Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
What's inaccurate there? The current "conservatives" (populists) are asserting that the system is rigged against them. And it is. It's rigged for asset holders, and if you're a Trump voter with a $65-75k household income, you don't own adequate assets to to enjoy the appreciation in their value caused by that rigging.
Whether that is the fault of those populists, for not getting skills that allowed them to move further up the ladder, is an argument of degree. Personally, I think the angry, complaining Trump voter owns a decent percentage of his own situation. How much I don't know. But he owns some. As the author noted, he has agency. Everyone has agency.
And for "conservatives" to use the same argument with which they've pilloried Democrats for so many years is a putrid hypocrisy, distilled effectively to: "When you poor Democrats fail, it's entirely because you're lazy. When we Populist Conservatives fail, it's entirely because the system is rigged against us." Right... They can shove all that up their asses until it bleeds into their Eustachian tubes.
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Jesus fucking Christ. Wait. This makes perfect sense coming from a guy who thinks "colorblind" is a thing.
This thought: "'it's not your fault, the system has it in for you'...something conservatives castigated liberals for saying to minorities years ago. And rightly so: it deprives people of agency and responsibility" is fucking offensive.
First, liberals
never turned to minorities and said this shit. What
was said is, "We understand the deck is stacked against you and you have more to overcome." That's not taking away agency and responsibility. I know you can't see that because we've argued
ad nauseam and then some about how you think we should apportion blame to black people for the situations we find ourselves in (and I still can't wrap my head around the fact that you think that blacks (i) act
as a group somehow or (ii) haven't tailored their behavior specifically based on centuries of unfair treatment).
Second, this whole, "Stop removing agency from minorities and treating them like children," mantra is a way to ignore the fact that diverse people in this country are still second class citizens while pretending like you're doing your part to treat everyone the same. It's a slick way of ignoring the problems people of color face while pretending to care about them.
Third, it ignores the fact that it
isn't our fault and the system
does have it in for us. Maybe less so than 50 years ago, but you have to close your eyes and ears real tight to think otherwise.
White people love to ignore both (i) all historical context as to how people arrived where they are and (ii) the actual fucking racial realities in this country and point to individuals and say, "That guy didn't work hard enough, it's his own fault." If you point out the historical context or how people are still being treated, they point at someone who was poor and say, "But they succeeded," like that's an answer. It's like a sickness.
TM
