02-10-2019, 08:33 PM
(02-09-2019, 08:09 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(02-09-2019, 11:51 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: You simply restate your premises, which refutes nothing. A racist doing what you do (and racists are the easiest people to refute) what you would do is to start with the assumption that blacks are uniformly inadequate and would have as a proof the recapitulation of your premise. I would have plenty of counter-arguments... that plenty of blacks have achieved greatly, that lesser performance represents disadvantages in economics and public services, and that 'race' is ambiguous in America. A racist would begin with serial-killer Alton Coleman (Ted Bundy without the wit and superficial charm, and lesser intellect -- and black) and end with Alton Coleman. I would have Barack Obama, who is nearly-half white -- surprise his mother was 1/16 black) and demonstrate that without the disabilities that many American blacks have faced in the past he has achieved the Highest Office in the Land and done it well. The racist returns to the loathsome Alton Coleman, an example of pure and unattractive criminality.
Yes, I'm out of my league here. Clearly, I'm not in the same as you with my writing skills. In a way, it's a damn good thing for you that I haven't taken away that advantage by brushing up or reinvigorating the grammar skills that I had during the 1980's. Yes, it would be hard to believe that you're communicating with a former higher level student who was stuck in high level English, science and math classes with the high level students throughout his middle school and high school years. A high level student who tested out of a third of the courses and the time and expenses associated with the courses. You know what I learned that college failed to teach you or your mind failed to allow you to learn, I learned how to directly communicate with different people and learned the value of speaking with different people and the value of adjusting my use of language in order to relate with people and easily communicate with a wide range of people. Now, if you see value in demeaning or deluding and misapplying the word racism or racist then so be it because it's only going to be blues who end up being hurt by it. You are supposed to be a smart person. Me, I'm supposed to be an idiot and I'm cool with the idea of blues teaching blues that on a regular basis because all that does is end up hurting blues. As you know, reds don't pay much attention to what blues have to say about much of anything relating to them these days.
Getting the grammar right is but the start. Good writing depends upon offering something worthy of someone else reading it. Maybe the topic (let us say lion-taming) might be interesting in its own right. Figuring that lions and humans have similar social structures, maybe one learns how individual the lions are and through such one develops a rapport with creatures that usually start by contemplating us as dinner. But I caught your logical limitation. Writing must seem to move even if it ends up in a circle. If you have changed something before ending up in the same place that you started, then you have achieved something in your writing. If you have simply gone back to the same place as the result of a random wandering, then you have achieved nothing. The Sunday drive, once a commonplace activity in which people took a drive in a random direction and then returned, faded out as oil prices got high. People did not return to it. People have discovered how empty it is, and they now expect to find a destination.
The best advice for becoming a good writer is to be a prolific reader of the good stuff. You will learn nothing from trash except the trite and ultimately boring.
I gave up cursing at people who showed that they probably voted for Trump. I told one fellow who I figured was a farmer that I hoped that the President's trade war would not gut his income and increase his cost of living. Farmers sell commodities on the world market and have costs that can rise if something goes wrong.
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.