Presidential election, 2016

[Eric the Green]

(01-03-2017, 12:25 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(01-02-2017, 07:34 PM)Danilynn Wrote: It's been nearly 2 centuries since Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Let it go. move the &^&%% on already. there are no slaves, nor slaveholders in America.

It's only been a tad over 150 years, but who's counting?

As I pointed out on another thread, it's been far less than 150 years. Slaves just became serfs, working for the same owners; that is when they were not actually imprisoned for no reason and then made to work as prisoners, or thousands lynched for looking at a white man the wrong way as Emmit Till was. Bitter fruit indeed.

And is slavery really a thing of the past, when we have people of all races and ages working for too little while the CEOs rake in the dough? I don't think so; it's called wage slavery, and people of color are always still most likely to be confined to these jobs and to have much less wealth than whites. And what about racial profiling by police, shootings of unarmed young black people, and innocent people put away in prison by prosecutors who refuse to admit their mistakes? Again, most of the victims of these prosecutors are people of color, but by no means all of them. And the USA has more people in prison than any country; not only innocent people, but people locked away for drug dealing and such; again, disproportionately people of color. That's slavery, or worse. And segregation has returned, with black people often confined to specific poor neighborhoods and schools, especially in the South.

No, with all of that, we can say for sure that the USA has NOT come to terms with slavery; past OR present. And rural folks who vote Republican have no sense at all of the complicity of their ancestors or of themselves in all of this. Sorry for the "slur," but these people are acting the part. It's not all their fault, since all they are exposed to for information are Rush Limbaugh and Shawn Hannity and their local preachers; none of whom give them ANY information or show any concern for this issue; quite the opposite: they harp constantly on how people of color are lazy and steal their tax money for welfare programs, and that therefore they should vote for more tax and spending cuts. But, on the other hand, all people are still responsible for learning the truth, and seeking it out. And in this 2016 election, it's very clear that, on the contrary, people more-fully closed their eyes to these truths, and started us on a path backwards to the past.

I would say, to the extent that Americans, ALL of us, do not adequately come to terms with our slave-holding past and our unequal and unjust present, we are in that sense still "slaveholders." And voting Republican, as the vast majority of rural folks do these days out of habit and ideology, is the most frequent way (though not the only way) of NOT coming to terms with it. But it's not ONLY a matter of voting, but of reconciling ourselves to the truth, and taking some kind of action. And not belittling the problem, or saying it was solved 150 years ago. Democrats, moderates and liberals too.

We need to talk about injustice!
http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson..._injustice

Bryan Stephenson is one of the most admirable and courageous heroes of our time. I respect him a lot for all he says and does. People like him deserve to be listened to.