The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-06-2020, 02:06 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 09:34 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 08:55 PM)TnT Wrote: Well, if the pictures of the beer-gut wanna-bes that showed up at Gettysburg this weekend, having been gulled by the very cesspool of information that they subscribe to, have any credibility, I guess I'm not too worried about any "civil war" that these guys foment.

Just hanging around here, you have to wade through information and disinformation about obsessions with violence, astrology, 'xenophobia' and dogs.  Is there a law that partisans can't have weird hobbies and beliefs too?

Where was the disinformation about dogs in south africa? I have personally lived there, though i will have to add that they dont replace dogs with guns. They have both and high security. One neighbour of mine in johannesburg had a sniper perched above his fence. He would wave to us when we walked past the house he was guarding. Black, white...its all the same regqrding a need for security in ones own house so people keep themselves safe by way of dogs, guns, high sharp tipped fencing, electric fence also on top of that fence and security doors as well as bars on windows. I was glad to get out of there personally. I felt like i was in a prison.

I have never been to South Africa. I have been to Gettysburg a few times, and did not find anyone trying to push their hobbies and weird interests on me. Well, the Gettysburg Discussion Group did have an interest in one particular battle, but I shared it at the time.

But from the sounds of it, neither the folk of South Africa or Gettysburg would benefit much from the services of dogs without armed men to back them up. A dog might draw the attention of a sniper to an intruder, but you are better off moving somewhere where you don't need snipers to defend your property.

[pbrower2a]

(07-05-2020, 09:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 09:29 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 05:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Eric -- Classic X'er seems to have the idea that there very few ways in which to be American, and all of those involve being like him, looking like him, and believing like him.  That of course is too narrow.

He fails to understand as I do why Confederate flags and statues of Confederate leaders could be so offensive to people American by default -- and the 13th, 14th, and 125th Amendments in place for a century and a half. Those Americans are the descendants of people for whom those Confederate leaders waged a war and sacrificed huge amounts of cannon fodder, tax revenue, and honor to keep in bondage. The political heirs of the Confederacy then steadily stripped the rights that freed slaves got until they and their descendants  were but shells... until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If there are memorials to German soldiers of World War II, then those are of the plotters of July 20, 1944, who, had they succeeded, would have put a swift end to the particular horrors of Nazism and sued for peace, putting a swift end to the Nazi nightmare. But those potters failed (they came close to succeeding!) and almost all of them paid with their lives for their courageous deed.

You're wrong. Classic understands that there are many ways to be American and many ways to prove to others that one is an American and there are many races of Americans these days as well. You're right. The traditional black vs white, north vs south, rich vs poor, haves vs have nots are too vague and way too narrow to go by these days. You can if you want but you'll be crushed by America. Classic also understands that burning an American flag or dissing the American flag during the American anthem isn't a good way to gain American support or gain American sympathy these days either.

That has seemed to changed, although not in your right-wing, Trump-loving circles. Colin Kaepernick has been welcomed back into the NFL, and even the commissioner has apologized to him, and his gesture of kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality is being praised and copied instead of knocked now. He was ahead of his time.

The fact that you are worried about these symbols, while you ignore the reality of racial profiling and cops singling out unarmed black men like George Floyd and Elijah McClain for murder, gives broad and powerful hints about where your racial sympathies really lie. Also your defense of confederate monuments does this as well. Trump seemed to cater to the people who say exactly the same things that you do in his speech at Mt. Rushmore yesterday, but it is being condemned as dividing America and as stoking prejudice by many folks, as his approval rating drops to minus 14 points or more.

You still cannot define what you mean by what is American. All you can do is appeal to loyalty to national symbols and feelings of nationalist patriotism. The flag and the anthem can be important symbols, but what do they represent?

OK -- I am not Greek or of Greek ancestry.... but the Greeks have a flag that in some respects reminds me of the US flag (nine blue and white stripes instead of thirteen red and white, and a cross instead of stars). 

I would not deny a Greek the right to this flag and anthem:





It well fits a heritage far older than ours, and even more explicitly promotes liberty in contrast to three and a half centuries of subjection to a very alien power that disparaged Greek culture and the majority religion of the Greek people. The music seems to be distinct to the country in question (OK, the Greek-speaking part of Cyprus has used it, but ... those people are Greek!) and uniquely suited to a historical context. It has fit a monarchy and a republic. It was awkward for the vile dictatorship of 1967 to 1973... which is just as well. 

As national anthems go, it is very good -- one of my favorites among those not of my own country. 

The flag and the national anthem well fit a historical context and a culture. This said, few other countries have a history like that of Greece. But this said, a nation is more than its symbols.

An aside: in an extended version, one fellow is mentioned:

Τζορτζ Ουάσινγκτον

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-06-2020, 02:44 AM)taramarie Wrote: Unsure what you mean regarding pushing hobbies or weird interests.

Think on our regulars. Which people are likely to insist in telling you about things like dogs, astrology, violence or xenophobia? Their obsessions with their various areas of interest are often a bit odd, and not at all what are in your experience? I know everyone tends to have an odd area of interest, but at times they color your conversation, makes it impossible to communicate with them if that requires you to shift their opinion in their odd area of interest.

[pbrower2a]

Dogs relate better to me than do many people. That goes with the territory -- with Asperger's syndrome.

[Eric the Green]

(07-06-2020, 01:52 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 09:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 09:29 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 05:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Eric -- Classic X'er seems to have the idea that there very few ways in which to be American, and all of those involve being like him, looking like him, and believing like him.  That of course is too narrow.

He fails to understand as I do why Confederate flags and statues of Confederate leaders could be so offensive to people American by default -- and the 13th, 14th, and 125th Amendments in place for a century and a half. Those Americans are the descendants of people for whom those Confederate leaders waged a war and sacrificed huge amounts of cannon fodder, tax revenue, and honor to keep in bondage. The political heirs of the Confederacy then steadily stripped the rights that freed slaves got until they and their descendants  were but shells... until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If there are memorials to German soldiers of World War II, then those are of the plotters of July 20, 1944, who, had they succeeded, would have put a swift end to the particular horrors of Nazism and sued for peace, putting a swift end to the Nazi nightmare. But those potters failed (they came close to succeeding!) and almost all of them paid with their lives for their courageous deed.

You're wrong. Classic understands that there are many ways to be American and many ways to prove to others that one is an American and there are many races of Americans these days as well. You're right. The traditional black vs white, north vs south, rich vs poor, haves vs have nots are too vague and way too narrow to go by these days. You can if you want but you'll be crushed by America. Classic also understands that burning an American flag or dissing the American flag during the American anthem isn't a good way to gain American support or gain American sympathy these days either.

That has seemed to changed, although not in your right-wing, Trump-loving circles. Colin Kaepernick has been welcomed back into the NFL, and even the commissioner has apologized to him, and his gesture of kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality is being praised and copied instead of knocked now. He was ahead of his time.

The fact that you are worried about these symbols, while you ignore the reality of racial profiling and cops singling out unarmed black men like George Floyd and Elijah McClain for murder, gives broad and powerful hints about where your racial sympathies really lie. Also your defense of confederate monuments does this as well. Trump seemed to cater to the people who say exactly the same things that you do in his speech at Mt. Rushmore yesterday, but it is being condemned as dividing America and as stoking prejudice by many folks, as his approval rating drops to minus 14 points or more.

You still cannot define what you mean by what is American. All you can do is appeal to loyalty to national symbols and feelings of nationalist patriotism. The flag and the anthem can be important symbols, but what do they represent?

I don't care about what the NFL decides to do about Colin Kaepernic or whether some team decides to pay him a million to sit on the bench and watch a football game to make themselves look/feel  good. I know what I'm going to do this season. I'm going to do something else instead of watching football  this season. You shake them down and scare them by placing their most important assets at risk. We hurt them and hurt  liberal cities by making matters even  worse for them   at the same time. You just wait til we start getting more personal and begin refusing services and all kinds of other stuff that neither you, the government or the liberal media has control over. Like I've said, feeding a bunch of liberal fat cats to a bunch of wolves and teaching a bunch of preachy blue movie stars a harsh lesson about the difference us and them. You have an insurance policy and we have one too that we can back with guns. Like I said, have fun during the ugly 4T that we both know is coming.

We don't need to visit red states and counties if we don't wanna, so you can refuse service to those of us whom you can scope out to be visitors and city slickers or ethnically diverse, long-haired, etc. We'll just stay away and not patronize you. Meanwhile you can try to keep some of your agricultural products from the market, but that won't do you any good, and most farms are corporate and therefore not so concerned with cultural "American" symbols. And in places like California we have enough within our blue state borders to feed ourselves just fine. So your pressures will have little effect. We blue states and counties can do without your gun totin' backward hick redneck racist behaviors just fine.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-06-2020, 11:47 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 01:52 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 09:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 09:29 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-05-2020, 05:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Eric -- Classic X'er seems to have the idea that there very few ways in which to be American, and all of those involve being like him, looking like him, and believing like him.  That of course is too narrow.

He fails to understand as I do why Confederate flags and statues of Confederate leaders could be so offensive to people American by default -- and the 13th, 14th, and 125th Amendments in place for a century and a half. Those Americans are the descendants of people for whom those Confederate leaders waged a war and sacrificed huge amounts of cannon fodder, tax revenue, and honor to keep in bondage. The political heirs of the Confederacy then steadily stripped the rights that freed slaves got until they and their descendants  were but shells... until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If there are memorials to German soldiers of World War II, then those are of the plotters of July 20, 1944, who, had they succeeded, would have put a swift end to the particular horrors of Nazism and sued for peace, putting a swift end to the Nazi nightmare. But those potters failed (they came close to succeeding!) and almost all of them paid with their lives for their courageous deed.

You're wrong. Classic understands that there are many ways to be American and many ways to prove to others that one is an American and there are many races of Americans these days as well. You're right. The traditional black vs white, north vs south, rich vs poor, haves vs have nots are too vague and way too narrow to go by these days. You can if you want but you'll be crushed by America. Classic also understands that burning an American flag or dissing the American flag during the American anthem isn't a good way to gain American support or gain American sympathy these days either.

That has seemed to changed, although not in your right-wing, Trump-loving circles. Colin Kaepernick has been welcomed back into the NFL, and even the commissioner has apologized to him, and his gesture of kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality is being praised and copied instead of knocked now. He was ahead of his time.

The fact that you are worried about these symbols, while you ignore the reality of racial profiling and cops singling out unarmed black men like George Floyd and Elijah McClain for murder, gives broad and powerful hints about where your racial sympathies really lie. Also your defense of confederate monuments does this as well. Trump seemed to cater to the people who say exactly the same things that you do in his speech at Mt. Rushmore yesterday, but it is being condemned as dividing America and as stoking prejudice by many folks, as his approval rating drops to minus 14 points or more.

You still cannot define what you mean by what is American. All you can do is appeal to loyalty to national symbols and feelings of nationalist patriotism. The flag and the anthem can be important symbols, but what do they represent?

I don't care about what the NFL decides to do about Colin Kaepernic or whether some team decides to pay him a million to sit on the bench and watch a football game to make themselves look/feel  good. I know what I'm going to do this season. I'm going to do something else instead of watching football  this season. You shake them down and scare them by placing their most important assets at risk. We hurt them and hurt  liberal cities by making matters even  worse for them   at the same time. You just wait til we start getting more personal and begin refusing services and all kinds of other stuff that neither you, the government or the liberal media has control over. Like I've said, feeding a bunch of liberal fat cats to a bunch of wolves and teaching a bunch of preachy blue movie stars a harsh lesson about the difference us and them. You have an insurance policy and we have one too that we can back with guns. Like I said, have fun during the ugly 4T that we both know is coming.

We don't need to visit red states and counties if we don't wanna, so you can refuse service to those of us whom you can scope out to be visitors and city slickers or ethnically diverse, long-haired, etc. We'll just stay away and not patronize you. Meanwhile you can try to keep some of your agricultural products from the market, but that won't do you any good, and most farms are corporate and therefore not so concerned with cultural "American" symbols. And in places like California we have enough within our blue state borders to feed ourselves just fine. So your pressures will have little effect. We blue states and counties can do without your gun totin' backward hick redneck racist behaviors just fine.

You fucked up and called a fellow city slicker a redneck just like you've fucked up and called a fellow American who is color blind a racist just like you've fucked up and called an American patriot a Fascist. Like I said, if you would squawk less, preach less, dictate less and pay better attention and  learn for a change you'd figure out the difference between you and an American these days. You keep asking me what you should already know as an American. So, where does that leave you and the so called liberals these days.

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-06-2020, 07:06 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You fucked up and called a fellow city slicker a redneck just like you've fucked up and called a fellow American who is color blind a racist just like you've fucked up and called an American patriot a Fascist. Like I said, if you would squawk less, preach less, dictate less and pay better attention and  learn for a change you'd figure out the difference between you and an American these days. You keep asking me what you should already know as an American. So, where does that leave you and the so called liberals these days.

Just to be clear, were you squawking, preaching or dictating just then?

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-06-2020, 03:39 AM)taramarie Wrote: Astrology is Eric's profession as far as i know so of course he will discuss it and inject it into his "findings" regarding the political topics that you guys discuss. I do not see that much discussion about dogs, but pbrower mentioned his reason for bringing up dogs so he can answer that better than i can as i only mentioned dogs in south africa as that was brought up and i have experience in south africa. As for violence and xenophobia....this is the 4T and there is violence partly because of xenophobia as well as other various outrages going on in your country which are splitting the population into pieces. Also i believe it could be a feeling of needs not being met/heard or understood and the only way to get those needs met is a feeling of having to take action even if it means violence at times. I feel this going on within both sides politically in your country going by what people say and how it is said. It is a 4T so obviously that will happen. I just hope it does not end up as another civil war. More than likely not. I hope so anyway. "Odd areas of interest" may be a call out for the need to bring attention to a need as well as a simple interest. Perhaps listen to the message behind those interests?

You did catch a few poster's specific interests, ones which I have grown past. I suppose it just itches in my case because I have grown past them. I know just enough to catch some errors and engage.

But the violence? It was common... in the Industrial Age and before. This is not the Industrial Age or before. The ones I find obsessed with violence and xenophobia seem to be dwelling in the past, are conservative, are really reluctant to change, are least able to see how things changed at the age boundary. War and violence are not cost effective or necessary anymore. We are absurdly slow to figure this out, especially the more conservative among us. Watching them type that we have always had a crisis war before therefor they will be disappointed that they will not find a nuke going off just above their heads is more than a little off.

[Bob Butler 54]

While many things showing the confederate battle flag or referencing Confederate officers are being struck down these days, it seems there is at least one thing immune.  CNN reports the car 'General Lee' from the Dukes of Hazzard TV show has not drawn any fire.

[pbrower2a]

(07-06-2020, 09:56 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: While many things showing the confederate battle flag or referencing Confederate officers are being struck down these days, it seems there is at least one thing immune.  CNN reports the car 'General Lee' from the Dukes of Hazzard TV show has not drawn any fire.

The Appalachian parts of Virginia were pro-Union enough that most of them seceded from Virginia as the state of West Virginia. Eastern Kentucky was strongly pro-Union in the Ci il War.  Eastern Tennessee, which had a very different economic reality from that of plantation-dominated western Tennessee, voted heavily against the referendum on secession. Ordinarily mountainous areas are difficult areas through which to send troops -- unless the population is sympathetic to the invaders as liberators (think of Italy in WWII -- the Nazis and Italian fascists could never maintain pockets of resistance in the Apenine Mountains)

[Classic-Xer]

(07-06-2020, 03:39 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 03:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 02:44 AM)taramarie Wrote: Unsure what you mean regarding pushing hobbies or weird interests.

Think on our regulars.  Which people are likely to insist in telling you about things like dogs, astrology, violence or xenophobia?  Their obsessions with their various areas of interest are often a bit odd, and not at all what are in your experience?  I know everyone tends to have an odd area of interest, but at times they color your conversation, makes it impossible to communicate with them if that requires you to shift their opinion in their odd area of interest.

Astrology is Eric's profession as far as i know so of course he will discuss it and inject it into his "findings" regarding the political topics that you guys discuss. I do not see that much discussion about dogs, but pbrower mentioned his reason for bringing up dogs so he can answer that better than i can as i only mentioned dogs in south africa as that was brought up and i have experience in south africa. As for violence and xenophobia....this is the 4T and there is violence partly because of xenophobia as well as other various outrages going on in your country which are splitting the population into pieces. Also i believe it could be a feeling of needs not being met/heard or understood and the only way to get those needs met is a feeling of having to take action even if it means violence at times. I feel this going on within both sides politically in your country going by what people say and how it is said. It is a 4T so obviously that will happen. I just hope it does not end up as another civil war. More than likely not. I hope so anyway. "Odd areas of interest" may be a call out for the need to bring attention to a need as well as a simple interest. Perhaps listen to the message behind those interests?

Astrology is Eric's hobby. Political activism is Eric's profession.

[beechnut79]

Robert E. Lee actually tried to reunify the country once the issue was decided. There are many wo feel that the US will not survive this crisis as a 50 state nation at least. Makes you wonder if the southern states might try to reform the Confederacy. If so, would they be enlightened enough as to not attempt to re-form Jim Crow laws let alone slavery. I would bet that they would be. I can see the possibility of Alaska joining Canada and Hawaii becoming its own nation. Many now question whether the idea of 50 states under one central government is any longer feasible.

[pbrower2a]

(07-06-2020, 10:54 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Robert E. Lee actually tried to reunify the country once the issue was decided.  There are many wo feel that the US will not survive this crisis as a 50 state nation at least. Makes you wonder if the southern states might try to reform the Confederacy. If so, would they be enlightened enough as to not attempt to re-form Jim Crow laws let alone slavery.  I would bet that they would be.  I can see the possibility of Alaska joining Canada and Hawaii becoming its own nation.  Many now question whether the idea of 50 states under one central government is any longer feasible.

This is worth remembering. General Robert E. Lee was an excellent general. Once he surrendered at Appomattox he made clear that the Confederate cause and slavery were dead beyond any recovery. He lived only five years after the Confederate defeat, and one can only imagine o- 

He did not like losing, of course, but note well that he opposed the "Lost Cause" violence against blacks. He advocated reconciliation and not resistance. The Klan cruelty was out of his sympathy. So give up slavery and go for a full recovery, whatever that took.

Lee is himself a tragic figure in American history... and far more complex than his image. One can obviously not confuse him with the proto-fascist Nathan Bedford Forrest.

[Eric the Green]

(07-06-2020, 11:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 10:54 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Robert E. Lee actually tried to reunify the country once the issue was decided.  There are many wo feel that the US will not survive this crisis as a 50 state nation at least. Makes you wonder if the southern states might try to reform the Confederacy. If so, would they be enlightened enough as to not attempt to re-form Jim Crow laws let alone slavery.  I would bet that they would be.  I can see the possibility of Alaska joining Canada and Hawaii becoming its own nation.  Many now question whether the idea of 50 states under one central government is any longer feasible.

This is worth remembering. General Robert E. Lee was an excellent general. Once he surrendered at Appomattox he made clear that the Confederate cause and slavery were dead beyond any recovery. He lived only five years after the Confederate defeat, and one can only imagine o- 

He did not like losing, of course, but note well that he opposed the "Lost Cause" violence against blacks. He advocated reconciliation and not resistance. The Klan cruelty was out of his sympathy. So give up slavery and go for a full recovery, whatever that took.

Lee is himself a tragic figure in American history... and far more complex than his image. One can obviously not confuse him with the proto-fascist Nathan Bedford Forrest.

I've read recently that he believed in white supremacy, and that was one reason he fought. He wasn't as great and gracious as is portrayed. I think it's right to take down his statues.

From The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...ee/529038/

White supremacy does not “violate” Lee’s “most fundamental convictions.” White supremacy was one of Lee’s most fundamental convictions.

Lee was a slave owner—his own views on slavery were explicated in an 1856 letter that is often misquoted to give the impression that Lee was some kind of abolitionist. In the letter, he describes slavery as “a moral & political evil,” but goes on to explain that:

"I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy."

The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most important, better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention. That black people might not want to be slaves does not enter into the equation; their opinion on the subject of their own bondage is not even an afterthought to Lee.

Lee’s cruelty as a slave master was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that “Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families” by hiring them off to other plantations, and that “by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.” The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.”...

Lee’s heavy hand on the Arlington, Virginia, plantation, Pryor writes, nearly led to a slave revolt, in part because the enslaved had been expected to be freed upon their previous master’s death, and Lee had engaged in a dubious legal interpretation of his will in order to keep them as his property, one that lasted until a Virginia court forced him to free them.

When two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured, Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to “lay it on well.” Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.”...

During his invasion of Pennsylvania, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia enslaved free black Americans and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that “evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lee’s army” to the abduction of free black Americans, “with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.”

Soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Then, in a spectacle hatched by Lee’s senior corps commander, A. P. Hill, the Confederates paraded the Union survivors through the streets of Petersburg to the slurs and jeers of the southern crowd. Lee never discouraged such behavior. As the historian Richard Slotkin wrote in No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, “his silence was permissive.”...

The white supremacists who have protested on Lee’s behalf are not betraying his legacy. In fact, they have every reason to admire him. Lee, whose devotion to white supremacy outshone his loyalty to his country, is the embodiment of everything they stand for. Tribe and race over country is the core of white nationalism, and racists can embrace Lee in good conscience.

The question is why anyone else would.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-06-2020, 02:15 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 01:52 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You just wait til we start getting more personal and begin refusing services and all kinds of other stuff that neither you, the government or the liberal media has control over.

That was tried by assorted racists prior to the Civil Rights Movement.  It used to be quite traditional to deny service at restaurants and hotels, to save the back of the bus for minorities.  I didn't think you were that sort of conservative.  If you are providing goods or services to the public, you might find the government and liberal media will pay attention.  A lot of people do frown on that sort of thing.  If you are a church or private club, that is officially another matter, but you will feel the pressure.

You know there is so much more human interaction between people of different races in workplaces and on the internet and so forth these days that it's getting hard tell the difference between natural hatred or natural dislikes that occur between different people and polar opposites and that which occurs between the racist people these days. So, you can roll with racism and milk racism for whatever it's still worth on the liberal side these days. Yes. Liberal pressure still seems pretty high right now as blacks are now killing each other like crazy and blue cities and blue states are teetering on brink of financial disaster as Black Lives Matter ignores and continues blaming police for the shitty lives of of its people. Hmmm...Whatever, we'll see what America really thinks come November.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-07-2020, 12:16 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 11:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 10:54 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Robert E. Lee actually tried to reunify the country once the issue was decided.  There are many wo feel that the US will not survive this crisis as a 50 state nation at least. Makes you wonder if the southern states might try to reform the Confederacy. If so, would they be enlightened enough as to not attempt to re-form Jim Crow laws let alone slavery.  I would bet that they would be.  I can see the possibility of Alaska joining Canada and Hawaii becoming its own nation.  Many now question whether the idea of 50 states under one central government is any longer feasible.

This is worth remembering. General Robert E. Lee was an excellent general. Once he surrendered at Appomattox he made clear that the Confederate cause and slavery were dead beyond any recovery. He lived only five years after the Confederate defeat, and one can only imagine o- 

He did not like losing, of course, but note well that he opposed the "Lost Cause" violence against blacks. He advocated reconciliation and not resistance. The Klan cruelty was out of his sympathy. So give up slavery and go for a full recovery, whatever that took.

Lee is himself a tragic figure in American history... and far more complex than his image. One can obviously not confuse him with the proto-fascist Nathan Bedford Forrest.

I've read recently that he believed in white supremacy, and that was one reason he fought. He wasn't as great and gracious as is portrayed. I think it's right to take down his statues.

From The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...ee/529038/

White supremacy does not “violate” Lee’s “most fundamental convictions.” White supremacy was one of Lee’s most fundamental convictions.

Lee was a slave owner—his own views on slavery were explicated in an 1856 letter that is often misquoted to give the impression that Lee was some kind of abolitionist. In the letter, he describes slavery as “a moral & political evil,” but goes on to explain that:

"I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy."

The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most important, better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention. That black people might not want to be slaves does not enter into the equation; their opinion on the subject of their own bondage is not even an afterthought to Lee.

Lee’s cruelty as a slave master was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that “Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families” by hiring them off to other plantations, and that “by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.” The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.”...

Lee’s heavy hand on the Arlington, Virginia, plantation, Pryor writes, nearly led to a slave revolt, in part because the enslaved had been expected to be freed upon their previous master’s death, and Lee had engaged in a dubious legal interpretation of his will in order to keep them as his property, one that lasted until a Virginia court forced him to free them.

When two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured, Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to “lay it on well.” Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.”...

During his invasion of Pennsylvania, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia enslaved free black Americans and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that “evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lee’s army” to the abduction of free black Americans, “with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.”

Soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Then, in a spectacle hatched by Lee’s senior corps commander, A. P. Hill, the Confederates paraded the Union survivors through the streets of Petersburg to the slurs and jeers of the southern crowd. Lee never discouraged such behavior. As the historian Richard Slotkin wrote in No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, “his silence was permissive.”...

Ahh... You completely missed the point as usual.

[Eric the Green]

(07-06-2020, 10:54 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Robert E. Lee actually tried to reunify the country once the issue was decided.  There are many wo feel that the US will not survive this crisis as a 50 state nation at least. Makes you wonder if the southern states might try to reform the Confederacy. If so, would they be enlightened enough as to not attempt to re-form Jim Crow laws let alone slavery.  I would bet that they would be.  I can see the possibility of Alaska joining Canada and Hawaii becoming its own nation.  Many now question whether the idea of 50 states under one central government is any longer feasible.

It's a good point. We have always been two countries, one a brutal supremacist nation longing for a past it tried to keep alive, and the other moving forward and eager to innovate. The division now is not as stark geographically as it once was, but it's still stark.

I considered the idea for a while that we should not have fought the civil war and should have just let the South go, and save all that bloodshed, and we should do the same now if they want to secede. I am wondering about that now. I thought if the South was left on its own, it would evolve and end slavery on its own eventually, maybe in 30-50 years. 

Now I don't think so, again. After all, they did maintain white supremacy for another 100 years after the civil war, and to this day the southern and redneck whites vote to keep blacks in their place with Reaganomics and by electing a reactionary culture warrior as their president. The Confederates resisted emancipation because the slaves were valuable property in a productive economic system, as well as being what they conceived of as an inferior race that should not be freed, thus disrupting their established feudal aristocratic society of privilege. It was a matter of property rights over human rights.

So, I guess the civil war, I hate to say it, was necessary. It was so bloody largely because they had a brilliant general named Robert E. Lee who thought he could beat a more populous and better equipped nation in a conventional rather than a guerrilla war like others have fought against the USA since then. It was bloody because the white southerners were passionately dedicated to their evil cause, just as many of them are passionately dedicated to evil to this very day, as they wear their red MAGA hats, cheer their insane leader, tote their weapons and carry their confederate battle flags. 

So, we might fight again. We might still separate. Or we might simply decay and die because we have been unwilling to bravely and heroically put the Southern and Redneck regions in their place, and realize where they belong. Or perhaps the blue side will win again politically without violence, and then enough people in the red areas will decide that progress is better than misplaced passion, and the few remaining violent rebels if any can be easily dealt with. We'll see.

[Eric the Green]

(07-07-2020, 12:35 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 02:15 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 01:52 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You just wait til we start getting more personal and begin refusing services and all kinds of other stuff that neither you, the government or the liberal media has control over.

That was tried by assorted racists prior to the Civil Rights Movement.  It used to be quite traditional to deny service at restaurants and hotels, to save the back of the bus for minorities.  I didn't think you were that sort of conservative.  If you are providing goods or services to the public, you might find the government and liberal media will pay attention.  A lot of people do frown on that sort of thing.  If you are a church or private club, that is officially another matter, but you will feel the pressure.

You know there is so much more human interaction between people of different races in workplaces and on the internet and so forth these days that it's getting hard tell the difference between natural hatred or natural dislikes that occur between different people and polar opposites and that which occurs between the racist people these days. So, you can roll with racism and milk racism for whatever it's still worth on the liberal side these days. Yes. Liberal pressure still seems pretty high right now as blacks are now killing each other like crazy and blue cities and blue states are teetering on brink of financial disaster as Black Lives Matter ignores and continues blaming police for the shitty lives of of its people. Hmmm...Whatever, we'll see what America really thinks come November.

We know that the police can't be blamed for the black crime waves in the cities, and know that we need qualified police from their own community to try and tamp them down. Just because the blacks commit more crime these days, does not excuse the police from breaking the law and becoming criminals themselves in the way they mistreat and murder innocent black people. Blacks, as Jessie Jackson encouraged them to do, need to uplift themselves beyond crime and find their way beyond it. Whites can't be blamed entirely for their crimes. There's really no excuse for crime, and it does hurt their cities. In previous times, blacks in the ghettos committed less of it. They also had better communities years ago which were less driven apart by urban black removal and drug wars too. There's no basis for connecting any current crime waves to the black lives matter movement. Such waves have been an ongoing problem for decades.

Allowing people of any race to live in poverty amidst riches, and in such uneducated conditions amidst such talent, is not right. If a nation cannot help the many who are poor, it can't save the few who are rich. We are interdependent on each other. Many blacks have shown themselves to be as brilliant and as capable as whites in any field. So there's no basis for seeing them as essentially inferior, and thus to say as Robert E Lee did that they are necessarily liable to make everything worse. But 400 years of oppression does have its effects on a people. It is difficult for all members of a people to rise above such degradation and such physical, financial and mental/emotional abuse in just a few decades. So whites are not blameless either.

[Classic-Xer]

(07-06-2020, 07:17 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 07:06 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You fucked up and called a fellow city slicker a redneck just like you've fucked up and called a fellow American who is color blind a racist just like you've fucked up and called an American patriot a Fascist. Like I said, if you would squawk less, preach less, dictate less and pay better attention and  learn for a change you'd figure out the difference between you and an American these days. You keep asking me what you should already know as an American. So, where does that leave you and the so called liberals these days.

Just to be clear, were you squawking, preaching or dictating just then?

Nope. You're wrong again. I was showing Eric all the mistakes he's made with Americans so far and that's just some of his more recent mistakes.

[Eric the Green]

(07-06-2020, 10:53 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 03:39 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 03:07 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-06-2020, 02:44 AM)taramarie Wrote: Unsure what you mean regarding pushing hobbies or weird interests.

Think on our regulars.  Which people are likely to insist in telling you about things like dogs, astrology, violence or xenophobia?  Their obsessions with their various areas of interest are often a bit odd, and not at all what are in your experience?  I know everyone tends to have an odd area of interest, but at times they color your conversation, makes it impossible to communicate with them if that requires you to shift their opinion in their odd area of interest.

Astrology is Eric's profession as far as i know so of course he will discuss it and inject it into his "findings" regarding the political topics that you guys discuss. I do not see that much discussion about dogs, but pbrower mentioned his reason for bringing up dogs so he can answer that better than i can as i only mentioned dogs in south africa as that was brought up and i have experience in south africa. As for violence and xenophobia....this is the 4T and there is violence partly because of xenophobia as well as other various outrages going on in your country which are splitting the population into pieces. Also i believe it could be a feeling of needs not being met/heard or understood and the only way to get those needs met is a feeling of having to take action even if it means violence at times. I feel this going on within both sides politically in your country going by what people say and how it is said. It is a 4T so obviously that will happen. I just hope it does not end up as another civil war. More than likely not. I hope so anyway. "Odd areas of interest" may be a call out for the need to bring attention to a need as well as a simple interest. Perhaps listen to the message behind those interests?

Astrology is Eric's hobby. Political activism is Eric's profession.

I doubt I can have a "profession" for which I don't get paid.