Wang_Tang posted:

They're retired military, so any sort of response is summarily dismissed, since they've been in the service 20+ years and therefore know what they are talking about.

Bruce Leroy posted:

I think part of the problem with racist EMTs, cops, firefighters, and other emergency personnel is that their jobs specifically revolve around working with people when they are at their absolute worsts (e.g. accused or victim of a crime, sick or injured enough to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance, having just lost their homes to fire, etc.), so they mostly see people who are very angry, upset, irrational, and extremes of pretty much every other negative emotion. For people who live in racially and ethnically homogenous areas, if their only contact with other racial ethnic groups is at work when they see people in dire circumstances, they internalize those encounters and start to view those extreme circumstances as representative of those groups as a whole and during normal daily life. So, the cop who lives in a lily white neighborhood generally only sees black people when they have been accused of crimes, so he starts to view black people as inherently criminal and of ill repute.

I'm not saying this is the only reason people in these kinds of jobs can be bigoted, but it definitely provides a psychological framework to explain why someone could become explicitly and outwardly racist after experiencing one of these jobs for a while.

Bruce Leroy posted:

I think part of the problem with racist EMTs, cops, firefighters, and other emergency personnel is that their jobs specifically revolve around working with people when they are at their absolute worsts (e.g. accused or victim of a crime, sick or injured enough to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance, having just lost their homes to fire, etc.), so they mostly see people who are very angry, upset, irrational, and extremes of pretty much every other negative emotion. For people who live in racially and ethnically homogenous areas, if their only contact with other racial ethnic groups is at work when they see people in dire circumstances, they internalize those encounters and start to view those extreme circumstances as representative of those groups as a whole and during normal daily life. So, the cop who lives in a lily white neighborhood generally only sees black people when they have been accused of crimes, so he starts to view black people as inherently criminal and of ill repute.

I'm not saying this is the only reason people in these kinds of jobs can be bigoted, but it definitely provides a psychological framework to explain why someone could become explicitly and outwardly racist after experiencing one of these jobs for a while.

Wang_Tang posted:

They're retired military, so any sort of response is summarily dismissed, since they've been in the service 20+ years and therefore know what they are talking about.

Zwabu posted:

Having spent a good part of my career in the military myself, it always bugs me that so many people who have spent their entire career in the military, feeding off the government tit (including a socialized, universal health care system!), because they identify with the GOP team and watch Fox News, idolize everything in the private sector and decry everything in the public sector as worthless without considering the implications this has as to their own worth or the significance of their career. Of course such people can always rationalize the military, or their own service, as being a special exception to the rule of worthless government pee pee doo doo.

Armyman25 posted:

(sarcasm)

Trivia posted:

^ And that is why I always hear flight attendants bitch about certain races. I make sure to point out that hating them for what they are is pretty racist, as opposed to hating them for what they did.

Imperialist Dog posted:

quote:

A couple of weeks before the 2004 election, Suskind wrote a long article for the New York Times Magazine that quoted some of my comments to him that were highly critical of Bush and the drift of Republican policy. [...]

The day after the article appeared, my boss called to chew me out, saying that Karl Rove had called him personally to complain about it. I promised to be more circumspect in the future.

Interestingly, a couple of days after the Suskind article appeared, I happened to be at a reception for some right-wing organization that many of my think tank friends were also attending. I assumed I would get a lot of grief for my comments in the Suskind article and was surprised when there was none at all.

Finally, I started asking people about it. Not one person had read it or cared in the slightest what the New York Times had to say about anything. They all viewed it as having as much credibility as Pravda and a similar political philosophy as well. Some were indignant that I would even suspect them of reading a left-wing rag such as the New York Times.

I was flabbergasted. Until that moment I had not realized how closed the right-wing mind had become. Even assuming that my friends’ view of the Times’ philosophy was correct, which it most certainly was not, why would they not want to know what their enemy was thinking? This was my first exposure to what has been called “epistemic closure” among conservatives—living in their own bubble where nonsensical ideas circulate with no contradiction.

[...]

I later learned that the order [for Fox News] to ignore me extended throughout Rupert Murdoch’s empire. For example, I stopped being quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Awhile back, a reporter who left the Journal confirmed to me that the paper had given her orders not to mention me. Other dissident conservatives, such as David Frum and Andrew Sullivan, have told me that they are banned from Fox as well. More epistemic closure.

quote:

After careful research along these lines, I came to the annoying conclusion that Keynes had been 100 percent right in the 1930s. Previously, I had thought the opposite. But facts were facts and there was no denying my conclusion. It didn’t affect the argument in my book, which was only about the rise and fall of ideas. The fact that Keynesian ideas were correct as well as popular simply made my thesis stronger.

[...]

Annoyingly, however, I found myself joined at the hip to Paul Krugman, whose analysis was identical to my own. I had previously viewed Krugman as an intellectual enemy and attacked him rather colorfully in an old column that he still remembers.

For the record, no one has been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the economy’s problems than Paul Krugman. The blind hatred for him on the right simply pushed me further away from my old allies and comrades.

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.

XyloJW posted:

So I found interesting article, close to the heart of what we often discuss: how ego is wrapped up in politics.

Bruce Bartlett has been a lifelong conservative, serving Ron Paul in the 70's, Jack Kemp in the 80's, and working for the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation in the 90's. In the 2000's, he had friends in all the right places, and even served as an advisor to Dick Cheney.

Troubled by the many hypocrisies in the Bush administration, he voiced these opinions in a Wall Street Journal editorial. He was threatened for breaking the party line.


After this, he decides to try to write a plain-language guide to conservative economics, thinking that supply-side needed to be better explained. He thought he had a good grasp of Keynesian economics, but decided to do some refresher reading. With his ego no longer on the line, he found his view of the evidence had changed.

XyloJW posted:

This was my first exposure to what has been called “epistemic closure” among conservatives—living in their own bubble where nonsensical ideas circulate with no contradiction.

llama_arse posted:

A normally very upbeat, cheerful, and apolitical nurse recently posted this little screed on Facebook:


I'm not sure if this has been making the rounds since this is the first time I've seen it, but I'm guessing it's just a combination of popular right-wing acronyms FYGM and STDH? Also, does assuming this person was black make me the real racist?

XyloJW posted:

I know you're kind of joking, but I think it's important to understand that. No matter how crazy and die-hard the culture warrior, they're not beyond the reach of reason--they've just got their ego wrapped up so tight into their politics that the opportunity to change rarely presents itself. And if you try to change their mind when they're not ready, they take it as a personal attack on themselves.

I've brought family members back from the brink of Glenn-Beckian insanity by just being polite and waiting until I thought they might actually be willing to listen.

Armyman25 posted:

According to Benefits.gov these are the eligibility requirements for Medicaid in Mississippi:
General Program Requirements
In order to qualify for this benefit program, you must be a resident of the state of Mississippi, a U.S. national, citizen, permanent resident, or legal alien, in need of health care/insurance assistance, whose financial situation would be characterized as low income or very low income. You must also be either pregnant, a parent or relative caretaker of a dependent child(ren) under age 19, blind, have a disability or a family member in your household with a disability, or be 65 years of age or older.

katlington posted:

Not joking and I don't see it as a good thing.
[...]
Lol I forgot my point. I have a point. My point is this: it's great that people can be cured of incorrect beliefs one at a time if all the stars and moons align but the only actual fix is if they can learn to apply critical thinking skills to the endless torrent of bullshit they are subject to and subject themselves to.

Nth Doctor posted:

God. drat. So not only do you have to be pretty much indigent, but you need to also be either disabled or taking care of someone who is dependent on you. gently caress Mississippi.

XyloJW posted:

So, he's from Pontotoc, an extremely poor, former slave town, with a few extremely rich white people who own all the farmland, and he went to Ole Miss. Yeah, I know about a dozen people exactly like him. I poo poo you not when I say I know freshman at Ole Miss who don't sign up for classes on Fridays because they have to drive back to Jackson on the weekend to run their farm that their parents gave them at 18. And because it's demanding work, they think they earned it.

It says he works in Jackson. Jackson is incredibly segregated, so I'm going to assume if seeing a black person with the temerity to be on Medicaid is shocking, he must work at one of the hospitals in Madison, the ultra white suburb north of Jackson, or the only slightly less racially homogeneous Brandon on the east side of Jackson.

There are parts of Jackson that are literally 100% black, by Census data, so I'm going to assume he doesn't work at one of the hospitals in those areas.

The privileged rear end in a top hat.

XyloJW posted:

Is that not how it is in the rest of the country? I was to understand that that was the big deal about Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, that it removed the disabled requirements so that the just poor could also enroll.

Sarion posted:

This is the requirement for Medicaid pretty much everywhere. It's what the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare is all about.


E: Should have read Xylo's post first I guess.

More specifically though, under Obamacare the only requirement is having an income, based on family size, of under 135% FPL. Single and healthy, disabled with kids, none of that matters, only income matters.

Unless you live in a state with a moronic governor who wants to gently caress their state just to spite Obama. The local paper here in SC ran an article this weekend pointing to a study by a SC medical association saying that the Medicaid expansion would bring 44,000 jobs and inject billions of dollars into the state's economy. To which our Governor's response was, "nuh uh".

Wang_Tang posted:

Stuff about the economy, Benghazi, etc doesn't usually grind my gears. Such arguments can be dismantled quite quickly just by asking for more information or clarification. What really gets me, and quite frankly sometimes scares me, are the sovereign citizen-type movements.



It amazes me how frank followers are about their support of those movements. Even active-duty military will often post such images or screeds on their walls.

I can understand the reasoning behind the so-called "Oath Keepers," expressing their unwillingness to not engage in violence/harm against US citizens. But where were these guys during the Battle of Blair Mountain or Kent State? What is with the blind obsession with the constitution?

Nth Doctor posted:

Yeah, I figured this was how it always was. Holy poo poo does our country hate the poor.

AFewBricksShy posted:

I hate it when people use the revolutionary flags as symbols. I'm not a nutcase, I just like historical flags, dammit. I just want to fly the Gasden Flag or the Join or Die flag because it's an awesome flag, but not because I support some dumbass idea of what I think the country should be.

AFewBricksShy posted:

I hate it when people use the revolutionary flags as symbols. I'm not a nutcase, I just like historical flags, dammit. I just want to fly the Gasden Flag or the Join or Die flag because it's an awesome flag, but not because I support some dumbass idea of what I think the country should be.

AFewBricksShy posted:

I hate it when people use the revolutionary flags as symbols. I'm not a nutcase, I just like historical flags, dammit. I just want to fly the Gasden Flag or the Join or Die flag because it's an awesome flag, but not because I support some dumbass idea of what I think the country should be.

BonoMan posted:

It's hilarious because this guy started from a privileged position in a small town (which usually gives the privileged even more leverage) and thinks that he somehow worked his way to the top. I mean becoming a doctor is no small feat, so kudos to that, but holy poo poo this guy has no perspective and that usually stems from not having any perspective in his upbringing.

BonoMan posted:

Also this dude went to Sewanee, which likely suggests he came from a connected family.

quote:

"The connection between family breakdown and child poverty is well established. In a 1991 American Sociological Review article, David J. Eggebeen and Daniel T. Lichter estimated that if black family composition had remained constant from 1960 to 1988, the black child poverty rate in 1988 would have been 28.4 percent instead of 45.6 percent."

"The black out-of-wedlock birth rate ballooned from less than 25 percent in the early 1960s to 49 percent in 1975 and to 70 percent in 1995." 2010 = 77%

"In the absence of widening racial differences in family structure(baby mama's), the 1960-1988 period would have brought substantial convergence in racial differences in official, deep, and relative child poverty."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/923fdspn.asp
Family Ties
https://www.weeklystandard.com

MariusLecter posted:

They should put the able bodied men in their own project to live and work where the families can come visit them instead.

Armyman25 posted:

I watched the documentary The Pruitt Igoe Myth, about a public housing project in St. Louis. One of the things that struck me was a woman explaining that able bodied men weren't allowed to live with their families in the project if they wanted to remain eligible to live there. So men would have to sneak in to see their families.

What struck me was that I'll bet that the reason behind that was a conservative wanting to make sure that "handouts" didn't go to people who didn't need them, i.e., able bodied men. I mean, why should a family with a man in it need help?

MariusLecter posted:

They should put the able bodied men in their own project to live and work where the families can come visit them instead.

Gourd of Taste posted:

Then once they've lived in that project we could make it so they had to disclose that on every job application after, to keep the rest of us safe.

Fandyien posted:

That was a really good documentary. I actually brought that very thing up with a Republican I know when we were talking about welfare, and he thought it sounded "eminently reasonable".

Most of the right-wingers I know are in agreement that a sensible welfare reform would be forcing families to take a "poverty vow" that confirms, on penalty of being charged with fraud, that they have less then $2000 in the bank. More then $2k? Immediately stricken from the roles.

I tried to point out to him how outrageous it was but he seems to think that since he makes enough to live in a lovely apartment in the college area of our town by selling weed and working at a steakhouse, some worthless nig moochers should be able to do just fine.

Weirdly that was actually the point where I decided I couldn't deal with being around that person anymore.

Fandyien posted:

That was a really good documentary. I actually brought that very thing up with a Republican I know when we were talking about welfare, and he thought it sounded "eminently reasonable".

Most of the right-wingers I know are in agreement that a sensible welfare reform would be forcing families to take a "poverty vow" that confirms, on penalty of being charged with fraud, that they have less then $2000 in the bank. More then $2k? Immediately stricken from the roles.

I tried to point out to him how outrageous it was but he seems to think that since he makes enough to live in a lovely apartment in the college area of our town by selling weed and working at a steakhouse, some worthless nig moochers should be able to do just fine.

Weirdly that was actually the point where I decided I couldn't deal with being around that person anymore.

Sarion posted:

And then he'll complain that the welfare system encourages people to stay poor because if they have over $2000 they lose their benefits. Checkmate Liebrals!

katlington posted:

Might as well go all in and use it to argue against any means testing for welfare. Stipends for everybody!