09-17-2022, 08:46 PM
Racism has always been a crusade of swine. It appeals to the lowest level of solidarity. It is tribal. I know -- white racists associate the word "tribe" with anyone that they consider either non-white or 'not white enough'. Racists are typically bigoted against the board, so there are few white racists who selectively despise blacks but not whites or vice-versa. White people can be just as tribal as anyone. When I was relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area from rural Michigan in the 1970's I found that I got along best with Jews and Asians, OK with Latino women (but not men), and sort-of-OK with blacks (there were too few for me to establish any conclusion). The white punks were alienated in the extreme, and they had literal gangs. (Latinos were OK if they weren't in gangs). They could not figure out why I wanted nothing to do with them. That was my experience fifty years ago, and I would not expect the same now. (OK, maybe my real enmity was with gangs. I saw them up to no good, like involvement in drugs. We on the autistic spectrum just don't get along with drunks and druggies).
Democracy depends to no small extent upon the recognition that through democratic process that one cannot get any of the goodies from politics while stabbing others in the back. Suggestions intended to hurt 'lazy, good-for-nothing' black people also hurt similarly 'lazy, good-for-nothing' white people.
...Lately, Jackson, Mississippi has had a water scandal: the tap water is undrinkable, and you would come out of a shower or bath from it dirtier than you went in. Jackson is predominantly black, and white people have as bare a majority as is possible. But white voters cannot recognize the water crisis in Jackson as a disgrace. Michigan, which like Mississippi has no built-in water shortage, solved the Flint water crisis by using a good water supply from Detroit (which may be one of the nastiest cities in America, but it has an excellent water supply made for growth that never happened in the Detroit area.
Democracy works when we practically all see each other as siblings and not "our kind" and "their kind".
Democracy depends to no small extent upon the recognition that through democratic process that one cannot get any of the goodies from politics while stabbing others in the back. Suggestions intended to hurt 'lazy, good-for-nothing' black people also hurt similarly 'lazy, good-for-nothing' white people.
...Lately, Jackson, Mississippi has had a water scandal: the tap water is undrinkable, and you would come out of a shower or bath from it dirtier than you went in. Jackson is predominantly black, and white people have as bare a majority as is possible. But white voters cannot recognize the water crisis in Jackson as a disgrace. Michigan, which like Mississippi has no built-in water shortage, solved the Flint water crisis by using a good water supply from Detroit (which may be one of the nastiest cities in America, but it has an excellent water supply made for growth that never happened in the Detroit area.
Democracy works when we practically all see each other as siblings and not "our kind" and "their kind".
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.