- Location
- America
Gullenists.
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Let's be clear though, "moderates" in most cases is code for neoliberal technocrats.
Ordering people to stop being prejudiced makes them more prejudiced
- Thread starter Memphet'ran
- Start date
- Status
Gullenists.
...
Let's be clear though, "moderates" in most cases is code for neoliberal technocrats.
...Where? Like, seriously, where is it used that way?
Also, what kind of "neoliberal" are we talking about here? Thatcherite? Reaganite? Radical laissez-faire enthusiasts?
And "technocratic" in what sense?
Because as far as I can tell, "moderates" are people who are close to the centre on either side of the political spectrum and who either mix-and-match from both sides according to their political views or are not as radical as their party establishment.
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Acatalepsy
Firewall Proxy
- Location
- The Diamond Age
It's worth pointing out that the lag time between "small persecuted minority" and "has the run of the place" was a couple of centuries - that is, longer than the modern world has effectively existed. This makes the idea that the secret to their success was 'just be nice to people' somewhat questionable - or at least, it makes the idea of replicating their success a bit difficult for anyone whose idea of 'getting results' involves them happening before 2300. As @MJ12 Commando and @Chloe Sullivan point out, that required there to be massive social shocks and authoritarian intervention to start really working.
I'm not sure this says much one way or the other; it seems like standard compound interest dynamics; you spend a lot longer going from being .001% of the population to being 10% of the population than you spend going from being 10% of the population to being 90% of the population.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
but it's not a steady curve. you get sudden spikes when there's a crisis and you manage to leverage it to your favor. you get sudden tipping points where your social status changes and you sudenly gain legitimacy in the popular view.
Norseman
Entirely Wholesome
I would point you to Our Liquor Laws as Seen by the Committee of Fifty, simply put not only was prohibition a failure, but there was ample evidence from all the many, many failed earlier prohibitions to show why and how it would fail. That article is from the 1890s and yet the situation and tactics it describes would not only fit in well with the prohibition, but also with the war on drugs. There truly is nothing new under the sun.
Originally, of course, that may have been right, as this telling statement reveals:
Article: The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
— John Ehrlichman, Nixon White House Domestic Affairs Advisor, on the War on drugs in a Harper's Magazine interview in 1994[35][36]
But I also think the War on Drugs as implemented by leftists (and Bill Clinton in particular) was an attempt to stop the rise of organised crime, the lethal violence associated with gang wars that disproportionately affected minorities, and what we Germans know as Beschaffungskriminalität, i.e. crime committed in order to fund drug habits and violence in the drug scene.
I mean, it all doesn't make the War on Drugs any less effective, the efforts to reduce drug use in disenfranchised minorities any less hypocritical of the last three administrations, or the fact that the War on Drugs has influenced US foreign policy to an absurdly ludicrous degree in the past and present, but we have to remember that there was a reason why increased sentences and a harder crackdown on drug trafficking occurred in the 1990s and were widely supported even amongst minorities, long after Nixon and George Bush Senior had left the White House. People associated drugs with violence and crime, and it's only the relatively recent, blatantly racist excesses of law enforcement, the judicial system implementing mandatory minimum sentences, and the incarceration system becoming unethically overcrowded and brutal that has clearly shown to the public that the War on Drugs has backfired spectacularly.
Luckily enough, the focus now seems to be on more rehabilitation, therapy, and cracking down on guns... Which were always going to be more useful in stopping drug use and associated organised crime and violence, but it wasn't always considered that way.
And even then, many arguments can be made that legalisation is not the be-all-and-end-all cure to drug crime that many of its proponents tout it as. I'm extremely skeptical that full legalisation of all drugs alone would be as successful or useful as people claim it to be, especially considering that gleaned anecdotally from media reports, cheap heroin and meth seems to be ravaging the economically destitute rural areas of the United States (and let's not even talk whether it'd work in Mexico, where the cartels reign supreme). Those people need job programs, social assistance, and medical insurance that pays for therapy, not necessarily legal access to drugs. And law enforcement needs to break up the distribution networks more than the end consumers, no matter how much more difficult it is. Legalisation is a good first step, but it sure as hell shouldn't be the only step. Portugal and the Netherlands didn't just legalise Marijuana willy-nilly -- they spent a lot of money on social and medical therapy programs to ease people out of addiction.
...All good reasons to vote for HRC over Trump, I suppose. She has coherent policy plans on all of this. Trump? I haven't heard a peep out of him on this topic except accusing Mexican immigrants of bringing drugs into the US, which is probably true in some individual cases and also not a damn solution to anything.
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Pyrion
Asuran Rights Activist
- Location
- Spirit Lake, ID
Yeah, SB ran out of hard drive space.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
No? The fuck are you talking about.
You may be incredulous, but IIRC that was legit the reason why the Directors first thought about creating SV -- for a long time, SB was running so badly and intermittently that people expected the site to collapse from one day to the next, and people were making plans to migrate in case the site crashed and burned.
After the Great Schism that split SB, people found out early about SV and signed up en masse in protest and to get away from SB. SB managed to stabilise under new moderation and fixed its hardware issues, so both sites ended up in existence and populated.
The guiding principle behind SV's moderation policies, of course, has always been to be professional and as transparent as possible when moderating and running this site in light of the debacle that led to so many people signing up here.
Can we please get back on topic, though?
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
SB thought about creating a new forum because KEIR was AWOL and any upgrades to the site would necessitate either getting him on the case, or buying the site from him.
SV however was founded by Lord Squishy, who is himself banned from SB for impersonating an admin on another forum, so there is no way he is on the board of anything that isnt SV. I can only assume he saw an opportunity and created SV to take advantage of the schism, though in truth he only owns part of the forum, according to himself.
But yes, this is getting off topic.
Yeah, LordSquishy helped found SV, but he didn't do it alone. Suishy, Ford Prefect, and Xon were equal partners-in-crime (with Isil'Zha's help), and SV was a project planned indepedently from SB. SB's "board" was totally irrelevant in that decision. In fact, the fact that Kier was AWOL was exactly the reason why people were indepedently looking for and creating alternatives to SB. SV existed as a project-in-progress started by our esteemed three directors before the Schism happened with no input from SB -- otherwise people wouldn't have been able to sign up.
Many members joined SV because of what they considered an out-of-touch and draconian administration on SB. And while SV has taken many of the lessons from the Schism to heart and tries to be professional and transparent about its moderation policies, to claim that SB's administration were the reason why SV was founded is... just not true. It was definitely the hardware issues. SV went live on April 20th 2014; but discussion on creating SV was begun early in 2014 and concrete development started a week before the site went live. The fact that SB's moderation decision on April 19th 2014 then led to an influx of SB refugees and then markedly influenced the principles of SV's moderation policies as they developed is also true, but not the main reason the site was founded.
And that's all I'm gonna say about that. It's off topic... Probably should be moved elsewhere, too. Ugh.
- Location
- That light in the sky with a decaying orbit.
What a beautifully racist straw-man argument. Bob's parents were Slavs fleeing the poverty of eastern Europe- they definitely weren't the right sort of people. The second assumes they didn't live in an apartment because they couldn't afford the down payment on a loan. The third simply assumed bob's father has a glamorous office job and isn't a factory worker or coal miner. The fourth panel is ridiculous, especially with the strong likely hood that Bob's parent bought a newly built prefab house. Neighborhoods associations are quite unpopular with anybody but the upper class. The fifth assumes bob did drugs at all.
This is just a string of ridiculous and arbitrary trait assignments due to your racial stereotype of a white man.
Since the Kennedy administration, we have had a set of laws called affirmative action which allow and create racially discriminatory practices, which all disadvantage Bob. Your need to rely on a straw man cosmic rather than addressing affirmative action shows only the weakness of your stance.
Yeah, you're interpreting all sorts of stuff into the comic that ain't there, and somehow, you're not invalidating its point at all. And you're calling it racist for some unfathomable reason.
- Bob's great-grandparents may not have been the "right sort of people", true. But as white immigrants, they still had several generations to build up their wealth and secure their position in society when the same chance was denied to blacks under slavery and Jim Crow laws.
- What if Bob's grand-parents got the mortgage loan anyway, even though the black couple were denied a loan while being equally solvent than Bob's grand-parents? Which is implied as the clothes are drawn as similarly fancy? Was it because of common racism in the forties and fifties, meaning that Bob's family became homeowners and thus accumulated wealth much earlier than other ethnic groups because of social benefits denied to black folks? Would that be "fair"?
- When you apply for a white-collar job (which the suit-and-tie imply), and all else being equal, why was it fair for Bob's father to get that job and the black applicant to be denied? Also, lol at the idea that you'd apply for a factory job or coal mine (a blue-collar job) in a suit-and-tie in the, what, eighties? And how is it "fair" that white families could get a chance to increase their wealth and accumulate it through joining the job market, but qualified black folks had less of a chance?
- What if they didn't buy a new pre-fab house? Also, where do you get all this detailed stuff from in that panel? The idea it wants to get across is clear: because Bob's family could acummulate wealth throughout previous generations on the basis of the benefits of being white that disadvantaged blacks didn't have, they could now afford the down-payment on a house -- which black folks undeservedly could not.
- In that fifth panel? That's a cop. And what if Bob actually did do drugs? Let's assume he did, because teenagers do all sorts of experimental dumb shit in their youth, black or white. Why was he given a second chance, but the black girl wasn't, even though they were both caught with drugs in their youth? Why are they treated unequally? And don't tell me they weren't, because we know sentencing for petty drug charges are disproportionately harsher for black minorities.
- Conclusion: Bob has benefited from racism throughout all his life without even realising or knowing it.
And reading back your statements, it all sounds like apologistic bullshit trying to read things into a comic strip that aren't there, looking for excuses to deny the fact that the United States has a racist past, and trying to claim that specific groups of people are not at all disadvantaged by that past.
Which is nonsense of the highest order.
The stuff you read into it is just as arbitrary, man. Moreso, in fact, as pointed out above.
Suuuuuuuuuuure.
So you actively deny that people today may be disadvantaged by America's past of racist discrimination against black and coloured folks? And do you claim that it's somehow immoral or unethical to try to redress those disadvantages? Even though Bob has all sorts of other advantages he can draw on to succeed in modern American society that blacks folks don't have? Even though he's been disadvantaged for a much shorter time than black folks? Even though Asians are disadvantaged more by the current system? How's that "fair", hmm?
And if you don't think that, I would like you to present a politically and socially viable alternative to the current system of affirmative action. I'll be waiting.
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- Location
- That light in the sky with a decaying orbit.
Simple, just treat all people as equal before the law. Take into no account their color nor creed, but only their actions. Let those who have made it their policy to deny others for their color or creed fall under scrutiny of the law (except for those who deny others that they would join the others creed in exception to their own).
Let this policy reign for generations, and time will wear away all resistance. The second greatest foolishness of those who demand social justice is impatience. The greatest is to thing that the same evil they seek to fight can be used to right it.
"Let us treat all people as equal under the law. No discrimination under the law. Ever."
*Asian-Americans overrun college campuses based on "totally objective" SAT scores. Even less white people get places at college. Poor black folks continue to be denied a higher education, meaning they are still trapped in the cycle of poverty. White people that commit crimes are sentenced to as much jail time an exorbitant bail and fines as blacks for petty drug offenses and municipal violations. The authority of the states is crushed under the federal juggernaut for refusing to be totally equal to everybody. *
"Yes, this is a much more just and equal society than before."
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Pretty much. Seriously, this is exactly what needs to happen.
...Please read all the sentences in my post and not just the last and penultimate ones.
Cos' if we're talking about a "just and equal society", the picture I painted is definitely not that of one.
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Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
"Totally equal rights lol" is John Galt logic. Assuming that if you strip away all artificial advantages and let everyone do whatever talent and prosperity will just magically spring forth equally independent of skin colour, and everyone else? Guess they're just not working hard enough!
And that's the more charitable option, the other my cynical ass can think of is "Yes, I know my super equal society will be horribly unequal. I don't give a shit, fuck 'em."
And that's the more charitable option, the other my cynical ass can think of is "Yes, I know my super equal society will be horribly unequal. I don't give a shit, fuck 'em."
Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
I mean, I think there's an argument to be made that the treatment Bob and his family got should be the baseline, and that as such Bob didn't really 'Benefit' from racism so much as 'Not Suffer' from it.
However, this sort of misses the point of the comic, which is that Bob's family has gotten preferential treatment over people of color, and that this is not fair. Maybe it just got lost in transmission? Subtext isn't always the best way to communicate a message, because people interpret stuff differently.
Interesting hypothesis.
Okay.
The ones who are better at preparing their children get into college campuses more often? Perfect! Society will adjust to put more weight on said tests and America won't fall behind in STEM scores as much anymore.
They'll figure it out. A clear, obvious, and equal goal will have people sorted by their abilities. Obviously it's hard to test for the exact qualities you want, but as long as the testing is (mostly) fair, you can work out the kinks later.
No, with a fair standard the ones willing to put time, effort, and sacrifice into raising a child will have a much better chance of getting out of poverty. Frankly, implying that they never can is pretty damn insulting.
Laws are actually enforced across the board. Sounds good to me.
Read my lips: Monarchist.
Too bad they don't have the time because they have to work two jobs to even feed their child...
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And the kids have higher risk of childhood malnutrition and other environmental ability impairments from growing up in poverty.
Hey, look! It's almost like you shouldn't have kids until you are financially stable enough to actually take care of them! It's like actions have consequences!
- Status