Y'all are right about reparations. They're a stupid, terrible idea. It will mean one endless hand out for more free stuff and the other perpetually clutching a stick so they can continue beating white people over the head about racism.
If black folks want to talk about reparations, I'd love to have that conversation with them. Just not the one they think. I want to talk about 12,000 years of reparations for the horrible way women have been treated, oppressed, murdered, assaulted, and tortured by males (including 'people with penises', or the people formerly known as transvestites). And I promise you, THAT Day of Reckoning, based on 12 millennia rather than 400 years, will take a LOT longer and the penised will have to dig really deeply into their pockets to satisfy our chronic grievance.
(Yes, I'm kidding, but this is my answer to anyone who's never been enslaved from someone who has never enslaved.)
“They better not say racism is over just because they gave us the money.”
When you settle a lawsuit, the defendant gives the plaintiff money, and the plaintiff gives the defendant 3 things: a stipulation of dismissal of the suit, a general release, and a non-disclosure agreement.
If the Black plaintiffs in Black people vs. USA, don't want to give those 3 things, there is no possibility of giving them money as reparations. They just are not ready to settle.
Oh, you are so right.. comparing centuries of slavery and Jim Crow to some tort claims or dog bite suit totally works, cuz the two circumstances are so similar.
Nah, dude. In this "lawsuit" you're not going to be doing much talking; it'll about your crime, and the hearings will be to figure out the proper judgment against you.
Who exactly are "we"? Do you want a check mailed to all the immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean? Do you want checks mailed to everyone with a drop of the dreaded black blood, no matter how little? Will that include Hispanics and Arabs as well, since nearly all of them have varying degrees of African ancestry?
Israel is north Africa. Tunisia is in North Africa. I could name every African country. So, do all the people from Africa who come to America entitled to a reparation? Do you only need to be black? Can my Dominican Husband move to NY and receive his reparations because he is black? What about my 2 biracial children? Do they only get half the $?
A monetary payment is a reduction of moral and ethical issues to cash. No one can do that and retain their rage. Emotion cannot equal money. When you go to the world of money from the world of rage you are transforming the frame of reference. If you are unwilling to accept that transformation, you are unwilling to engage in the process.
BTW: My crime? Sorry. I have done no wrong. I am not taking that rap. I could explain my family history but that would be pointless.
As a white Baby Boomer male, I'm probably the least qualified person to tell you what's in the minds of people of color, and I'm certainly no victim. I've received certain advantages based on my birth to two married parents, good education, service to my country, and a lifetime of good jobs and hard work. But, it really bothers me when I see people of any color derided as "privileged" or "undeserving" and asked to shut up because of a series of human qualities that they had no control over. Just as people can't control the color of their skin, I didn't choose my parents nor any of these other factors. We all have inherent advantages and disadvantages -- some physical, some intellectual, etc -- and your success or failure in this life has a lot more to do with what you do with those qualities than whether you were a victim of racism or discrimination. I truly believe that. I've stood alongside men and women of every color in the military, and they proved consistently that what I just said is true. They showed me how much more we can accomplish when we look past our differences and focus on what others bring to the table. Woke culture is about elevating hierarchies of victimhood and creating new forms of racial discrimination -- and thus projecting political power -- than it is about righting wrongs. You don't heal past discrimination by creating new forms of discrimination. It's simply not possible to achieve equality of outcomes for some people without holding back other people artificially. What we need to do as a nation is provide equality of opportunity.
The history of this country is what it is.. we owe black Americans a colossal debt.. we will never repay it, because we weren't the direct beneficiaries of their labor, because we assume they'll never be able to make us pay it, and because we don't feel badly about slavery or Jim Crow. Those are things that happened to someone else; don't try to make us feel bad-- that's the height of rudeness.
DiSantis is not a credible heir. He is but an infant compared to the resolve, incredible talent, perhaps genius intellect, and resiliency shown by President Trump. Those who are buying this nonsense show how woefully ignorant they are of so much that has gone on and continues to go on. When the full truth comes out, most will be totally amazed and will agree that DiSantis is a nothingburger compared to DJT.
And is it that genius intellect that keeps him groveling back to Maggie Haberman, desperate for approval from the Gray Lady and its Manhattan readers to give one embarrassing interview after another?
I think it would be worse than what they describe.
Would upper middle class and solid middle class ppl benefit? Probably. They would be careful and would invest it.
But....all those poor black ppl who all of a sudden have $5 million? What do you think they are going to do with it? How long would it last them? What education, training or experience do they have that would enable them to manage that money to last? What happens when its gone and they are right back where they started?
You assume I give a shit what someone's response would be. I really do not.
That's the thing about being GenX, we really just do not care what people think and we just have no fucks left to give.
I am neither afraid to offend or to be offended.
Someone gets angry at something I said...so what? What are they gonna do about it? Yell? Call me names? As long as that is all, big deal. Goes beyond that to physical threats then I shoot them if they try to act on them. Pretty simple.
Well, it shouldn't get that far, right? cuz you wouldn't ask those questions to someone standing in front of you. You prefer the internet, no? where you can dish out the disrespect, and the other guy can't get you..
Btw, when you say you'd go right to the gun 🔫 you sound like a pussy.
Silly boy, I am one of those people that has no problem making other people uncomfortable at almost any time.
I'm that guy you go out with and wonder what the hell he might say that will make you cringe.
See, I have a few things going for me on that score.
1. I know that so long as I never let someone goad me into swinging first, there is nothing they can do that matters. They can yell and call names all they like, but I can just keep making them angrier and angrier by ignoring them. If they swing at me, then one of two things will happen. Either they will get arrested for assault OR I WILL shoot them. All I need is for them to put me in a position where I can justify that as self defense. Being perfectly honest, there have been times where I have intentionally kept making them angrier and angrier just for fun but I always make sure I do it politely so that the nobody could claim to the cops that I incited it with name calling etc. It is kinda fun to watch unpleasant, stupid people lose their minds and be helpless to do anything about it. So long as I remain calm and polite they are literally powerless without resorting to violence. Once that happens, I win anyway you look at it.
2. Being popular and liked is a millenial thing. GenX just does not care. So long as my friends, family are good, who cares? I've been working for 35 yrs, I've got the connections and relationships that matter and most of them would agree with my opinions even when they prefer not to express them and so there is no threat to my business or my income. Which, BTW, at this point in my life I could probably stop working and still be ok.
So yeah.....I feel completely free to say what I want, when I want, how I want and there is nothing that anybody can do that can really impact me.
Thing is......I know when, I know how, and I know to whom I can say things. I am a master at the backhanded compliment. I do sarcasm better than most people I know. I know that most people lose their shit when you laugh at them or demean the importance of what they are saying. Nothing sets off a pretentious Millenial preaching about social justice faster then to just laugh at them and walk off, to dismiss the importance of what they are saying. See, GenX learned the power of ignoring people, of making them think they are unimportant or just too stupid to merit attention. Its why SJWs hate comedy that attacks their views. Millenials and GenZ have never learned that and they have no idea how to respond to it. They also think that being offended is important whereas GenX practically seeks out things that offend them as entertainment. One reason we find Millenials to be weak. We honestly just do not care if you try to offend us and we enjoy watching your reaction when we offend you. Its fun.
A silly straw man argument. Nobody has said Musk never did anything good ever. Nor is it a revolution to ask him and others to help pay for shared needs.
You don't have an argument—you have a hard-on to harness state power to confiscate resources from the productive and transfer them, in amounts and the manner that YOU see fit, to the unproductive. Dude, it's been tried over and over again. It results in untold human misery, economic destruction, and the death of civilizations. Not here, not ever.
Don’t be silly. Since the New Deal, the United States has used state power or resources through the political system to create a decent safety net (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and more). It has also extend the civil rights of discriminated minorities, again through the political and legal systems. The federal govt. built the interstate highway system, paid for the Apollo moonshot (which led to many important, scientific developments with huge economic impact, for example, the microchip), and made investments in research that have benefited the entire population (and populations abroad), for example, by developing the vaccine for COVID-19. And we are facing new crises today that only the national government can address and IS, including climate change. The wealthy need to pay their fair share for all of these things. That is not communism. It is not even socialism.
Well, it’s a political process, which means the tax rates vary over time, enormously. The thing to do is to build a consensus of what we need the tax dollars for, I think. (On my list would be healthcare (making Medicaid nationwide) , vocational education, childcare, climate change, job training. Others would take one or more of those items off the list and add something else, reducing the deficit for example, but you have to build a consensus around what’s needed.)
My list to produce the necessary consensus would EXCLUDE "healthcare (making Medicaid nationwide), vocational education, childcare, climate change, job training."
OK, slavery has been gone in this country for over 150 years. If reparations were to be made, the time to make them would be right after the Civil War, because the people who deserved it would get it from the people who did the harm. However, between the North losing about 360,000 men (which could be considered a reparation of sorts), and the South losing around 250,000 men and then being economically devastated, there was little to be had to even give the Emancipated Blacks.
Now we are proposing to give people money who were never slaves and "take" it from people who never had slaves. Never mind that California was not even a slave state to begin with.
For the purpose of "systemic racism" giving people money won't solve that problem if it truly exists. Do they really think giving people money in and of itself will fix any problems that inner city Blacks have to deal with on a permanent basis? If they do, they are sorely mistaken.
And who gets the money? I'm a White guy who has 1% African DNA, do I get 1% of the money? What about Black children of recent African or Caribbean immigrants, whose ancestors were never slaves? If someone looks White but "identifies" as Black, do they get a cut?
Sure, let's defund the police, spend school lessons learning about the evils of White racism and multiple genders while forgetting about science and math, and just give people lots of money without any direction forward. What could possibly go wrong?
Hey-- they didn't pay reparations after the war ended; hence, our problem. Also, regarding your 300k men died in the war so that's your reparation..? Uhuh, nice try, but the war and its costs is entirely the white people's burden. White people created slavery and profited from it, so white people were obliged to end slavery, too. If it required a war? Tough titty, they shouldn't have enslaved the African people. If the war cost money..? The whites would pay it.
"White people created slavery and profited from it"
Slavery has existed since pre-history. There were no Europeans when slavery was first practiced. No Americans, either. Chances are, the first tribe of cave men enslaved other early hominids.
I understand what you're trying to say, in that Americans of European descent were the primary slaveholders in the United States and that sub-Saharan Africans were the primary victims of chattel slavery. The problem I see is two-fold. You're unaware, or ignoring, that slavery as a state-sanctioned institution goes back as far as we have records and that untangling who owes who what would be a Sisyphean task. Second, you're ignoring the fact that if you want to assign responsibility for redress to people who have benefited from the exploitation of others, you yourself need to be prepared to pay reparations to everyone in the developing world, since your entire way of life is built on the exploitation of people in poor countries. From the pants you're wearing (made by poor workers in Vietnam) to the phone you're carrying (children in China), to the coffee you had this morning (oppressed farmers in South America) to the car you drive (oil from the war-torn Middle East or batteries made from toxic heavy metals mined in unsafe conditions in Africa), everything about your life is exploitative. That's the exploitation that you're complicit in today, that's not even talking about how the system you live in was advanced to the current point by even more exploitation.
If you want to apportion blame for inequalities, remember that being logically consistent puts you and I, as Americans, together for far more blame than our skin color would separate us.
I am someone who leans right/libertarian , but I don't know why we eliminate most of this reparations talk/discussion by giving the worst school systems locations (based on results) school vouchers as a type of reparations. The right would get behind it due to it being a) the right thing to do , b) it would prove to the American people through results that school choice would have just as good results with less cost per student and c) it would break the ideological left's hold on public education and force teacher's unions to worry about creating proper merit incentives. This would help those MOST left behind instead of those in middle/upper class that use race as a cudgel. Most reparations talk doesn't help the generationally poor.
Be careful what you wish for. REAL school choice would not necessarily prioritize STEM and humanities as many people assume. Some groups, less able to handle the cognitive load of such pursuits and with considerable gifts and talents in other areas , may well have ideas of their own about what their freely chosen school should teach. Freedom is a dangerous thing, especially when given under the assumption it will be used wisely and in the manner envisioned by its giver(s).
Are there other arguments against school choice that you know of? Why are public school teachers so against charter schools? Is it just about them and their unions losing power? It appears to me that the teachers who object to school choice are very dedicated. Is this because school choice would result in further decline in public education?
If the war on drugs is reason for reparations, what do we do with the non-blacks who have been caught up in it? Or are they somehow deserving of their punishment in a way that blacks arrested are not? And John is right - SF could dole out any figure today, and the same chorus would still be singing the same tune tomorrow. Nothing would ever be enough, and that's finally starting to dawn on people, the ones who finally noticed that 2023 is not 1923 or even 1973. Racializing society was a disaster the first time, yet there are people who think that somehow, the result will be different this time. No, it won't.
The activist crowd never worries about the backlash that Glenn mentions because they never consider it. Look at how the idiocy of "anti-racism" has been ushered in, look at how many organizations are falling all over themselves to give the appearance of wanting more black people, and worst of all, look at the steady elimination of things like entrance exams in a back-handed, condescending attempt at recruiting minorities. It's just amazing that the same people who call these tests biased ignore the years preceding the tests, the years in which minority children, like all others, should be learning the skills that would allow them to compete for admission or employment or whatever else. White liberals love nothing more than infantilized blacks whom they can treat like mascots.
Haha, dude.. you don't know any liberals, do you.. 🙄 right? Cuz you spend all your time hanging out w white right wing virgins on your computers, where you email each other right wing memes and talk shit about every group in society but yours..
What is crazy is that Black people are told they shouldn't have to be concerned about showing up on time, being accurate and speaking English correctly. To do these things is to "act White." Blacks who follow this advice don't have racism to blame for underperforming their wealth building potential. They can, however, blame malpractice on the part of so-called Black leaders who spread lies and nonsense.
I am a white person and I am not in favor of paying reparations to any ethnic or other identity group. Something I would like to discuss, however, is how we as a country could invest in strategies that have potential to solve problems some groups of people are facing. I am not opposed to investing some of my own resources if there can be a process of Americans working together to define what practical things can be done to elevate the socioeconomic status of black Americans. From my perspective there have been a number of programs intended to improve education, nutrition and so on for black children, but I have not seen a good review of the effectiveness or lack thereof of these programs. Did some of them fall victim to the common governmental reactivity to the public opinion crisis of the moment, which gets dropped after a few years with not much learned about what did or did not work? I don't think that handing people checks is the right thing to do, and I certainly would resent it considering that taxes in Democratic states and cities are already too high. I do think we should try to do something else; it can't be impossible to teach a child to read.
Your best bet would be to drop the opinions and wait until the court has decided what you'll be doing as a result of the case. Probably white people will be paying a lot, and you'll have to just accept the judgment and start paying.
Haha, no, none of that is going to happen. You'll come out of any case against you scot free-- cuz there'll never be a case against you. People are just not going to like you, cuz you don't think you're responsible for anything; big surprise there
It's not only possible to teach children to read, the methods required are straightforward, well-known, and work for almost all learners. Unfortunately, those methods are NOT the ones being used in American schools and haven't been for going on 50 years now. See Emily Hanford's podcast series "Sold a Story" produced by American Public Media. She was recently interviewed by Bari Weiss in her Honestly podcast "Why 65% of Fourth Graders Can't Really Read." Both podcasts are well worth the time spent.
Thank you for the references! I did listen to Bari's podcast with interest. John McWhorter has been making the point for some time that black kids don't benefit from the current methods for teaching reading. It was interesting to find out that most kids don't! One of the main causes of so many social problems is that people are so in love with their ideologies and with being right, that they become completely insensitive to the humans they are supposedly trying to help.
Yes, one tidbit I found VERY interesting was that the whole language method (still around in diluted form in so-called "balanced language instruction") was first developed and shown to be effective with deaf children. This then was carried into instruction for poor readers generally (think many black kids and a few white kids) and thence to all kids. We've been stuck with it ever since. I see the trend as a real-life example of Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" coming to life (thanks to nice white ladies, damn their souls!).
P.S. You're very impressive in working to expand your knowledge, carefully considering what you learn, and demonstrating your willingness to try new approaches. I'm a fan!
Yes, of course, I agree with you. I was just focusing on the black demographic as one group that needs some kind of (as yet undefined) support to achieve more equality with affluent whites, for example. I do think that these groups have had some separate and different historical and cultural experiences that have stalled them in multigenerational poverty, so they may or may not need different solutions. I would love to be able to find out about all of those factors and explore with my fellow citizens what can be done to get closer to equity without discriminating against anyone. It just seems like we can't do that with ANY social problem in this country. We ping-pong between ignoring the problem and ramming ham-fisted, ignorant solutions through the legislatures with little or no debate.
It becomes easy to pin the problem on "Systemic Racism" and hire DIE consultants and the like, but not really tackle the multiple problems that are multifactorial and multigenerational, and probably in no small part due to failed past policies that meant well, but caused harm nonetheless.
As you know, American pop culture gets exported to the UK whether or not everyone wants it. In this case, students and others in the UK have imported this horribly toxic woke ideology that has taken over in the U.S. The culture here has always been racialized, because of slavery being practiced on such a huge scale for so long, followed by an additional century of legalized oppression. You do not have that history in the UK, and looking at it from my perspective on the outside, the woke activists among you have been hard pressed to create a category of oppressed victims to idealize. It appears that Muslims have been adopted in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. I am really sorry that the social pathologies in the U.S. always infect other countries and cultures.
Poverty is colorblind. However it is true that poverty is much more prevalent in the Black and Hispanic communities. Racialization of poverty is prevalent here because it fits a "narrative" but the strange thing is, poverty of Blacks is mostly in the largely Democrat administrated cities, while poverty of Whites is seen more in rural Conservative areas like Appalachia. So, no it's probably not just a "race" thing.
Oh, I agree with you. But politicians, media and academia here need oppressed groups-Minorities, ethnicities, gender identities, etc.
The old trope about bourgeoisie vs proletariat doesn't fly here because of the significantly successful middle class, so race and gender are substituted for class.
I say let's help move people from the lower classes to the middle. Not everyone needs to be a Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
Y'all are right about reparations. They're a stupid, terrible idea. It will mean one endless hand out for more free stuff and the other perpetually clutching a stick so they can continue beating white people over the head about racism.
If black folks want to talk about reparations, I'd love to have that conversation with them. Just not the one they think. I want to talk about 12,000 years of reparations for the horrible way women have been treated, oppressed, murdered, assaulted, and tortured by males (including 'people with penises', or the people formerly known as transvestites). And I promise you, THAT Day of Reckoning, based on 12 millennia rather than 400 years, will take a LOT longer and the penised will have to dig really deeply into their pockets to satisfy our chronic grievance.
(Yes, I'm kidding, but this is my answer to anyone who's never been enslaved from someone who has never enslaved.)
My white daughter-in-law with 2 birracial kids would greatly benefit. 😂🤣😅😆😁😄
Well the kids only get half the money lol!
No, but I've heard excerpts of it
“They better not say racism is over just because they gave us the money.”
When you settle a lawsuit, the defendant gives the plaintiff money, and the plaintiff gives the defendant 3 things: a stipulation of dismissal of the suit, a general release, and a non-disclosure agreement.
If the Black plaintiffs in Black people vs. USA, don't want to give those 3 things, there is no possibility of giving them money as reparations. They just are not ready to settle.
Oh, you are so right.. comparing centuries of slavery and Jim Crow to some tort claims or dog bite suit totally works, cuz the two circumstances are so similar.
Nah, dude. In this "lawsuit" you're not going to be doing much talking; it'll about your crime, and the hearings will be to figure out the proper judgment against you.
Who exactly are "we"? Do you want a check mailed to all the immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean? Do you want checks mailed to everyone with a drop of the dreaded black blood, no matter how little? Will that include Hispanics and Arabs as well, since nearly all of them have varying degrees of African ancestry?
Israel is north Africa. Tunisia is in North Africa. I could name every African country. So, do all the people from Africa who come to America entitled to a reparation? Do you only need to be black? Can my Dominican Husband move to NY and receive his reparations because he is black? What about my 2 biracial children? Do they only get half the $?
Like I said. Not ready to settle.
A monetary payment is a reduction of moral and ethical issues to cash. No one can do that and retain their rage. Emotion cannot equal money. When you go to the world of money from the world of rage you are transforming the frame of reference. If you are unwilling to accept that transformation, you are unwilling to engage in the process.
BTW: My crime? Sorry. I have done no wrong. I am not taking that rap. I could explain my family history but that would be pointless.
Having resentment over some decided wrong is not fixed by money.
There has to be forgiveness, there needs to be acceptance of the present not past, in order for growth.
As a white Baby Boomer male, I'm probably the least qualified person to tell you what's in the minds of people of color, and I'm certainly no victim. I've received certain advantages based on my birth to two married parents, good education, service to my country, and a lifetime of good jobs and hard work. But, it really bothers me when I see people of any color derided as "privileged" or "undeserving" and asked to shut up because of a series of human qualities that they had no control over. Just as people can't control the color of their skin, I didn't choose my parents nor any of these other factors. We all have inherent advantages and disadvantages -- some physical, some intellectual, etc -- and your success or failure in this life has a lot more to do with what you do with those qualities than whether you were a victim of racism or discrimination. I truly believe that. I've stood alongside men and women of every color in the military, and they proved consistently that what I just said is true. They showed me how much more we can accomplish when we look past our differences and focus on what others bring to the table. Woke culture is about elevating hierarchies of victimhood and creating new forms of racial discrimination -- and thus projecting political power -- than it is about righting wrongs. You don't heal past discrimination by creating new forms of discrimination. It's simply not possible to achieve equality of outcomes for some people without holding back other people artificially. What we need to do as a nation is provide equality of opportunity.
The history of this country is what it is.. we owe black Americans a colossal debt.. we will never repay it, because we weren't the direct beneficiaries of their labor, because we assume they'll never be able to make us pay it, and because we don't feel badly about slavery or Jim Crow. Those are things that happened to someone else; don't try to make us feel bad-- that's the height of rudeness.
Don't lump me in with your junk stereotypes.
"We", "Us", "Our"
Leftist cant and sleight-of-mouth. Never stops.
DiSantis is not a credible heir. He is but an infant compared to the resolve, incredible talent, perhaps genius intellect, and resiliency shown by President Trump. Those who are buying this nonsense show how woefully ignorant they are of so much that has gone on and continues to go on. When the full truth comes out, most will be totally amazed and will agree that DiSantis is a nothingburger compared to DJT.
Lady, without his father's money, he'd be working in some gas station and on the sex offenders list.
You might could try to spell the man's name correctly. Or do you wish to see the reappearance of "Drumpf" and "DJFT"...?
And is it that genius intellect that keeps him groveling back to Maggie Haberman, desperate for approval from the Gray Lady and its Manhattan readers to give one embarrassing interview after another?
Friend, I don't wish to argue. Let's agree to disagree about this.
Who is Cara C.?
Thanks for asking that, I am wondering the same thing--Who is Cara C.?
Cara C. is a reader who asked a question that Glenn and John are responding to in this clip. The question itself is included in the full conversation.
I think it would be worse than what they describe.
Would upper middle class and solid middle class ppl benefit? Probably. They would be careful and would invest it.
But....all those poor black ppl who all of a sudden have $5 million? What do you think they are going to do with it? How long would it last them? What education, training or experience do they have that would enable them to manage that money to last? What happens when its gone and they are right back where they started?
Schmuck-- if you speak that way to a black person, you're going to get an angry response.
Ha....... 😁😁 I'm jk; I know you only speak that way cuz you're on the internet and you feel safe.
No, seriously . What you wrote is bad, and you're a silly little man. Just a nutless little twit w a keyboard and something to prove 🙄
You assume I give a shit what someone's response would be. I really do not.
That's the thing about being GenX, we really just do not care what people think and we just have no fucks left to give.
I am neither afraid to offend or to be offended.
Someone gets angry at something I said...so what? What are they gonna do about it? Yell? Call me names? As long as that is all, big deal. Goes beyond that to physical threats then I shoot them if they try to act on them. Pretty simple.
Well, it shouldn't get that far, right? cuz you wouldn't ask those questions to someone standing in front of you. You prefer the internet, no? where you can dish out the disrespect, and the other guy can't get you..
Btw, when you say you'd go right to the gun 🔫 you sound like a pussy.
Lie a little next time; say you'd fight the guy.
Silly boy, I am one of those people that has no problem making other people uncomfortable at almost any time.
I'm that guy you go out with and wonder what the hell he might say that will make you cringe.
See, I have a few things going for me on that score.
1. I know that so long as I never let someone goad me into swinging first, there is nothing they can do that matters. They can yell and call names all they like, but I can just keep making them angrier and angrier by ignoring them. If they swing at me, then one of two things will happen. Either they will get arrested for assault OR I WILL shoot them. All I need is for them to put me in a position where I can justify that as self defense. Being perfectly honest, there have been times where I have intentionally kept making them angrier and angrier just for fun but I always make sure I do it politely so that the nobody could claim to the cops that I incited it with name calling etc. It is kinda fun to watch unpleasant, stupid people lose their minds and be helpless to do anything about it. So long as I remain calm and polite they are literally powerless without resorting to violence. Once that happens, I win anyway you look at it.
2. Being popular and liked is a millenial thing. GenX just does not care. So long as my friends, family are good, who cares? I've been working for 35 yrs, I've got the connections and relationships that matter and most of them would agree with my opinions even when they prefer not to express them and so there is no threat to my business or my income. Which, BTW, at this point in my life I could probably stop working and still be ok.
So yeah.....I feel completely free to say what I want, when I want, how I want and there is nothing that anybody can do that can really impact me.
Thing is......I know when, I know how, and I know to whom I can say things. I am a master at the backhanded compliment. I do sarcasm better than most people I know. I know that most people lose their shit when you laugh at them or demean the importance of what they are saying. Nothing sets off a pretentious Millenial preaching about social justice faster then to just laugh at them and walk off, to dismiss the importance of what they are saying. See, GenX learned the power of ignoring people, of making them think they are unimportant or just too stupid to merit attention. Its why SJWs hate comedy that attacks their views. Millenials and GenZ have never learned that and they have no idea how to respond to it. They also think that being offended is important whereas GenX practically seeks out things that offend them as entertainment. One reason we find Millenials to be weak. We honestly just do not care if you try to offend us and we enjoy watching your reaction when we offend you. Its fun.
Give a man a fish vs Teach a man to fish.
A silly straw man argument. Nobody has said Musk never did anything good ever. Nor is it a revolution to ask him and others to help pay for shared needs.
"Ask"? "Help"? Then you'll accept 'No' as an answer...
The lingo of the left. You guys never change. Lie, obfuscate, relabel.
Whatever you do, don’t deal with the issue directly. Better to put down the arguers with some kind of stereotyping.
You don't have an argument—you have a hard-on to harness state power to confiscate resources from the productive and transfer them, in amounts and the manner that YOU see fit, to the unproductive. Dude, it's been tried over and over again. It results in untold human misery, economic destruction, and the death of civilizations. Not here, not ever.
Don’t be silly. Since the New Deal, the United States has used state power or resources through the political system to create a decent safety net (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and more). It has also extend the civil rights of discriminated minorities, again through the political and legal systems. The federal govt. built the interstate highway system, paid for the Apollo moonshot (which led to many important, scientific developments with huge economic impact, for example, the microchip), and made investments in research that have benefited the entire population (and populations abroad), for example, by developing the vaccine for COVID-19. And we are facing new crises today that only the national government can address and IS, including climate change. The wealthy need to pay their fair share for all of these things. That is not communism. It is not even socialism.
But there is no objective, universally agreed upon notion of what that "fair share" is. It's a vague and contested concept.
Christ sake, Handsome, "fair share " is a principle.. percentages and amounts will be sorted out when the law is written
Exactly what I said. It’s a political process.
Agree with the last—it's totalitarianism. You may have heard of it.
Hey-- you were going to quot saying words like "totalitarianism," remember? Cuz you don't understand them.
Any luck on the Harlem renaissance Mr Lowry ?
Well, it’s a political process, which means the tax rates vary over time, enormously. The thing to do is to build a consensus of what we need the tax dollars for, I think. (On my list would be healthcare (making Medicaid nationwide) , vocational education, childcare, climate change, job training. Others would take one or more of those items off the list and add something else, reducing the deficit for example, but you have to build a consensus around what’s needed.)
the only thing I want to pay tax dollars for are the roads I drive on and a military whose sole purpose is the defense of this nation.
My list to produce the necessary consensus would EXCLUDE "healthcare (making Medicaid nationwide), vocational education, childcare, climate change, job training."
Therein, I believe, lies the problem.
Fine. Like I said, it’s a political process about which people will disagree. That’s why we have a political process.
Reparations.
OK, slavery has been gone in this country for over 150 years. If reparations were to be made, the time to make them would be right after the Civil War, because the people who deserved it would get it from the people who did the harm. However, between the North losing about 360,000 men (which could be considered a reparation of sorts), and the South losing around 250,000 men and then being economically devastated, there was little to be had to even give the Emancipated Blacks.
Now we are proposing to give people money who were never slaves and "take" it from people who never had slaves. Never mind that California was not even a slave state to begin with.
For the purpose of "systemic racism" giving people money won't solve that problem if it truly exists. Do they really think giving people money in and of itself will fix any problems that inner city Blacks have to deal with on a permanent basis? If they do, they are sorely mistaken.
And who gets the money? I'm a White guy who has 1% African DNA, do I get 1% of the money? What about Black children of recent African or Caribbean immigrants, whose ancestors were never slaves? If someone looks White but "identifies" as Black, do they get a cut?
Sure, let's defund the police, spend school lessons learning about the evils of White racism and multiple genders while forgetting about science and math, and just give people lots of money without any direction forward. What could possibly go wrong?
Hey-- they didn't pay reparations after the war ended; hence, our problem. Also, regarding your 300k men died in the war so that's your reparation..? Uhuh, nice try, but the war and its costs is entirely the white people's burden. White people created slavery and profited from it, so white people were obliged to end slavery, too. If it required a war? Tough titty, they shouldn't have enslaved the African people. If the war cost money..? The whites would pay it.
Read a book about history
Black tribes in Africa sold black ppl to other ppl. First. Funny how they couldn't reconcile with each other.
"White people created slavery and profited from it"
Slavery has existed since pre-history. There were no Europeans when slavery was first practiced. No Americans, either. Chances are, the first tribe of cave men enslaved other early hominids.
I understand what you're trying to say, in that Americans of European descent were the primary slaveholders in the United States and that sub-Saharan Africans were the primary victims of chattel slavery. The problem I see is two-fold. You're unaware, or ignoring, that slavery as a state-sanctioned institution goes back as far as we have records and that untangling who owes who what would be a Sisyphean task. Second, you're ignoring the fact that if you want to assign responsibility for redress to people who have benefited from the exploitation of others, you yourself need to be prepared to pay reparations to everyone in the developing world, since your entire way of life is built on the exploitation of people in poor countries. From the pants you're wearing (made by poor workers in Vietnam) to the phone you're carrying (children in China), to the coffee you had this morning (oppressed farmers in South America) to the car you drive (oil from the war-torn Middle East or batteries made from toxic heavy metals mined in unsafe conditions in Africa), everything about your life is exploitative. That's the exploitation that you're complicit in today, that's not even talking about how the system you live in was advanced to the current point by even more exploitation.
If you want to apportion blame for inequalities, remember that being logically consistent puts you and I, as Americans, together for far more blame than our skin color would separate us.
I am someone who leans right/libertarian , but I don't know why we eliminate most of this reparations talk/discussion by giving the worst school systems locations (based on results) school vouchers as a type of reparations. The right would get behind it due to it being a) the right thing to do , b) it would prove to the American people through results that school choice would have just as good results with less cost per student and c) it would break the ideological left's hold on public education and force teacher's unions to worry about creating proper merit incentives. This would help those MOST left behind instead of those in middle/upper class that use race as a cudgel. Most reparations talk doesn't help the generationally poor.
Be careful what you wish for. REAL school choice would not necessarily prioritize STEM and humanities as many people assume. Some groups, less able to handle the cognitive load of such pursuits and with considerable gifts and talents in other areas , may well have ideas of their own about what their freely chosen school should teach. Freedom is a dangerous thing, especially when given under the assumption it will be used wisely and in the manner envisioned by its giver(s).
Are there other arguments against school choice that you know of? Why are public school teachers so against charter schools? Is it just about them and their unions losing power? It appears to me that the teachers who object to school choice are very dedicated. Is this because school choice would result in further decline in public education?
There's a good article in Manhattan Institute's City Journal by Robert Bellafiore (a charter school advocate) detailing the entrenched opposition to alternatives to the public school (near) monopoly. See: https://www.city-journal.org/hochul-pokes-the-anti-charter-school-beehive
If the war on drugs is reason for reparations, what do we do with the non-blacks who have been caught up in it? Or are they somehow deserving of their punishment in a way that blacks arrested are not? And John is right - SF could dole out any figure today, and the same chorus would still be singing the same tune tomorrow. Nothing would ever be enough, and that's finally starting to dawn on people, the ones who finally noticed that 2023 is not 1923 or even 1973. Racializing society was a disaster the first time, yet there are people who think that somehow, the result will be different this time. No, it won't.
The activist crowd never worries about the backlash that Glenn mentions because they never consider it. Look at how the idiocy of "anti-racism" has been ushered in, look at how many organizations are falling all over themselves to give the appearance of wanting more black people, and worst of all, look at the steady elimination of things like entrance exams in a back-handed, condescending attempt at recruiting minorities. It's just amazing that the same people who call these tests biased ignore the years preceding the tests, the years in which minority children, like all others, should be learning the skills that would allow them to compete for admission or employment or whatever else. White liberals love nothing more than infantilized blacks whom they can treat like mascots.
Haha, dude.. you don't know any liberals, do you.. 🙄 right? Cuz you spend all your time hanging out w white right wing virgins on your computers, where you email each other right wing memes and talk shit about every group in society but yours..
What is crazy is that Black people are told they shouldn't have to be concerned about showing up on time, being accurate and speaking English correctly. To do these things is to "act White." Blacks who follow this advice don't have racism to blame for underperforming their wealth building potential. They can, however, blame malpractice on the part of so-called Black leaders who spread lies and nonsense.
Hey, do you know any black people?
No, they don't. They all have a theoretical Negro in their minds that is just like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH0G-PKpAQQ
Hey, have you read an autobiography of Frederick Douglass?
I am a white person and I am not in favor of paying reparations to any ethnic or other identity group. Something I would like to discuss, however, is how we as a country could invest in strategies that have potential to solve problems some groups of people are facing. I am not opposed to investing some of my own resources if there can be a process of Americans working together to define what practical things can be done to elevate the socioeconomic status of black Americans. From my perspective there have been a number of programs intended to improve education, nutrition and so on for black children, but I have not seen a good review of the effectiveness or lack thereof of these programs. Did some of them fall victim to the common governmental reactivity to the public opinion crisis of the moment, which gets dropped after a few years with not much learned about what did or did not work? I don't think that handing people checks is the right thing to do, and I certainly would resent it considering that taxes in Democratic states and cities are already too high. I do think we should try to do something else; it can't be impossible to teach a child to read.
Your best bet would be to drop the opinions and wait until the court has decided what you'll be doing as a result of the case. Probably white people will be paying a lot, and you'll have to just accept the judgment and start paying.
Haha, no, none of that is going to happen. You'll come out of any case against you scot free-- cuz there'll never be a case against you. People are just not going to like you, cuz you don't think you're responsible for anything; big surprise there
It's not only possible to teach children to read, the methods required are straightforward, well-known, and work for almost all learners. Unfortunately, those methods are NOT the ones being used in American schools and haven't been for going on 50 years now. See Emily Hanford's podcast series "Sold a Story" produced by American Public Media. She was recently interviewed by Bari Weiss in her Honestly podcast "Why 65% of Fourth Graders Can't Really Read." Both podcasts are well worth the time spent.
Thank you for the references! I did listen to Bari's podcast with interest. John McWhorter has been making the point for some time that black kids don't benefit from the current methods for teaching reading. It was interesting to find out that most kids don't! One of the main causes of so many social problems is that people are so in love with their ideologies and with being right, that they become completely insensitive to the humans they are supposedly trying to help.
Yes, one tidbit I found VERY interesting was that the whole language method (still around in diluted form in so-called "balanced language instruction") was first developed and shown to be effective with deaf children. This then was carried into instruction for poor readers generally (think many black kids and a few white kids) and thence to all kids. We've been stuck with it ever since. I see the trend as a real-life example of Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" coming to life (thanks to nice white ladies, damn their souls!).
P.S. You're very impressive in working to expand your knowledge, carefully considering what you learn, and demonstrating your willingness to try new approaches. I'm a fan!
Thank you!
Yes, of course, I agree with you. I was just focusing on the black demographic as one group that needs some kind of (as yet undefined) support to achieve more equality with affluent whites, for example. I do think that these groups have had some separate and different historical and cultural experiences that have stalled them in multigenerational poverty, so they may or may not need different solutions. I would love to be able to find out about all of those factors and explore with my fellow citizens what can be done to get closer to equity without discriminating against anyone. It just seems like we can't do that with ANY social problem in this country. We ping-pong between ignoring the problem and ramming ham-fisted, ignorant solutions through the legislatures with little or no debate.
It becomes easy to pin the problem on "Systemic Racism" and hire DIE consultants and the like, but not really tackle the multiple problems that are multifactorial and multigenerational, and probably in no small part due to failed past policies that meant well, but caused harm nonetheless.
As you know, American pop culture gets exported to the UK whether or not everyone wants it. In this case, students and others in the UK have imported this horribly toxic woke ideology that has taken over in the U.S. The culture here has always been racialized, because of slavery being practiced on such a huge scale for so long, followed by an additional century of legalized oppression. You do not have that history in the UK, and looking at it from my perspective on the outside, the woke activists among you have been hard pressed to create a category of oppressed victims to idealize. It appears that Muslims have been adopted in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. I am really sorry that the social pathologies in the U.S. always infect other countries and cultures.
Hey, great job blaming every group but the one responsible for what black Americans have lived in the previous four centuries 🙄
Poverty is colorblind. However it is true that poverty is much more prevalent in the Black and Hispanic communities. Racialization of poverty is prevalent here because it fits a "narrative" but the strange thing is, poverty of Blacks is mostly in the largely Democrat administrated cities, while poverty of Whites is seen more in rural Conservative areas like Appalachia. So, no it's probably not just a "race" thing.
Oh, I agree with you. But politicians, media and academia here need oppressed groups-Minorities, ethnicities, gender identities, etc.
The old trope about bourgeoisie vs proletariat doesn't fly here because of the significantly successful middle class, so race and gender are substituted for class.
I say let's help move people from the lower classes to the middle. Not everyone needs to be a Bill Gates or Elon Musk.