Remember guys, it's not about racism

[Loren Pechtel]

Googling "national park service do not feed the animals", I find this http://www.nps.gov/maca/learn/news/do-not-feed-wildlife.htm, from the NPS website for Mammoth Cave National Park, in Kentucky.

Why is there a law that prohibits disturbing or feeding wildlife?

· Nutritionally, it is bad for the animals. Human food can make wildlife sick.

· It interferes with an animal's ability to forage for its own food. Animals can become dependent on humans.

· Wildlife fed by humans can become nuisance animals, breaking into tents, cars and homes. Rangers trap, move and sometimes kill nuisance animals.

· It makes an animal an easy target for poachers. The deer that linger near the park roads this summer may be killed by poachers in the fall. (Hunting is not allowed in the park.)

· Animals that expect to receive food from humans can become a safety hazard. Some animals carry diseases that are very harmful to humans, like Lyme disease and hanta virus.

Human food making SNAP recipients sick seems unlikely.

GOP voters might be concerned by the prospect of SNAP recipients breaking into tents, cars and homes; fortunately police officers can trap, move and sometimes kill nuisance poor people.

SNAP recipients are rarely preyed upon by poachers, even if they linger on the roads.

SNAP recipients also seem unlikely to be vectors for Lyme disease or Hanta virus, except in the paranoid delusions of GOP voters.

SNAP recipients are unlikely to have their foraging ability impaired, but the rules do say "...can become dependent [on humans]", so I guess that's half a point out of five.

Nice job of missing the point--you addressed everything except the reason behind it: Dependency.

Don't blame me - blame the National Parks Service.

The OP propaganda piece made a claim about the NPS's reasons for asking people not to feed the animals.

The NPS themselves give five different reasons, a half of one of which could, in poor light, if you squint a bit, be construed as similar to the claimed reason in the OP snippet.

The claim is dubious; the conclusion based on that claim is even more so. Propaganda is like that - to be effective it needs to contain faint traces of reality.

You're the one who omitted the important point, I blame you.

 

[Shadowy Man]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/07/14/3680185/food-stamp-oklahoma-gop/

NOW thus endeth today's lesson.

I wonder how many in the GOP are willing to give up such handouts as tax breaks, birthday stocks, and inheritance, lest they not learn how to take care of themselves.

 

[bilby]

Googling "national park service do not feed the animals", I find this http://www.nps.gov/maca/learn/news/do-not-feed-wildlife.htm, from the NPS website for Mammoth Cave National Park, in Kentucky.

Why is there a law that prohibits disturbing or feeding wildlife?

· Nutritionally, it is bad for the animals. Human food can make wildlife sick.

· It interferes with an animal's ability to forage for its own food. Animals can become dependent on humans.

· Wildlife fed by humans can become nuisance animals, breaking into tents, cars and homes. Rangers trap, move and sometimes kill nuisance animals.

· It makes an animal an easy target for poachers. The deer that linger near the park roads this summer may be killed by poachers in the fall. (Hunting is not allowed in the park.)

· Animals that expect to receive food from humans can become a safety hazard. Some animals carry diseases that are very harmful to humans, like Lyme disease and hanta virus.

Human food making SNAP recipients sick seems unlikely.

GOP voters might be concerned by the prospect of SNAP recipients breaking into tents, cars and homes; fortunately police officers can trap, move and sometimes kill nuisance poor people.

SNAP recipients are rarely preyed upon by poachers, even if they linger on the roads.

SNAP recipients also seem unlikely to be vectors for Lyme disease or Hanta virus, except in the paranoid delusions of GOP voters.

SNAP recipients are unlikely to have their foraging ability impaired, but the rules do say "...can become dependent [on humans]", so I guess that's half a point out of five.

Nice job of missing the point--you addressed everything except the reason behind it: Dependency.

Don't blame me - blame the National Parks Service.

The OP propaganda piece made a claim about the NPS's reasons for asking people not to feed the animals.

The NPS themselves give five different reasons, a half of one of which could, in poor light, if you squint a bit, be construed as similar to the claimed reason in the OP snippet.

The claim is dubious; the conclusion based on that claim is even more so. Propaganda is like that - to be effective it needs to contain faint traces of reality.

Your post has far more characteristic of propaganda, full of red-herrings, strawmen, and harping on meaningless superficial semantic issues to detract from the underlying conceptual point.

The fact that there are additional separate reasons not to feed park animals has zero relevance to any point the OP is making. The fact that it causing dependence is widely acknowledged as a sufficient reason is all that matters for their point. That single point is independent and stands on its own from the others. Also, it is not "half a point" but a whole one. Dependence on others supplying their needs inherently entails interference with their actions to work to supply their own needs. The second half entails the first. The fact that non-humans do this work via "foraging" activities is a meaningless superficial specificity relative to the deeper conceptual issue that they engage in activities to supply their own needs. In fact, humans worked via foraging until very recently and some still do (even hipsters in Portland). The fact that our work to supply our needs is no longer "foraging" has zero relevance.

The comparison in the OP is an apt analogy. The whole point of analogies is to take relationships the person understands and align it with a conceptually similar relationship you want them to understand. There are always superficial dissimilarities between the components being analogized. That is actually a good thing because it highlights that the similarity is at a deeper level involving more general relational/causal principles. Research shows that the people who fail to learn from analogies or use them properly do just what you are doing, they focus of surface features of the things being related rather than the relational principles.

The analogy in the OP breaks down because while wild animals are able to choose to forage independently, humans are embedded in a society where reverting to a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle has been largely rendered impossible, and in those few remaining places where it is possible, is prohibited.

If society bans a New Yorker from establishing a farm in Central Park, and society doesn't provide as many jobs in New York as there are New Yorkers looking for work, then society has a responsibility to fill the gap - and it is in the self interest of the wealthy to pay to do so, because the alternative is crime.

Of course all of that is far too nuanced for conservative propaganda, which is targeted at people who view actually thinking as an unwelcome and unjust impost.

The analogy in the OP is apt, only if you actively avoid thinking too hard.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Dependence or reliance?

There is no reliable difference between the use of those words. Many definitions of each simply use the other as the definition, and many sources that say they are synonymous.

So, those words aside, what exactly are two different concepts you are trying to get at? Is it the notion of being physically requiring something without possible actions that would allow survival without it, versus psychological "dependence" meaning a learned a habit of using it even though one could act differently and survive without it?

If that is the distinction, then welfare is used for both reasons, but is only a cause of the latter not the former. Except for people with real and actual disabilities that prevent working, few people who actually make reasonable efforts to work still require welfare for extended periods.

Please substantiate this claim with evidence. And I should repoint out the fact that the super majority receiving SNAP help are children, elderly, and disabled.

Thus, those that truly need it tend to get off quickly and not return to it. The longer people are on it or the more they return to it, the more likely it is they they aren't just using it out of true necessity but out of a learned dependence.

True. I know if I was poor I wouldn't want nice stuff. I'd just want enough to barely scrape by because it is so easy to be poor and dependent.

 

[arkirk]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/07/14/3680185/food-stamp-oklahoma-gop/

NOW thus endeth today's lesson.

If the Republican Party would stop killing all forms or recovery except for the rich, there would not be all those folks on food stamps. The department of the Interior protects those animals you are not feeding. You can't say any of the millions on food stamps feel in any way protected.

It actually is about Racism...Republicans are opposed to the human race in all but a few select forms. They must be encased in Business suits before they are worth helping. The Wall street bankers would not stoop to use a food stamp. Their protection and protectors are the potent ones in our society. We are all living on borrowed time.

 

[thebeave]

Yes there is. The GOP has implicitly linked poverty to race, to the point where poor whites will vote against things that will benefit themselves because they will also benefit blacks. Take this quote from former GOP strategist Lee Atwater:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

When the GOP puts the ideas of poverty and animals in the same paragraph, they are absolutely sending a racially coded signal. And the proof is in the pudding: Poor whites voting against things that they themselves could (and sometimes DO) benefit from.

There are so many words that are racial codes: "Urban" in any other context than zoning. (Rick Santorum frightened voters by claiming that Obama was going to attack them with an army of 'urban youths') Hell 'youth crime,' doesn't mean 'white youth crime.' "Inner city" is another famous one. They pretend that this is a neutral term used by planners. It isn't. And of course "Immigrant." They aren't talking about european immigrants when they use that term. I hope I don't need to talk about 'thug.'

I think maybe you do. Are the Democrats, such as our president, also secretly racist?

 

[Sarpedon]

Like I said: Everyone in america, blacks too, have been raised in and are products of a racist culture. All of us have been exposed, and to a certain extent, twisted, by this culture. The idea that 'black people can't be racist' is too simplistic. Not only are black people every much a part of the culture of racism as white people (affected in different ways of course) but no one is free from it. Not President Obama, not black people, not liberal white people, not me, not you. It isn't about words. It isn't even about actions, though I would settle for correcting that. It is about the way we have been trained to think. And it won't stop until we all stop and criticize ourselves, and really think about what we think and why, and try to rectify it.

 

[Rhea]

It occurs to me that many who see racism in the quote in the OP are instinctively racist themselves, although with enough awareness to realise that these feelings are wrong.

Only if you don't actually live in the US and hear this shit all the fucking time.

This is huge.

HUGE

You cannot. CAN. NOT. get a grasp of the pervasiveness of the dog-whistles and the micro aggressions without encountering them.

Erik, unless you have spent years in the US and with your eyes wide open (or as a minority and then you see it even with your head covered and your hands tied behind your back), unless you have seen 10,000 instances of racist aggression, micro-aggression and even "just" racial insensitivity, you can't feel the weight of the issue.

This is big and several of the non-Americans on this board keep bringing it up, "oh, come on, it can't be that bad," except we JUST told you it was.
We see racism in the OP because it matches all of the slightly less-obvious and all of the unabashedly obvious statements using the same words that fly around all over the place. It fits a well worn and pervasive pattern here. It really really does.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is no reliable difference between the use of those words. Many definitions of each simply use the other as the definition, and many sources that say they are synonymous.

So, those words aside, what exactly are two different concepts you are trying to get at? Is it the notion of being physically requiring something without possible actions that would allow survival without it, versus psychological "dependence" meaning a learned a habit of using it even though one could act differently and survive without it?

If that is the distinction, then welfare is used for both reasons, but is only a cause of the latter not the former. Except for people with real and actual disabilities that prevent working, few people who actually make reasonable efforts to work still require welfare for extended periods.

Please substantiate this claim with evidence. And I should repoint out the fact that the super majority receiving SNAP help are children, elderly, and disabled.

In other news, water is wet. In most states you're not going to get aid if you aren't in one of these categories.

Mostly it's "children"--but they're getting it because of the failings of their parents.

 

[ronburgundy]

Googling "national park service do not feed the animals", I find this http://www.nps.gov/maca/learn/news/do-not-feed-wildlife.htm, from the NPS website for Mammoth Cave National Park, in Kentucky.

Why is there a law that prohibits disturbing or feeding wildlife?

· Nutritionally, it is bad for the animals. Human food can make wildlife sick.

· It interferes with an animal's ability to forage for its own food. Animals can become dependent on humans.

· Wildlife fed by humans can become nuisance animals, breaking into tents, cars and homes. Rangers trap, move and sometimes kill nuisance animals.

· It makes an animal an easy target for poachers. The deer that linger near the park roads this summer may be killed by poachers in the fall. (Hunting is not allowed in the park.)

· Animals that expect to receive food from humans can become a safety hazard. Some animals carry diseases that are very harmful to humans, like Lyme disease and hanta virus.

Human food making SNAP recipients sick seems unlikely.

GOP voters might be concerned by the prospect of SNAP recipients breaking into tents, cars and homes; fortunately police officers can trap, move and sometimes kill nuisance poor people.

SNAP recipients are rarely preyed upon by poachers, even if they linger on the roads.

SNAP recipients also seem unlikely to be vectors for Lyme disease or Hanta virus, except in the paranoid delusions of GOP voters.

SNAP recipients are unlikely to have their foraging ability impaired, but the rules do say "...can become dependent [on humans]", so I guess that's half a point out of five.

Nice job of missing the point--you addressed everything except the reason behind it: Dependency.

Don't blame me - blame the National Parks Service.

The OP propaganda piece made a claim about the NPS's reasons for asking people not to feed the animals.

The NPS themselves give five different reasons, a half of one of which could, in poor light, if you squint a bit, be construed as similar to the claimed reason in the OP snippet.

The claim is dubious; the conclusion based on that claim is even more so. Propaganda is like that - to be effective it needs to contain faint traces of reality.

Your post has far more characteristic of propaganda, full of red-herrings, strawmen, and harping on meaningless superficial semantic issues to detract from the underlying conceptual point.

The fact that there are additional separate reasons not to feed park animals has zero relevance to any point the OP is making. The fact that it causing dependence is widely acknowledged as a sufficient reason is all that matters for their point. That single point is independent and stands on its own from the others. Also, it is not "half a point" but a whole one. Dependence on others supplying their needs inherently entails interference with their actions to work to supply their own needs. The second half entails the first. The fact that non-humans do this work via "foraging" activities is a meaningless superficial specificity relative to the deeper conceptual issue that they engage in activities to supply their own needs. In fact, humans worked via foraging until very recently and some still do (even hipsters in Portland). The fact that our work to supply our needs is no longer "foraging" has zero relevance.

The comparison in the OP is an apt analogy. The whole point of analogies is to take relationships the person understands and align it with a conceptually similar relationship you want them to understand. There are always superficial dissimilarities between the components being analogized. That is actually a good thing because it highlights that the similarity is at a deeper level involving more general relational/causal principles. Research shows that the people who fail to learn from analogies or use them properly do just what you are doing, they focus of surface features of the things being related rather than the relational principles.

The analogy in the OP breaks down because while wild animals are able to choose to forage independently, humans are embedded in a society where reverting to a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle has been largely rendered impossible, and in those few remaining places where it is possible, is prohibited.

If society bans a New Yorker from establishing a farm in Central Park, and society doesn't provide as many jobs in New York as there are New Yorkers looking for work, then society has a responsibility to fill the gap - and it is in the self interest of the wealthy to pay to do so, because the alternative is crime.

Of course all of that is far too nuanced for conservative propaganda, which is targeted at people who view actually thinking as an unwelcome and unjust impost.

The analogy in the OP is apt, only if you actively avoid thinking too hard.

Your post is the result of not thinking to hard, failed reading comprehension, and no understanding of what an analogy actually is. The post you pretended to respond to already refutes everything in your response, but here it is again in another form. Exact matches on surface features (such as if people foraged just like wild animals) would make the comparison not an analogy at all but merely a identical shared trait. The comparison in analogies is at the more abstract level. What makes it an analogy is precisely that the they do not do the exact same thing but rather that they each do something that belongs in the same general category of which foraging is just a particular manifestation of no relevance to the analogy. In this case that category is engaging in effortful actions upon which the acquisition of resources to meet one's own needs depends, which is n contrast to the category of someone else simply supplying that human's or other animal's needs, not contingent upon any efforts on their part. These categories and their negative relationship with each other apply to both humans and wild animals, and that is what makes the analogy fully apt.

Also note that whether there are enough (jobs) ways for all people to work to produce what they need is irrelevant to the aptness of the analogy being made. The analogy merely illustrates the fact that supplying people's needs for them increases a psychological dependency that will cause them to turn to that source even when their could work to supply their own needs. If their is no way for them to supply their own needs, that merely makes this fact irrelevant at that time, it doesn't change that it a fact or that aptness of the analogy that illustrates it. Also, all people that are not severely disabled, can increase their long-term probability of supplying their own needs via such sustained efforts now and in the future. Thus, the learned dependency is in fact always relevant and impactful, even though there are periods where those efforts might not yeild any short term results.

 

[ronburgundy]

There is no reliable difference between the use of those words. Many definitions of each simply use the other as the definition, and many sources that say they are synonymous.

So, those words aside, what exactly are two different concepts you are trying to get at? Is it the notion of being physically requiring something without possible actions that would allow survival without it, versus psychological "dependence" meaning a learned a habit of using it even though one could act differently and survive without it?

If that is the distinction, then welfare is used for both reasons, but is only a cause of the latter not the former. Except for people with real and actual disabilities that prevent working, few people who actually make reasonable efforts to work still require welfare for extended periods.

Please substantiate this claim with evidence.

I already supplied various widely available stats that substantiate it. That patterns of who goes onto welfare, who stays on it longer, and who is likely to return to it after they get off it, all strongly support the learned dependence model. In addition, the fact that so many people get off it quickly shows that sustained effort to do would eventually get one off of it, thus failure to get off of it over long periods (such as 5 years) implies a lack of sustained efforts to get off of it. Note that having additional children once one is on welfare not only shows lack of honest effort to get of it, it is actively doing things that make it less likely to get off it.

And I should repoint out the fact that the super majority receiving SNAP help are children, elderly, and disabled.

A red herring. The majority of SNAP goes to household that include non-disabled, non-elderly adults. Yes, most of these adults that are able to work have children, thus their children get SNAP too, but the kids getting SNAP is determined by the work of their parents. Thus, the learned dependency of their parent winds up determining whether their kids stay on or return to SNAP. Note that none of this has to do with whether we should have SNAP or give SNAP to these kids, no matter what their parents do or do not do.
It merely speaks to the fact that the OP analogy is valid in illustrating the well established causal impact that such "handouts" have on learned dependency.

Thus, those that truly need it tend to get off quickly and not return to it. The longer people are on it or the more they return to it, the more likely it is they they aren't just using it out of true necessity but out of a learned dependence.

True. I know if I was poor I wouldn't want nice stuff. I'd just want enough to barely scrape by because it is so easy to be poor and dependent.

More strawmen. I explicitly said that welfare is hard and is not a good 'ol time. However, actions are determined by relative options and many things are unpleasant about the alternative to staying on SNAP. People do not like change, even when the other side of that transition appears to be much better. Finding work is stressful and sometimes humiliating. Working is stressful, hard, and for most jobs, not very enjoyable.
Millions of Americans live with far less nice stuff than they could have, if they wanted to work more. It is a matter of relative choices and whether the more nice stuff is worth the subjective cost.
Also, the alternative to welfare is often not alot of "nice stuff" but barely more than they have now, just paying for it themselves via more work. If a person works part time and is just below the income level to qualify for SNAP, what is the incentive to work another 10 hours per week, lose that benefit and pay for it all themselves only to wind up with about the same stuff they had on SNAP?

 

[bilby]

Googling "national park service do not feed the animals", I find this http://www.nps.gov/maca/learn/news/do-not-feed-wildlife.htm, from the NPS website for Mammoth Cave National Park, in Kentucky.

Why is there a law that prohibits disturbing or feeding wildlife?

· Nutritionally, it is bad for the animals. Human food can make wildlife sick.

· It interferes with an animal's ability to forage for its own food. Animals can become dependent on humans.

· Wildlife fed by humans can become nuisance animals, breaking into tents, cars and homes. Rangers trap, move and sometimes kill nuisance animals.

· It makes an animal an easy target for poachers. The deer that linger near the park roads this summer may be killed by poachers in the fall. (Hunting is not allowed in the park.)

· Animals that expect to receive food from humans can become a safety hazard. Some animals carry diseases that are very harmful to humans, like Lyme disease and hanta virus.

Human food making SNAP recipients sick seems unlikely.

GOP voters might be concerned by the prospect of SNAP recipients breaking into tents, cars and homes; fortunately police officers can trap, move and sometimes kill nuisance poor people.

SNAP recipients are rarely preyed upon by poachers, even if they linger on the roads.

SNAP recipients also seem unlikely to be vectors for Lyme disease or Hanta virus, except in the paranoid delusions of GOP voters.

SNAP recipients are unlikely to have their foraging ability impaired, but the rules do say "...can become dependent [on humans]", so I guess that's half a point out of five.

Nice job of missing the point--you addressed everything except the reason behind it: Dependency.

Don't blame me - blame the National Parks Service.

The OP propaganda piece made a claim about the NPS's reasons for asking people not to feed the animals.

The NPS themselves give five different reasons, a half of one of which could, in poor light, if you squint a bit, be construed as similar to the claimed reason in the OP snippet.

The claim is dubious; the conclusion based on that claim is even more so. Propaganda is like that - to be effective it needs to contain faint traces of reality.

Your post has far more characteristic of propaganda, full of red-herrings, strawmen, and harping on meaningless superficial semantic issues to detract from the underlying conceptual point.

The fact that there are additional separate reasons not to feed park animals has zero relevance to any point the OP is making. The fact that it causing dependence is widely acknowledged as a sufficient reason is all that matters for their point. That single point is independent and stands on its own from the others. Also, it is not "half a point" but a whole one. Dependence on others supplying their needs inherently entails interference with their actions to work to supply their own needs. The second half entails the first. The fact that non-humans do this work via "foraging" activities is a meaningless superficial specificity relative to the deeper conceptual issue that they engage in activities to supply their own needs. In fact, humans worked via foraging until very recently and some still do (even hipsters in Portland). The fact that our work to supply our needs is no longer "foraging" has zero relevance.

The comparison in the OP is an apt analogy. The whole point of analogies is to take relationships the person understands and align it with a conceptually similar relationship you want them to understand. There are always superficial dissimilarities between the components being analogized. That is actually a good thing because it highlights that the similarity is at a deeper level involving more general relational/causal principles. Research shows that the people who fail to learn from analogies or use them properly do just what you are doing, they focus of surface features of the things being related rather than the relational principles.

The analogy in the OP breaks down because while wild animals are able to choose to forage independently, humans are embedded in a society where reverting to a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle has been largely rendered impossible, and in those few remaining places where it is possible, is prohibited.

If society bans a New Yorker from establishing a farm in Central Park, and society doesn't provide as many jobs in New York as there are New Yorkers looking for work, then society has a responsibility to fill the gap - and it is in the self interest of the wealthy to pay to do so, because the alternative is crime.

Of course all of that is far too nuanced for conservative propaganda, which is targeted at people who view actually thinking as an unwelcome and unjust impost.

The analogy in the OP is apt, only if you actively avoid thinking too hard.

Your post is the result of not thinking to hard, failed reading comprehension, and no understanding of what an analogy actually is. The post you pretended to respond to already refutes everything in your response, but here it is again in another form. Exact matches on surface features (such as if people foraged just like wild animals) would make the comparison not an analogy at all but merely a identical shared trait. The comparison in analogies is at the more abstract level. What makes it an analogy is precisely that the they do not do the exact same thing but rather that they each do something that belongs in the same general category of which foraging is just a particular manifestation of no relevance to the analogy. In this case that category is engaging in effortful actions upon which the acquisition of resources to meet one's own needs depends, which is n contrast to the category of someone else simply supplying that human's or other animal's needs, not contingent upon any efforts on their part. These categories and their negative relationship with each other apply to both humans and wild animals, and that is what makes the analogy fully apt.

Also note that whether there are enough (jobs) ways for all people to work to produce what they need is irrelevant to the aptness of the analogy being made. The analogy merely illustrates the fact that supplying people's needs for them increases a psychological dependency that will cause them to turn to that source even when their could work to supply their own needs. If their is no way for them to supply their own needs, that merely makes this fact irrelevant at that time, it doesn't change that it a fact or that aptness of the analogy that illustrates it. Also, all people that are not severely disabled, can increase their long-term probability of supplying their own needs via such sustained efforts now and in the future. Thus, the learned dependency is in fact always relevant and impactful, even though there are periods where those efforts might not yeild any short term results.

'Too'.