The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(08-20-2021, 06:21 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-19-2021, 08:13 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You should be able to tell the difference between a kid and an adult. Other than Reds are racist people and cops are racists too and the minorities are born inferior and will always be viewed as inferior by white, America is bad or evil or behind as far as the rest of the world, what are you teaching and  failing to teach me? Yep. I'm to old to be sent to the principle's office I'm also to old to be scolded or intimidated by someone like you or PB these days.

Tribal Thinking.  One thinks of one’s self as superior, and makes up excuses to think others unlike you are inferior, justifying prejudice, oppression and violence.  That is the center of the problem.  I would not say the US is the worst at it.  Look at prior crises.  Kings.  Slavery.  Conquest of lands inhabited by the disliked people.  I would not say the US is free of it.

One thing that I am not is "tribal", as you would probably see quickly. Most people now recognize colonial adventures as costly and futile. Slavery is an abomination. I recognize America not so much as an anti-traditional country as it is a country with multiple traditions that can get along so long as they avoid forcing their ways upon others. Korean-Americans are not going to become Jews, and Jews are not going to become Korean-Americans even if they have a few things in common.

Why am I not tribal? Roughly one half of my ancestry is German, and as such I have a love-hate relationship with Germany. Fortunately the one part of Germany that I thoroughly hate, Nazism, is dead. German-American cuisine is awful (meat loaf, potato salad, hamburgers, frankfurters) for insipidness or for poor consequences to personal health (alcoholic beverages, high-fat sausages, and sugary desserts). I see other traditions as just as valid as what I have.    

Quote:Kids indulge in it too.  You (Classic X'er) dislike and use violence on a smaller scale to those outside particular cliques.  The instructors do what they can to moderate the anti social behavior, the prejudice, the foul language, the violence.  They have only partial success.  Not surprising.  Humans evolved crushing others with different genes.  Tribal thinking was cost effective back then, at least for the winners.  As a result, the teachers and principles are going to fail.  People like you are going to slip though the cracks.  Thus, we have to deal with prejudice, foul language, and violence by so called adults.  Our culture is the worse for it.

The best thing that can happen is for someone like Classic X'er to become the "crazy uncle" that we warn kids to avoid before he ends up in prison, the morgue, or the nursing home. It will be an unpleasant role for him, but he has earned it. Civility arises from the suppression of the worst tendencies in human nature, and that is one of the essential things to learn. People who fail to learn that cannot get along in a wholesome society. I don't know how it is possible to inculcate something so necessary for success as impulse control except to organize rewards for the deferral of gratification. People must exercise thrift, reject excess, eschew violence, moderate their speech to avoid provocations, and develop themselves vocationally. The cultures that promote formal education as a virtue in its own right will fare better than others even in the presence of racism.  

White privilege is worthless if it has a meth or opioid habit attached.    

Quote:Before George Floyd’s death, the KKK, the Neo Nazi and Antifa seemed to enjoy having fist fights with each other.  Before and after, bad cops would murder minorities.  Nuts would shoot up a social club, or drive though a crowd.  Rural racists would pile into pick up trucks and shoot paint balls into protestors.  Folks plotted to kidnap and kill a governor.  Then there was the racist organizations in the January 6th insurrection.  This is all a wrinkle on tribal thinking, on prejudice, foul language, intimidation and violence.  This is all an outgrowth of the teachers not managing to overcome flaws in the culture, not teaching the children what America should be about.

Tribal thinking achieves nothing but poverty and violence. people seem to be catching on. 

I expect some very long prison terms for people involved in the Michigan plot and the Capitol Putsch, and much faster than upon the violent participants in the rearguard actions against the Civil Rights struggle. 

Quote:All men are created equal.

Now you (Classic X'er) come into a site discussing history and politics and throw around foul language and empty threats of violence.  Am I supposed to be impressed?  You can’t do anything with fact and reason so you behave like a kid?

In each crisis, the greatest flaw in the culture is removed.  You might think of yourself as representing the greatest flaw in the culture.

History is all too often an obscene tale imprinted with the blood of innocent people upon the symbolic parchment of the flesh of those innocent people. We teach it to our children because we cannot afford to repeat it. No more Mongol-style mass-murder! No more mistreatment of First peoples of the Americas! No more Atlantic slave trade! No more Holodomor or Holocaust! No more Killing Fields!

In premodern times people used fables and fairy tales to inculcate values. The Boy who Cried Wolf, the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, Little Red Riding Hood all involve wolves, real dangers to children and livestock, or a warning to not be as deviously predatory as a wolf. 

Speaking of wolves... we use history to warn us of the dangers of the worst wolf of all time, Adolf Hitler ("Adolf" translates as "Noble Wolf"), and not some fairy tale that begin "Once upon there was an evil king named Adolf Hitler"...