Probably for the best. I guess Walmart (who sell them, they are crap) are bricking it a bit right now so called it off with DK.
That's one silver lining we can expect from this. No more major brands milking lingering sentimentality over the confederacy. Again, not American, can't judge, can't comment, but as an outsider, all the confederacy sympathy sure looks like residual racist sentiment. Or is at least very hard to separate from it.
I would try and explain to them that he was an enemy of the U.S and lost but they probably wouldn't understand. The KKK still wave the flag too.
Reminds me of that line from the opening of The Assassination of Jesse James: "he considered himself a Southern loyalist and guerrilla fighter in a civil war that never ended." Someone said back earlier in the thread, something to this effect: when one side is defeated, they don't go away, and they don't disavow their beliefs. What's interesting is how this situationally plays to our sympathy in some cases. I rewatched Firefly recently and found the Browncoats (who are, after all, just a thin coding for Southern loyalists) much less sympathetic than I used to. We only have Malcolm's word for it that the Browncoats are the good guys and were fighting the good fight, and that the Evil Empire are actually evil.
My problem with Bush Jr. and with Hillary are that they're both dynastic nominations. It just shows how much having connections is more important than being qualified. And to be sure, Hillary was much much more qualified than Trump. I have sooooo many misgivings about her ethics and moral character, and in some ways I think it's unfair that she should be disqualified for the sake of being a "legacy" nominee when she spent her whole career trying to build a career free from her husband. In so many ways, she didn't just ride on the coat tails of Bill. But I just think it's a stupid idea in a nation built on the concept that we should replace our leaders every 4-8 years that we would choose to find the loop hole where we just elect people from the same family. He's certainly a millionaire. A million dollars is a lot of money, but it's tiny in the grand scheme of things. Shrewd investors earning mid to high five figures a year can retire with more than a million dollars in the bank. Ivanka made $50 million + last year alone. Trump has easily used his position and endless vacations to Mar-a-lago to move taxpayer money into his pockets while president. It's easily millions of dollars. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I read through this whole thread and had started a comment that ended up turning into an essay, so I just deleted the whole thing. I live in Philadelphia where there has been lots of protesting, some looting, nightly curfew for almost a full week, stores boarded up, a crazy string of ATM bombings helped in part by some guy in the city selling dynamite through obviously illegal channels, one of which occurred a few blocks from my house. A coworker lives close enough to the action to see the light of fires from his window, to have smoke come inside his house. I'm going to say a few things and am happy to go more in-depth if anyone has questions, but for the sake of brevity, I'll do little to justify my position. Again, ask if you have questions. The Philadelphia police department already has many of the policies in place that measurably reduce bad outcomes. Aside from a few incidents I've seen, they've done an okay job handling the protests. On a national level, most protest problems are with the police. The police escalate. The police are supposed to be the professionals, but they act worse than the protesters. It's part of people's First Amendment rights to protest, to be angry in public, to use profanities. The police set up arbitrary barricades guarding nothing in order to bait protesters. The police look for any reason to start firing rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters. The police turn a blind eye to white "neighborhood protection" groups that defy curfew and then roam the city assaulting people. The police are somehow able to disburse thousands of protesters and arrest hundreds more, but watch "helplessly" as the news gets (obviously compelling) footage of looters and burning buildings. I think it's intentional because the police know that a good "riot" story will delegitimize the cause of the protesters. The protesters a different group than the rioters/looters. If anything, the past week+ of completely inappropriate police response to protesters has convinced me of the illegitimacy of the police in the US. They're not here to protect and serve citizens. They protect and serve themselves. If anyone uses their First Amendment right to free speech to question the state's monopoly on the means of violence, the police don't hesitate to remind them they have it. I'm curious what will happen in Minneapolis. I think the vote to dismantle the police is just a PR spin. I hope that they try something else, something radical. One in four prisoners in the world is in the US. Black people make up 6% of the US population but make up 40% of the prison population. One out of three black men in the US will be incarcerated at some point in their life. Change is needed from root to stem. The whole system is rotten and racist to its core. I'd like if the US could just get on-par with the rest of the developed world. The reality of that would look like a complete revolution here, which is a depressing reality. We need a revolution to be decent. Not great, not good, just decent.
I'm honestly shocked it's that low. I always assumed it was more like >20%. Here's the thing I learned today.
I absolutely loved Philly. It was one of the most diverse places I have ever visited in my lifetime. As somebody from the outside looking in the U.S was literally like loads of small countries, each with their own laws per state that made them all feel a bit different. Those many days I spent on South St were among the best of my life.
In so many ways, this is where a lot of people in the US will be blind to their own racism. There's a hundreds-year-old story of the movement of black people in the US. For the most part, black people live in large cities or are still in the South. It's extremely easy to get out to the suburbs or rural towns and cities and never see a black person. In Philadelphia, the largest demographic group is black. They represent 42% of the population here. Where I grew up, black people were less than 1%. And yet, it's from these friends that I see all these, "systemic racism doesn't exist" posts and, "I'm not racist. I had a black friend in high school" comments. This is from 8 years ago, is a joke, and is set up for people to react in just the way they are, so I don't blame some of the cringe. But the video does highlight the fact that everyone gets the joke and most people don't have a comment that isn't somehow cringy. The most cringy people are the ones who feel the need to prove they're not racist, "I'm from Atlanta." The people who lean into the joke make it out less scathed, "Hey, mom. Look! A black guy!" does more to acknowledge the reality of racial disparity than, "I'm from Dallas where there are lots of black people."
I love Philly (and also hate it, a thing that anyone who lives here would get) and I love the diversity here. South Street is awesome and I love the night life. I feel like the people who live here are so chill compared to NYC and other cities. There's this frenetic stress in NYC that makes me never feel quite at ease. And the US is just so huge. So you get the state system on top of an example of every biome in a single country. It's a great country for a road trip for that reason.
Absolutely pmsl at that video. It's funny how many layers there are to our reactions to things beyond the obvious - the Texan's comment of "I don't mind black guys, lots of 'em where I come from!" felt icky, but the clearly tongue-in-cheek native's comment of "what're you doing here?!" didn't. d_stilgar, agree about the police and their handling of the riots. I entered this conversation rather controversially going "the police are okay really" and clearly they took that as some kind of challenge, because it's been carnage, escalation and irresponsibility ever since. I want to somehow get through to the people in the UK planning to attend local protests that a protest is only constructive as long as it remains non-violent, that there will be attempts to subvert and escalate it by fringe elements, that some police may try to bait them, and that it's vitally important to keep it contained so it doesn't delegitimize their cause in the public eye. But I think even trying to offer that caution would be perceived as obstructive. In other news I finally got off my arse and Googled around and immediately found this: (I love this guy, his Bitesize History series is well worth a watch too FYI)
Whilst I'm not encouraging protests that turn violent, I don't think that completely makes them pointless, sure it will detract from the movement in the eyes of some, but not all and so it's still productive in my opinion. I feel saying they're only good if they are non violent gives too much power to those who want to might instigate the violence. Issue I found was there was a peaceful protest happening literally two minutes away from where I live but I didn't realise until a couple of people were leaving whilst yelling outside my window! Awareness can still be the limiting factor for these kind of events.
I agree and disagree in regards to the validity of violence in protests. I believe it to be the higher road, that protesters should show that they're able and willing to be peaceful. At the same time, I think we've seen that and we have enough examples of police being the instigating assholes at this point. On some level, I'm shocked we haven't seen more targeted, deliberate violence against police. Police behavior during the protests has been deplorable and knowing they have layers of legal protection in place to stop victims from receiving justice is infuriating. This quote by Martin Luther King Jr. is apt, "I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity." That was 1967. Things have gotten marginally better since then, but you'd think that fifty years later we might be nearly over the problems America faced then, not still taking baby steps. If you can't watch that, watch the full video that he uses as his last clip. I think it says everything about why protesters would become violent. I don't condone the behavior, but I can hardly condemn it at this point.
People always get what they vote for, it may not be what they thought they would be getting, but they most certainly get what they voted for. A great salesman can sell you what you don't need or wanted in the first place, at times something that isn't even in your best interest. It's his stock-in-trade.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." --H.L. Mencken
Two party systems complicate that quite a lot, yes they may have voted for it but the only reason they did so was because they had to choose between two bad options. Also if you agree with Party A on Issue 1 and with Party B on Issue 2 you are screwed as it is always a package deal.
Guardian: We often accuse the right of distorting science. But the left changed the coronavirus narrative overnight Probably more for the Corona thread...
This has made me really despair on social media. People unironically equating "what about the NHS and lockdown?" with overt racism. Some people shared this: (Okay, there seem to be no ways to upload images today, I'll try again later) He later clarified that his problem is with people caring more about these things than about the plight of black people. As if it were an either/or. What do you care about, people dying of coronavirus or dying at the hands of the police? Pick one. NO YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH, PUT ONE BACK.
If it's the hidden racist bingo one the issue is with people who'll post messages praising the nhs, maybe not commenting on people flooding to beaches, but then commenting about it when the protests happen, all the time not posting about the black lives matter issue. I only saw (and shared) it after the clarification had been added for those who didn't get it.
