The effects of Jim Crow and slavery did not go away by waving a magic wand. They are imbedded and rooted in the very founding of the country, a rot at it's core that will never go away, because we've never actually reckoned with it.
Black people are "allowed" to use the n word (in a general cultural understanding) because, historically, it was a way to take back the word from it's original intent, and repurpose it into something African-Americans had control over. When white people complain about the double-standard a.) why do they want to use it in the first place and b.) they are disingenuously leaving out the historical reasons for that societal norm to make a rather ridiculous point to begin with.
There are things black people in America put up with in their everyday lives that someone born white in this country (myself included) will never even be able to begin to contemplate. The woman who moves away from you on the elevator. The human resources manager who won't call you back for a job interview because of your name. The knowledge that your son is magnitudes more likely to be shot be an officer of the state. These are just the tip of the iceberg.
Cracked.com article urging people to get off their asses and register to vote and vote in 2018. Trump's reign might not even last that long if he's impeached. Since he's refusing to divest his fortune and will having conflicts of interest immediately after being sworn in that's not impossible.
I wouldn't put any hope on impeachment. The likelihood of the Democrats regaining enough seats in both the House and the Senate in 2018 is so remote that we might as well dismiss it as being exactly zero. If you don't like Trump then hone your message and vote him out of office in 2020.
All citizens enjoy the right to speak however they damn well please.
@simples Intellectualism tends to disappear when people being speaking about politics because so many people internalize politics, as if their political beliefs were somehow a part of their identity. Not enough people have learned the art of dissociating one's self from one's political leanings; they still rely on groupthink or group identity--attacking the group is seen as an attack on the person, when it generally isn't.
The other problem with political discussions these days is reliance on confirmation bias. If you are a liberal and you spend all day perusing Mother Jones, Democracy Now!, DailyKos, the Huffington Post, etc. you will begin to think that most people think the way you think. If you are conservative and you spend all day browsing Drudge, Fox News, or Breitbart you will also come to that conclusion. The best way to bring yourself back to the middle is to read dissenting viewpoints on a regular basis.
I actually listen to conservative talk-radio to and from work every single day, and have for years. I'll give them this, they are masters of repetitive message disipline.
Talk of the "liberal" media (which doesn't exist anyway, if there is a bias in the press, it's toward laziness) always leaves out the fact that you can drive from San Francisco to Bangor, from Seattle to Miami, and never ONCE in those car trips would you have a single second where you couldn't tune in a conservative talk station. On the flip-side, you'd be lucky to hit even ONE liberal station. Now, the internet is slowly making traditional radio obsolete, but that day has not yet arrived. And middle-America is absolutely blanketed with conservative propoganda on the radio from dawn til dusk, 365 days a year.
I'm also not sure where this idea came from that anyone posting here is trying to pass themselves off as an "intellectual", but the way that word has essentially become a pejorative in recent years is disturbing in and of itself.
If you are a liberal and you spend all day perusing Mother Jones, Democracy Now!, DailyKos, the Huffington Post, etc. you will begin to think that most people think the way you think. If you are conservative and you spend all day browsing Drudge, Fox News, or Breitbart you will also come to that conclusion. The best way to bring yourself back to the middle is to read dissenting viewpoints on a regular basis.
none of the media you mention is real journalism.
drudge - aggregator huffington post - aggregator, but more importantly content farm fox news - a classic example of infotainment democracy now, daily kos, mother jones - a newsletter on left issues and left-activism breitbart is a bizarre factional internal bulletin comparable in function to the official "magazine" of ISIS
i'm not saying it's all bad reading but reading all of these won't put you in any desirable middle. it will more likely make you ideologically dysphoric and simply distracted
Meanwhile in the UK Theresa May has opted for the a quite bracingly hard Brexit. Her negotiating leverage to get what the country needs is the threat to revise our economic model into a sort of giant tax haven offshore of Europe. Like a sort of floating parasitic turd... I rather agree with an anonymous UK diplomat quoted as saying: "If you are going to sell your soul, make sure you have something to sell."
I was just picking the low-hanging fruit, the names people will recognize. Democracy Now is probably the most level-headed in that group. Neither Amy Goodman nor Juan Gonzalez bother hiding their bias but they try to be Sgt. Joe Friday "just the facts" about things. Sources like The Young Turks, on the other hand, like to get in your face and they don't care if they step on your toes doing so, either.
@jjstraka34 I remember when Liberal Talk Radio tried to get itself going in the late 90s early 00s. They tried really hard but they just couldn't generate the listener base, which is when they settled on making the Internet and social media their primary venues. At the other end of the dial, I remember the first time I ever heard Rush on the air in 1992 and I remember thinking, "what the heck is wrong with this guy?". The only time I have the radio on is while driving and when driving I prefer music, not talk.
Obama pardoned another 300 people today. Say what you want, but no other President has come close to granting this amount of mercy and offering this many second chances. Best of all, it's one of the few thinga Trump can't undo. Presidential pardons are ironclad.
I was just picking the low-hanging fruit, the names people will recognize. Democracy Now is probably the most level-headed in that group. Neither Amy Goodman nor Juan Gonzalez bother hiding their bias but they try to be Sgt. Joe Friday "just the facts" about things. Sources like The Young Turks, on the other hand, like to get in your face and they don't care if they step on your toes doing so, either.
@jjstraka34 I remember when Liberal Talk Radio tried to get itself going in the late 90s early 00s. They tried really hard but they just couldn't generate the listener base, which is when they settled on making the Internet and social media their primary venues. At the other end of the dial, I remember the first time I ever heard Rush on the air in 1992 and I remember thinking, "what the heck is wrong with this guy?". The only time I have the radio on is while driving and when driving I prefer music, not talk.
They did, and it didn't work. For one thing, Air America was run by wholly incompetent con-men according to nearly all the hosts. The other of course being that Mega-Corporations like Clear Channel are willing to take a LOSS to inject right-wing talking points into the bloodstream. You think Rush makes 20+ million a year because of Gold Bond itch cream and Lifelock ads?? He is subsidized, welfare, if you will. His show is given out for free to stations all over the country.
Essential reading on Richard Nixon, and possibly the most scathing and honest obituary ever written.
No reason this should be surprising though. Both Nixon and Trump are almost criminally repulsive human beings, and one can only hope that they both end up suffering the same fate.
Essential reading on Richard Nixon, and possibly the most scathing and honest obituary ever written.
I agree, Nixon was horrible. What's worse is that he had Kissenger in his corner. A very good friend of Hillary's.
A issue Bernie made plenty of hay over in the primary, and rightly so. That said, Henry Kissinger wouldn't have been anywhere near a foreign policy post in a Clinton administration. Even if she had wanted to (doubtful) her left-flank would have torn her to shreds over it.
More news many of us have known for months, were told was a conspiracy theory, and once again, turns out to be totally accurate. And of course, it's only coming out now, on the eve of his elevation to the Presidency, too late to do anything, by design:
Essential reading on Richard Nixon, and possibly the most scathing and honest obituary ever written.
I agree, Nixon was horrible. What's worse is that he had Kissenger in his corner. A very good friend of Hillary's.
A issue Bernie made plenty of hay over in the primary, and rightly so. That said, Henry Kissinger wouldn't have been anywhere near a foreign policy post in a Clinton administration. Even if she had wanted to (doubtful) her left-flank would have torn her to shreds over it.
More news many of us have known for months, were told was a conspiracy theory, and once again, turns out to be totally accurate. And of course, it's only coming out now, on the eve of his elevation to the Presidency, too late to do anything, by design:
I totally understand but you guys have to realize that this is all a game. They want your attention on them. If they are constantly living for free in your head, they own you. You will have less time being with the people you love, volunteering your free time and/or bettering yourself. These tactics have been used for centuries. Time to wake up homies.
So Mexico handed over El Chapo on Obama's last day. Timing it on Obama's last day to give him credit for getting the bad guy maybe and right before Trump takes over I guess they want to force to see if Trump will carry out campaign promise to deport criminal Mexican back to Mexico? I don't know what the game is there.
Essential reading on Richard Nixon, and possibly the most scathing and honest obituary ever written.
I agree, Nixon was horrible. What's worse is that he had Kissenger in his corner. A very good friend of Hillary's.
A issue Bernie made plenty of hay over in the primary, and rightly so. That said, Henry Kissinger wouldn't have been anywhere near a foreign policy post in a Clinton administration. Even if she had wanted to (doubtful) her left-flank would have torn her to shreds over it.
More news many of us have known for months, were told was a conspiracy theory, and once again, turns out to be totally accurate. And of course, it's only coming out now, on the eve of his elevation to the Presidency, too late to do anything, by design:
I totally understand but you guys have to realize that this is all a game. They want your attention on them. If they are constantly living for free in your head, they own you. You will have less time being with the people you love, volunteering your free time and/or bettering yourself. These tactics have been used for centuries. Time to wake up homies.
Donald Trump would agree with this, since he has said that after the festivities today, he is (this is just unreal)....taking the rest of the wknd off. He hasn't even started the job yet. Aren't conservatives supposed to believe in hard work?? I mean, it's not like there might be a couple things he might want to get up to speed on or anything. I truly don't think a good portion of a Americans have any clue what they've actually done here.
So Mexico handed over El Chapo on Obama's last day. Timing it on Obama's last day to give him credit for getting the bad guy maybe and right before Trump takes over I guess they want to force to see if Trump will carry out campaign promise to deport criminal Mexican back to Mexico? I don't know what the game is there.
No Trump won't deport him back. El Chapo was wanted in the states as well, and will be more secured in a U.S. prison than in a Mexican one. Everyone knows that.
When Trump talks about deporting criminal Mexicans, he is talking about petty crime individuals.
Is there a greater slap in the face to the outgoing first African-American President than to have to turn over power to the man whose entire political career was founded by questioning his very citizenship because of his race?? That sums up America in a nutshell. We may, occasionally, do the right thing. But we will always revert back to our default position, which is rot, decay, and corruption.
Meanwhile in the UK Theresa May has opted for the a quite bracingly hard Brexit. Her negotiating leverage to get what the country needs is the threat to revise our economic model into a sort of giant tax haven offshore of Europe. Like a sort of floating parasitic turd... I rather agree with an anonymous UK diplomat quoted as saying: "If you are going to sell your soul, make sure you have something to sell."
To be fair, there was never actually any alternative. Those supposing that the EU would ever agree to a "soft" Brexit where living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Meanwhile in the UK Theresa May has opted for the a quite bracingly hard Brexit. Her negotiating leverage to get what the country needs is the threat to revise our economic model into a sort of giant tax haven offshore of Europe. Like a sort of floating parasitic turd... I rather agree with an anonymous UK diplomat quoted as saying: "If you are going to sell your soul, make sure you have something to sell."
To be fair, there was never actually any alternative. Those supposing that the EU would ever agree to a "soft" Brexit where living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Nor should they. Much like here in the US, many people didn't consider the consequences of their vote, and now they can choke on the results.
Meanwhile in the UK Theresa May has opted for the a quite bracingly hard Brexit. Her negotiating leverage to get what the country needs is the threat to revise our economic model into a sort of giant tax haven offshore of Europe. Like a sort of floating parasitic turd... I rather agree with an anonymous UK diplomat quoted as saying: "If you are going to sell your soul, make sure you have something to sell."
To be fair, there was never actually any alternative. Those supposing that the EU would ever agree to a "soft" Brexit where living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
That's one flank. I think in terms of the negotiations the EU may be regarded as Scylla, while Ukip etc. play the role of Charybdis.
First the UK's internal politics get played out on the international stage, and now the EU's 27 will get to squabble as to what crumbs to pass us. Frankly the UK hand in these negotiations is disastrously weak and a conciliatory attitude may have worked rather better than the current bravado.
"Because the office cannot investigate individuals, the probe will focus on whether the Privy Council Office violated the Official Languages Act in its role of supporting the prime minister."
Given the circumstances this sounds like a waste of resources.
Meanwhile in the UK Theresa May has opted for the a quite bracingly hard Brexit. Her negotiating leverage to get what the country needs is the threat to revise our economic model into a sort of giant tax haven offshore of Europe. Like a sort of floating parasitic turd... I rather agree with an anonymous UK diplomat quoted as saying: "If you are going to sell your soul, make sure you have something to sell."
To be fair, there was never actually any alternative. Those supposing that the EU would ever agree to a "soft" Brexit where living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
That's one flank. I think in terms of the negotiations the EU may be regarded as Scylla, while Ukip etc. play the role of Charybdis.
First the UK's internal politics get played out on the international stage, and now the EU's 27 will get to squabble as to what crumbs to pass us. Frankly the UK hand in these negotiations is disastrously weak and a conciliatory attitude may have worked rather better than the current bravado.
That's not actually true. The UK has the strongest military force in Europe (apart from America, obviously, but they have shown they cannot be relied upon). All they have to do is threaten to withdraw British troops from eastern Europe and Britain can demand any terms they like. Of course no one has the balls to actually do that. They have spent so long playing Monopoly that they have forgotten how to play Risk. Apart from Putin of course.
Meanwhile in the UK Theresa May has opted for the a quite bracingly hard Brexit. Her negotiating leverage to get what the country needs is the threat to revise our economic model into a sort of giant tax haven offshore of Europe. Like a sort of floating parasitic turd... I rather agree with an anonymous UK diplomat quoted as saying: "If you are going to sell your soul, make sure you have something to sell."
To be fair, there was never actually any alternative. Those supposing that the EU would ever agree to a "soft" Brexit where living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Nor should they. Much like here in the US, many people didn't consider the consequences of their vote, and now they can choke on the results.
Just as in the USA, neither option on the ballot paper was remotely palatable.
Comments
Black people are "allowed" to use the n word (in a general cultural understanding) because, historically, it was a way to take back the word from it's original intent, and repurpose it into something African-Americans had control over. When white people complain about the double-standard a.) why do they want to use it in the first place and b.) they are disingenuously leaving out the historical reasons for that societal norm to make a rather ridiculous point to begin with.
There are things black people in America put up with in their everyday lives that someone born white in this country (myself included) will never even be able to begin to contemplate. The woman who moves away from you on the elevator. The human resources manager who won't call you back for a job interview because of your name. The knowledge that your son is magnitudes more likely to be shot be an officer of the state. These are just the tip of the iceberg.
All citizens enjoy the right to speak however they damn well please.
@simples Intellectualism tends to disappear when people being speaking about politics because so many people internalize politics, as if their political beliefs were somehow a part of their identity. Not enough people have learned the art of dissociating one's self from one's political leanings; they still rely on groupthink or group identity--attacking the group is seen as an attack on the person, when it generally isn't.
The other problem with political discussions these days is reliance on confirmation bias. If you are a liberal and you spend all day perusing Mother Jones, Democracy Now!, DailyKos, the Huffington Post, etc. you will begin to think that most people think the way you think. If you are conservative and you spend all day browsing Drudge, Fox News, or Breitbart you will also come to that conclusion. The best way to bring yourself back to the middle is to read dissenting viewpoints on a regular basis.
Talk of the "liberal" media (which doesn't exist anyway, if there is a bias in the press, it's toward laziness) always leaves out the fact that you can drive from San Francisco to Bangor, from Seattle to Miami, and never ONCE in those car trips would you have a single second where you couldn't tune in a conservative talk station. On the flip-side, you'd be lucky to hit even ONE liberal station. Now, the internet is slowly making traditional radio obsolete, but that day has not yet arrived. And middle-America is absolutely blanketed with conservative propoganda on the radio from dawn til dusk, 365 days a year.
I'm also not sure where this idea came from that anyone posting here is trying to pass themselves off as an "intellectual", but the way that word has essentially become a pejorative in recent years is disturbing in and of itself.
drudge - aggregator
huffington post - aggregator, but more importantly content farm
fox news - a classic example of infotainment
democracy now, daily kos, mother jones - a newsletter on left issues and left-activism
breitbart is a bizarre factional internal bulletin comparable in function to the official "magazine" of ISIS
i'm not saying it's all bad reading but reading all of these won't put you in any desirable middle. it will more likely make you ideologically dysphoric and simply distracted
@jjstraka34 I remember when Liberal Talk Radio tried to get itself going in the late 90s early 00s. They tried really hard but they just couldn't generate the listener base, which is when they settled on making the Internet and social media their primary venues. At the other end of the dial, I remember the first time I ever heard Rush on the air in 1992 and I remember thinking, "what the heck is wrong with this guy?". The only time I have the radio on is while driving and when driving I prefer music, not talk.
Essential reading on Richard Nixon, and possibly the most scathing and honest obituary ever written.
No reason this should be surprising though. Both Nixon and Trump are almost criminally repulsive human beings, and one can only hope that they both end up suffering the same fate.
More news many of us have known for months, were told was a conspiracy theory, and once again, turns out to be totally accurate. And of course, it's only coming out now, on the eve of his elevation to the Presidency, too late to do anything, by design:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-russia-associates-investigation.html?_r=2
El Chapo was wanted in the states as well, and will be more secured in a U.S. prison than in a Mexican one. Everyone knows that.
When Trump talks about deporting criminal Mexicans, he is talking about petty crime individuals.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/complaints-filed-over-trudeaus-language-use/ar-AAm1ycm?li=AAacUQk&oc
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/language-complaints-filed-over-trudeaus-french-answers-to-english-questions/article33668928/
First the UK's internal politics get played out on the international stage, and now the EU's 27 will get to squabble as to what crumbs to pass us. Frankly the UK hand in these negotiations is disastrously weak and a conciliatory attitude may have worked rather better than the current bravado.
Given the circumstances this sounds like a waste of resources.
Leave: serious economic problems and recession.
Remain: Mass migration leading to infrastructure collapse, escalating social problems, and the further rise of the Far Right.