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Old 08-08-2018, 11:28 PM   #2236
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Re: We are all Slave now.

So GGG hides in a very literal definition of "the last half century?"

But he still has to deal with southern Democrats, post 1968. And currsnt Democrats on the wrong side of namby-stateism.
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Old 08-08-2018, 11:56 PM   #2237
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Re: icymi above

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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield View Post
Catholicism needs it. And then the Scots-Irish of Appalachia.
Look, the notion of "a scientific assessment of instances where the victims of a systemic oppressed acquired responsibility for remaining oppressed" is crazy. Wake up. There is no objective way to "assess" the extent to which "victims of systemic oppression" can be deemed "responsible" for their oppression, let alone a "scientific" way to do it. The act of suggesting such a thing is possible is an apology for oppression, no more. Suggesting that you can be scientific about it is essentially Murray's game, but it is not science.
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Old 08-09-2018, 04:16 AM   #2238
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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So GGG hides in a very literal definition of "the last half century?"

But he still has to deal with southern Democrats, post 1968. And currsnt Democrats on the wrong side of namby-stateism.
And Obama on targeted drone strikes and free speech. But the donkey has been better than the alternative. I’ll take some nanny-stateism if that’s the price of saving at least some of the New Deal (which you may think of as early nanny state) and Great Society.
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Old 08-09-2018, 05:25 AM   #2239
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Re: icymi above

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Look, the notion of "a scientific assessment of instances where the victims of a systemic oppressed acquired responsibility for remaining oppressed" is crazy. Wake up. There is no objective way to "assess" the extent to which "victims of systemic oppression" can be deemed "responsible" for their oppression, let alone a "scientific" way to do it. The act of suggesting such a thing is possible is an apology for oppression, no more. Suggesting that you can be scientific about it is essentially Murray's game, but it is not science.
It’s not Murray’s game at all. Murray’s game is genetics. He doesn’t concede the social or cultural construction of “race.” He ultimately hangs his hat on statistical differences in tests, income, etc. This is why he’s so problematic and controversial. It isn’t really science.

And he knows better, which exposes his bias. In a recent book called Coming Apart, he assessed the increasing spread between bifurcating lower and upper class whites. White is a cultural thing that can be assessed using anthropological data for him, but assessment of minorities must always involve data building a genetics argument. He’s lazy and biased on minorities.

Scientific analysis of all cultures, oppressed and oppressive, can be done. There are endless examples of it. But it always involves “fuzzy” data, as anthropology is a soft science.
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Old 08-09-2018, 05:40 AM   #2240
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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So GGG hides in a very literal definition of "the last half century?"

But he still has to deal with southern Democrats, post 1968. And currsnt Democrats on the wrong side of namby-stateism.
Democrats are stale and have no vision. It’s a dead brand.

Republicans are insane greedheads and demographically fucked.

Neither plans to do anything real to rein in runaway capitalism or inequality. And we can’t afford either’s policies.

The mood in the country remains dark because everybody knows the post-2008 recovery is theatre. Our national vision, from both parties, is to keep reflating an asset bubble that burst in 2000. Why? Because, uncreative fucks we are, it’s the only means we can muster to get baby boomers thru retirement and wallpaper over a labor market that’s been flat or trending down on wage growth since 2000.

Parties are arguing over music on the Titanic. Strings or horns?
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Old 08-09-2018, 08:23 AM   #2241
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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So GGG hides in a very literal definition of "the last half century?"

But he still has to deal with southern Democrats, post 1968. And currsnt Democrats on the wrong side of namby-stateism.
My claim was that Dems had been on the right side of the good things that had happened.

Yes, Dems were on the wrong side of a lot of bad things that happened. Crim Justice "Reform" of the 90s is a good example. Again, it's a party, not something to be worshipped. Plenty of mistakes. But not much that is good in politics happens without us.
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Old 08-09-2018, 08:26 AM   #2242
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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Here's where I perhaps step on a huge third rail. I think one can assess cultural behaviors and conclude that, controlling for oppression, a group is shooting itself in the foot a bit.

My analogue there would be the Catholic Church. Catholics as a whole are held back by a very regressive religion. It teaches loathsome things, like one must reproduce regardless of economic concerns, one should not worry about this life as the next is more important. These insidious teachings are geared to control people. I'd never draw a 1:1 between this and what blacks have suffered, but I'd say a study of Catholics might show how one studies a cultural group and teases out where the oppressive control mechanisms (the institutional predation) ends, and the cultural behaviors reactive to it become superseding causes.

Catholicism's diabolical control mechanisms can be blamed to a point. But at a later point, many Catholics started to "game the system" and find a way around it, or just left. (Yours truly never joined. I wouldn't even pay fealty to it as a child, finding it abhorrent in second grade.)

If certain negative cultural behaviors persist despite clear evidence they are doing no one any favors, and actually holding people back (and I would say this applies too frequently to Catholic culture, where many people are content to remain of modest class and part of an often middling community), at a certain point, some responsibility falls on those of the community. That could be teased out in data. Fluffy data, subject to debate, but necessarily assessed to address the issue in whole.

And if such an approach were used, accepting entirely, as should be, that race is a cultural construct, it would end the genetics debate, which is truly evil and never offered for any legitimate point.

(I'll apologize if this offends a Catholic. But only for offending you. Not for what I've said. It's entirely factual.)
What a joke.
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Old 08-09-2018, 08:45 AM   #2243
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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Yup. The Democratic Party had completed its flip on Vietnam in 1968 (see e.g. the primary results for Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire and Bobby Kennedy in California, not to mention LBJ’s October Surprise peace deal which was scuttled by Nixon’s friends Anna Chennault and Madame Ky). Hard as it is to believe, that was 50 years ago.
Actually, I'll go back with what I said another 40 years, that the Dems been on the right side of all the positive stuff (I'm sure someone will think of an exception, but the fact no one has yet already says something), but add this, Japanese Internment, and a whole lot of Southern Democratic BS to the list of stuff where we've also been on the wrong side of bad stuff.

Note also in that period the Republicans or at least a sizable number of Republicans have been on the right some of some of the good stuff, too.

When you get back to pre-depression, the comparison doesn't make much sense any more, as you are really into a different iteration of the party system at that point.
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Old 08-09-2018, 10:46 AM   #2244
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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i fucked with you too much over the years, and I promised Jesus and T I would stop, but I have to say, no white person should think “what other white person is this book referring to.”
Sure they should. Right after asking "is she talking about me?" Because of course she was.
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Old 08-09-2018, 10:48 AM   #2245
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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A cultural chasm has occurred over melanin? Or culture? Or religion?
I don't know what a "cultural chasm" is, but no, the dispute is over power and wealth.
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Old 08-09-2018, 11:06 AM   #2246
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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I don't know what a "cultural chasm" is, but no, the dispute is over power and wealth.
The rift at the heart of all discrimination is one side's perception that people who who look or act differently are alien. By alien I mean somehow fundamentally different.

In regard to racism (a cultural chasm between people of different "races") here, that involves primarily skin color, hair, and facial features indicative of people being from certain non-European parts of the world.

Those features are of course surface, superficial, and not ones on which to base any conclusion about a person. We all agree on that. Hundreds of years ago, when we were less knowledgeable, people enslaved other people and justified it on the basis that those people were alien and lesser because certain of their features differed from the features of Europeans. Okay. So we all agree that was a mix of idiocy and evil. Science has proven the differences between alleged "races" are so thin they're not worth discussing.

And yet, hundreds of years later, this moronic thinking - still rooted in the notion somebody looks different than somebody else - persists. I agree with you that the powerful and wealthy wanting to protect their positions is part of it. But the powerful and wealthy do that in regard to everyone who challenges them, of any "race." And the racists in this country are not all powerful and wealthy. Not by a long shot. The racism that persists still has a lot to do with something as stupid as amount of melanin in one's skin. That that has persisted is simply mind-boggling.
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Old 08-09-2018, 11:22 AM   #2247
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Re: We are all Slave now.

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My claim was that Dems had been on the right side of the good things that had happened.

Yes, Dems were on the wrong side of a lot of bad things that happened. Crim Justice "Reform" of the 90s is a good example. Again, it's a party, not something to be worshipped. Plenty of mistakes. But not much that is good in politics happens without us.
Not much good happens with you. You're co-opted by corporatists as much as the other party and cry that you deserve a pass because you do some good works while the other party is flat out evil and stupid.

Okay, you get some credit for that. You're better than the GOP -- a bar about one foot above the floor. You're bought and paid for, but you're not ogres... You're happy to redistribute in the limousine liberal fashion (so long as it doesn't offend the interests that own your legislators). But as to solutions? As to methods by which you might create jobs for the middle and lower classes? Well, you can't do any of that. Sure, you'll do it for the unions that support you. And you'll talk about fantasies like retraining. But you toe the corporate line just like everybody else. When the people who line your pockets tell you to squash Bernie Sanders, you follow orders. When the hedge fund army that supports your party tells you its preferred policies, you react exactly the same way as the GOP does when the fossil fuel oligarchs tell it what to do.

Sure, Democrats are better. They aren't as stupid as the GOP. They aren't riddled with racists and xenophobes. They're smart enough to get behind clean energy, and they're good on social policy. But do they actually plan to help the disadvantaged find any economic dignity? No. They want to redistribute, placate, and continue a country where 20% get great lives, and the other 80% increasingly need the help of govt to survive. That's hardly a noble charge. One could argue its cynicism borders on the sociopathic.

Voted for Clinton and John Kerry, and various other Ds in local, state, and congressional races. (Because you'll go there.)

________
*Cynically and smartly by the way, as status quo protection, because they know it's better to placate the angry population than let them starve as the GOP would.
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Old 08-09-2018, 12:21 PM   #2248
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Re: icymi above

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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield View Post
It’s not Murray’s game at all. Murray’s game is genetics. He doesn’t concede the social or cultural construction of “race.” He ultimately hangs his hat on statistical differences in tests, income, etc. This is why he’s so problematic and controversial. It isn’t really science.

And he knows better, which exposes his bias. In a recent book called Coming Apart, he assessed the increasing spread between bifurcating lower and upper class whites. White is a cultural thing that can be assessed using anthropological data for him, but assessment of minorities must always involve data building a genetics argument. He’s lazy and biased on minorities.
Murray covers ugliness with a veneer of science. My point was that your language suggesting as much.

Quote:
Scientific analysis of all cultures, oppressed and oppressive, can be done. There are endless examples of it. But it always involves “fuzzy” data, as anthropology is a soft science.
Seriously, wtf are you talking about? What is a good example? If you build a stone house on a muddy foundation, it will fall down. If you pretend to do "science" with material that is the product of a biased culture, you will replicate those biases, even if you use the word "science" to try to imply that what you are doing is free of bias.

That, by the way, is part of what Klein was saying and Harris did not want to hear. It is an example of the way that the dominant culture (or "white people") want to pretend that they themselves are objective, free thinkers, unbiased and pure as the driven snow, rather than inevitably sharing and spreading the culture around them.
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Old 08-09-2018, 12:45 PM   #2249
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Re: icymi above

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Murray covers ugliness with a veneer of science. My point was that your language suggesting as much.
And my point is, Murray does no credible science on race. So citing Murray as an example of science on the issue is saying nothing of any value.

Quote:
Seriously, wtf are you talking about? What is a good example? If you build a stone house on a muddy foundation, it will fall down. If you pretend to do "science" with material that is the product of a biased culture, you will replicate those biases, even if you use the word "science" to try to imply that what you are doing is free of bias.
You're putting the rabbit in the hat, and you know it. By saying there is no credible data, you preclude anyone from scientific inquiry. Except that statement is false. There is credible data.

If one dominant culture discriminates against another, we have among many others two sets of significant data: (1) the discrimination; and, (2) the reaction to the discrimination. Necessarily, to the extent any reaction is self-defeating, a portion of it is the responsibility of the actor. The only way one can carve around this is to say that once discrimination has been set in motion against a group, the group can never bear any responsibility for anything going forward. No one is saying that, and no one can say that.

Quote:
That, by the way, is part of what Klein was saying and Harris did not want to hear. It is an example of the way that the dominant culture (or "white people") want to pretend that they themselves are objective, free thinkers, unbiased and pure as the driven snow, rather than inevitably sharing and spreading the culture around them.
Are you saying a group once and persistently discriminated against can never be responsible to any extent for anything it does afterward? Because you have to say that to get where you're logically trying to get.

And let's not get into personal shots here. I'm asking you to play out the chess game on the logic here. This could be about any subject. But if you say yes, you've said oppressed groups' responsibility can never be assessed. Or you're saying it should never be assessed. The first is, I think, logically impossible. The second puts you with Klein, which is fine. But understand, when you do that, you take the position, "There is some knowledge we should not look into," which was exactly Harris' critique of Klein.
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Old 08-09-2018, 01:26 PM   #2250
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Re: icymi above

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And my point is, Murray does no credible science on race. So citing Murray as an example of science on the issue is saying nothing of any value.
You're not wrong, but you're also not hearing what I'm saying. Murray presents his work as scientific, though it is riddled with bias. When you pretend it's possible to engage in "a scientific assessment of instances where the victims of a systemic oppressed acquired responsibility for remaining oppressed," you are doing the same thing as Murray -- using "science" as a pretense for engaging in something that inevitably will reflect the bias and oppression of the culture.

Quote:
You're putting the rabbit in the hat, and you know it. By saying there is no credible data, you preclude anyone from scientific inquiry. Except that statement is false. There is credible data.

If one dominant culture discriminates against another, we have among many others two sets of significant data: (1) the discrimination; and, (2) the reaction to the discrimination. Necessarily, to the extent any reaction is self-defeating, a portion of it is the responsibility of the actor. The only way one can carve around this is to say that once discrimination has been set in motion against a group, the group can never bear any responsibility for anything going forward. No one is saying that, and no one can say that.

Are you saying a group once and persistently discriminated against can never be responsible to any extent for anything it does afterward? Because you have to say that to get where you're logically trying to get.

And let's not get into personal shots here. I'm asking you to play out the chess game on the logic here. This could be about any subject. But if you say yes, you've said oppressed groups' responsibility can never be assessed. Or you're saying it should never be assessed. The first is, I think, logically impossible. The second puts you with Klein, which is fine. But understand, when you do that, you take the position, "There is some knowledge we should not look into," which was exactly Harris' critique of Klein.
I think the notion that you can somehow measure and "assess" the "responsibility" of a discriminated group for its condition, let alone with "science," is total nonsense. I tried to make that clear when you first referred to the idea, and I asked you for a published example where someone had done that. If someone tells me they are going to write a book assessing the Gypsies' responsibility for their genocide by German Nazis, and that they are going to do it with science, I would expect that person to be wearing a tin-foil hat and driving a cab, at best.

I understand that you have put words together in a way that makes sense in your own mind. Is there some accepted and respected model in the world for what you think you are talking about? Honestly, the thing that comes closest to me is Murray's projected of blaming blacks' genes for their treatment by the culture, and using that as a justification to cut social spending and taxes for the rich. Murray at least blames genetics rather than choices by blacks. And you have dumped on Murray, so he is not your pole star. So what's your model here?

eta: Maybe you are thinking about comparative negligence and contributory negligence, and following the lead of the great Justice Traynor in Li v. Yellow Cab in thinking that it's rational for even a victim to be deemed to bear some responsibility?
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