07-27-2021, 01:34 AM
(07-26-2021, 05:18 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-11-2021, 06:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Intellectually-hollow as Palin and Trump are, they succeeded to the extent that they did with dishonesty among the gullible. Many people believe whatever is convenient for them at the time, which explains the knack of confidence artists for flattering their marks.
I just have the feeling that the what is left of the Republican base cares more about having a racist president than it d does about democracy. It isn't that they are being dishonest to themselves, but they are ashamed of their true motivations.
Racism is one of the most callow hustles to have ever existed. Even Ayn Rand recognized this.
I look at racism and I see "strange fruit" and outright massacres. Not all lynching and mass murders have racism or religious bigotry at their core, but enough do.
People need ask themselves what racism achieves.
1. It pits one part of the working class against the other, fostering exploitation more severe against one group while offering majority privilege to the other group -- at a price of depressed wages. Labor unions do what they can to stop this.
2. It makes economic competition much rarer if not impossible. People who might have the capacity for owning and operating a small business that might keep the racist establishment honest.
3. it scares off immigrants. Immigrants do much of the innovative entrepreneurialism. Contrast new York City, which became the richest large city with the rural South. Negrophobia easily morphs into antisemitism, which may explain why Jews practically founded the NAACP.
4. It is inconsistent with religious teachings. If Jesus died for our sins, then He apparently died for the sins of all people -- and not only white people. (My position is that although egregious, unrepentant sinners have much to fear about hell because that is where they many be going. The scariest thing that I can imagine about Hell is the company that it keeps. Who wants to go where the Nazis are?)
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.