The Well-Mannered Politics Thread

Militant X 1 said:

Sure, there may be "other" people groups that are profiled but let's keep it real! This country's "major" issue unfortunately, is and has always been between blacks and whites due to the Peculiar Institution known as Slavery! We blacks are and have been constantly fighting against systemic social problems in this nation that have been designed to marginalize and to keep us subjugated since the days of slavery (i.e. Segregation, Jim Crow and the Black Codes, The One Drop Rule, The Birth of a Nation film etc.). And then non-blacks wonder why certain segments of my people group have such a distrust for law enforcement? Really? Now, I'm not condoning bad behavior by no means. I believe in obeying the law. My dad is a retired Chief of Police. My family (a military, black family) obeys the laws of this land but we are far from being blinded to, ignorant or avoidant of the social injustices that our people face on a daily basis in this nation.

What kills me is the hypocrisy in this nation when it comes to the issues of race. Non-blacks in this nation praise the remembrance of the Jewish Holocaust...and rightfully so. Over 6 millions Jews were stripped of their birthright and properties and then marked for death. Horrendous event! There's documentary after documentary after documentary on the topic. But, when it comes to the Black Holocaust (i.e. The Middle Passage) and the millions of Africans (Blacks) murdered, brutalized, raped, burned, lynched and hung, castrated, families ripped apart and sold during slavery and even after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed etc., we're told to; "Just forget about it! Let it go! It happend so long ago!" So, why praise the remembrance of a Holocaust that happened overseas in Germany but not the one that happened in your own backyard in the "good ole' U.S.A?

Things are better but we still have major racial issues between black and white in our nation that have not been dealt with! Kap kneeling brought an awareness to the systemic issue of white officers not only killing "unarmed" blacks but then getting away with it! When a black man can get shot and killed in his own home by an off duty officer who is identified days after the event and then have his character assinated to protect that white officer, it's quite clear that the system is broken and rigged against black people in general and more than other "profiled" people groups.

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gtalk12 said:

Two years after the protests began, he is frustrated because he feels their message and intent have been misinterpreted or intentionally hijacked.

From liberals: " 'Hey, don't you know it was a Green Beret who told Colin to protest in the first place, told him to take a knee?' " Boyer lamented: "And I'm like, 'I didn't tell him to do anything. I definitely didn't tell him to protest. What I did was meet with him, make suggestions on different ways to do it after he was already protesting. And worked with him to kind of come to a middle ground."

And from conservatives: "(They) put all veterans in this box and say, 'You're offending every veteran.' That's also ridiculous. Or, 'He's protesting the anthem.' He's not protesting the national anthem. It has become an anthem debate, but that's not what the protest is about. It's about racial inequality, police brutality."

Whether people agree or disagree, Boyer wishes the message hadn't been intercepted.

"It's not fair to Colin, it's not fair to me, and it's not fair to the cause," he said. "And it's not good for our country



--------------These are the thoughts of the Green Beret Nate Boyer who at times had to live out of a 93 civic. This is my point exactly.

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Willbacker said:

This is what I want to know. Why did blacks abandon the party of Lincoln and embrace the party of the KKK, the resegragation back in the 1880's, who created the Jim Crow laws and filibustered the the Civil Rights agreement. These are the same people that run the cities, hire the police chief and set the rules and regulations they follow. Isnt this where the oppression and problems mainly are? Hell the police have to make sure you don't put extra salt on your food in NYC and have to keep you from sipping thru a plastic straw in Seattle. Heck the welfare system created by Democrats broke up the black family when they used to be the strongest family unit as recently as the 1950's. The bottomline is everybody else gets blamed but the politicians and councilmen/women they just keep getting recycled.

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rossihunter2 said:

paragraphs like this make it hard for me to be well-mannered and civil when "discussing" politics with you - your arguments and "facts" are disingenuous and not used in good faith or with context and I'll leave it at that before I say anything else

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Willbacker said:

On American issues with two different parties you're more than likely gonna disagree. The tough thing is to try to meet in the middle and reach a compromise. To me and this my opinion the repubs have basically stayed the same (I'm sure I'll hear some sqwacking) wanting a smaller federal govt, less taxes and the 10th amendment which has for decades has been their motto while the left has veered strongly offcourse with globalization, open borders and socialism. That's a big gap in diffrences.

While the issues are important its the American VALUE that we need to regrasp.

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Willbacker said:

Good to hear from you Mili but we do have to face the facts that slavery was a long time ago and blacks today do have the same equal opportunity today as anybody else.

Now you saying the blacks don't get celebrated or remembered. Hell man you got your own month that's dedicated strictly to blacks in remembrance. Heck the 1st person killed in the Revolutionary War was black. Atticus Finch. Look how many whites lost their lives in the Civil War fighting for blacks. Smh man let me tell you I didn't get a damn thing for my white privilege. If I remember correctly you did pretty good for yourself and I remember this cuz you said very nice things to me about my wife and told me a little about yourself which I thank you for and you want to know why you had oppurtunities becuz America is the greatest country on the planet.

We all know slavery was horrendous but we have to forge forward.

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Willbacker said:

Good to hear from you Mili but we do have to face the facts that slavery was a long time ago and blacks today do have the same equal opportunity today as anybody else. As it pertains to police brutality was it only white police that shot unarmed blacks. The incident in Charlotte was a black detective and Freddy Gray was mostly black police. When is anybody gonna bitch about black on blacvk crime by far the number one race vs race killings. In fact according to the numbers more whites are killed by blacks than blacks killed by whites. I believe this graph is correct but maybe its wrong. Its something I remembered reading awhile back

This is what I want to know. Why did blacks abandon the party of Lincoln and embrace the party of the KKK, the resegragation back in the 1880's, who created the Jim Crow laws and filibustered the the Civil Rights agreement. These are the same people that run the cities, hire the police chief and set the rules and regulations they follow. Isnt this where the oppression and problems mainly are? Hell the police have to make sure you don't put extra salt on your food in NYC and have to keep you from sipping thru a plastic straw in Seattle. Heck the welfare system created by Democrats broke up the black family when they used to be the strongest family unit as recently as the 1950's. The bottomline is everybody else gets blamed but the politicians and councilmen/women they just keep getting recycled.

Now you saying the blacks don't get celebrated or remembered. Hell man you got your own month that's dedicated strictly to blacks in remembrance. Heck the 1st person killed in the Revolutionary War was black. Atticus Finch. Look how many whites lost their lives in the Civil War fighting for blacks. Smh man let me tell you I didn't get a damn thing for my white privilege. If I remember correctly you did pretty good for yourself and I remember this cuz you said very nice things to me about my wife and told me a little about yourself which I thank you for and you want to know why you had oppurtunities becuz America is the greatest country on the planet.

We all know slavery was horrendous but we have to forge forward.

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Willbacker said:

My facts are facts not "facts". History sets precedent. Reagan was the last true conservative before Trump. The Bushes were RINO's. I remember "No new taxes" then yeah. Then Bush Jr's tax cut. Lets just say it didn't help me any then I watch him vote for Clinton. Right now I try to understand why 29% of Hispanics voted for Trump, 41% union workers voted for Trump ( the number is real high with the private unions, low with the public unions and guess why) but only 8 % of blacks voted for Trump. Nobody has EVER answered my question as to why blacks vote democrat and have for the last 50/60 yrs. Did life improve under Obama?

https://www.blackpressusa.com/is-black-america-better-off-under-obama/

And this doesn't include the 3 mil more on food stamps under Obama.

Sure I'm sure its hard to discuss politics with cuz I lay down solid points and I'm not worried about being politically correct. We should perhaps stick to football cuz I agree with you on 90% of your assessments.

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Willbacker said:

It seems like there was only 4 protestors in week 2 but its not only the kneeling from Kap but the way he praised Castro is what totally lost me. It totally blows my mind that theres so many that totally want the govt to control everything ie communism that it really scares the hell out of me cuz it could happen. You cant get call it freedom if you don't have choice. So understand its a number of things with me.

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Inqui said:

propping up bad industries is textbook "socialism"

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Inqui said:

Who have you seen that wants government control of everything (as in, a Soviet-style centrally planned economy complete with price floors and price ceilings)? Those that do seem to be a very fringe minority and I haven't seen anyone reputable advocate for such a system. Even Bernie draws the line at only going European-style on areas where market incentives don't lead to socially optimal outcomes. Healthcare's the obvious example, but I've also talked in the past about how for-profit prisons create seriously perverse incentives (and they tend to disproportionately affect minority communities despite no explicit policy to do so) and how roads would never get made.

I've been over this already, but I pay less tax in NZ than I would in the US, I can choose my own doctor whenever I want, I have private health insurance, and we have one of the most "socialist" healthcare systems in the world. I can bring up peer-reviewed articles about how risk pooling, substitution and market power, oligopolies, and elasticity of demand work but I'd bore the forum so much that everyone would promptly put me on ignore. I've also mentioned that our "socialist" system costs the government a fraction of the US system when you adjust for population and tax bases, and it's the same story with literally EVERY other developed country and even a long (and growing) list of developing ones and we arguably get better outcomes (allblackraven and I are likely to live longer than our American friends on this board and our partners are significantly less likely to die in childbirth, for example). The big takeaway is that someone almost won the 2016 election on a platform based on universal healthcare, but in every other country it's not even a debate. They've had these systems for decades and you'd be hard-pressed to find people who think switching to a US-style system is a good idea.

But I digress. The main point I wanted to make is that even in the textbook examples of modern "socialism" (ie, throughout Scandanavia) the government provides a string of services and then invites the private sector to compete. That underlined bit is really important because the people there DO get to choose. That's why I live next to a private hospital and have private health insurance - and if either of them raise their prices too much I can simply tell them to get fucked and roll with the public option. The insurers here have significantly less market power so consumers can't get gouged like they can in the US. I know you're itching to bring up Venezuela but what you're going to have to show me is that if the US government takes on certain roles why the US is more likely to become Venezuela than it is to become Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Australia, NZ or Canada. This is why I'm asking where you're getting the idea that the US left (or the left in any other country worthy of serious discussion) wants the government to control EVERYTHING, because in these other countries that's patently not the case and no serious pundit, politician or group has suggested anything like that for a very long time. I'll be honest in that it feels like you're listening to what Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and fellow talk show callers have to say about the left and taking that on board more than seeing what serious figures actually have to say.

The other point that bothered me a bit is that you're either ignoring or simply forgiving the examples of socialism that the US is carrying out as we speak. The government's making military purchases that even the Pentagon thinks is unnecessary. And Trump's tariffs fit your definition of socialism to a tee (where you said back on page 30 or so that socialism is about control and capitalism is about choice) because US consumers can't buy milk from Canada, NZ or Europe if they want to so that's limiting their choices. Trump's imposing a consumption tax on US consumers while also restricting their choice - I'm struggling to see how that doesn't fit your definition. And then there was the $12b-$15b bailout of farmers who started struggling because the trade war was a bad idea - propping up bad industries is textbook "socialism". And the US farming subsidies are just as bad and protectionist - we used to have them over here but they were scrapped in the 1990s and now our primary sector is one of the most efficient in the world, so in principle I can agree with some of what you're saying. But the reality is that your own party's advocating socialism, just in the wrong places (or to the wrong extent in the military case).

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Militant X 1 said:

Sure, there may be "other" people groups that are profiled but let's keep it real! This country's "major" issue unfortunately, is and has always been between blacks and whites due to the Peculiar Institution known as Slavery! We blacks are and have been constantly fighting against systemic social problems in this nation that have been designed to marginalize and to keep us subjugated since the days of slavery (i.e. Segregation, Jim Crow and the Black Codes, The One Drop Rule, The Birth of a Nation film etc.). And then non-blacks wonder why certain segments of my people group have such a distrust for law enforcement? Really? Now, I'm not condoning bad behavior by no means. I believe in obeying the law. My dad is a retired Chief of Police. My family (a military, black family) obeys the laws of this land but we are far from being blinded to, ignorant or avoidant of the social injustices that our people face on a daily basis in this nation.

What kills me is the hypocrisy in this nation when it comes to the issues of race. Non-blacks in this nation praise the remembrance of the Jewish Holocaust...and rightfully so. Over 6 millions Jews were stripped of their birthright and properties and then marked for death. Horrendous event! There's documentary after documentary after documentary on the topic. But, when it comes to the Black Holocaust (i.e. The Middle Passage) and the millions of Africans (Blacks) murdered, brutalized, raped, burned, lynched and hung, castrated, families ripped apart and sold during slavery and even after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed etc., we're told to; "Just forget about it! Let it go! It happend so long ago!" So, why praise the remembrance of a Holocaust that happened overseas in Germany but not the one that happened in your own backyard in the "good ole' U.S.A?

Things are better but we still have major racial issues between black and white in our nation that have not been dealt with! Kap kneeling brought an awareness to the systemic issue of white officers not only killing "unarmed" blacks but then getting away with it! When a black man can get shot and killed in his own home by an off duty officer who is identified days after the event and then have his character assinated to protect that white officer, it's quite clear that the system is broken and rigged against black people in general and more than other "profiled" people groups.

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The Raven said:

50 percent of the country is white. 15 percent is black. To put this bluntly, if there are more white people, more white people will die. If there are fewer black people, fewer black people will die. Sounds grisly but it's just how numbers work. This is frankly a misleading graphic probably made with racist intentions because it doesn't account for the demographic differences/

Look at how the two lines mirror each other. Trend line is same. Probably means race isn't a factor and population demographics are.

Please think critically next time you share tacit racism with the class.

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allblackraven said:

Fact of the matter is that the terms 'left', 'socialism', etc. were always associated with wrong examples and mostly as a scare tactic by conservative west or fairy-tale lies by Soviet-type governments. There was never anything left in the old Soviet block - it was pure government/party dictatorship.

As you pointed out, the closest we have to real socialism are the wealthy European countries (Scandinavia in particular), Canada and New Zealand, perhaps Australia.

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Inqui said:

I'd say Australia's further on the side of government intervention on the economic spectrum than NZ and Canada (the European countries are debatable), but otherwise I agree fully. "Socialism this" and "socialism that" have been seriously overused by the right-wing media to the point where they're just reflexive scare tactics in response to anything that isn't in the Republican party manifesto. The idea that clipping the banks' ability to make bad loans is the first step on the road to goose-stepping down Times Square to the US anthem with flags everywhere is pretty much the definition of scare tactics.

One of my pet peeves is the idea that initiatives such as financial oversight or universal healthcare are going to turn the US into the Venezuela of the north "because socialism". It's really not an intelligent argument and it ignores the context of both countries (either from dishonesty or ignorance or a bit of both) but I see it made all the time despite the fact that there are much more accurate examples out there.

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Inqui said:

And on the protests, it's not about the flag, the anthem or the NFL any more than Rosa Parks was upset at buses or Tommie Smith and John Carlos were upset at the Olympics. Buses and the Olympics were just very visible symbols of what those people had to say, and I know the Olympians in particular faced a lot of similar arguments ("it's being divisive", "it's not the time and place for it", "be thankful to the country that gave you your shot at glory" etc).

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The Raven said:

History lesson: FDR and Truman called for universal healthcare, a federal jobs guarantee, and a minimum wage that people could live on. This bullshit notion that Democrats are just now getting progressive is historically inaccurate and just a bad take all around.

Now that Democrats are abandoning their corporate shill, neoliberal bullshit policies and getting back to fighting for working people and sticking it to Bourgeois trash, I'm looking forward to soon winning the White House and both houses.

Also flagrant bullshit is the notion that Republicans have stayed the same. In 1980, Reagan opposed even putting a fence on the border and said we should "open our borders both ways" to solve our problems. Reagan started the "Obamaphone" program that Republicans bitch about. In 1970, Nixon created the EPA, an agency current Republicans try to gut at every moment. Eisenhower raised taxes on the rich and had higher taxes than JFK and Obama. TR supported unions, higher wages, and strong regulations on big business.

Our politics have shifted to the far right, to the point that neoliberals like the Clinton are closer in economic policy to Republicans than the rest of the party. We used to be much further left. Universal healthcare and a federal job guarantee were considered good ideas by FDR and Truman in the 1940s. Now, the right derides them as socialist.

Also, globalization has been happening since at least 1492. Republicans were cool with it for decades until they decided that latino immigrants are hurting our economy, which is also flagrant bullshit.

If you think this country is moving left you aren't paying attention. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

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Militant X 1 said:

Hey Will. Good hearing from you as well but we definitely disagree on this issue. Big time!

Let me just say that I could go back and forth with you, post for post and stats for stats about White issues as well as, in comparison to the over inflated issues of the Black community that I see all of the time. But that is to easy to do in a forum lol. I actually love conversations of this magnitude but more "face to face". I just chimed in on your post cause it struck a chord in me that needed to be addressed. And to be honest, you have validated the content of my post by your statements I've bolded:

1. WE DO HAVE TO FACE THE FACTS THAT SLAVERY WAS A LONG TIME AGO.
2. Blacks today have the same "equal" opportunity as anybody else.
3. Hell man you (we blacks) got your own month that's dedicated strictly to blacks.
4.I didn't get a damn thing for "MY WHITE PRIVILEGE". (interesting choice of words Will..."My White Privilege").
5. WE ALL KNOW SLAVERY WAS HORRENDOUS BUT WE HAVE TO FORGE FORWARD.

Not one time, in reference to the Jewish Holocaust, have I ever heard White people (not all of course) tell the Jewish community the things you have said above. Not once! And yet, that's the feelings expressed by most Whites (not all of course) when it comes to our Black Holocaust (The Middle Passage, Slavery, Segregation, Jim Crow, The Black Codes, The One-Drop Rule and the film The Birth of a Nation etc.) that took place right here on American soil. The disingenous attitude that comes across is that; Jews....we remember; but you Blacks need to GET OVER IT! Unbelieveable! Smh!

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The Raven said:

50 percent of the country is white. 15 percent is black. To put this bluntly, if there are more white people, more white people will die. If there are fewer black people, fewer black people will die. Sounds grisly but it's just how numbers work. This is frankly a misleading graphic probably made with racist intentions because it doesn't account for the demographic differences/

Look at how the two lines mirror each other. Trend line is same. Probably means race isn't a factor and population demographics are.

Please think critically next time you share tacit racism with the class.

Click to expand...

Inqui said:

Who have you seen that wants government control of everything (as in, a Soviet-style centrally planned economy complete with price floors and price ceilings)? Those that do seem to be a very fringe minority and I haven't seen anyone reputable advocate for such a system. Even Bernie draws the line at only going European-style on areas where market incentives don't lead to socially optimal outcomes. Healthcare's the obvious example, but I've also talked in the past about how for-profit prisons create seriously perverse incentives (and they tend to disproportionately affect minority communities despite no explicit policy to do so) and how roads would never get made.

I've been over this already, but I pay less tax in NZ than I would in the US, I can choose my own doctor whenever I want, I have private health insurance, and we have one of the most "socialist" healthcare systems in the world. I can bring up peer-reviewed articles about how risk pooling, substitution and market power, oligopolies, and elasticity of demand work but I'd bore the forum so much that everyone would promptly put me on ignore. I've also mentioned that our "socialist" system costs the government a fraction of the US system when you adjust for population and tax bases, and it's the same story with literally EVERY other developed country and even a long (and growing) list of developing ones and we arguably get better outcomes (allblackraven and I are likely to live longer than our American friends on this board and our partners are significantly less likely to die in childbirth, for example). The big takeaway is that someone almost won the 2016 election on a platform based on universal healthcare, but in every other country it's not even a debate. They've had these systems for decades and you'd be hard-pressed to find people who think switching to a US-style system is a good idea.

But I digress. The main point I wanted to make is that even in the textbook examples of modern "socialism" (ie, throughout Scandanavia) the government provides a string of services and then invites the private sector to compete. That underlined bit is really important because the people there DO get to choose. That's why I live next to a private hospital and have private health insurance - and if either of them raise their prices too much I can simply tell them to get fucked and roll with the public option. The insurers here have significantly less market power so consumers can't get gouged like they can in the US. I know you're itching to bring up Venezuela but what you're going to have to show me is that if the US government takes on certain roles why the US is more likely to become Venezuela than it is to become Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Australia, NZ or Canada. This is why I'm asking where you're getting the idea that the US left (or the left in any other country worthy of serious discussion) wants the government to control EVERYTHING, because in these other countries that's patently not the case and no serious pundit, politician or group has suggested anything like that for a very long time. I'll be honest in that it feels like you're listening to what Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and fellow talk show callers have to say about the left and taking that on board more than seeing what serious figures actually have to say.

The other point that bothered me a bit is that you're either ignoring or simply forgiving the examples of socialism that the US is carrying out as we speak. The government's making military purchases that even the Pentagon thinks is unnecessary. And Trump's tariffs fit your definition of socialism to a tee (where you said back on page 30 or so that socialism is about control and capitalism is about choice) because US consumers can't buy milk from Canada, NZ or Europe if they want to so that's limiting their choices. Trump's imposing a consumption tax on US consumers while also restricting their choice - I'm struggling to see how that doesn't fit your definition. And then there was the $12b-$15b bailout of farmers who started struggling because the trade war was a bad idea - propping up bad industries is textbook "socialism". And the US farming subsidies are just as bad and protectionist - we used to have them over here but they were scrapped in the 1990s and now our primary sector is one of the most efficient in the world, so in principle I can agree with some of what you're saying. But the reality is that your own party's advocating socialism, just in the wrong places (or to the wrong extent in the military case).

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