something other than the truth it leads them into a future that doesn't learn from the past.
Look at how much the situation in Palestine is changing the opinions of America. Many people are seeing the full extent of America's violent foreign policy. It's shaking their belief in America as something noble and freedom loving. I believe this is a good thing. More people's political opinions will be rooted in the truth. It could effect how people vote, protest, organize. I think this could lead to positive change.
Are you saying that people shouldn't care about the truth? What is your point exactly? You haven't actually stated any belief. Is it important to you that America is seen as noble, independent, freedom-loving, bold and courageous? Why is it important to you that the founding fathers are seen this way? Why do you think its ok for people to believe lies when they've never been offered the truth? Why do you value the mythology of the founding fathers more than the reality of the founding fathers? You called me childish for caring about the truth of the founding fathers, and for not valuing the lies about the founding fathers. This is insane to me.
Some people's perspective and worldview are wrong. It seems like you think tribalism is when someone thinks their worldview is right and someone else's is wrong. What is your political ideology? That seems like a centrist take if I've ever seen one.
I've been accused of being a centrist before. What makes you think that your world view, your life experience is worth more than mine? Whose experience is more real, more true? I think tribalism is when you think your world view is the only one that matters, that anyone who agrees with it is part of your tribe, and anyone who doesn't see it that way is in a different tribe. Tribalism is instinctive and getting rid of it requires open minded exposure to people with different world views.
George Washington wearing dentures made of slave teeth is not "life experience." Its a simple historical fact. I have no desire to base my beliefs on mythology. I base my beliefs on fact. I cannot have a discussion about Washington without mentioning the facts of his life. This includes talking about his crimes against humanity. You think I am immature and childish because I don't value beliefs about washington unless they are based in the facts of his life. You value mythology and historical fact similarly. Serious discussion requires a foundation of fact. You are fundamentally unserious.
I love how you are so carefully avoiding committing any beliefs or assertions to this discussion. All you do is try and poke holes in what I say. When I respond you hide behind rudimentary, "everything is relative" arguments. You are the philosophical equivalent of, "I know you are but what am I?"
What is your political ideology?
I can't really sum up my ideology or identity in a word or a political team, but in general I'm proud of my country while recognizing that we've had a dark past and we have plenty of work to do today as well, despite great strides and an overall very high quality of life. The fact that we have the luxury of dedicating so much time debating these issues alone is evidence of this.
Probably the single most important phrase in my life when it comes to debating controversial topics is that where there is understanding, there can be no hatred. Everyone has a different life experience, different challenges and trials, different education, different family and upbringing.
Some of my core values are independence, self reliance, charity, forgiveness, hard work, and prudence. I live very modestly but comfortably enough and I got this life because of my upbringing and my own hard work and believe that others can also despite probably having more challenging upbringings. My ancestors immigrated in the early 1900s looking for a better life, chasing the so called American dream, worked as miners in small company owned houses. The first generation was very poor, but subsequent generations have done ok.
I believe that we should live as though we control our own futures, and mostly we do. Our own happiness and contentment in life is at our control, and outside factors beyond our control are not worth compromising on that happiness. It's very similar to ancient stoic philosophy.
I teach my kids the value of hard work, saving money, but giving to less fortunate people. I provide for them, but with few luxuries. If they want something, they need to earn it and get it for themselves. They cannot expect things from other people, but should be thankful and appreciative when others help them, which in turn should inspire them to want to help others.
It is my biggest and most important duty to provide for my family and instill in them my own core values.
I believe that the United States is a great place to raise a family, providing an environment where they can succeed and be free to pursue their own contentment in life.
At the moment I'm having a hard time finding a political team that fits these values, since politics is so focused on hot button issues that serve more to divide people than to actually improve everyone's lives. I'd love it if there were more teams, but the system we have more or less works.
Your political ideology is ”liberal”, although an even more appropriate term would be ”bootlicker”. The only way you see the world is through the lens of ”memememememe fuck you got mine”, and thus you think the US is good because muh treats. You don't stop to consider the butchered civilians or exploited global south residents necessary to get your treats and ”high quality of life”.
Don't try to pretend like your way of thinking is somehow unique or can't be put into a box, maaaaan, because I've seen it a million times before.
Let's be real though, everyone except you are your little tribe is a liberal, which is like 99 percent of the country. So that doesn't really mean much.
I'm not American, bucko.
Your political ideology is just the status quo. You have a life you're ok with and you just want everyone else to calm down so you can enjoy it. The funny thing is that you have made zero effort to actually justify your ideology. Everyone else has written all these reasons why your line of thinking doesn't work. All you can respond with is, "why can't we all just get along??" Say what you will about my ideology, leftist, making me angrier or unhappy with our politicians and system. I don't spend any energy deluding myself into anything. I'm not surprised when the system fails its people in the ways its intended to. It also helps me connect with many different kinds of people, because I care about their struggles.
the system is currently supporting two genocides, one in palestine and one in the congo. What part of your humanity do you have to sacrifice to not care about these atrocities? Are you even aware of how your denial of other's humanity also compromises yours?
You have a cowards ideology.
It's almost like we are speaking different languages, and I'm not surprised to be attacked coming in here. The reason I have a hard time responding to "facts" is that over the years I've spent countless hours researching various topics only to find that you get different answers depending on what you look for. Not only that but truth is different and history gets rewritten over the years. In my youth there were rallying cries to free tibet. People like you protested angrily, guilt tripped average folks about being callous and cruel for not caring. Now years later in this very thread I'm told that the Chinese did a great thing freeing tibetan slaves and so on. It's hard not to be cynical when you can find evidence and justification for anything you want to. I've got right wing friends doing the same thing you are doing, trying to guilt trip me for not paying attention or not caring about the crimes committed by the left. They send me articles and facts all the time. How do you really know what the truth is? Change your algorithm and start looking for evidence to support the opposite perspective and you will start getting different facts. It all starts to feel arbitrary and the only real truth is right in front of you.
Revolutionaries like the people in here are always around. They can't accept injustice and have no answer except to tear it all down and start over.
You can totally get different answers depending on what you're looking for. That doesn't mean they are equally valuable answers. Some evidence is shit. Have you tried vetting your sources? Its a fundamental part of research.
Have you ever taken a philosophy class? The first day is always spent debunking relativist arguments like the ones you make. Have you ever taken a history class? The whole point of the discipline is learning how to source information and piece it together. What about the physical sciences? Engineering? These all require someone to make decisions about how to move forward. Your attitude might help you avoid conflict, might absolve you of responsibility or whatever. But you can't foster community, build bridges, or run tests on relativism. The only reason you believe relativism is because you start with the assumption that the system is good, because it is good for you. Its why the world seems so unintelligible to you. Your foundation is wrong so you can't build anything on top of it.
Considering the amount of right wingers that want to throw me in an oven I'll hold off on the facts aren't real bit. I don't want to be thrown in an oven, that's a fucking fact bud. And the fact that you value their opinion, throw me in an oven, just as highly as my opinion, don't throw in a fucking oven, I consider your relativism dangerous.
They don't want to throw anyone in an oven, and that's a fact. One of my best friends is one of those guys, who I grew up with. He doesn't hate anyone besides "liberals", having nothing to do with skin color or race. Also I have an engineering degree and took every one of those general education classes, economics, philosophy, psychology, etc, but also a master's level elective class that literally was about interpreting and critiquing scientific journal articles. We spent a lot of time finding holes in published works and discussing retractions, enough to make me a little cynical even about "science" itself, let alone news stories. Maybe your "facts" aren't quite as factual as you would like them to be and your truth isn't quite that. But you will also grow less certain about things as you get older, just like I did.
Well, you had a good education. I'm also skeptical of science, but mostly because our science can't be fully separated from capitalism and its incentives.
Why are you talking to me like I'm a teenager? Y'all always pretend to be the adults in the room, very cool very condescending.
So you aren't always relativist. You get to side with your buddies against the minorities that their tribe hates. Lovely. I don't give a fuck about your friends. Your friend isn't conservatism, conservatism is conservatism. He's aligned himself how he's aligned himself. With people who want to throw me in a fucking oven you dumb motherfucker. Go peddle your dogshit cowardly ideology somewhere else. People saying they want to kill me is a fucking fact. You are cowardice incarnate.
Stop being such a victim, nobody wants to kill you, they just want to live their lives. I know lots of conservatives and not one of them wants to murder minorities, what are you even talking about?
Seriously, go talk to normal people about normal stuff and knock it off. Yeah there is injustice in the world and we should talk about that, but you can't always live in that space or it will drive you crazy.
people will stop being victims as soon as other people stop being victimizers
stop being this guy:
let me guess, you're one of the normal people. you have decided this for totally normal reasons, and your normality just exists in a vacuum and isn't imposed by any kind of superstructure.
no, we shouldn't talk about it. we should put an end to it.
people don't choose whether they live in an unjust space or not. they are born into it, and it drives them crazy and kills them. Only people unaffected by it have the liberty of ignoring it.
their criticism of the US founding fathers isn't "blind" but is based on the stuff they did, and how it completely contradicted their professed values of freedom and liberty.
Are you making the case that anyone who doesn't view the founding fathers in the same way, who doesn't passionately hate them without consideration of any good they accomplished, is therefore wrong about everything and incapable of having acceptable opinions on other topics? That sounds like tribalism and is what I was responding to. I mean, if you tell me straight up that my every opinion is wrong and advertise that you have no intention and feel no obligation to have a good faith discussion, then that makes you an extremist, a fanatic, and further dialog is pointless. I enjoy the discussion and challenge engaging with different views, but when my comments get deleted after being personally attacked, then the discussion has probably run it's course.
this is your characterization. I never said "I HATE THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND REFUSE TO CONSIDER ANYTHING ABOUT THEM AAAAAAAAAAAA."
No. I have carefully considered their entire legacy. Thanks! I am even able to distinguish between those among them who owned slaves, and those among them who were merely friends with slave owners. I am able to distinguish between George Washington, who put down Shay's rebellion, and Benjamin Franklin, who claimed that making the inhabitants of the Earth whiter was a noble pursuit. I am able to distinguish between John Quincy Adams, who wanted slavery abolished eventually (as long as no slave owners got hurt in the process!) and Thomas Jefferson, who actively sexually assaulted his slaves and sold his own children.
I am able to treat them as individuals, assess their legacies, and come to the conclusion that they were bourgeois nationalists, and to the extent that their cause was "progressive" against the British monarchy, is negated entirely by the genocidal settler-colonial territory they lived on, whose economy was based largely on slavery. I am also able to remember that their primary motivation for independence wasn't opposition to monarchy or love of bourgeois republicanism, but anger at taxation, the highest crime a bourgeois individual can suffer. Having their profits decreased.
if you're just going to ask questions about things I never said, it's not going to be a very productive conversation
No. I'm not saying that. But you seem uninterested in directly quoting what I did say and responding to it.
Define this tribalism which so concerns you. What "tribe" have you determined me to be a member of?
good thing I never said that. If you said 2+2= 4 I would tell you you're right. Perhaps you're engaged with multiple people and you're becoming increasingly confused. I recommend re-reading everything I've said to you thus far and thinking a bit harder about it.
lol. you have decided I am a bunch of scary things and not worth talking to or listening to. This makes me the extreme one.
You just jumped into the middle of a conversation between me and someone else, or maybe I responded to the wrong person. Anyway this particular thread was in response to machiabelly or something like that.
I made that clear when I referred directly to them (the person you were previously speaking to) but then you became confused and spoke to me as though I were them, despite that.
That was never the point of the protests surrounding his death. The point was to call out police brutality. This was true of all the other anti-police brutality protests before George Floyd as well, regardless of whether the victim had a perfect past or not in each case. The press, both local and national, humanizes some victims of state or corporate violence, while demonizing others. Seemingly without noticing, people too often create tiered systems of moral worth by trying to find “the perfect victim.”
This ill advised search for the perfect Christlike victim, and its corollary desire to smear those with less than perfect pasts, makes humanity conditional, further entrenching negative stereotypes and destructive narratives about entire communities. The difference between a victim of systemic injustice who made mistakes in their life and a person who gets deified despite their mistakes is incalculable. The demonization of George Floyd in the wake of his death was IMMEDIATE. The media did not even wait for his blood to be cold before they started digging up his arrest record, etc. The lionization of the founding fathers on the other hand was overwhelming and immediate, in spite of their slave ownership, and an entire American civil mythology was constructed around that image that for many is still considered unquestionable. That's the difference. You're assuming a total symmetry of context between the contemporary victims of systemic violence and the actual ruling class founders of American society.
I don't assume total symmetry, it's just an analogy that mostly fits. They are all imperfect men who are elevated because of what they symbolize to some people.
George Floyd wasn't "elevated." He was killed, and then people protested police brutality after his death because it was just one highly publicized example among countless similar deaths. To the extent that people drew murals of him etc in the wake of those protests has less to do with him being seen as the best dude who ever lived and more to do with combating the demonization that immediately happened in the wake of his death. Since this sort demonization frequently happens. When Botham Jean was shot in his own apartment by an off duty cop who wandered into the wrong apartment and assumed it was her own, the first thing the news did was point out that he had marijuana in his apartment. This kind of demonization is used to minimize the death and imply that they deserved it. So any "elevation" you perceive is in response to that kind of shit. A man like george washington who owns slaves but yaps about Freedom dying comfortably in his bed and being used as a nationalist symbol for 2 centuries is not the same as a man being killed by a cop and then people protesting his death for a few months. You don't "assume" total symmetry? Good. Stop comparing the two things as though they were alike in a way that is relevant to the conversation. And no. It's not an analogy that fits very well at all. You're comparing the civil mythology of a settler colonial nation to a protest movement against police brutality because they both supposedly "elevated imperfect people."