Pete Buttigieg

[Koyaanisqatsi]

And no matter how often I show this to be a ridiculous fallacy

You have done no such thing. You have merely made an ironic observation that what a person studies need not be what defines them. Except when it comes specifically to someone studying the law, which is the very best possible qualification for a position like the POTUS, since the primary job--the very oath of the office--is first and foremost to uphold and defend the law of the land (aka, the Constitution) and to actually write bills that will in turn become laws.

Aside from the Attorney General, the Office of the President is effectively the highest lawyer in the land, if only in a defacto sense, so one of the most appropriate requirements for the job would be that the applicant has studied the law--particularly Constitutional law--in some capacity.

I never said Democrats should nominate people who are uneducated. I said they should nominate people with more diverse educational backgrounds.

No, you actually argued the inverse of that, fixating on a law degree as somehow axiomatically meaning that one did not have a diverse educational background. As if getting to the point of studying law was somehow myopic, in spite of the fact that, as with Obama and Clinton, the law part of their educational background was merely one component.

Everyone that goes on to study law starts with something broader in their undergraduate studies--usually some form of liberal arts, which is the broadest possible educational background--and then progresses to a law degree, again, as both Obama and Clinton did.

Here is Buttigieg's educational background:

Buttigieg attended Harvard, majoring in history and literature. While at Harvard, he was president of the Harvard Institute of Politics Student Advisory Committee and worked on the institute's annual study of youth attitudes on politics. He wrote his undergraduate thesis on the influence of puritanism on U.S. foreign policy as it was reflected in Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American.

Upon graduating from Harvard in 2005, Buttigieg was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and in 2007 he received a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honors in philosophy, politics and economics from Pembroke College, Oxford.

Bill Clinton's:

With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service degree in 1968.
...
Upon graduating from Georgetown in 1968, Clinton won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford, where he initially read for a B.Phil. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics but transferred to a B.Litt. in politics and, ultimately, a B.Phil. in politics. Clinton did not expect the second year because of the draft and he switched programs; this type of activity was common among other Rhodes Scholars from his cohort. He had received an offer to study at Yale Law School, Yale University, but he left early to return to the United States and did not receive a degree from Oxford.
...
After Oxford, Clinton attended Yale Law School and earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1973

Where Buttiegieg stopped in his education, Clinton went on to get a higher degree in law, but otherwise the two share nearly identical educational backgrounds. Same with Obama:

[In] 1981, he transferred as a junior to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations[40] and in English literature and lived off-campus on West 109th Street. He graduated with a BA degree...Two years after graduating from Columbia, Obama was back in Chicago when he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project, a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.
...
Obama entered Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988, living in nearby Somerville, Massachusetts. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, president of the journal in his second year, and research assistant to the constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe while at Harvard for two years. During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a JD degree magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.

So, again, pretty much the exact same thing. The law portion of everyone's educational background is a higher aspect of their education. They have ALL had very diverse educational backgrounds.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

America need fewer lawyers in the White House, we need more businessmen like George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Or blows with the wind, corporation parasite Mitt Romney.

 

[PyramidHead]

America need fewer lawyers in the White House, we need more businessmen like George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Or blows with the wind, corporation parasite Mitt Romney.

It's a bad thing that those are always our only real choices, though.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Being a lawyer is not a monolithic thing. Do you people just not understand how higher degrees work?

 

[PyramidHead]

I have no problem with someone being a lawyer, I just wish there were more presidential candidates representing a culture other than the Ivy League or Wall Street. Neither are very good at understanding the basic structural issues that America faces (mostly because both benefit from their not being addressed).

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I have no problem with someone being a lawyer, I just wish there were more presidential candidates representing a culture other than the Ivy League or Wall Street. Neither are very good at understanding the basic structural issues that America faces (mostly because both benefit from their not being addressed).

That’s just bumper sticker nonsense. First of all, both the Ivy League and “Wall Street” (and by that I’ll assume you mean banking/stock brokerage firms) are filled with people who had to climb their way up to get into those institutions. Yes, there are many that were essentially born into them, but not nearly as many as you imagine.

I come from a lower middle class family (born in Virginia, raised in St. Louis until ten and then Eugene, Oregon from there to college), got a work study scholarship to Boston University where I studied Film & Communication. And yet with that background was able to get a job “in Wall Street” to use the idiotic terminology of the day, first at an investment management bank helping them (as a temp) debug their computer code for Y2K and then in a wealth advisory firm, where I worked for a good ten years wearing many different hats (Director of Compliance and Client Services primarily).

I was the “back office” iow. Where the managing directors would pick the investments, I would then take the clients all the way through the process and get them to provide necessary documentation and sign wire transfer directions and limited partnership agreements and walk them through setting up brokerage accounts and buying/selling mutual funds/stocks/bonds/etfs, etc., etc., etc. The whole fucking shooting match. So I dealt directly with all kinds of rich-as-fuck 10-to-1%-ers and nearly every single bank/custodian VP and alternative investment MDs and VPs. In short, every fucking person in finance in NYC (and a good number in other cities as well as other countries).

Point being, whenever any idiot talks about “Wall Street” I personally know or have dealt with just about every fucking person that encompasses and can tell you first hand that there is no “Wall Street” to anyone that actually works within the finance industry anymore than there is a “Retail Street” or a “Manufacturer’s Street” or a “Service Industry Street.”

Or, for that matter, a “Lawyer Street.” It’s just nonsense.

And just like with any other industry, there are fuckheads and there are swindlers, but the majority—90%—are just people who studied accounting and/or finance and primarily business administration and found they had an affinity for it. That’s it.

When you’re talking about C-Suite millionaires, yes, you’re talking about people that are in powerful positions and they know it, but again, the majority are just businesspeople, not comic book villains. You don’t read about them, of course, because that doesn’t sell newspapers.

So your perceptions of what goes on are entirely warped through the media that covers only the scandals and the crimes, but if the exact same scrutiny were turned onto “Retail Street” you’d see identical numbers of scandals and crimes.

Again, studying law is a higher educational step, not a monolithic entity or hive mind. There is no singular “culture” to it. Denigrating it by trying to force it into a singularity is the domain of ignorance that tries equally to denigrate “book learning” as if that, too, is some sort of singularity.

Reaching that stage of higher education means that one has first graduated high school (something a vast number of Republican voters have not accomplished) and then went on to complete one’s undergraduate degree and then went on to complete one’s graduate degree. Far from being a closed funnel, it is the exact opposite; by the time anyone has successfully completed law school, they are a fully expanded individual when it comes to academic studies, not more and more myopic, however ironic that may seem in regard to choosing one’s speciality or focus within the very broad legal categories.

Think of the intelligence and discipline and extensive general liberal arts studies that every law student must first demonstrate before they even can consider taking an LSAT to even hope to get into a good law school, let alone an Ivy League one. It is one of the most difficult disciplines to even enter into, let alone excel at.

Trying to assert some sort of monolithic “Lawyer Street” singularity is identical to saying idiotic shit like “fake news” or trying to turn the word “liberal” into a slur. It’s what the right does to make their moron voters gleefully vote against their own best interests.

ETA: Both Obama and Clinton were lawyers and neither one of them had any problems understanding the “basic structural issues that America faces.”

 

[blastula]

I like this.

[YOUTUBE]H8A6bq1-0iI[/YOUTUBE]

 

[PyramidHead]

I have no problem with someone being a lawyer, I just wish there were more presidential candidates representing a culture other than the Ivy League or Wall Street. Neither are very good at understanding the basic structural issues that America faces (mostly because both benefit from their not being addressed).

That’s just bumper sticker nonsense. First of all, both the Ivy League and “Wall Street” (and by that I’ll assume you mean banking/stock brokerage firms) are filled with people who had to climb their way up to get into those institutions. Yes, there are many that were essentially born into them, but not nearly as many as you imagine.

I come from a lower middle class family (born in Virginia, raised in St. Louis until ten and then Eugene, Oregon from there to college), got a work study scholarship to Boston University where I studied Film & Communication. And yet with that background was able to get a job “in Wall Street” to use the idiotic terminology of the day, first at an investment management bank helping them (as a temp) debug their computer code for Y2K and then in a wealth advisory firm, where I worked for a good ten years wearing many different hats (Director of Compliance and Client Services primarily).

Explains a lot. Do go on

I was the “back office” iow. Where the managing directors would pick the investments, I would then take the clients all the way through the process and get them to provide necessary documentation and sign wire transfer directions and limited partnership agreements and walk them through setting up brokerage accounts and buying/selling mutual funds/stocks/bonds/etfs, etc., etc., etc. The whole fucking shooting match. So I dealt directly with all kinds of rich-as-fuck 10-to-1%-ers and nearly every single bank/custodian VP and alternative investment MDs and VPs. In short, every fucking person in finance in NYC (and a good number in other cities as well as other countries).

Point being, whenever any idiot talks about “Wall Street” I personally know or have dealt with just about every fucking person that encompasses and can tell you first hand that there is no “Wall Street” to anyone that actually works within the finance industry anymore than there is a “Retail Street” or a “Manufacturer’s Street” or a “Service Industry Street.”

Or, for that matter, a “Lawyer Street.” It’s just nonsense.

And just like with any other industry, there are fuckheads and there are swindlers, but the majority—90%—are just people who studied accounting and/or finance and primarily business administration and found they had an affinity for it. That’s it.

When you’re talking about C-Suite millionaires, yes, you’re talking about people that are in powerful positions and they know it, but again, the majority are just businesspeople, not comic book villains. You don’t read about them, of course, because that doesn’t sell newspapers.

So your perceptions of what goes on are entirely warped through the media that covers only the scandals and the crimes, but if the exact same scrutiny were turned onto “Retail Street” you’d see identical numbers of scandals and crimes.

Agreed, that's basic class consciousness. My criticism of Ivy League types and financiers is applicable to anyone in the capitalist class. And I'm not sure why you think I care about scandals and crimes. I also wonder why you think it has anything to do with personal attributes. I don't think that CEOs or bankers are bad people, they just occupy functions in the workings of society that place them at odds with workers. They have to play these roles in order to compete with other capitalists, so I don't disparage them personally in the end. I just don't give them much credence when they claim to know what's best for the majority of us, or how to achieve it.

Again, studying law is a higher educational step, not a monolithic entity or hive mind. There is no singular “culture” to it. Denigrating it by trying to force it into a singularity is the domain of ignorance that tries equally to denigrate “book learning” as if that, too, is some sort of singularity.

Reaching that stage of higher education means that one has first graduated high school (something a vast number of Republican voters have not accomplished) and then went on to complete one’s undergraduate degree and then went on to complete one’s graduate degree. Far from being a closed funnel, it is the exact opposite; by the time anyone has successfully completed law school, they are a fully expanded individual when it comes to academic studies, not more and more myopic, however ironic that may seem in regard to choosing one’s speciality or focus within the very broad legal categories.

They have spent their formative years encased in a bubble surrounded by rich people. They are "fully expanded" only to the bounds of the echo-chamber that higher education has become. As such, they will always, always defer to existing institutions and official channels to solve problems that are actually structural in nature.

Think of the intelligence and discipline and extensive general liberal arts studies that every law student must first demonstrate before they even can consider taking an LSAT to even hope to get into a good law school, let alone an Ivy League one. It is one of the most difficult disciplines to even enter into, let alone excel at.

So? I'm not saying it's easy. I just don't buy the rhetoric that political leaders should be people who have demonstrated the ability to pass through gauntlets invented by the ruling class without complaint.

Trying to assert some sort of monolithic “Lawyer Street” singularity is identical to saying idiotic shit like “fake news” or trying to turn the word “liberal” into a slur. It’s what the right does to make their moron voters gleefully vote against their own best interests.

ETA: Both Obama and Clinton were lawyers and neither one of them had any problems understanding the “basic structural issues that America faces.”

Both excellent examples of my point. You and I are standing on opposite sides of an enormous gulf if you think invoking Obama or Clinton as examples of what we need more of is something that would sway my opinion. I imagine your view of the political spectrum extending about as far to the left as Goldwater, then dropping off toward the sea floor like the fucking continental shelf. It's why we don't get along; the only ammunition you have against an actual leftist is the stock-in-trade criticisms of your political opponents to the right, who are media-addled and traditional. I know that when I see a 10-paragraph essay from you in response to one of my dirtbag memes or shitposts, that blind spot will predominate throughout.

 

[PyramidHead]

Yesterday from TYT:

Mother of Black Teen Who Was Hanged Says Buttigieg Wouldn't Help

Stephanie Jones’ son was found hanging from an electrical tower on April 14, 2011. A coroner decided on the scene that it was suicide and that death was almost instantaneous. That coroner, however, had no medical training and police apparently conducted no forensic examination of the scene or of the body. The body was cremated before Jones could request an autopsy.

Jones says that after Buttigieg became mayor, she asked him personally to help get justice for her son. She says he told her to call his office, but that her calls were never returned. (Asked on Monday for comment, Buttigieg’s campaign said it would need time to respond. This story will be updated in the event of a response.)

For the new mayor, officially questioning the coroner’s actions regarding the hanging death of a black teenager carried potential political risks.

When Jones asked for Buttigieg’s help, it was just five months after the mayor had appointed that same coroner, Chuck Hurley, as his new, interim police chief. And that move was already controversial because Hurley was brought in after Buttigieg ousted the city’s first black police chief, which had prompted protests by the black community.

This whole story reeks.

Crime-scene investigators snapped photos of Jiha’d and the surrounding scene. Despite Morton’s description of Jiha’d hanging “about ten feet” in the air, one full-body photo – which has not been released but was seen by this reporter – shows Jiha’d hanging with his feet flat on the ground and his knees bent. The report doesn’t explain the apparent discrepancy between the photo and Morton’s description.

Hurley certified it as a suicide, listing the time of death as 1:50 p.m., eight minutes after the 911 call. The official cause of death was: "Asphyxiation by hanging."

Under the category “Approximate interval – Onset of Death,” Hurley noted on the death certificate that Jiha’d died within "seconds.”

There is no way that someone could have died within seconds of "asphyxiation by hanging." When hanging causes quick death, it's because the neck is snapped. Asphyxiation takes minutes and is agonizingly painful.

Jones recognized the sheet as one from her home. “It was a gray and white sheet pattern, like checkerboard style,” she said.

The sheet, she noted, had been cut. Jones says only “20 percent” of the original sheet was tucked in the body bag with her son. Jiha’d’s Detroit Tigers ball cap, his Bible, and a plastic bracelet were still in his backpack. “Where,” she wonders to this day, “was the other 80 percent of that sheet at?”

The rest of the sheet wasn’t the only item missing when Jones took inventory of her son’s belongings. “His school ID was missing,” she recalls, adding that her son’s wallet “with $20 cash” and a ring were also missing. “Most of that sheet was missing. He had an iPod with Tupac Shakur and stuff on it, that was missing.”

The police report did not account for the missing items.

[...]

To this day, Jones has questions about how her son died and how local officials handled it. But she remains steadfast about one thing: Jiha’d Vasquez, the Penn High School teen who carried a Bible in his backpack and spent summer vacations traveling to missionary-run Christian camps, did not tie a noose around his own neck and hang himself.

“He expressed to me that he would never take his own life because he knew it was a sin against God,” Jones says. “He not only told me that, he told a few people that, even my family members.”

His friends remember Jiha’d as a “loving kid” with a “big goofy smile” who loved music, especially Tupac Shakur.

“Jiha’d always said anybody who committed suicide wasn’t going to heaven,” said Blake Carpenter, Vasquez’s friend, in August 2011. “He said he wanted to be up there with Tupac.” Reached by phone recently, Carpenter declined to speak further for this story. “This is still too hard to talk about,” he said.

“He never showed signs of suicide to any of our friends,” said Ila Beckett earlier this month. A former high school classmate of Jiha’d, Beckett said that “I, being a survivor of suicide myself, never thought [Jiha’d] was suicidal, like, at all.”

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Explains a lot.

As does that ignorant retort.

My criticism of Ivy League types and financiers is applicable to anyone in the capitalist class.

Which would include you, btw, unless you live in a non-capitalist country.

And I'm not sure why you think I care about scandals and crimes. I also wonder why you think it has anything to do with personal attributes. I don't think that CEOs or bankers are bad people, they just occupy functions in the workings of society that place them at odds with workers. They have to play these roles in order to compete with other capitalists, so I don't disparage them personally in the end. I just don't give them much credence when they claim to know what's best for the majority of us, or how to achieve it.

So, it's nothing personal, it's just all personal. You've just blanket accused anyone in a hierarchical structure as being axiomatically incapable of surmounting the hierarchical structure.

And by "majority of us," who are you referring to, because the largest percentage of workers in America, at least, are in office and administrative support positions (aka, "white collar") by some 22 million (and that does not include business and financial operations)? The next largest (by some 15 million) is retail, basically ("sales and related"). Then comes food prep/serving at about 13 m and under that is transportation at about 10 m.

So please tell me how a lawyer occupies a function "in the workings of society" that places them at odds with their assistants or clerks or waiters or someone selling them their suits or someone in a great big convoy, runnin' through the night.

This is a freshman's understanding of the world; a binary, two-dimensional approach to existence.

They have spent their formative years encased in a bubble surrounded by rich people.

Did you go to college? Then you spent your formative years encased in a bubble surrounded by rich people. Hell, if you live in America (or any "western" country), then you have spent your formative years encased in a bubble surrounded by rich people.

Again, these are meaningless, bumper sticker platitudes that just assume non-agency on the part of some monolithic zombie-like beings incapable of separating out their own identity among others, but somehow, only you are invulnerable to such influences. Fancy that.

They are "fully expanded" only to the bounds of the echo-chamber that higher education has become. As such, they will always, always defer to existing institutions and official channels to solve problems that are actually structural in nature.

More binary bubble gum. To even attempt to discredit the entire diverse universe of "higher education" as a monolithic "echo-chamber' is to remove yourself so far from anything even remotely real as to be pure fantasy. How the fuck are you going to argue for changing anything "structural" when your entire worldview is two-dimensional?

Think of the intelligence and discipline and extensive general liberal arts studies that every law student must first demonstrate before they even can consider taking an LSAT to even hope to get into a good law school, let alone an Ivy League one. It is one of the most difficult disciplines to even enter into, let alone excel at.

So? I'm not saying it's easy.

You completely missed the point.

Trying to assert some sort of monolithic “Lawyer Street” singularity is identical to saying idiotic shit like “fake news” or trying to turn the word “liberal” into a slur. It’s what the right does to make their moron voters gleefully vote against their own best interests.

ETA: Both Obama and Clinton were lawyers and neither one of them had any problems understanding the “basic structural issues that America faces.”

Both excellent examples of my point. You and I are standing on opposite sides of an enormous gulf if you think invoking Obama or Clinton as examples of what we need more of is something that would sway my opinion.

I don't give a rat's ass about your opinion, particularly when it is clearly informed by ignorant shit like this:

I imagine your view of the political spectrum extending about as far to the left as Goldwater, then dropping off toward the sea floor like the fucking continental shelf.

You are clearly ruled by an unhealthy combination of confirmation bias and a freshman's understanding of the world, let alone politics.

It's why we don't get along

We "don't get along" because you play checkers, but think you're playing chess.

 

[PyramidHead]

Which would include you, btw, unless you live in a non-capitalist country.

This is the shit I mean. When I have to stop at the beginning of a reply to massage my temples because you just demonstrated the fact that you think the capitalist class is just people who live in a capitalist country, it's like... why bother. There's too much remedial ground to cover, and not enough Vicodin.

And I'm not sure why you think I care about scandals and crimes. I also wonder why you think it has anything to do with personal attributes. I don't think that CEOs or bankers are bad people, they just occupy functions in the workings of society that place them at odds with workers. They have to play these roles in order to compete with other capitalists, so I don't disparage them personally in the end. I just don't give them much credence when they claim to know what's best for the majority of us, or how to achieve it.

So, it's nothing personal, it's just all personal. You've just blanket accused anyone in a hierarchical structure as being axiomatically incapable of surmounting the hierarchical structure.

Not incapable, just less likely to voluntarily do so in proportion to the benefit they receive from it.

And by "majority of us," who are you referring to, because the largest percentage of workers in America, at least, are in office and administrative support positions (aka, "white collar") by some 22 million (and that does not include business and financial operations)? The next largest (by some 15 million) is retail, basically ("sales and related"). Then comes food prep/serving at about 13 m and under that is transportation at about 10 m.

Sales, food prep, and transportation makes up about 40 million, which is larger than the 22 you identified as white collar, but again, the division I'm making here (which is a very common one on the left) has nothing to do with wealth or job category and everything to do with class. You don't actually know what "class" means in the context of this discussion, do you?

So please tell me how a lawyer occupies a function "in the workings of society" that places them at odds with their assistants or clerks or waiters or someone selling them their suits or someone in a great big convoy, runnin' through the night.

Like police officers and military personnel, they are paid to enforce a system of laws and regulations that have always been geared toward the protection of private property, and are given strong incentives not to question or challenge those laws unless it is on the basis of other, more established laws. They participate in and directly benefit from the oppression of minorities and the poor, the stifling of the creative arts through copyright litigation, and the mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, and will always side against them when corporate interests are threatened. That makes them class traitors (and also makes defense lawyers usually an exception to this rule). Since you asked so nicely.

This is a freshman's understanding of the world; a binary, two-dimensional approach to existence.

No: it's a Marxist's. And your comments indicate that you have no idea what that means and no interest in learning.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

This is the shit I mean.

You're own ludicrously simplistic binary view of the world?

When I have to stop at the beginning of a reply to massage my temples because you just demonstrated the fact that you think the capitalist class is just people who live in a capitalist country, it's like... why bother.

Again you missed the point entirely with a strawman thrown in no less. The point was and remains that your ignorant attempts at trying to label everything based on simplistic bumper sticker monolithic ideology reveals how two-dimensional is your thinking. The real world doesn't fall neatly into any such categories, yet it is the real world where politics, in particular, exists.

Iow, your head is up your ass freshman. To whit:

So, it's nothing personal, it's just all personal. You've just blanket accused anyone in a hierarchical structure as being axiomatically incapable of surmounting the hierarchical structure.

Not incapable, just less likely to voluntarily do so in proportion to the benefit they receive from it.

Your confirmation bias has forced you to paint a world where diminished agency is structural, which is completely contradicted by the countless examples where that is not the case. You blame "structure" when in fact it is a far more complicated combination of a myriad of different independent elements. It's binary bumper-sticker freshman thinking.

And by "majority of us," who are you referring to, because the largest percentage of workers in America, at least, are in office and administrative support positions (aka, "white collar") by some 22 million (and that does not include business and financial operations)? The next largest (by some 15 million) is retail, basically ("sales and related"). Then comes food prep/serving at about 13 m and under that is transportation at about 10 m.

Sales, food prep, and transportation makes up about 40 million, which is larger than the 22 you identified as white collar, but again, the division I'm making here (which is a very common one on the left) has nothing to do with wealth or job category and everything to do with class. You don't actually know what "class" means in the context of this discussion, do you?

So please tell me how a lawyer occupies a function "in the workings of society" that places them at odds with their assistants or clerks or waiters or someone selling them their suits or someone in a great big convoy, runnin' through the night.

Like police officers and military personnel, they are paid to enforce a system of laws and regulations that have always been geared toward the protection of private property

With the person being the center of that definition.

and are given strong incentives not to question or challenge those laws unless it is on the basis of other, more established laws.

Iow, their power is subject to oversight and check by the State.

They participate in and directly benefit from the oppression of minorities and the poor...snip

Some do. The majority do not. Again we see the freshman ignorance of a far more complicated, non-binary world and how myopism like yours completely misses it.

This is a freshman's understanding of the world; a binary, two-dimensional approach to existence.

No: it's a Marxist's.

Right. A freshman's understanding of the world; a binary, two-dimensional approach to existence. Marx argued that the State should take over the means of production and that this would somehow magically instantiate a class-less equality, as if such a simplistic understanding of human nature/human interaction exists out there in a pristine utopia just waiting to be unleashed, but for the yoke of hierarchical systems holding everyone back. And what immediately happened after his ideas were championed by a revolution, no less? Human nature/human interaction shattered the utopian ideal in the most brutal totalitarian form imaginable--with millions tortured or killed--and decades to run its course.

There is no such thing as "class" and "equality" has never and can never exist. It's not even an applicable concept. That is a child's understanding of a deeply complicated, multi-dimensional web--like playing checkers at a chess match--that continues to betray your ignorance.

Understand this fully. I know what you are TRYING to argue. I know what traditional notions of "class" have been and continue to be. They are simplistic and two-dimensional and always have been, the difference being that in earlier times, the people themselves were far more simplistic and two-dimensional, thus their hierarchies mimicked that world view.

That is not the case today and has not been for decades. Pretty much, in fact, since Stalin shattered Marx's utopian dream and WWII cemented the finally very real notion of a global armageddon at the hands of mankind. That has put us in a completely different, far more complicated and still unfolding global consciousness, where the notion of borders and states and more traditional (aka, two-dimensional) hierarchies are constantly being challenged and shattered.

It is not that I do not know what you are talking about; it is that you're understanding of what you are talking about is ignorant and grossly outdated.

 

[Brian63]

Folks, you each think of the other as a dumbass. Point taken. No need to repeat, rephrase, reinsert that assertion into every other sentence of your rebuttals to each other. Please just cut that crap out and stick to the actual substance. Thank you.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Folks, you each think of the other as a dumbass. Point taken. No need to repeat, rephrase, reinsert that assertion into every other sentence of your rebuttals to each other. Please just cut that crap out and stick to the actual substance. Thank you.

Actually, in this instance I think it's justified, because the "actual substance" is endemic to the underlying ignorance that could result in someone fundamentally unqualified nevertheless becoming the nominee. Which then gives us Trump for another four years.

 

[PyramidHead]

You're own ludicrously simplistic binary view of the world?

"Your"

Again you missed the point entirely with a strawman thrown in no less. The point was and remains that your ignorant attempts at trying to label everything based on simplistic bumper sticker monolithic ideology reveals how two-dimensional is your thinking. The real world doesn't fall neatly into any such categories, yet it is the real world where politics, in particular, exists.

Iow, your head is up your ass freshman. To whit:

So, it's nothing personal, it's just all personal. You've just blanket accused anyone in a hierarchical structure as being axiomatically incapable of surmounting the hierarchical structure.

Not incapable, just less likely to voluntarily do so in proportion to the benefit they receive from it.

Your confirmation bias has forced you to paint a world where diminished agency is structural, which is completely contradicted by the countless examples where that is not the case. You blame "structure" when in fact it is a far more complicated combination of a myriad of different independent elements. It's binary bumper-sticker freshman thinking.

And by "majority of us," who are you referring to, because the largest percentage of workers in America, at least, are in office and administrative support positions (aka, "white collar") by some 22 million (and that does not include business and financial operations)? The next largest (by some 15 million) is retail, basically ("sales and related"). Then comes food prep/serving at about 13 m and under that is transportation at about 10 m.

Sales, food prep, and transportation makes up about 40 million, which is larger than the 22 you identified as white collar, but again, the division I'm making here (which is a very common one on the left) has nothing to do with wealth or job category and everything to do with class. You don't actually know what "class" means in the context of this discussion, do you?

So please tell me how a lawyer occupies a function "in the workings of society" that places them at odds with their assistants or clerks or waiters or someone selling them their suits or someone in a great big convoy, runnin' through the night.

Like police officers and military personnel, they are paid to enforce a system of laws and regulations that have always been geared toward the protection of private property

With the person being the center of that definition.

and are given strong incentives not to question or challenge those laws unless it is on the basis of other, more established laws.

Iow, their power is subject to oversight and check by the State.

They participate in and directly benefit from the oppression of minorities and the poor...snip

Some do. The majority do not. Again we see the freshman ignorance of a far more complicated, non-binary world and how myopism like yours completely misses it.

This is a freshman's understanding of the world; a binary, two-dimensional approach to existence.

No: it's a Marxist's.

Right. A freshman's understanding of the world; a binary, two-dimensional approach to existence. Marx argued that the State should take over the means of production and that this would somehow magically instantiate a class-less equality, as if such a simplistic understanding of human nature/human interaction exists out there in a pristine utopia just waiting to be unleashed, but for the yoke of hierarchical systems holding everyone back. And what immediately happened after his ideas were championed by a revolution, no less? Human nature/human interaction shattered the utopian ideal in the most brutal totalitarian form imaginable--with millions tortured or killed--and decades to run its course.

lol You have clearly never read anything by Marx, who was anti-state and anti-utopian.

There is no such thing as "class" and "equality" has never and can never exist. It's not even an applicable concept. That is a child's understanding of a deeply complicated, multi-dimensional web--like playing checkers at a chess match--that continues to betray your ignorance.

Understand this fully. I know what you are TRYING to argue. I know what traditional notions of "class" have been and continue to be. They are simplistic and two-dimensional and always have been, the difference being that in earlier times, the people themselves were far more simplistic and two-dimensional, thus their hierarchies mimicked that world view.

Mask off.

That is not the case today and has not been for decades. Pretty much, in fact, since Stalin shattered Marx's utopian dream and WWII cemented the finally very real notion of a global armageddon at the hands of mankind. That has put us in a completely different, far more complicated and still unfolding global consciousness, where the notion of borders and states and more traditional (aka, two-dimensional) hierarchies are constantly being challenged and shattered.

Okay, you're embarrassing yourself now. Borders and states? Where is this even going.

It is not that I do not know what you are talking about; it is that you're understanding of what you are talking about is ignorant and grossly outdated.

It's "your", F R E S H M A N

All snark aside, I don't even know where to begin and I agree with Brian63 that it's getting off-topic. If you would like to talk about Marxism in another thread, start one and I'd gladly participate. I mean that sincerely.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

"Your"

Congratulations. You caught my dyslexia.

You have clearly never read anything by Marx, who was anti-state and anti-utopian.

If you would like to talk about Marxism in another thread, start one and I'd gladly participate. I mean that sincerely.

No point, but agree that this has gone too far off the rails.

 

[southernhybrid]

I thought this thread was about Pete Buttiigieg! Y'all are such experts at derailing threads.

 

[RavenSky]

I like this.

[YOUTUBE]H8A6bq1-0iI[/YOUTUBE]

Me too. I was looking for the clip yesterday. Thank you for posting it.

 

[RavenSky]

Folks, you each think of the other as a dumbass. Point taken. No need to repeat, rephrase, reinsert that assertion into every other sentence of your rebuttals to each other. Please just cut that crap out and stick to the actual substance. Thank you.

I thought this thread was about Pete Buttiigieg! Y'all are such experts at derailing threads.

Both of the above.

If you would like for one of the mods to move your posts Elsewhere so you can continue this discussion, let us know. Otherwise, knock off the derail.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

We all (finally) agreed, so relax everyone.