|
Reparations becomes insanity when you start to look outside the US and realize that the world is filled with countries that have spent the last two hundred years oppressing, terrorizing and killing their minorities. The black American experience is not a unique one, and if they have a right to have the historical and ongoing injustices perpetrated against them righted through cash payment by the ethnic groups that oppressed them then so does every other minority that's spend the last few centuries being brutalized. The problem is that a world where you actually try to enforce that right is a world being drowned in rivers of blood, repaying injustice with injustice and perpetuating a new round of ethnic conflict even more violent than the last. Historical injustice in a broad sense can never be righted. We can only correct ongoing injustice through the conventional ways: self-determination, equality under national and international law, and strict respect for all people's human rights. Of course, there's people who want to do the latter and call it reparations. This seems really stupid to me. It's not reparations because it doesn't pay for or correct historical injustice in any sense. It needlessly racializes what's not actually a racial issue so that the supporters of reparations can feel that warm reparations feeling in their hearts, while simultaneously making those programs much harder, if not impossible to achieve. You might be able to convince Americans to enact socialism, but if it's framed as the 88% of Americans who aren't black paying the 12% who are reparations then you're almost certain to lose.
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2016 23:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:23 |
|
|
Sharkopath posted:Reparations are never going to happen but also neither will federal level economic redevelopment of black communities and schooling. It's moot either way but I will always support people trying to alleviate the situation with the small power they can muster. I don't agree at all. If I thought any sort of positive change was impossible I wouldn't waste my time being a leftist. I do think positive change is possible though, which is why I don't support programs that make such change harder on the grounds of sanctimonious and wrong-headed moralism.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2016 23:52
|
|
|
I also think it's incorrect to view what Conyers, Coates, etc. are doing as "trying to alleviate the situation with the small power they can muster". It's actually grandstanding for a project they know will never work, especially in Conyers' case. Maybe Coates actually believes his own propaganda but Conyers knows full well it's never going to happen based on the past 10,000 time his proposals failed to make it out of committee.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2016 23:58
|
|
|
Sharkopath posted:I think cultural resistance to policies that would enact the change needed to actually begin to unscrew the darn near hundreds of years of racism systematic and otherwise is untenable currently and in the near future. People still keeping it up on the forefront have my admiration and sympathy but the opposition has done their best to create a deep divide that is probably more insurmountable than it might seem, at least speaking nationally. You don't have to "change hearts and minds". That's a liberal lie that they tell to make societal change seem impossible. At the turn of the 20th century the United States was a far, far more racist country than it is today to the point that the first and by far most popular film was the "noble" story of the Ku Klux Klan, but that didn't stop 12% of Americans from joining a socialist, multi-racial & anti-racist, revolutionary union organization known as the IWW. About 20,000 Bolsheviks were able to take control of a country of a 100 million. Even Martin Luther King didn't change hearts and minds through rational argument and in fact he was despised by most white people of his time, and it's only his victories that transformed him into an American hero. You're going about everything the wrong way because you've been duped by the liberal establishment, which doesn't want to change anything, into believing that change is impossible unless you convince everyone of the morality of your cause first.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 00:18
|
|
|
.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 00:27
|
|
|
Sharkopath posted:Duped nothing, it was always violence and the threat of it that led to change, at lightest just fear of general disruption. I already know that. It's not even that. It's not a matter of violence or "hearts and minds" or any other lie they tell you. Political change is accomplished through political power and nothing else.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 00:32
|
|
|
That should have been 12% of US industrial workers, (though admittedly not all at one time), and estimates of Bolshevik membership in February 1917 range from 20k-30k. Obviously those rose massively, especially following the July Days, but that's exactly my point!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 00:38
|
|
|
stone cold posted:The avatar of white identity politics is running the country in a month, friend. This is boneheaded take that liberals have accepted and they wonder why they aren't running the country anymore.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 01:39
|
|
|
stone cold posted:I forgot, Donald "Beloved by The KKK and White Nationalists" Trump pandered to.... gosh darn it who was it that wanted to kick out all the Hispanics, put Muslims in camps, and thinks we don't have enough law and order, aka killing of black youths. Donald Trump got more of the black and Latino vote, proportionally, than Mitt Romney. He won in part because they either voted third party or stayed home. And those horrible white people who swung Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin? They mostly stayed home or voted third party too. You and your ilk have nothing to offer black, Latino or LGBT communities, let alone the rest of the working class, because all you have to offer is defeat after defeat. Liberal identity politics is not enough to prop up liberalism.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 01:51
|
|
|
Schizotek posted:Listen, Trump got 10% of the black vote instead of 7%. Clearly the Republicans are the true party of black interests now. No one is saying that, Einstein. I'm pointing out that the hysteria about how Trump is Turbo-Hitler fell completely flat for every demographic it was supposed to because liberal identity politics offer absolutely nothing to the people they claim to represent.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 01:59
|
|
|
stone cold posted:Certainly Trump's suppressive tactics, media incompetence, or John Roberts' declaration that racism is over and cheerful gutting of the VRA had nothing to do with it. Minorities have already rejected you. You spent the election trying to whip them up into a frenzy about Trump while offering them nothing. You have no way to advance the cause of women, black people, Latinos or any other minority besides to point to your mirror image and say you're better than that guy. And a month ago you were telling us that there was going to be a surge from those groups to put your horrible, corrupt neoliberal candidate in office, and that surge never materialized. It was the opposite. They voted Republican even more than last time, and most of them stayed home. You have already lost. I have no idea whether the US working class will adopt revolutionary socialism, but thank God they're finally done with you.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:10
|
|
|
stone cold posted:I too am immensely gleeful at the prospect of minorities being shoved into the ovens. You want to pretend I'm celebrating the Trump presidency, but I'm not. I'm celebrating that you were proved wrong. Trump is a living nightmare, and your dead-end politics are the reason he's here.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:17
|
|
|
Schizotek posted:Depressed minority vote probably has more to do with VRA shenanigans than them not being worried about Trump. No, it wasn't. This is just a lie liberals like to tell themselves to excuse their abysmal failure. If the message of liberal identity politics on steroids was actually compelling to minorities you would have seen a voting surge that dwarfed all the voter suppression. It wasn't, and now because of your worthless incompetence we have live through Trump raping the country to death for the next four years.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:20
|
|
|
stone cold posted:I was proved wrong that what? Minorities deserve rights? Human rights belong to all, not just white cishet middle class and above men? That people deserve a universal basic income? That imperialism and capitalism are eating the world alive? That capital punishment shouldn't exist? You don't have any values. You have a bunch of slogans that prove how much better you are than everyone else. And the American people, black and white alike, man and woman like, gay and straight alike, listened to you spout that self-righteous garbage for an 18-month election season then got up and spat in your face. In a more honest ideology this would prompt some self-reflection but you can never expect that from liberals.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:29
|
|
|
Schizotek posted:What, besides the esteemed opinion of yourself, makes it a lie? VRA got gutted. A bunch of states, including swing states, took advantage to shut down hundreds of minority polling stations and remove early voting. Do you have any proof that, uh, "Making the entire platform about minorities" or whatever the gently caress fever dream idiots in this thread actually think is a thing was the reason and not that? No one denies the blocking of the VRA suppressed the vote. It's that if your message resonated with women, black Americans, Latino Americans and all the rest you would have actually seen a surge in the millions, maybe tens of millions, that completely erased the hundreds of thousands the GOP suppressed. You are doomed and the sooner you realize it the sooner you can start developing a politics that can actually win.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:37
|
|
|
stone cold posted:I'm beginning to think you might not be a leftist at all, in fact you might just be a slacktivist! This is really the best you can offer? The other guy is at least trying to address the substantial points I'm bringing up. You on the other hand aren't and for that matter don't seem to understand what I'm saying at all, considering you think I'm saying "this election was a working class revolt" rather than "the working class (black, Latino and LGBT alike) find you revolting".
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:39
|
|
|
stone cold posted:Considering they were too busy slaving away so idiots like you could spend your bitcoin instead of being able to vote, or they had their right to vote taken away by John Roberts, I don't get your point. You're never going to find a way out of the predicament you find yourself in if you're going to keep pretending "Minorities won't vote according to liberal identity politics" with "Minorities love Trump". But that's no problem for me. I'm happy enough to keep siphoning off your base while you blame everything on #BernieBros and no one listens just like they didn't listen on election day.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:47
|
|
|
The next election season is going to be exactly the same. The Dems will run some lovely, corrupt neoliberal who has nothing to offer the working class except sanctimonious scolding about how racist they are, and they'll lose. They'll condemn us to another four years of Trump just like the condemned us to four years a month ago. And then we'll have liberals like stone cold, (whose name is an insult to a great wrestler who once gave Donald Trump the Stone Cold Stunner), will be here to tell us that the reason this happened wasn't their incompetence, but because white people.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:57
|
|
|
stone cold posted:I'm glad you admit to voting for Trump. In the immortal words of Yoda, this is why you fail.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 02:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:23 |
|
|
Liberals don't understand that you can't counter a message like Trump's if you fail to offer a counter-narrative. It was clear to everyone that he was racist, sexist, xenophobic and everything else, and Hillary lost because she failed to tell any of those groups how she'd do anything differently. And for that matter she didn't intend to. It's just like how she attacked Trump for failing pay taxes but never offered a solution that would make billionaires like Trump pay taxes. She didn't want billionaires to pay taxes so everyone saw right through it, and that's exactly what happened on her identity politics argument too. Unless you have actual solutions, which contemporary identity politics doesn't, everyone will tell you to gently caress off. The hysterical specter of Trumpschwitz isn't enough.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2016 04:06
|
|