Race, and politics by OPPYH

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Race, and politics

POSTED BY: OPPYH
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 1, 2023 13:35
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Saturday, November 14, 2009 10:22 PM

Over hear in RWED there is a constant speculation that because Obama is a black man he is being treated in an unfair manner by the right wing, and and most conservatives.

Being an ever loving liberal let me say one thing:

WHAT THE HELL?

Conservative republicans attack democratic presidents. It's what they do. And vice versa. Strong conflicting views of how America should be run results in strong emotions.

Continuing to cry "racism" every time a very negative attack on Obama occurs is unfortunate, and a little sad.
It sets us back as people. it puts the peple who do so in with the likes of Jessee Jackson, and Al Sharpton. They do it because it puts them in the spotlight, and pays their bills. SMOKE AND MIRRORS.

If Race were an issue would Obama become the president of the United States?
It also plays both ways. Obama is a media darling. Everyone outside of Fox news loves him to pieces, and this is also a little scary. You put too much faith in the president, you may be let down sooner or later.

Conspiracy theories exist when you want them to. The issue of race in politics is about as real as Dungeons and Dragons. It only exists in your mind, but we can all feed into it and play along.

I knew as soon as he was elected there would be this grotesque, hellish underlying paranoid fear of a black president. As of now it is in it's infancy, but I expect at some point(much like nuclear weapons) it will be exploited and may even break us down further than we already are.

Great time to live in this world, I'd like to be cryogenically frozen for a few hundred years. Maybe when I wake up "Racism" and "prejudice" will be extinguished.

Any one have any sleeping pills?

Thanks

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Sunday, November 15, 2009 6:00 AM

DREAMTROVE

Pretty spot on. I think there's some bigotry against Obama, but mostly it's anti-islamic reactions to the "Hussein" secret muslim conspiracy. There's also hidden racism in the worship, "look I worship the black guy, I'm not racist."

Racism is very much an issue, but not for Obama. The snag is that we as a nation tackled racism as if the world only had two races. those two races now get along. OTOH, I was recently on a road trip across the country and I heard a fair amount of Mexican jokes and Islamophobia, and I can't help but notice a little Sinophobia as well, and call centers in Bangalore are complaining that Americans call them and ask to talk to "a real person." So yes, it's an issue, but it's not an issue here. (Oh, and I recognize that Obama is a completely different race from any discriminated against in the US, but I see that almost no one knows this. The most accurate racial identification of Obama I think was some looney rant about Obama being descended from ancient egyptians, which is probably true, but relevant?)

I guess I'll leave that one to John to connect to the Eye of Horus on the back of the dollar bill. ;)

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Sunday, November 15, 2009 6:15 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I remember when Clinton was president, the actions of the opposition party were startling and shameful. I had never seen a president hounded and hunted so incessantly by his opposition, with irrelevancies being manufactured into evil conspiracies worthy of impeachment.

When Bush was president, the actions of the opposition party were startling and shameful. I had never seen a president hounded and hunted so incessantly by his opposition. I actually came to see some of the actions of this president as vile, but even while coming to this conclusion, I could not believe the horrible, horrible things being said about the president and his administration. I could not remember such a negative attitude towards a president in my lifetime.

Now Obama is president. If the pattern holds true, we will continue to hear even more hateful and awful things about him than ever before. Things that startle and shame.

I almost think that it's the American people, quickly bored with the low-key vehemence of the past, who are constantly upping the ante. No matter who wins the next presidential election, I expect it all to get worse. Again.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Sunday, November 15, 2009 7:59 AM

FREMDFIRMA

I favor the Bulworth method of eliminating racism myself - everybody get busy with everybody else till we're all prettymuch the same color!

-F

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Sunday, November 15, 2009 8:33 AM

AGENTROUKA

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

I favor the Bulworth method of eliminating racism myself - everybody get busy with everybody else till we're all prettymuch the same color!

-F

How boring would that look!

Intermingle everyone as they choose, love and enjoy, obviously. But there is such a wide variety of physical beauty in humankind that I'd be a little saddened to see the entirety of it shrink to one mono-look. I'm half-certain, though, that it's our future path anyway, so whatever. I'll deal. There could be a lot worse things.

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Sunday, November 15, 2009 11:18 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Heheh, I doubt it, there's always fashion and culture - I do so love the idea of being able to mix n match without other folks having an *issue* with you cause some of your cultural or religous tenets being out of political favor with the approved intolerance of the day.

I thought that dislikin folk over such things was asinine when I was six, and my opinion of it ain't changed none for the better since.

The infinite diversities of the myraid combinations are a beautiful thing, are they not ?

But still, I like the idea of more nookie, and less stupid cultural-theological hangups about it, would do society good, you ask me.

-F

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Sunday, November 15, 2009 12:15 PM

DREAMTROVE

Frem,

Science, alas, doesn't hold up the idea. What actually happens in animal species is that genetic groups diverge until they become separate species. Knowing that, assume for a moment that we do apply an artificial social structure to encourage the elimination of all differences between humans. Ultimately, extremely predictable things happen.

1. Since some genetic characteristics are dominant, the children would be grouped according to perception. People, collectively consider Tia Carrere of Wayne's World to be asian, and Barack Obama to be black. But the problem gets more complex: In Africa, Obama would be seen as strictly east african, but Malia and Sasha would be seen as west african, like their mother.

2. Some groups, particularly those with very bloody histories where someone has tried to exterminate their ethnicity, such as the recent extermination will resist this idea, like the east african, due to the race wars over the last twenty years that claimed 15-20 million wars, in which the openly stated goal was west african genetic supremacy and the extermination of the east african races.

3. As blood mixes, three major populations sections will develop: (Sticking with my african example, but applicable anywhere) a) East African purests who are more prone to resist the merger for historical reasons, b) the group that mixes, where west african genes dominate, but also west african populations dominate, being more prone because they lack the historical resentment, but also being more numerous, even locally, because so many of the east africans were exterminated recently and over the centuries, that west africans now dominate even in east africa, and c) west african purests who don't mix.

Over time, group b for obvious reasons would more and more resemble group c, until it was excepted as being much closer to c than group a, leaving a far wider divide than there had been.

4. Groups harbor resentment for a long time. Tutsi resent the Hutu, Serbs and Croats and Albanians/Kosovars resent each other, Jews resent the aryans, Armenians resent the turks, Ukrainians resent everyone, Native populations resent settlers, the world over, etc. This goes on for a long time, blacks haven't forgotten slavery and indians haven't forgotten the trail of tears. The Irish remember a thousand years or more of forced extermination by the english.

5. Any forced breeding program will create new resentments, as some populations will dominate both genetically and numerically. (Consider the issue today in Xinjiang. 7 million uyghurs are being forced to integrate with a billion chinese. We can all predict the result of that.)

6. People don't just differ genetically, but culturally. Uyghur culture doesn't stand much of a chance in this situation either.

7. So, lets enter science fiction and assume that you succeed. Not only can people fight wars over cultural differences and even minute variations in religion, but they also recognize differences instinctively. There was just a piece in Newsweek about this: populations identify genetic differences and separate themselves, and believe whatever the maximum difference is to be the most important feature.

Case in point: Eastern Europe and Gypsies. The Slavs think of the gypsies as their genetic opposites. Both are indo-european aryans, and are closer related to each other than either is to the germans, who aren't technically aryans, but they are the only people that they see. That is, until a muslim community moves among them. Now, if these are say, Albanians, there still isn't a lot of genetic difference all around but there's a new spectrum.

8. If you narrow down to get rid of all differences, the resultant population will still see the remaining differences as absolute. Go back to our west africans in central/east africa for a moment: Stereotypes of the curly haired, people who live in apartments, city-folk, those who speak with an different accent etc. or have a slight difference in religion or other ideas and practices will all be at each others throats.

9. The only thing that will ever unite the created society is when they re-encounter the isolated survivors of the East Africans, who may have grown over time into a militant xenophobic society convinced that everyone is conspiring to exterminated them. The west african groups will see they are not so different from each other as they are from the East Africans. Blood will spill again...

Think about the Christians of America. 50 years ago they were at each other's throats. One church vs. another. Now they have met Muslims, and they are united against a common enemy. Of course, Mulims believe that Jesus Christ taught the word of God, but this doesn't matter. Muslims are *more* *different*. That's all that matters.

Some future world scenario in which there are Hindu temples everywhere, Muslims and Christians may find that actually, they're pretty similar, in that they're not Hindus.

Or, alternatively, the muslims may disappear, and so may the catholics, and everyone else until there is one First United Pentecostal Church of the Second Coming of the we're all going to die now, but over in Oklahoma, there's a branch where the people don't believe that we will all die when the Rapture arrives, and out in California, there's a group that believes that some guy is Jesus, and another one that thinks there are rituals that need performing to bring on the events of the apocalypse, and that group has long fingers. They're the long fingered meddlers who make things happen rather than wait for them, they're an evil conspiracy to take over california or the world and they are in league with the devil, as are all long fingered people...

In other words, we're screwed.

My plan would go something like this: People should be perpetually exposed to people extremely different from themselves, at a great distance. Send and Englishman and Irishman together to China and they'll find a common ground they didn't know they had, hopefully, that won't be hating the Chinese, but when they go home, their differences will seem small again.

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Sunday, November 15, 2009 12:37 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
The infinite diversities of the myraid combinations are a beautiful thing, are they not ?

But still, I like the idea of more nookie, and less stupid cultural-theological hangups about it, would do society good, you ask me.

Only looks like this if you preserve the rainbow, but nah, I've studied mice too much to believe in this future: The only way we get one race is if one exterminates all the others. Really what we'll get in the US is some dominate society of some racial mix, and then another which worships Sarah Palin.

It's been my experience that these mixing societies have decidedly *less* nookie. Groups of humans all seek to dominate, just like any other animal, and one group will succeed. I'm not a very dominant male, and so I do better in an environment that has less conflict and much more culture. Which culture doesn't really matter.

Ironically, I do better in a very different environment, like Japan, or Russia or even some rabidly christian environment than I do in one that is openly accepting of my different beliefs, which I make no attempt to hide.

In an open accepting society I'm a definite FAIL I suspect because I'm a non-alpha male. Of course no society is truly accepting. If I were to state my political beliefs, being albeit mildly conservative, I would run into some serious conflicts. Curiously, though Taoism, which is peaceful and passive, is widely known as a conservative philosophy, compared with the more left wing Confucianism, which is militant and authoritarian. Confucianists favor forced assimilation, Taoists tend to favor variety. The core difference is none of these, but that Taoists are Laissez fair and prefer minimal interference, and Confucianists tend to believe in the necessity of a mandate for intervention to correct the perceived wrongs. But the followers of Confucianism vary: I have little respect for the communists, but a lot of respect for Samsung. Of course, with the Yinyang as the national symbol, the Korean ideology is really a mix of the two. (Then of course there are the liberals who thought Oh, I thought it was a neat symbol.)

The world is what it is, and it goes as it goes. I can still see aberrant forces that destructively buck the path of nature, like manipulative financial systems, wars, deforestation, but I can't see a reason to prefer Christianity to Islam, or to even care.

Also, as you know, I'm a culture junkie. It's what I enjoy. I really can't stand this walmart paved planet that we're headed for. When I go to a distant land, I want it to be different. Iowa isn't very different.

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Sunday, November 15, 2009 12:39 PM

DREAMTROVE

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, IDIC, is better than "Infinite Diversity in other than Infinite Combinations"

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Monday, November 16, 2009 9:07 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

On the original topic, I agree mostly. But I think racism is very alive and well in America today, and IS a large part of the reason things have become so very ugly recently. It's been used very effectively (consciously and subconsciously) by the right-wing nutbags, and others in the party, to incite anger. To ignore it is to hide our heads in the sand.

On the other hand, to cry "racism" at everything is counter-productive. You're not going to change the mind of racists; you're not going to get them to even recognize their prejudice unless they already know they have it--and those who are aware of their own racism will cling to it to the very end. I believe we should ignore that aspect of it and let him stand on his own merits; to decry it over everything is a waste, and only gives his detractors something to argue against.

The fact of Obama's race has made me afraid for him from the time he was nominated, and I will stay that way. There are few things that rile people up as much as racism, and few things which as easily incite hatred and violence. I attribute SOME of what we've seen recently to overt or subtle appeal to racism; I think those who hate him find it easier to do so because of either consious or subconscious racist feelings. But there's also a lot of appeal to anger in using the Socialist, Nazi and other labels; thus it is and thus it always will be.

I agree that each party attacks the other party in power with everything to hand. But I think what we've seen lately is on a higher level of ugliness, and I think both coming off eight years of Dumbya AND racism contribute largely to it.

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Monday, November 16, 2009 10:33 AM