The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Classic-Xer]

(07-21-2020, 05:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 09:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-20-2020, 11:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-20-2020, 11:33 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-20-2020, 02:38 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are defending the Confederates, which is racist. Stop denying that you are racist.

The Confederates were not Americans.

(North Americans though, I suppose, but not citizens of the USA)

Dude, there are no ex Confederates alive to defend these days. True, the Confederates weren't technically Americans during the Civil War years. You'll find that out and learn what it was like to be one of them soon enough as well. Like it or not, you are on the modern day version of the Confederate side today.

You admire the people who re-created the Confederate myth 105 years ago. That is when the Confederate statues started going up, fifty years after the end of the Civil War as the soldiers embarrassed and shamed by defeat were no longer around in large enough numbers to say no. 

1915 is also the year in which the second Ku Klux Klan was formed and when D. W. Griffith brought forth the movie spectacle The Birth of a Nation, the second half of which was a celebration of the eventual suppression of the Freedmen who had just been liberated from slavery and did what most Americans do when given a chance -- voting, running for public office, starting businesses, and getting formal education. Had Reconstruction succeeded the South might instead have become a rich land in which commerce and industry might have well served the agricultural economy. Blacks who had recently been slaves were forming banks and stores... which is about what most immigrant groups do. But free blacks had immigrated, so to speak, from enslavement to freedom and from feudal exploitation to capitalism. 

Let's not fool ourselves about the Second Klan. It had many of the characteristics -- violence, bigotry, cultural intolerance, and of course gaudy symbolism -- characteristic of fascist groups (including Mussolini's Blackshirts that would form later before such groups as the Nazi Party in Germany and Austria (and in German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia), the Ustase in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, and the Iron Guard in Romania. Those groups were ugly in different ways, but -- yes, all politically monstrous. 

Unlike the others, the second KKK failed before it could become a national power. This said, the Klan was far closer to achieving national power in America than the Nazis were in Germany in the mid-1920's. Not for export? There were Klan groups in Canada, and had the Klan taken over in America the word for Anschluss  would be undeniably Anglo-Saxon in origin. There was a short-lived Klan group that formed in Germany in the late 1920's, and it disbanded; its members chose to become Nazis. 

We will never know what a Klan-dominated America would be like... but I have contemplated a novel about an Axis victory in which Germany remains a democracy and Japan's early steps toward democracy fulfilled themselves. A hint on such a world: "Alaska" becomes "Arasuka" Prefecture in 1959, and Churchill and Adenauer basically switch roles in history. Fascistic leaders start wars but usually end up losing them. 

...at one point I saw America becoming rifted like Spain in the 1930's, with the more liberal parts of Spain being about as progressive as New England at the time and parts holding a nostalgia for a medieval and feudal ethos. Or maybe Yugoslavia in the 1990's along regional lines that reflect quasi-national divides. A hint: Boston has more in common with San Francisco than with central Pennsylvania. 

That opportunity for rending America in a civil war is almost certainly over. Your side lost the cultural struggle.

Well, I see the bulk of the country remaining together as a few Democratic states (mainly cities) fight it out so to speak. We are seeing some signs of the cultural struggle that's occurring now. Your side of the Democratic spectrum appears be losing the cultural struggle. The Republican side hasn't committed and  isn't directly involved yet and remains idle for the most part. By the way, the KKK failed because the northern Klan's viewed it more as social fraternity which were popular at the time than a political action group and they stopped being members when they found out what the Klan was doing to blacks in the South.

My take on what it means to be an American is that there are many different ways in which to be an American. There is no single American culture, and there has never been one since the first people came to America through the (now-inundated)  Bering land bridge during the glacial maximum and spread from Alaska to the south and east and broke into tribes. 

The recent cultural struggle has been an attempt to meld cultures of two regional zones of America -- the Mountain South (Appalachia and the Ozarks after that culture developed a Fundamentalist-Evangelical bloc highly reactionary in its values) and the relatively-homogeneous culture of white people of the Deep South. Both cultures are anti-intellectual and racist and see anything different -- that is, cosmopolitan -- as suspect. About fifty years ago Southern whites were beginning to recognize that they had something in common in culture with Southern blacks, basically that one of those cultures cannot survive well if the other struggles just to thrive... but that came to an end. 

Most Americans have begun to recognize that "Us" and "Them" is good only for dividing people and diverting them from their real needs, including dignity in the workforce. Different as the black bourgeoisie, Jews, Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans (as if Asian Indians have much in common with Filipinos or Koreans), and middle-class Hispanics are in culture they seem to vote alike even if their stomachs turn if they had to eat much of the same cuisine. America's model minorities are basically on the liberal side of the political spectrum even if they are arch-conservatives on culture. 

Add to this, many white people despise the attempt of the Hard Right to impress upon them an anti-intellectual culture that can only doom them to poverty. I am one of those. 

...as for the extreme, fascistic Right -- it includes people who have merged Klan and Nazi ideology. The (second) 1915 Klan and the German Nazi Party shared the same racism and Jew-hatred. The problem for bringing the KKK and the Nazis together was that as long as the Nazis were decidedly German they were too 'exotic' for Kluxers who thought themselves "100% American".  

OK, J S Bach isn't American. Neither is Fyodor Dostoevsky. If I had the money I would surround myself with Japanese prints. Put those together and not one of those is American. Put those together in some syncresis -- and that is very American. 

Consider some kid's birthday party. Pizza is the main course, and perhaps the kids smash a pinata to unleash the goodies. The pizza is Italian, and the pinata is Mexican. Kid with an Italian-American parent and a Mexican-American parent? Maybe. That is American itself. The child might go by the name of Linda Schmidt... and the surname suggests the ancestry that you might expect. 

You can call people like me "rootless cosmopolites" if you wish (a warning: Josef Stalin used that term to describe Jews when he started to sour on them) ... but you cannot define what it means to be an American. I don't try. This said, it is un-American to promote terrorist violence or to seek  to divide us into "us" and "them".

Dude, we're not on the same page. Who do all Americans have in common? What is it that makes us all Americans? I have American heritage. Guess what, the American Indians are part of our American Heritage and the Confederates who lost the Civil War are part of our American Heritage too. Liberal culture does not recognize American Heritage or place value on it. You're on the side who is fucking with a nasty giant dude. If you aren't intellectual enough to see it. In short, America is team with a common heritage, common history, common flag and a Constitution that has stood for over two hundred years. So, as far as I'm concerned, you can either stay with the team and try your luck with the other team because this is going to boil down to Liberal Culture vs American Culture. So, what are the Democrats going do about all the new racists with darker skin on it's side. I mean, when you are into gutter politics that's the kind of shit that gutter politics attract. You seem like a decent level headed guy at times.

[Eric the Green]

(07-21-2020, 11:49 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:35 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: So, what are the new values? I'm just curious to see how many we'll have in common?

Part of the new values is the cycles.  In the crisis, you see a willingness to sacrifice for the common good, which includes a willingness to pay for it.  In an unravelling there is a selfishness.  This time around it took the shape of not solving problems, low taxes and small government.  This puts progressives on top come the high, a more conservative flow in the unravelling.  Repeat as the cycles go around.

I view it also as part of the age perspective.  Things were ugly in the Agricultural Age.  With the Enlightenment came the arrow of progress, away from the Agricultural Age, towards democracy, human rights and equality.  Each crisis, the most severe problems facing the culture come to the fore to move us further along.  They are related to democracy, human rights and equality.  This time around and thus far, racism and COVUS 19 have become the core problems to be addressed.  At the moment, the Democrats look like they will acquire power, and other issues will be addressed by their agenda.  Thus far global warming, fixing the bridges and poverty look like they might bubble up, but the economy looks to be in bad shape as a result of the virus, so it is not certain that they will.

But that is my perspective.  Many blues have not thought as much on history or seen the patterns.  They think more that this time period stands alone, and do not perceive the larger patterns, the cycles or ages.  They will look at the need to solve COVUS 19 and face down violent racist policing as more unique issues of this time, not as part of a larger pattern that has been going on for centuries.

The opposite older values?  Finding a reason to continue the selfish attitude and deny the problems which have to be solved.  Keep the unraveling selfishness.  Yell fake news or hoax whenever a problem that others want to solve comes up.

Thing is, you can’t do that with COVUS 19.  Try, and it will kill you.  It is also hard to ignore the protests.  When enough people cry change loud enough, even something a stubborn as culture has to give.  Other problems such as global warming and the bridges are slow.  You can get away with putting them off and letting other generations deal with them.  That is why the virus makes a good trigger.  The incubation time is short enough that you can’t not see it, you can’t remain committed to selfishness and not solving problems.

Others will see the new values a bit differently.  Other versions of them would be welcome.

The thing about covid19 is that the USA was in crisis even beforehand, and if this crisis is just about covid19, then we'll just go back to the way things were in 2019. No new values will have been instituted.

So arguably covid19 makes a good trigger, but there is no 4T regeneracy unless the whole program of Reaganomics in all its aspects is replaced with a progressive outlook and program. These aspects of Reaganomics include climate science denial, systemic racism, economic inequality, health care debacle, militarism, and erosion of democracy and the effectiveness of government. It also includes the resulting cold civil war between red and blue.

So if covid does result in a new chance for progressive government, then it will have served a purpose. If it just results in effective measures to turn back the virus, it will still leave the USA on a fast and sure course toward breakup and/or permanent banana republic status and climate disaster.

If covid results in policies that intensely outrage and discourage Classic Xer to no end, then we'll know we're on the right track.

We must successfully depose the drumpturd first. This may not be easy, and the resulting conflict may be a further impact of covid as a trigger. If it causes him to fall even further in the polls and/or lose the election, then between now and January 20th Trump might have various options. 

Now he is pursuing a course of provoking violence and sending in federal troops to blue cities including DC itself. By this means he could declare martial law and/or federalize police forces. If not successfully resisted by the Courts, Congress and the People, Trump could use this declaration to call off the election or declare it invalid. If he has succeeded in appointing enough right-wing judges that do his bidding, the Courts could approve this, or rule in Trump's favor on his complaint that the election was rigged. He could try to organize a private army to protect him from any marshals that try to remove him from the White House. If the cold civil war goes hot, then we'll have to fight it out, and if progressives take power they will have to gain success on all the agenda items declared during the 2T, and defend themselves from red attacks, or face permanent national decline or immediate ruin.

[Eric the Green]

(07-22-2020, 12:59 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 05:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 09:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-20-2020, 11:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-20-2020, 11:33 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, there are no ex Confederates alive to defend these days. True, the Confederates weren't technically Americans during the Civil War years. You'll find that out and learn what it was like to be one of them soon enough as well. Like it or not, you are on the modern day version of the Confederate side today.

You admire the people who re-created the Confederate myth 105 years ago. That is when the Confederate statues started going up, fifty years after the end of the Civil War as the soldiers embarrassed and shamed by defeat were no longer around in large enough numbers to say no. 

1915 is also the year in which the second Ku Klux Klan was formed and when D. W. Griffith brought forth the movie spectacle The Birth of a Nation, the second half of which was a celebration of the eventual suppression of the Freedmen who had just been liberated from slavery and did what most Americans do when given a chance -- voting, running for public office, starting businesses, and getting formal education. Had Reconstruction succeeded the South might instead have become a rich land in which commerce and industry might have well served the agricultural economy. Blacks who had recently been slaves were forming banks and stores... which is about what most immigrant groups do. But free blacks had immigrated, so to speak, from enslavement to freedom and from feudal exploitation to capitalism. 

Let's not fool ourselves about the Second Klan. It had many of the characteristics -- violence, bigotry, cultural intolerance, and of course gaudy symbolism -- characteristic of fascist groups (including Mussolini's Blackshirts that would form later before such groups as the Nazi Party in Germany and Austria (and in German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia), the Ustase in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, and the Iron Guard in Romania. Those groups were ugly in different ways, but -- yes, all politically monstrous. 

Unlike the others, the second KKK failed before it could become a national power. This said, the Klan was far closer to achieving national power in America than the Nazis were in Germany in the mid-1920's. Not for export? There were Klan groups in Canada, and had the Klan taken over in America the word for Anschluss  would be undeniably Anglo-Saxon in origin. There was a short-lived Klan group that formed in Germany in the late 1920's, and it disbanded; its members chose to become Nazis. 

We will never know what a Klan-dominated America would be like... but I have contemplated a novel about an Axis victory in which Germany remains a democracy and Japan's early steps toward democracy fulfilled themselves. A hint on such a world: "Alaska" becomes "Arasuka" Prefecture in 1959, and Churchill and Adenauer basically switch roles in history. Fascistic leaders start wars but usually end up losing them. 

...at one point I saw America becoming rifted like Spain in the 1930's, with the more liberal parts of Spain being about as progressive as New England at the time and parts holding a nostalgia for a medieval and feudal ethos. Or maybe Yugoslavia in the 1990's along regional lines that reflect quasi-national divides. A hint: Boston has more in common with San Francisco than with central Pennsylvania. 

That opportunity for rending America in a civil war is almost certainly over. Your side lost the cultural struggle.

Well, I see the bulk of the country remaining together as a few Democratic states (mainly cities) fight it out so to speak. We are seeing some signs of the cultural struggle that's occurring now. Your side of the Democratic spectrum appears be losing the cultural struggle. The Republican side hasn't committed and  isn't directly involved yet and remains idle for the most part. By the way, the KKK failed because the northern Klan's viewed it more as social fraternity which were popular at the time than a political action group and they stopped being members when they found out what the Klan was doing to blacks in the South.

My take on what it means to be an American is that there are many different ways in which to be an American. There is no single American culture, and there has never been one since the first people came to America through the (now-inundated)  Bering land bridge during the glacial maximum and spread from Alaska to the south and east and broke into tribes. 

The recent cultural struggle has been an attempt to meld cultures of two regional zones of America -- the Mountain South (Appalachia and the Ozarks after that culture developed a Fundamentalist-Evangelical bloc highly reactionary in its values) and the relatively-homogeneous culture of white people of the Deep South. Both cultures are anti-intellectual and racist and see anything different -- that is, cosmopolitan -- as suspect. About fifty years ago Southern whites were beginning to recognize that they had something in common in culture with Southern blacks, basically that one of those cultures cannot survive well if the other struggles just to thrive... but that came to an end. 

Most Americans have begun to recognize that "Us" and "Them" is good only for dividing people and diverting them from their real needs, including dignity in the workforce. Different as the black bourgeoisie, Jews, Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans (as if Asian Indians have much in common with Filipinos or Koreans), and middle-class Hispanics are in culture they seem to vote alike even if their stomachs turn if they had to eat much of the same cuisine. America's model minorities are basically on the liberal side of the political spectrum even if they are arch-conservatives on culture. 

Add to this, many white people despise the attempt of the Hard Right to impress upon them an anti-intellectual culture that can only doom them to poverty. I am one of those. 

...as for the extreme, fascistic Right -- it includes people who have merged Klan and Nazi ideology. The (second) 1915 Klan and the German Nazi Party shared the same racism and Jew-hatred. The problem for bringing the KKK and the Nazis together was that as long as the Nazis were decidedly German they were too 'exotic' for Kluxers who thought themselves "100% American".  

OK, J S Bach isn't American. Neither is Fyodor Dostoevsky. If I had the money I would surround myself with Japanese prints. Put those together and not one of those is American. Put those together in some syncresis -- and that is very American. 

Consider some kid's birthday party. Pizza is the main course, and perhaps the kids smash a pinata to unleash the goodies. The pizza is Italian, and the pinata is Mexican. Kid with an Italian-American parent and a Mexican-American parent? Maybe. That is American itself. The child might go by the name of Linda Schmidt... and the surname suggests the ancestry that you might expect. 

You can call people like me "rootless cosmopolites" if you wish (a warning: Josef Stalin used that term to describe Jews when he started to sour on them) ... but you cannot define what it means to be an American. I don't try. This said, it is un-American to promote terrorist violence or to seek  to divide us into "us" and "them".

Dude, we're not on the same page. Who do all Americans have in common? What is it that makes us all Americans? I have American heritage. Guess what, the American Indians are part of our American Heritage and the Confederates who lost the Civil War are part of our American Heritage too. Liberal culture does not recognize American Heritage or place value on it. You're on the side who is fucking with a nasty giant dude. If you aren't intellectual enough to see it. In short, America is team with a common heritage, common history, common flag and a Constitution that has stood for over two hundred years. So, as far as I'm concerned, you can either stay with the team and try your luck with the other team because this is going to boil down to Liberal Culture vs American Culture. So, what are the Democrats going do about all the new racists with darker skin on it's side. I mean, when you are into gutter politics that's the kind of shit that gutter politics attract. You seem like a decent level headed guy at times.

Confederates are only part of our American heritage to the extent that they recognized the failure of their cause and rejoined the Union, and now uphold all its ideals and true heritage and not that of their lost cause.

The common history of America includes a continual movement to update, reform, revolutionize and transform that heritage. The Constitution can be amended and re-interpreted. 

American heritage includes folks like me whose ancestors were mostly here before there even was a USA, and a few more who came here before it became truly a United States, instead of a collection of states within two regions of opposite natures.

It also includes all those who have come here ever since then, many of whom have hoped that this is a land of opportunity, and it includes those who were brought here against their will since 1619, and who were bought and sold and then endured second-class citizenship because their skin was dark, because of the white racists some of whom sought to establish an entirely different country with a new heritage of white racism.

[pbrower2a]

(07-22-2020, 12:59 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 05:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 09:40 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-20-2020, 11:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-20-2020, 11:33 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, there are no ex Confederates alive to defend these days. True, the Confederates weren't technically Americans during the Civil War years. You'll find that out and learn what it was like to be one of them soon enough as well. Like it or not, you are on the modern day version of the Confederate side today.

You admire the people who re-created the Confederate myth 105 years ago. That is when the Confederate statues started going up, fifty years after the end of the Civil War as the soldiers embarrassed and shamed by defeat were no longer around in large enough numbers to say no. 

1915 is also the year in which the second Ku Klux Klan was formed and when D. W. Griffith brought forth the movie spectacle The Birth of a Nation, the second half of which was a celebration of the eventual suppression of the Freedmen who had just been liberated from slavery and did what most Americans do when given a chance -- voting, running for public office, starting businesses, and getting formal education. Had Reconstruction succeeded the South might instead have become a rich land in which commerce and industry might have well served the agricultural economy. Blacks who had recently been slaves were forming banks and stores... which is about what most immigrant groups do. But free blacks had immigrated, so to speak, from enslavement to freedom and from feudal exploitation to capitalism. 

Let's not fool ourselves about the Second Klan. It had many of the characteristics -- violence, bigotry, cultural intolerance, and of course gaudy symbolism -- characteristic of fascist groups (including Mussolini's Blackshirts that would form later before such groups as the Nazi Party in Germany and Austria (and in German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia), the Ustase in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, and the Iron Guard in Romania. Those groups were ugly in different ways, but -- yes, all politically monstrous. 

Unlike the others, the second KKK failed before it could become a national power. This said, the Klan was far closer to achieving national power in America than the Nazis were in Germany in the mid-1920's. Not for export? There were Klan groups in Canada, and had the Klan taken over in America the word for Anschluss  would be undeniably Anglo-Saxon in origin. There was a short-lived Klan group that formed in Germany in the late 1920's, and it disbanded; its members chose to become Nazis. 

We will never know what a Klan-dominated America would be like... but I have contemplated a novel about an Axis victory in which Germany remains a democracy and Japan's early steps toward democracy fulfilled themselves. A hint on such a world: "Alaska" becomes "Arasuka" Prefecture in 1959, and Churchill and Adenauer basically switch roles in history. Fascistic leaders start wars but usually end up losing them. 

...at one point I saw America becoming rifted like Spain in the 1930's, with the more liberal parts of Spain being about as progressive as New England at the time and parts holding a nostalgia for a medieval and feudal ethos. Or maybe Yugoslavia in the 1990's along regional lines that reflect quasi-national divides. A hint: Boston has more in common with San Francisco than with central Pennsylvania. 

That opportunity for rending America in a civil war is almost certainly over. Your side lost the cultural struggle.

Well, I see the bulk of the country remaining together as a few Democratic states (mainly cities) fight it out so to speak. We are seeing some signs of the cultural struggle that's occurring now. Your side of the Democratic spectrum appears be losing the cultural struggle. The Republican side hasn't committed and  isn't directly involved yet and remains idle for the most part. By the way, the KKK failed because the northern Klan's viewed it more as social fraternity which were popular at the time than a political action group and they stopped being members when they found out what the Klan was doing to blacks in the South.

My take on what it means to be an American is that there are many different ways in which to be an American. There is no single American culture, and there has never been one since the first people came to America through the (now-inundated)  Bering land bridge during the glacial maximum and spread from Alaska to the south and east and broke into tribes. 

The recent cultural struggle has been an attempt to meld cultures of two regional zones of America -- the Mountain South (Appalachia and the Ozarks after that culture developed a Fundamentalist-Evangelical bloc highly reactionary in its values) and the relatively-homogeneous culture of white people of the Deep South. Both cultures are anti-intellectual and racist and see anything different -- that is, cosmopolitan -- as suspect. About fifty years ago Southern whites were beginning to recognize that they had something in common in culture with Southern blacks, basically that one of those cultures cannot survive well if the other struggles just to thrive... but that came to an end. 

Most Americans have begun to recognize that "Us" and "Them" is good only for dividing people and diverting them from their real needs, including dignity in the workforce. Different as the black bourgeoisie, Jews, Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans (as if Asian Indians have much in common with Filipinos or Koreans), and middle-class Hispanics are in culture they seem to vote alike even if their stomachs turn if they had to eat much of the same cuisine. America's model minorities are basically on the liberal side of the political spectrum even if they are arch-conservatives on culture. 

Add to this, many white people despise the attempt of the Hard Right to impress upon them an anti-intellectual culture that can only doom them to poverty. I am one of those. 

...as for the extreme, fascistic Right -- it includes people who have merged Klan and Nazi ideology. The (second) 1915 Klan and the German Nazi Party shared the same racism and Jew-hatred. The problem for bringing the KKK and the Nazis together was that as long as the Nazis were decidedly German they were too 'exotic' for Kluxers who thought themselves "100% American".  

OK, J S Bach isn't American. Neither is Fyodor Dostoevsky. If I had the money I would surround myself with Japanese prints. Put those together and not one of those is American. Put those together in some syncresis -- and that is very American. 

Consider some kid's birthday party. Pizza is the main course, and perhaps the kids smash a pinata to unleash the goodies. The pizza is Italian, and the pinata is Mexican. Kid with an Italian-American parent and a Mexican-American parent? Maybe. That is American itself. The child might go by the name of Linda Schmidt... and the surname suggests the ancestry that you might expect. 

You can call people like me "rootless cosmopolites" if you wish (a warning: Josef Stalin used that term to describe Jews when he started to sour on them) ... but you cannot define what it means to be an American. I don't try. This said, it is un-American to promote terrorist violence or to seek  to divide us into "us" and "them".

Dude, we're not on the same page. Who do all Americans have in common? What is it that makes us all Americans? I have American heritage. Guess what, the American Indians are part of our American Heritage and the Confederates who lost the Civil War are part of our American Heritage too. Liberal culture does not recognize American Heritage or place value on it. You're on the side who is fucking with a nasty giant dude. If you aren't intellectual enough to see it. In short, America is team with a common heritage, common history, common flag and a Constitution that has stood for over two hundred years. So, as far as I'm concerned, you can either stay with the team and try your luck with the other team because this is going to boil down to Liberal Culture vs American Culture. So, what are the Democrats going do about all the new racists with darker skin on it's side. I mean, when you are into gutter politics that's the kind of shit that gutter politics attract. You seem like a decent level headed guy at times.

So what distinguishes us Americans from other peoples?

We do not all have one culture. We accept that there are other cultures and do not expect people from those other cultures to make the same assumptions. So it is with cuisine. Not so long ago a sign of assimilation into American culture was that people went for bland cuisine. Evidence that one was 'low' was that strong 'ethnic' scents emanated from the kitchen. The norm was to fit WASP values in using few spices, over-cooking food, and to relying upon foods calculated to be bland in the extreme. Thus something so awful as meat loaf and mashed potatoes. So it was for the GI Generation, whose eating habits are well known... and much abandoned. 

Now just to feel sophisticated -- or to make eating an experience  -- we eschew blandness. Many of us like to make excursions into  the exotic. Maybe I can explain a few things: add dairy to Chinese cuisine and you have basically Italian cuisine. This may not seem obvious, but just think about it for a while; Marco Polo did bring some peculiar habits back to Italy. So Italian cuisine is really an offshoot of Chinese cuisine? You may have seen that here. 

OK, so some of our celebrations cross ethnic lines. The Fourth of July may mean Independence Day in the United States and the Philippines (not a coincidence)... but it means nothing in  many other days. The Fourth of July has no significance in Canada, and Canada Day means nothing in America. Double-Seven means much in the Far East, but to me it is only the day that my mother died.  So much for "lucky double-seven". 

So -- Irish-Americans dye many urban rivers green on Saint Patrick's Day. The Irish are a big part of American life, the first large group of non-English settlers who didn't pretend to be English. Capitalizing upon an ethnic heritage is often good business, as has well been shown.  Mexican-Americans can in no way pretend to be "English"... but they can make much of a celebration of overthrowing a puppet regime of Emperor Maximilian.    

So is there really a "liberal" culture and an "American" culture? I concede that Rush Limbaugh (whom I have derided as "Rash Libel") is undeniably American... but he can no more define what is American than can Barbra Streisand.  Exploiting an ancestral culture is quite American. 
.......

OK, so you fear the attacks of darker-skinned people upon American culture. One aspect of American life that has never gone away is the color line... and it may no longer be quite the bar to full enjoyment of American life as it used to be, it is safe to assume that any visible African ancestry defines one as black. Fine. The definition may be different in America than in, for example, Brazil -- but this person

     

is considered black even though she basically looks like a white person dyed brown. A genetic test shows that she is 44% of European origin. Even though she won the Miss America contest, she is still considered black. 

From Wikipedia:

Quote:  Vanessa Lynn Williams was born in The Bronx, New York,[1] with a birth announcement that read: "Here she is: Miss America."[2][3] Later in life, she participated in a DNA test with the following results: 23% from Ghana, 17% from the British Isles, 15% from Cameroon, 12% Finnish, 11% Southern European, 7% from Togo, 6% from Benin, 5% from Senegal, and 4% Portuguese.[4]


Her paternal great-great grandfather was William A. Feilds, an African-American legislator in the Tennessee House of Representatives.[5][6] Her mother Helen Tinch met her father Milton Augustine Williams Jr. (1935–2006) while both were music education students at Fredonia State Teachers College in the late 1950s.[7] They both became elementary school music teachers after marriage, though their teaching positions were in separate districts.[7] Milton also served as the assistant principal of his school for an extended period of time.[8]

Williams was raised Roman Catholic, the religion of her father. Her mother, who had been raised Baptist, converted to Catholicism when she got married. Williams was baptized at Our Lady of Grace Church in the Bronx. Her mother played the organ at St. Theresa's Church in Briarcliff Manor for weddings and at mass, and Williams used to assist her mother by turning the pages of sheet music.[2]

Williams and her younger brother Chris (who would later become an actor) grew up in Westchester County, a predominantly white middle- to upper-class suburb of New York City.[3] Williams believes she may have been the first African-American student to go from the first grade to the 12th grade in the Chappaqua Central School District.[6]

A child of music teachers, Williams grew up in a musical household, studying classical and jazz dance, French horn, piano, and violin.[1][2] She was offered the Presidential Scholarship for Drama to attend Carnegie Mellon University during the college application period, (one of 12 students to receive it) but decided instead to attend Syracuse University[1] on a different scholarship.[9] Thus, in 1981, Williams joined Syracuse's College of Visual and Performing Arts, Department of Drama as a musical theater major.[9][10] She stayed at Syracuse through her second year until she was crowned Miss America 1984 in September 1983

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Williams#cite_note-syrconv-10][/url]
What could be more American than this? I rest my case. There are many ways in which to be American. Most of us establish what we are by picking and choosing aspects of our identity from things that may not be American in origin.  

No achievement makes one "white" -- not even being President of the United States and being very good at it.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-22-2020, 12:59 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, we're not on the same page. Who do all Americans have in common? What is it that makes us all Americans? I have American heritage. Guess what, the American Indians are part of our American Heritage and the Confederates who lost the Civil War are part of our American Heritage too. Liberal culture does not recognize American Heritage or place value on it. You're on the side who is fucking with a nasty giant dude. If you aren't intellectual enough to see it. In short, America is team with a common heritage, common history, common flag and a Constitution that has stood for over two hundred years. So, as far as I'm concerned, you can either stay with the team and try your luck with the other team because this is going to boil down to Liberal Culture vs American Culture. So, what are the Democrats going do about all the new racists with darker skin on it's side. I mean, when you are into gutter politics that's the kind of shit that gutter politics attract. You seem like a decent level headed guy at times.

The two original aspects of US culture were, in The Cousin’s War perspective, the Roundhead northern dwellers in the City on a Hill, and the Cavalier rural culture that is somewhat what you seem to be advocating as American.  The Roundhead culture supposes improvement and change, notably the idea that all men are created equal.  Every four score and seven years they get uppity, and try to impose ‘improvement’ on all, to become a more gleaming an example of the City on a Hill.  They have always been successful, but there are many flaws in US culture such that after each such crisis there is always still more to be done.

And that is part of what it is to be American, that striving for a more perfect union.

Now sometimes those dwelling in rural areas don’t want to change.  They don’t see problems that arise in other more urban areas.  They see that one group has always been dominant, and get this idea that they always should be.  And these rural folk want to cling to flaws that get the dwellers in the City on a Hill going.  

And the rural folk have always given way.

Both these instincts are part of the American culture.  They can conflict.  By the S&H theory, the progressives are always dominant in the crisis heart.  Sacrifices are called for to achieve the common good.  The perceived greatest problem confronting the culture is addressed.  In the unravelling, selfishness is dominant.  The call for a strong government to work for the common good is weak.

And you can’t say that both aspects of the culture aren’t part of America.  You can’t deny that each gets it’s time.  Well, you can try.  You can try to stay selfish when the culture is striving for the common good.  You can try to remain racist when the culture is rejecting the forms of racism you want to practice.  You can try not to dwell in that City on a Hill.

But that City on a Hill is called America.

[pbrower2a]

(07-22-2020, 03:40 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 12:59 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, we're not on the same page. Who do all Americans have in common? What is it that makes us all Americans? I have American heritage. Guess what, the American Indians are part of our American Heritage and the Confederates who lost the Civil War are part of our American Heritage too. Liberal culture does not recognize American Heritage or place value on it. You're on the side who is fucking with a nasty giant dude. If you aren't intellectual enough to see it. In short, America is team with a common heritage, common history, common flag and a Constitution that has stood for over two hundred years. So, as far as I'm concerned, you can either stay with the team and try your luck with the other team because this is going to boil down to Liberal Culture vs American Culture. So, what are the Democrats going do about all the new racists with darker skin on it's side. I mean, when you are into gutter politics that's the kind of shit that gutter politics attract. You seem like a decent level headed guy at times.

The two original aspects of US culture were, in The Cousin’s War perspective, the Roundhead northern dwellers in the City on a Hill, and the Cavalier rural culture that is somewhat what you seem to be advocating as American.  The Roundhead culture supposes improvement and change, notably the idea that all men are created equal.  Every four score and seven years they get uppity, and try to impose ‘improvement’ on all, to become a more gleaming an example of the City on a Hill.  They have always been successful, but there are many flaws in US culture such that after each such crisis there is always still more to be done.

And that is part of what it is to be American, that striving for a more perfect union.

Now sometimes those dwelling in rural areas don’t want to change.  They don’t see problems that arise in other more urban areas.  They see that one group has always been dominant, and get this idea that they always should be.  And these rural folk want to cling to flaws that get the dwellers in the City on a Hill going.  

And the rural folk have always given way.

Both these instincts are part of the American culture.  They can conflict.  By the S&H theory, the progressives are always dominant in the crisis heart.  Sacrifices are called for to achieve the common good.  The perceived greatest problem confronting the culture is addressed.  In the unravelling, selfishness is dominant.  The call for a strong government to work for the common good is weak.

And you can’t say that both aspects of the culture aren’t part of America.  You can’t deny that each gets it’s time.  Well, you can try.  You can try to stay selfish when the culture is striving for the common good.  You can try to remain racist when the culture is rejecting the forms of racism you want to practice.  You can try not to dwell in that City on a Hill.

But that City on a Hill is called America.

People can choose rural life because it is simpler and less expensive. One can buy a house in Lagrange, Indiana for much less than you can in Lagrange, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.  Lagrange, Indiana comes with plenty of limitations in what one can do there. It is about a three-hour trip from Chicago, so that allows a day-trip to the Windy City, but not a commute. If you are going to commute from there you might end up in Kalamazoo, Fort Wayne, or South Bend... 

Small-town life is fine if you can satisfy yourself with being in a small circle involving a church, civic group, or fraternal organization. Without that your life will be little more than watching TV or ordering stuff from the Big A to fill your life. But what is the use of reading if you can't talk about it?  

Still, small-town life has its security -- from having to confront many unsettling realities of urban and suburban life... traffic jams, high rents, long lines at stores. Take your choice. There is no perfect scenario for most of us. Even winning the Super-Duper Megabucks Lottery often comes with its own problems. (If you had problems before winning due to personal faults, then you might end up deeper in those problems).

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-22-2020, 01:19 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Confederates are only part of our American heritage to the extent that they recognized the failure of their cause and rejoined the Union, and now uphold all its ideals and true heritage and not that of their lost cause.

The common history of America includes a continual movement to update, reform, revolutionize and transform that heritage. The Constitution can be amended and re-interpreted. 

American heritage includes folks like me whose ancestors were mostly here before there even was a USA, and a few more who came here before it became truly a United States, instead of a collection of states within two regions of opposite natures.

It also includes all those who have come here ever since then, many of whom have hoped that this is a land of opportunity, and it includes those who were brought here against their will since 1619, and who were bought and sold and then endured second-class citizenship because their skin was dark, because of the white racists some of whom sought to establish an entirely different country with a new heritage of white racism.

To some extent you are making the same mistake as Classic.  You are taking your own extreme viewpoint and associated culture and presenting it as American.  The reality is richer, more complex.  You both represent different aspects of an America which includes both.  Each take center stage at different points in the cycle.

Now, in a lot of ways I am with you.  Every four score and seven years, you get a new birth of freedom.  You have to address problems identified by the science.  You have to purge aspects of racism that the people demand end.  To these and other things, it is time for the rural aspect to recognize the handwriting on the wall and retreat.  America is not perpetually racist and selfish.  There is more to us than that.

The blues waited with varying degrees of patience through a long unraveling waiting for our time to come.  Well, it has come.  Our half of the inning.  There comes a time when people are willing to sacrifice for the common good.  Things will never be the same after.  Parts of the American culture will be forever changed.

But that doesn’t mean their half inning won’t come around again.  There will be problems still.   Our half inning will come again too.  The cycles continue, and you have to recognize the other half of the culture.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-21-2020, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 11:27 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 10:27 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The keys are the virus and the economy and whether or not the liberals are going to allow their children to go to school or not because that's going to have a major impact too. Oh, and then there's the civil unrest that everyone witnessed that's still going on and defunding law enforcement shit that's going to factor as well. Biden is candidate because Biden was the only liberal candidate that the Southern black establishment trusted to keep the federal jobs, grants  and investment money flowing their way.

If we agree that the virus is key, and solving the virus key to restoring the economy, Biden has that one.  The folks advocating and implementing a Scientific approach are getting high approvals.  The happy talk folk advocating opening up while the virus is not under control are getting low approvals.  It is leaning landslide.  The usual 4T.

The schools?  Trump wants to kill kids for a few approval points.  It will just sink him deeper.  Reopening after the curves are way down is possible, but Trump as never been one for that.  How to lose the parent's vote?

The violence?  The protests seemed to be winding down a month after George Floyd's death, but Trump is reigniting the violence sending his unmarked agents into blue cities and provoking.  If the stakes were not so high I would kinda like to lock the unmarked agents and the Boogaloo Bois into somewhere where they could enjoy each other's violence.  As is, the unmarked guys are targeting Black Lives Matter and the Boogaloo Bois are targeting the community.  Not constructive.  Still, Trump is leaving a door wide open for a Biden promise to end the violence.  It would be easy enough.

So, how long is Biden going to allow the violence to continue until he uses his political connections to end the violence. Do you know what your problem is Bob, you've failed to convince me that you and the liberals above you who are in charge of the mess that we are seeing right now actually care about the lives of black people who are living with and dying from the violence. At least I'm open about it but then again I don't view their lives as my responsibility or the party that I support these days.

So, who is funding Antifa and who is coordinating their efforts and supplying them with all  the primate weapons these days? So, what is the American right supposed to do when it finds out that Democrats are in bed with those who are causing so much trouble for so during a national crisis for so many Americans and immigrants whose liberal ideology (live and let live) or religious beliefs or natural traits restricts them or prevents them from dealing with  violence/violent people.

Antifa is not causing violence. Trump is. I don't know what the American right can do about its fantasies.

There has been a spike in violent crime on some days in some places. Trump doesn't have the sense to deal with it. So we'll see what Biden can do, if anything. He is not in favor of defunding the police and allowing violent crime. Local authorities are primarily responsible for controlling crime, reforming police and improving social and economic conditions. I would like to see them get more proactive in this, and to get help from a new president and congress.

Is Trump trying to destroy the federal court in Seattle or Antifa? How liberal or stupid do you have to be to use that ploy or go for that ploy? You better get your shit straight and figure out a way to be smart because you're going to have to explain you're support of it to America or at least your candidate is going to have try to anyway because America is paying for it. So, did you support the Irish Catholic, the Marxist Jew and Latino or one of the two ex prosecutors/ex city/county bureaucrats or the gay or the black dude or the uppity liberal white woman with the high cheek bones that's I'm sure still represent something of value to some of the democratic population or Democratic electorate today.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-21-2020, 04:58 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:31 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: So, who is funding Antifa and who is coordinating their efforts and supplying them with all  the primate weapons these days? So, what is the American right supposed to do when it finds out that Democrats are in bed with those who are causing so much trouble for so during a national crisis for so many Americans and immigrants whose liberal ideology (live and let live) or religious beliefs or natural traits restricts them or prevents them from dealing with  violence/violent people.

No one is funding the Antifa, but a few reds are so detached from reality that they haven't noticed.

That's the rub, isn't it. Antifa is an idea, not a movement or even a group.  Back when they were still active, I'm sure that the Antifa protestors got some help from their friends, but only enough to afford attending without starving.

I'm sure that you have some experience with that sort of thing. America started out as an idea too.

[Eric the Green]

(07-22-2020, 02:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 11:27 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 10:27 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The keys are the virus and the economy and whether or not the liberals are going to allow their children to go to school or not because that's going to have a major impact too. Oh, and then there's the civil unrest that everyone witnessed that's still going on and defunding law enforcement shit that's going to factor as well. Biden is candidate because Biden was the only liberal candidate that the Southern black establishment trusted to keep the federal jobs, grants  and investment money flowing their way.

If we agree that the virus is key, and solving the virus key to restoring the economy, Biden has that one.  The folks advocating and implementing a Scientific approach are getting high approvals.  The happy talk folk advocating opening up while the virus is not under control are getting low approvals.  It is leaning landslide.  The usual 4T.

The schools?  Trump wants to kill kids for a few approval points.  It will just sink him deeper.  Reopening after the curves are way down is possible, but Trump as never been one for that.  How to lose the parent's vote?

The violence?  The protests seemed to be winding down a month after George Floyd's death, but Trump is reigniting the violence sending his unmarked agents into blue cities and provoking.  If the stakes were not so high I would kinda like to lock the unmarked agents and the Boogaloo Bois into somewhere where they could enjoy each other's violence.  As is, the unmarked guys are targeting Black Lives Matter and the Boogaloo Bois are targeting the community.  Not constructive.  Still, Trump is leaving a door wide open for a Biden promise to end the violence.  It would be easy enough.

So, how long is Biden going to allow the violence to continue until he uses his political connections to end the violence. Do you know what your problem is Bob, you've failed to convince me that you and the liberals above you who are in charge of the mess that we are seeing right now actually care about the lives of black people who are living with and dying from the violence. At least I'm open about it but then again I don't view their lives as my responsibility or the party that I support these days.

So, who is funding Antifa and who is coordinating their efforts and supplying them with all  the primate weapons these days? So, what is the American right supposed to do when it finds out that Democrats are in bed with those who are causing so much trouble for so during a national crisis for so many Americans and immigrants whose liberal ideology (live and let live) or religious beliefs or natural traits restricts them or prevents them from dealing with  violence/violent people.

Antifa is not causing violence. Trump is. I don't know what the American right can do about its fantasies.

There has been a spike in violent crime on some days in some places. Trump doesn't have the sense to deal with it. So we'll see what Biden can do, if anything. He is not in favor of defunding the police and allowing violent crime. Local authorities are primarily responsible for controlling crime, reforming police and improving social and economic conditions. I would like to see them get more proactive in this, and to get help from a new president and congress.

Is Trump trying to destroy the federal court in Seattle or Antifa? How liberal or stupid do you have to be to use that ploy or go for that ploy? You better get your shit straight and figure out a way to be smart because you're going to have to explain you're support of it to America or at least your candidate is going to have try to anyway because America is paying for it. So, did you support the Irish Catholic, the Marxist Jew and Latino or one of the two ex prosecutors/ex city/county bureaucrats or the gay or the black dude or the uppity liberal white woman with the high cheek bones that's I'm sure still represent something of value to some of the democratic population or Democratic electorate today.

Throwing a firecracker or writing graffiti does not destroy a building. Trump and his followers like you have the favorite tactic of using a slogan to apply to a whole group. So, prove to me that "antifa" threw that firework. Can you do that? Trump has provoked whoever did those things to start knocking down the door. But they can't destroy the building. But Trump can destroy our republic by deploying unidentified troops to pick peaceful protesters and bystanders off the street and put them in jail.

Martin Luther King Jr. would have been there with the protesters. My brother is a former Oregon official and lives in Portland so maybe he'll have some info on what's going on. Meanwhile, it would be wise for us all to go to this site and see the entire context of Dr. King's iconic final speech in Memphis, and remember what he said so powerfully, "The greatness of America is the right to protest FOR right!"
https://theundefeated.com/features/lets-...stice-too/

Somehow Classic Xer has forgotten what the TRUE greatness of America is.

There is audio posted here of longer excerpts from the speech. I'm not sure how to post an mp3 here. But King went there to support striking workers, many but not all black, and led a march there on March 28, 1968. Some looters and militants went off by themselves and started breaking windows. King was persuaded to turn the march around, because he did not want to be seen leading a violent march. 

But he vowed to come back and prove he could lead a non-violent march there. But the national guard was there the next day, and an injunction was ordered to prevent King's next march. His assistant Andrew Young went to court and got the injunction overturned on April 3, and King went to a large hall to rally his followers to join his planned march. In his speech, he recounted how he and his followers had won in Birmingham Alabama in spite of having dogs and water hoses turned on them by the sheriff, singing "we will not be turned around" and remaining non-violent. "We know water," he said, but "we will look above it and see the freedom in the air." Pete Townshend later echoed this iconic sixties phrase in his momentous song "Let's See Action," one of my favorites.

Two shorter parts from these same two excerpts of this final speech are heard in this youtube video. Ironically, an ad for Trump who is now taking away our right to protest comes on before Dr. King.





And you can hear longer audio clips of these two excerpts at the site linked above.

Nothing is Everything/Let's See Action by Peter Townshend



lyrics and audio here:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/petetown...thing.html

[Classic-Xer]

(07-22-2020, 01:19 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The common history of America includes a continual movement to update, reform, revolutionize and transform that heritage. The Constitution can be amended and re-interpreted. 


It also includes all those who have come here ever since then, many of whom have hoped that this is a land of opportunity, and it includes those who were brought here against their will since 1619, and who were bought and sold and then endured second-class citizenship because their skin was dark, because of the white racists some of whom sought to establish an entirely different country with a new heritage of white racism.

You seem to be with the Liberal groups who are  trying to establish an entirely different country with a new heritage too. I don't think you've been lying to me about your political desires and goals or personal status as a global citizen. It's to bad that we're going to have to repeat history again in order to soundly defeat another foolish group of Democrats who are upset with America again. It's not like I disagree with Liberal cancel culture, the use of its tactics as a means to an end. I happen to be open to canceling them. As I've said, I'm speaking to a DEAD man right now and I don't care who or what the fuck kills him or forces him to leave. That's where we're at. The Constitution can be amended as it's been but not reinterpreted and rewritten like England and the nations affiliated with England or Europe.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-22-2020, 02:15 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm sure that you have some experience with that sort of thing. America started out as an idea too.

My experience comes from being under keeper of the local chapter of the Friends of Darkover.  I had a computer, a mailing list, and a group of maps to get to the homes which typically hosted the meetings.  It seems to me that any effort to organize around a political idea wouldn't require more effort than Darkover.  Less, actually.  These days most people have e mail addresses, and I wouldn't have to deal with printing the addresses, attaching them to envelopes, and licking stamps.  Yah.  This was a while ago.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-22-2020, 03:02 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 02:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 11:27 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: If we agree that the virus is key, and solving the virus key to restoring the economy, Biden has that one.  The folks advocating and implementing a Scientific approach are getting high approvals.  The happy talk folk advocating opening up while the virus is not under control are getting low approvals.  It is leaning landslide.  The usual 4T.

The schools?  Trump wants to kill kids for a few approval points.  It will just sink him deeper.  Reopening after the curves are way down is possible, but Trump as never been one for that.  How to lose the parent's vote?

The violence?  The protests seemed to be winding down a month after George Floyd's death, but Trump is reigniting the violence sending his unmarked agents into blue cities and provoking.  If the stakes were not so high I would kinda like to lock the unmarked agents and the Boogaloo Bois into somewhere where they could enjoy each other's violence.  As is, the unmarked guys are targeting Black Lives Matter and the Boogaloo Bois are targeting the community.  Not constructive.  Still, Trump is leaving a door wide open for a Biden promise to end the violence.  It would be easy enough.

So, how long is Biden going to allow the violence to continue until he uses his political connections to end the violence. Do you know what your problem is Bob, you've failed to convince me that you and the liberals above you who are in charge of the mess that we are seeing right now actually care about the lives of black people who are living with and dying from the violence. At least I'm open about it but then again I don't view their lives as my responsibility or the party that I support these days.

So, who is funding Antifa and who is coordinating their efforts and supplying them with all  the primate weapons these days? So, what is the American right supposed to do when it finds out that Democrats are in bed with those who are causing so much trouble for so during a national crisis for so many Americans and immigrants whose liberal ideology (live and let live) or religious beliefs or natural traits restricts them or prevents them from dealing with  violence/violent people.

Antifa is not causing violence. Trump is. I don't know what the American right can do about its fantasies.

There has been a spike in violent crime on some days in some places. Trump doesn't have the sense to deal with it. So we'll see what Biden can do, if anything. He is not in favor of defunding the police and allowing violent crime. Local authorities are primarily responsible for controlling crime, reforming police and improving social and economic conditions. I would like to see them get more proactive in this, and to get help from a new president and congress.

Is Trump trying to destroy the federal court in Seattle or Antifa? How liberal or stupid do you have to be to use that ploy or go for that ploy? You better get your shit straight and figure out a way to be smart because you're going to have to explain you're support of it to America or at least your candidate is going to have try to anyway because America is paying for it. So, did you support the Irish Catholic, the Marxist Jew and Latino or one of the two ex prosecutors/ex city/county bureaucrats or the gay or the black dude or the uppity liberal white woman with the high cheek bones that's I'm sure still represent something of value to some of the democratic population or Democratic electorate today.

Throwing a firecracker or writing graffiti does not destroy a building. Trump and his followers like you have the favorite tactic of using a slogan to apply to a whole group. So, prove to me that "antifa" threw that firework. Can you do that? Trump has provoked whoever did those things to start knocking down the door. But they can't destroy the building. But Trump can destroy our republic by deploying unidentified troops to pick peaceful protesters and bystanders off the street and put them in jail.

Martin Luther King Jr. would have been there with the protesters. My brother is a former Oregon official and lives in Portland so maybe he'll have some info on what's going on. Meanwhile, it would be wise for us all to go to this site and see the entire context of Dr. King's iconic final speech in Memphis, and remember what he said so powerfully, "The greatness of America is the right to protest FOR right!"
https://theundefeated.com/features/lets-...stice-too/

Somehow Classic Xer has forgotten what the TRUE greatness of America is.

There is audio posted here of longer excerpts from the speech. I'm not sure how to post an mp3 here. But King went there to support striking workers, many but not all black, and led a march there on March 28, 1968. Some looters and militants went off by themselves and started breaking windows. King was persuaded to turn the march around, because he did not want to be seen leading a violent march. 

But he vowed to come back and prove he could lead a non-violent march there. But the national guard was there the next day, and an injunction was ordered to prevent King's next march. His assistant Andrew Young went to court and got the injunction overturned on April 3, and King went to a large hall to rally his followers to join his planned march. In his speech, he recounted how he and his followers had won in Birmingham Alabama in spite of having dogs and water hoses turned on them by the sheriff, singing "we will not be turned around" and remaining non-violent. "We know water," he said, but "we will look above it and see the freedom in the air." Pete Townshend later echoed this iconic sixties phrase in his momentous song "Let's See Action," one of my favorites.

Two shorter parts from these same two excerpts of this final speech are heard in this youtube video. Ironically, an ad for Trump who is now taking away our right to protest comes on before Dr. King.





And you can hear longer audio clips of these two excerpts at the site linked above.

Nothing is Everything/Let's See Action by Peter Townshend



lyrics and audio here:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/petetown...thing.html

Yep. That's about all they can do right now. So, where is the deadbeat Liberal governor and the Washington national guard? Dude, you basically lack the character of MLK and using him for your own benefit makes you look like shit. If you need to latch on to someone black, latch on to a racist black piece of shit wearing a fancy suit like Al Sharpton or Louise Farrakhan. Yes. They're just a couple of dumb blacks but that's no longer a viable excuse these days.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-22-2020, 04:02 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You seem to be with the Liberal groups who are  trying to establish an entirely different country with a new heritage too.

Not a new heritage. It is traditional, the liberal heritage, to seek a more perfect union, a new birth of freedom. The two changes pushed at this time are to recognize science in knowing the nature of problems and how to resolve them, and a third slice at racism. (The first two were at the Civil War and Civil Rights movement.) Both themes that have surface so far are reasonable ways to improve the culture, and fairly traditional in terms of seeking improvement and change.

(07-22-2020, 04:02 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: As I've said, I'm speaking to a DEAD man right now and I don't care who or what the fuck kills him or forces him to leave. That's where we're at.

Your obsession with violence and habit of making absurd empty threats is showing.

Most Americans of both red and blue flavors value life, and those that favor the economy have recognized that you must beat the virus to reopen. Shortcuts don't help, but in fact hurt big time. The people have spoken loudly on racist violence by police as well. In short, the red folk are moving blue big time. This looks to be solved by legislation not by violence this time around.

There is just more to America than selfishness and racism.

[Eric the Green]

(07-22-2020, 04:36 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 03:02 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 02:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-21-2020, 04:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: So, how long is Biden going to allow the violence to continue until he uses his political connections to end the violence. Do you know what your problem is Bob, you've failed to convince me that you and the liberals above you who are in charge of the mess that we are seeing right now actually care about the lives of black people who are living with and dying from the violence. At least I'm open about it but then again I don't view their lives as my responsibility or the party that I support these days.

So, who is funding Antifa and who is coordinating their efforts and supplying them with all  the primate weapons these days? So, what is the American right supposed to do when it finds out that Democrats are in bed with those who are causing so much trouble for so during a national crisis for so many Americans and immigrants whose liberal ideology (live and let live) or religious beliefs or natural traits restricts them or prevents them from dealing with  violence/violent people.

Antifa is not causing violence. Trump is. I don't know what the American right can do about its fantasies.

There has been a spike in violent crime on some days in some places. Trump doesn't have the sense to deal with it. So we'll see what Biden can do, if anything. He is not in favor of defunding the police and allowing violent crime. Local authorities are primarily responsible for controlling crime, reforming police and improving social and economic conditions. I would like to see them get more proactive in this, and to get help from a new president and congress.

Is Trump trying to destroy the federal court in Seattle or Antifa? How liberal or stupid do you have to be to use that ploy or go for that ploy? You better get your shit straight and figure out a way to be smart because you're going to have to explain you're support of it to America or at least your candidate is going to have try to anyway because America is paying for it. So, did you support the Irish Catholic, the Marxist Jew and Latino or one of the two ex prosecutors/ex city/county bureaucrats or the gay or the black dude or the uppity liberal white woman with the high cheek bones that's I'm sure still represent something of value to some of the democratic population or Democratic electorate today.

Throwing a firecracker or writing graffiti does not destroy a building. Trump and his followers like you have the favorite tactic of using a slogan to apply to a whole group. So, prove to me that "antifa" threw that firework. Can you do that? Trump has provoked whoever did those things to start knocking down the door. But they can't destroy the building. But Trump can destroy our republic by deploying unidentified troops to pick peaceful protesters and bystanders off the street and put them in jail.

Martin Luther King Jr. would have been there with the protesters. My brother is a former Oregon official and lives in Portland so maybe he'll have some info on what's going on. Meanwhile, it would be wise for us all to go to this site and see the entire context of Dr. King's iconic final speech in Memphis, and remember what he said so powerfully, "The greatness of America is the right to protest FOR right!"
https://theundefeated.com/features/lets-...stice-too/

Somehow Classic Xer has forgotten what the TRUE greatness of America is.

There is audio posted here of longer excerpts from the speech. I'm not sure how to post an mp3 here. But King went there to support striking workers, many but not all black, and led a march there on March 28, 1968. Some looters and militants went off by themselves and started breaking windows. King was persuaded to turn the march around, because he did not want to be seen leading a violent march. 

But he vowed to come back and prove he could lead a non-violent march there. But the national guard was there the next day, and an injunction was ordered to prevent King's next march. His assistant Andrew Young went to court and got the injunction overturned on April 3, and King went to a large hall to rally his followers to join his planned march. In his speech, he recounted how he and his followers had won in Birmingham Alabama in spite of having dogs and water hoses turned on them by the sheriff, singing "we will not be turned around" and remaining non-violent. "We know water," he said, but "we will look above it and see the freedom in the air." Pete Townshend later echoed this iconic sixties phrase in his momentous song "Let's See Action," one of my favorites.

Two shorter parts from these same two excerpts of this final speech are heard in this youtube video. Ironically, an ad for Trump who is now taking away our right to protest comes on before Dr. King.





And you can hear longer audio clips of these two excerpts at the site linked above.

Nothing is Everything/Let's See Action by Peter Townshend



lyrics and audio here:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/petetown...thing.html

Yep. That's about all they can do right now. So, where is the deadbeat Liberal governor and the Washington national guard? Dude, you basically lack the character of MLK and using him for your own benefit makes you look like shit. If you need to latch on to someone black, latch on to a racist black piece of shit wearing a fancy suit like Al Sharpton or Louise Farrakhan. Yes. They're just a couple of dumb blacks but that's no longer a  viable excuse these days.

The National Guard was not needed to stop a few youths from throwing a firework or painting graffiti. That's all they were doing until Trump's goons showed up.

There's no-one better to quote than MLK. Disregarding what he says makes you look like.....
because you have forgotten what the true greatness of America IS.

[Bob Butler 54]

Trump is sending more of his secret police out.  AP reports.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-22-2020, 05:33 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 04:02 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You seem to be with the Liberal groups who are  trying to establish an entirely different country with a new heritage too.

Not a new heritage.  It is traditional, the liberal heritage, to seek a more perfect union, a new birth of freedom.  The two changes pushed at this time are to recognize science in knowing the nature of problems and how to resolve them, and a third slice at racism.  (The first two were at the Civil War and Civil Rights movement.)  Both themes that have surface so far are reasonable ways to improve the culture, and fairly traditional in terms of seeking improvement and change.

(07-22-2020, 04:02 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: As I've said, I'm speaking to a DEAD man right now and I don't care who or what the fuck kills him or forces him to leave. That's where we're at.

Your obsession with violence and habit of making absurd empty threats is showing.  

Most Americans of both red and blue flavors value life, and those that favor the economy have recognized that you must beat the virus to reopen.  Shortcuts don't help, but in fact hurt big time. The people have spoken loudly on racist violence by police as well.  In short, the red folk are moving blue big time.  This looks to be solved by legislation not by violence this time around.

There is just more to America than selfishness and racism.

I agree, both sides value life. Life is a common value that both side share. So, what all goes into life (peoples lives) these days? I assume that you and I have much different lives. Me, I own a business and I have a family to support which requires a lot of time and effort on my behalf. I'm out there working and interacting with people every day with the exception of typical slow times of the year and occasional opportunities to take a breather and catch up on paperwork or spend time doing this during patches of mild weather like now. Our governor spent more time bouncing between his constituencies and pleasing his constituencies than he spent worrying about the impacts on the lives of working people and small business's and so forth. You know what, the more I get to know the Democrats, the more I can't stand the Democrats. To be honest, by the time we get out of this financial mess, we are going to be in debt up to our eye balls if not over our head. Bob, the writing is on the wall. The United States as we know it, is not coming out this crisis the way it is today. We both agree on that. If you're lucky, you'll be dead before the shit hits the fan. Now, you can stick with selling/playing liberal kumbaya, love and peace, live and let live and continue supporting liberal peacekeepers for Democratic presidents whose main purpose is to keep an old party that's half rotten together. Now, you may not be in the rotten half of the party. You too seem like a decent level headed person at times too. You worked for what you have and stashed away as much as you could to set yourself up for retirement which explains the reason why the economy doesn't seem to matter to you at this point. You may have flirted with Marxism but you didn't stick with Marxism and embraced the American way. I'll make you a deal. You keep the crazy liberal comments to yourself, I'll keep the comments about future violence to myself. One other thing relating to the violence that I speak of, it's not an empty threat, it's a real threat that at least wise enough to know where the border was between blue and red. I'm going to share some real life information with you, the looters and rioters stopped a few miles from my home because there was a heavily armed group of residents who were waiting for them. I had neighborhood duty. Like I said, I believe the American people are mainly ahead of the people running Washington, DC.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-22-2020, 06:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The National Guard was not needed to stop a few youths from throwing a firework or painting graffiti. That's all they were doing until Trump's goons showed up.

There's no-one better to quote than MLK. Disregarding what he says makes you look like.....
because you have forgotten what the true greatness of America IS.

I know, it's all Trumps fault as usual. I doubt Trump would stick his neck out over something minor. So, why doesn't the governor send in the national guard like he should and has the authority to do right now instead of doing nothing as usual and pointing his finger and blaming Trump. Why do Democrats act like teenage boys and girls? I'll give them credit they're all pretty much equal. As I've mentioned before, I have a close friend who gave up on the Democratic party and there are about twenty million or so Democratic voters like him these days. You're not going to hear anything from them until November. Like I said, this is going to boil down to Liberal Culture vs American Culture.

[Eric the Green]

(07-23-2020, 01:12 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 06:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 04:36 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 03:02 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-22-2020, 02:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Is Trump trying to destroy the federal court in Seattle or Antifa? How liberal or stupid do you have to be to use that ploy or go for that ploy? You better get your shit straight and figure out a way to be smart because you're going to have to explain you're support of it to America or at least your candidate is going to have try to anyway because America is paying for it. So, did you support the Irish Catholic, the Marxist Jew and Latino or one of the two ex prosecutors/ex city/county bureaucrats or the gay or the black dude or the uppity liberal white woman with the high cheek bones that's I'm sure still represent something of value to some of the democratic population or Democratic electorate today.

Throwing a firecracker or writing graffiti does not destroy a building. Trump and his followers like you have the favorite tactic of using a slogan to apply to a whole group. So, prove to me that "antifa" threw that firework. Can you do that? Trump has provoked whoever did those things to start knocking down the door. But they can't destroy the building. But Trump can destroy our republic by deploying unidentified troops to pick peaceful protesters and bystanders off the street and put them in jail.

Martin Luther King Jr. would have been there with the protesters. My brother is a former Oregon official and lives in Portland so maybe he'll have some info on what's going on. Meanwhile, it would be wise for us all to go to this site and see the entire context of Dr. King's iconic final speech in Memphis, and remember what he said so powerfully, "The greatness of America is the right to protest FOR right!"
https://theundefeated.com/features/lets-...stice-too/

Somehow Classic Xer has forgotten what the TRUE greatness of America is.

There is audio posted here of longer excerpts from the speech. I'm not sure how to post an mp3 here. But King went there to support striking workers, many but not all black, and led a march there on March 28, 1968. Some looters and militants went off by themselves and started breaking windows. King was persuaded to turn the march around, because he did not want to be seen leading a violent march. 

But he vowed to come back and prove he could lead a non-violent march there. But the national guard was there the next day, and an injunction was ordered to prevent King's next march. His assistant Andrew Young went to court and got the injunction overturned on April 3, and King went to a large hall to rally his followers to join his planned march. In his speech, he recounted how he and his followers had won in Birmingham Alabama in spite of having dogs and water hoses turned on them by the sheriff, singing "we will not be turned around" and remaining non-violent. "We know water," he said, but "we will look above it and see the freedom in the air." Pete Townshend later echoed this iconic sixties phrase in his momentous song "Let's See Action," one of my favorites.

Two shorter parts from these same two excerpts of this final speech are heard in this youtube video. Ironically, an ad for Trump who is now taking away our right to protest comes on before Dr. King.





And you can hear longer audio clips of these two excerpts at the site linked above.

Nothing is Everything/Let's See Action by Peter Townshend



lyrics and audio here:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/petetown...thing.html

Yep. That's about all they can do right now. So, where is the deadbeat Liberal governor and the Washington national guard? Dude, you basically lack the character of MLK and using him for your own benefit makes you look like shit. If you need to latch on to someone black, latch on to a racist black piece of shit wearing a fancy suit like Al Sharpton or Louise Farrakhan. Yes. They're just a couple of dumb blacks but that's no longer a  viable excuse these days.

The National Guard was not needed to stop a few youths from throwing a firework or painting graffiti. That's all they were doing until Trump's goons showed up.

There's no-one better to quote than MLK. Disregarding what he says makes you look like.....
because you have forgotten what the true greatness of America IS.

I know, it's all Trumps fault as usual. So, why doesn't the governor send in the national guard like he should and has the authority to do right now instead of pointing his finger and blaming Trump. Like I've mentioned before, I have a close friend who gave up on the Democratic party and there are about twenty million Democratic voters like him. You're not going to hear anything from them until November. Like I said, this is going to boil down to Liberal Culture vs American Culture.

But your idea of "American culture" is one that never changes or makes progress. American culture, in reality, IS liberal culture. But we'll see whether the true American culture wins in November, or the false one that you support. I'm hedging my bets.

The governor didn't send in the national guard because he didn't think a firework or some graffiti on federal property was enough reason to do so. Your false "American culture" is mainly concerned with symbols like the flag, statues or graffiti, not with real interests. The feds can guard their building, that's OK with me. But they should stay on federal property unless they know someone who committed a crime.

[David Horn]

(07-22-2020, 06:43 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Trump is sending more of his secret police out.  AP reports.

Just stop for a minute and consider that you can write that in all seriousness.  When have we ever been this far down the rabbit hole?  The Army v. the Bonus Marchers comes close, but even then, there was accountability.