(01-09-2021, 02:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-09-2021, 10:16 AM)David Horn Wrote:(01-09-2021, 01:25 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-08-2021, 08:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Thanks for stepping up to be a moderator, David. Marx and Lennon would be proud.
If Dave bans me, this place will be flooded with Right Wingers. I mean, I only know a thousand of them or so.
Two comments. and I'll move along quietly:
- I didn't volunteer for the job. It just arrived. I'll do my best to keep the place clean, once I learn how the tools work
- I'm not banning anyone who has something to say. No one gets to threaten anyone (that I won't tolerate), but being outspoken isn't a reason for anything but a spirited response from someone else. That's the entire point of this place.
Well, I'm a big boy who can handle a lot of shit (tons of shit), who has had my life threatened several times over the years. The majority of the times my life was threatened was back in the day when their was a double standard in place with a biassed moderator enforcing it. You volunteered for the job. Fate had nothing to do with it. I know you pretty good as a person. I know you are as partisan as they come these days. I have two eyes that don't lie. This site is a small slice/ sample of America today.
You don't know what a threat is. You may think that I am a coward for it, but I have run away from plenty of fights in my time. At the least I have not had to be hospitalized for any broken bones from an altercation, and I have never been arrested for assault and battery. Two of those were gay-bashing incidents. I did not think it either possible, appropriate, or practical to try to convince a gay-basher that I am straight.
While working on the 2010 Census I once faced four Rottweiler-sized dogs behind a door with a flimsy latch. I walked away. Four angry Rottweilers might as well be one tiger. I recognize the power, strength, agility, and voracity of dogs, and four such dogs are about as dangerous as a tiger. I had no idea of how long the latch would hold. I am alive, and the dogs did not get what they thought was "burglar meat".
I choose my fights carefully, ensuring that I have a good chance of coming out of such a piece and avoiding legal problems. When it comes to the verbal fights... we all have our biases. We all have our convictions. You have strong convictions, and I disagree with most of yours. I have a broader idea of what is American and what isn't, but a narrower idea of pretexts for the use of force. I also recognize that what statutory law generally aligns with a viable morality. There are exceptions, and those merit civil disobedience and advocacy efforts.
Breaking into Congress while it is in session in an effort to disrupt a lawful proceeding is not civil disobedience. It is subversion and an unconstitutional breach of the political process. Think of it: people brought in Trump banners, one of them a US flag defaced with the name "TRUMP". Even a confederate flag entered the Capitol building.
Say what you want about Black Lives Matters and the chimera known as Antifa, those were absent. Nothing official was to be protested.
Quote:The American left is powerless and no longer represented here today. So, where is MLK and how long will MLK's statue be safe from being torn down and replaced by a black fist representing black power. People better wake up here because this shit is going on and a fascist minded regime wants power these days and there's a very large American army waiting for them right now.
The Founding Fathers were wrong about two things that were on the fringe of attention at the time: slavery and women's rights. First one gets liberty and then one seeks other things such as the abolition of slavery or the right of women to vote. The enlightened despot is a rarity; far more often the despot is a mad monster.
People in truly free countries are able to judge their leaders objectively without fear. It's the heritage of freedom that Martin Luther King was able to use in gaining freedom for people whose freedom had seemed out of reach. Let's remember that when people in central and Balkan Europe looked for a model for resistance to Commie rule they found the American struggle for civil rights. I put Martin Luther King, Jr. in the pantheon of America's Founding Fathers.
Something to remember about Martin Luther King, Jr. : he wasn't a socialist. When the KGB files were released that 'flaw' ensured that he would get no support from the Soviet system. It preferred the Black Power types -- who, I must say, gave us much sound and fury and signified nothing in the end (Shakespeare allusion intended).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.