Removing Confederate Monuments and Renaming Confederate-Named Military Bases

[ideologyhunter]

The Greeks invented democracy at a state level and they owned slaves. So democracy was literally invented by slave owners, a thought that should give us pause and allow us to reflect on the current situation.

The Bible is packed with verses that reassured America's slave owners that they were benevolent custodians of God's Great Plan. Exodus 21 certainly took away any crisis of conscience for a slave owner or overseer who took a bullwhip to a slave's back. He was fully justified by Almighty God. I actually hope the protesters don't meditate on these old texts. That's all we need to make the country collectively lose its shit: Bible burning on the street. We know it's the favorite book of The Orange One. He even has people pepper-sprayed so he can walk around with one. I really don't want to see what he would do to Bible burners.

 

[Politesse]

What I said was, statues and monuments can be assessed according to the Democratic process.

People lobby their representative, parliament sits and debates their value, public sentiment, complaints made, etc, etc, and decides their fate....all interested parties have their say and the verdict based on the good of society. A lot of monuments are being taken down through democratic processes now. But if you think any of that would be happening if the people hadn't first torn several down themselves, you're a bit politically naive I think. People in power don't just voluntarily. out of the poor lily white goodness of their heart and no other consideration, suddenly decide to cede the public symbols of their dominance.

Isn't that how civil society works?

Well, no, not really. I mean ideally, sure, but that is not what history shows us actually happening. The democratic process is motivated by blood and fire and fear thereof, just like any other form of imperial governance.

If that's the case, something is fundamentally broken.

A Democracy, by definition, being ''a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives,'' should not entail blood, fire or fear.

This is government we're talking about, of course it's broken. You think your country was established by showing up, establishing a committee and offering everyone who already lived there a free and fair vote on whether they would like to be slaughtered, their lands taken, and their children kidnapped?

Benevolent rule by committee and principle is the pretty story you tell children about how the government works. Most people at some point grow up and realize that the ruling majority doesn't voluntarily share power out of the goodness of their hearts.

 

[southernhybrid]

DBT - and everyone - I invite you to get a fresh beer or coffee and read this thorough article from the Smithsonian

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/costs-confederacy-special-report-180970731

Historically, the installation of Confederate monuments went hand in hand with the disenfranchisement of black people. The historical record suggests that monument-building peaked during three pivotal periods: from the late 1880s into the 1890s, as Reconstruction was being crushed; from the 1900s through the 1920s, with the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan, the increase in lynching and the codification of Jim Crow; and in the 1950s and 1960s, around the centennial of the war but also in reaction to advances in civil rights. An observation by the Yale historian David Blight, describing a “Jim Crow reunion” at Gettysburg, captures the spirit of Confederate monument-building, when “white supremacy might be said to have been the silent, invisible, master of ceremonies.”

It is a very extensive look at who benefits, and who is harmed by these statues and the “museums” and “parks” that promote the Lost Cause ideology.

Most AMreican taxpayers probably don’t know how many tens of millions of dollars they pay to keep the story of white supremacy alive. I hope more people hear this story - and more of those statues come crashing down and the parks that promote lies are defunded.

Yes read the article, better yet, read Carol Anderson's book, "White Rage". I read it a few years ago and although I thought I knew a lot about the history of systemic racism in the US, I learned a lot more from reading that book. I had already read quite a few books about racism, but she did an outstanding job of tracing the history of racism during the history of the US. And please. It's not just a southern problem anymore. It's a national problem. In fact, the north is far more segregated than the south is these days.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If that's the case, something is fundamentally broken.

A Democracy, by definition, being ''a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives,'' should not entail blood, fire or fear.

This is government we're talking about, of course it's broken. You think your country was established by showing up, establishing a committee and offering everyone who already lived there a free and fair vote on whether they would like to be slaughtered, their lands taken, and their children kidnapped?

Benevolent rule by committee and principle is the pretty story you tell children about how the government works. Most people at some point grow up and realize that the ruling majority doesn't voluntarily share power out of the goodness of their hearts.

It's more important to get it right than to be civil.

 

[laughing dog]

Ah, the old "no race problem here" canard.

The problem is your side treats "no racism here" as proof of racism. You're presenting a non-rebuttable claim--thus utterly worthless.

WTF are you babbling about? No one made the claim that "no racism here" is proof of racism. Try responding to the actual content of a post instead of trying to read between the lines to produce yet another ridiculous but highly ironic straw man.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ah, the old "no race problem here" canard.

The problem is your side treats "no racism here" as proof of racism. You're presenting a non-rebuttable claim--thus utterly worthless.

WTF are you babbling about? No one made the claim that "no racism here" is proof of racism. Try responding to the actual content of a post instead of trying to read between the lines to produce yet another ridiculous but highly ironic straw man.

I'm not reading between the lines, you're just trying to deny the implications of what you said.

It's like denial of alcohol problems is considered a sign of alcoholism. I used to know someone diagnosed as an alcoholic despite being a teetotaler. One ambiguous question: "Have you ever lost friends due to alcohol?" that she answered yes to and they wouldn't believe her denials. (Note that the question does not say whose alcohol use. She had lost friends because they became alcoholics.)

 

[Toni]

WTF are you babbling about? No one made the claim that "no racism here" is proof of racism. Try responding to the actual content of a post instead of trying to read between the lines to produce yet another ridiculous but highly ironic straw man.

I'm not reading between the lines, you're just trying to deny the implications of what you said.

It's like denial of alcohol problems is considered a sign of alcoholism. I used to know someone diagnosed as an alcoholic despite being a teetotaler. One ambiguous question: "Have you ever lost friends due to alcohol?" that she answered yes to and they wouldn't believe her denials. (Note that the question does not say whose alcohol use. She had lost friends because they became alcoholics.)

No, Loren, that 'example' won't work.

If you don't believe that there was any racism, please say so explicitly instead of making us do some sort of mindreading to find some long lost anecdote when somone was too big a racist for you to continue to admit they were your friend--and actually back up your assertions with something like, I don't know: data, reports, articles on point. You know: with actual links.

 

[Rhea]

Ah, the old "no race problem here" canard.

The problem is your side treats "no racism here" as proof of racism. You're presenting a non-rebuttable claim--thus utterly worthless.

So let’s dig into this a little.

Loren, you seem to claim that there is NO RACISM in police actions. That they, in your words, are “not targeting blacks”.
Now, what would cause you to be able to dismiss as untrue all of the investigations, the scholarly work, the on-the-ground accounts, the investigative journalism that demonstrates repeatedly that the common denominator is not poverty, it’s color?

You never say that they may have a point in some cases, or that there is some level of it, or that it has some evidence. You just flat out say it doesn’t happen.

So then you complain, when we see you deny the data showing that it is not poverty that is the common denominator, the predictive factor, but it is in fact race, you complain that we take your denial as racism.


It’s not that you denied it, mind you. It’s that you deny it in the face of evidence to the contrary.

So something causes you to not see the evidence.
And yet, you seem really REALLY averse to being called a racist.

Those two things are interesting to contemplate. On the one hand, if someone really REALLY doesn’t want to BE a racist, they would look very carefully at the data and double triple check their biases. But if, on the contrary, they really REALLY don’t want to be CALLED a racist - that’s a different reaction, with different mitigations. All that one takes is arguing semantics.


It seems, and correct me if I’m wrong here, that you deny that you ever do racist things or have racist arguments.
Now, someone who doesn’t want to BE racist, would likely acknowledge that they are steeped in white culture, and that it has a lot of racist baggage, and that we grew up steeped in it and may not be able to detect all of the bits that still cling to us. We might try to shake them off, but since they were not “foreign material” it’s not always easy to detect what’s stil clinging. So we acknowledge that and account for the reality of it. That maybe our perspective can blind us to the conclusions of the data.

Whereas someone who doesn’t want to be CALLED racist, doesn’t have any reason to self reflect and self examine and hear the voices of those saying, “dude, you got a clinger showing, right there.” But would rather just deny that.


Something to think about. Do you, Loren, and Derec, consider yourselves absolutely not-racist? You’re good non-racist people who are just being picked on?

 

[laughing dog]

WTF are you babbling about? No one made the claim that "no racism here" is proof of racism. Try responding to the actual content of a post instead of trying to read between the lines to produce yet another ridiculous but highly ironic straw man.

I'm not reading between the lines, you're just trying to deny the implications of what you said.

Actually, if you bothered to actually think about what you write, you just admitted you are reading between the lines, because that is exactly what diving implications is.

It's like denial of alcohol problems is considered a sign of alcoholism. I used to know someone diagnosed as an alcoholic despite being a teetotaler. One ambiguous question: "Have you ever lost friends due to alcohol?" that she answered yes to and they wouldn't believe her denials. (Note that the question does not say whose alcohol use. She had lost friends because they became alcoholics.)

Cool story, bro about reading between the lines and drawing the wrong conclusion. Is that a tacit admission of your error or just unintended irony on your part?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Actually, if you bothered to actually think about what you write, you just admitted you are reading between the lines, because that is exactly what diving implications is.

It's like denial of alcohol problems is considered a sign of alcoholism. I used to know someone diagnosed as an alcoholic despite being a teetotaler. One ambiguous question: "Have you ever lost friends due to alcohol?" that she answered yes to and they wouldn't believe her denials. (Note that the question does not say whose alcohol use. She had lost friends because they became alcoholics.)

Cool story, bro about reading between the lines and drawing the wrong conclusion. Is that a tacit admission of your error or just unintended irony on your part?

Or it could be that we should start looking at racism as a mental condition, a pathology or a symptom, something treatable that goes beyond mere emotional tribalism. Why and how is it that the xenophobia is so strong in some persons that they will offer up excuse after excuse after excuse as to how they are correct and everyone else is wrong, It's not unlike the paranoia we see in mental consitions.

We know that there are tons of mentally ill people populating our prisons, and it's because we've not diagnosed their underlying mental condition and don't care to ante up the resources to implement better solutions.

 

[DBT]

If that's the case, something is fundamentally broken.

A Democracy, by definition, being ''a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives,'' should not entail blood, fire or fear.

This is government we're talking about, of course it's broken. You think your country was established by showing up, establishing a committee and offering everyone who already lived there a free and fair vote on whether they would like to be slaughtered, their lands taken, and their children kidnapped?

Benevolent rule by committee and principle is the pretty story you tell children about how the government works. Most people at some point grow up and realize that the ruling majority doesn't voluntarily share power out of the goodness of their hearts.

It's more important to get it right than to be civil.

There may be opposing groups that feel the same way, that they are right, that the others are wrong and that they should take action to correct matters in their own way, to force a result in their own favour.

 

[ronburgundy]

All lives very much matter. Equal Protection under the Constitution. #BLM was pointing out the lack of equal protection for them. #BLM probably should have named it Black Lives Matter Too, but probably figured white people would have been smart enough to understand what #BLM meant.

"All lives matter" is a true statement, but in general, it was being used by white people that don't think blacks are being unfairly targeted by police. So the term while accurate, is being used by idiots and asses, and naive people that don't know the origin of "all lives matter".

Except the supposed problem they are going after is false. Yes, there is a problem with the police, but they're not targeting blacks. If anyone is being targeted it's the poor.

While the poor definitely are targeted and the rich let off by everyone from the law writers to cops to the courts, none of the evidence you think you have supports the conclusion that racism hypothesis is false. The data are rife with confounds and uncontrolled variables that can not only mask racism effects but create correlations that are in the opposite direct of the causal impact of race itself. We've gone over it almost every time you present that data, but you refuse to listen to reason and keep trodding out your unscientific assertion.

If you are going to claim that the is no effect of racism and that the racism hypothesis is false, then burden is 100% on you to show that all other variables are accounted for. Your failure to do so doesn't make the hypothesis true, it just makes your assertion unsupported.

Granted there isn't strong evidence of racism in police data itself, but that is just b/c there are too many other factors muddying those waters. What allows us to be certain of racism are the numerous instances where individual cops are caught explicitly saying or doing racist things. Plus, almost never have these cops been disciplined for their racism prior to the video/audio proof of it. Since the odds of a first ever racist comment being caught on video/audio are very low, that means with extreme high degree of probability that many of them have been doing and saying racist things repeatedly and often in front of other cops with zero recourse, thus supporting the racism of the general police culture. In addition, we have evidence supporting premises that support the logical conclusion of widespread racism among cops. There is the fact that a large % of white males in the US are racists, plus the variables that predict which white males are most racist (e.g., political affiliation, conservatism, military service) are all highly over-represented among cops compared to the general population.

Granted this just allows us to deduce with high confidence that a large % of cops hold racist attitudes. But to infer that this racism manifests in policing we merely need to look to some of the most well established findings in the perception and action literature showing the such cognitive biases have large impacts on exactly they kinds of perception and decision making under conditions of stress and uncertainty that define a cops job. It would take something just short of a supernatural intervention for some of that racism not to manifest in police actions.

 

[repoman]

Watch videos on World Star of blacks acting crazy as hell and it would be hard to not build up some cognitive bias. That might be what it is like being a cop.

Some of this would spill over onto blacks like the one who got shot up with 500 mg of ketamine by the Aurora Police/EMS and died, who are not at all criminal.

 

[laughing dog]

It's more important to get it right than to be civil.

There may be opposing groups that feel the same way, that they are right, that the others are wrong and that they should take action to correct matters in their own way, to force a result in their own favour.

So? Let the white supremacists, the racists and their dupes come out into the daylight.

 

[DBT]

It's more important to get it right than to be civil.

There may be opposing groups that feel the same way, that they are right, that the others are wrong and that they should take action to correct matters in their own way, to force a result in their own favour.

So? Let the white supremacists, the racists and their dupes come out into the daylight.

You want to see fighting in the streets?

 

[Patooka]

So? Let the white supremacists, the racists and their dupes come out into the daylight.

You want to see fighting in the streets?

Way to shut the barn after the horse has bolted there champ. White supremacists, racists and very fine people Nazi cunts are already fighting in the streets. Google proud boys in your spare time. Fuck em. They're not even remotely interested in arguing in good faith and I'm not inclined to hear about the merits of anti-semitism or white supremacy even in ideal circumstances. So fuck em and fuck their statues.

And if they are upset and feel as they are being oppressed? Good. In case they were wondering they now have my permission to go fuck themselves with rusty railspikes. The UK didn't get their panties in a twist when the truth came out in regards to Jimmy Saville. No one got sand in their vagina when statues of Saddam came down. Why is this such a difficult thing to understand?

 

[DBT]

So? Let the white supremacists, the racists and their dupes come out into the daylight.

You want to see fighting in the streets?

Way to shut the barn after the horse has bolted there champ. White supremacists, racists and very fine people Nazi cunts are already fighting in the streets. Google proud boys in your spare time. Fuck em. They're not even remotely interested in arguing in good faith and I'm not inclined to hear about the merits of anti-semitism or white supremacy even in ideal circumstances. So fuck em and fuck their statues.

And if they are upset and feel as they are being oppressed? Good. In case they were wondering they now have my permission to go fuck themselves with rusty railspikes. The UK didn't get their panties in a twist when the truth came out in regards to Jimmy Saville. No one got sand in their vagina when statues of Saddam came down. Why is this such a difficult thing to understand?

You may have missed the point. Divisions in society exist, the far right, the far left and everything in between. How these divisions and conflicts are managed is the question.

 

[laughing dog]

So? Let the white supremacists, the racists and their dupes come out into the daylight.

You want to see fighting in the streets?

No.
Openness and transparency are two important hallmarks of effective democracy. Why are against them?

Besides, white supremacists, racist and their dupes are bullies who need a lesson in civility and hunan decency.

 

[DBT]

So? Let the white supremacists, the racists and their dupes come out into the daylight.

You want to see fighting in the streets?

No.
Openness and transparency are two important hallmarks of effective democracy. Why are against them?

Besides, white supremacists, racist and their dupes are bullies who need a lesson in civility and hunan decency.

I'm not against openness and transparency. My question was: how are these divisions and conflicts to be handled by society as a whole?

 

[Rhea]

I'm not against openness and transparency. My question was: how are these divisions and conflicts to be handled by society as a whole?

What do you propose when the system is stacked against the minorities asking for civility and equality?
We propose public demonstration and when something egregiously and irredeemably wrong is happening, action by the people.

I feel like you don’t really get the ongoing racism being defended here, and the use of satus quo to “win” that argument.