Meet the next President of the United States

[Sarpedon]

Terms like "white guilt" or "projecting guilt" are simply right-wing slogans to denounce ethics they don't like. Here we come back to the point where they've always been better at fighting at an emotional level, labeling and belittling instead of arguing. Constant arguments, especially amongst themselves, has always been a key feature of leftist organizations. Not that the same doesn't happen the other way around too (Michael Moore comes to mind), but not quite at the same level.

I'm not sure what you mean by social pressure, peer pressure obviously happens in all social groups, but within groups less strictly organized and less inclined to follow hierarchical structures, certainly to a lesser extent. I feel safe to say that this is a far greater factor in conservative groups than liberal / progressive ones, though again this happens in both. I distinctly remember endless feminist discussions during the student protests in Austria, and leftist-feminists showed pretty much the same indoctrination on certain topics than, random example, Herschel here.

Even if it's used politically, "white guilt" is still very much a social stigma in the US - even if you're not 80 years old and from Mississippi.

Be as racist and bigoted as you want to any color other than black. We can bomb the shit out of brown, use Agent Orange on yellow, whatever. Killed millions? It's coo. Your Asian and European friends that live here won't mind if you use a slur as a joke, if you can take one right back.

Enslaved blacks, as was common practice for the times?

Can't use the word black in any context without dirty looks.

Not getting into the rest of the debating in this thread because lolpolitics, just wanted to chime in with something slightly irrelevant. If you hear someone use "white guilt," don't handwave it as a right/left thing - it's a pretty complicated deal.

[Tarminic]

Enslaved blacks, as was common practice for the times?

Can't use the word black in any context without dirty looks.

Where do you live? I spent seven years in DC and 8 years in Tennessee and this wasn't an issue except for the occasional soccer mom.

On the other hand, I don't hang out with hipsters or hippies so maybe I'm just isolated from this phenomenon.

[Sarpedon]

Where do you live? I spent seven years in DC and 8 years in Tennessee and this wasn't an issue except for the occasional soccer mom.

On the other hand, I don't hang out with hipsters or hippies so maybe I'm just isolated from this phenomenon.

Texas. I actually know it's not as common in TN (I really want to move there, FFL will-approves ftw) but it's not just hippies/hipsters. Here, at least, if you're middle class, you're going to get it when it public. In private, everyone is racist as fuck.

Makes no sense to me. I was brought up on the "there are blacks, and then there are niggers" deal.

[Reed Tiburon]

Even if it's used politically, "white guilt" is still very much a social stigma in the US - even if you're not 80 years old and from Mississippi.

Be as racist and bigoted as you want to any color other than black. We can bomb the shit out of brown, use Agent Orange on yellow, whatever. Killed millions? It's coo. Your Asian and European friends that live here won't mind if you use a slur as a joke, if you can take one right back.

Enslaved blacks, as was common practice for the times?

Can't use the word black in any context without dirty looks.

not sure the concept of slavery really needs any defending here

yes, "white male guilt" is a thing, but it's not leveraged nearly as much as you think - it's mostly only actively spread by feminists, gawker, huffpo and the like. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," maybe the archetypal white guilt essay, was written by Peggy McIntosh, an anti-racism activist. Not-so-coincidentally, a white feminist.* Black people generally aren't the ones actively going around guilt-tripping people, at least not nowadays.

My point being, while society buys in or doesn't buy in to these terms to various degrees, the thought leadership there is coming from the fringe. "White guilt" has as much to do with white people feeling guilty as it does with people actively calling them out. And I'd argue that the buy-in to leftist propaganda in the US, based as it is on intellectual arguments, isn't nearly as effective across a society as buy-in to right-wing propaganda.*

*I guessed she was white before I went to Google Images to check. I was right. I actually haven't read that post in a long time, so she might say that she's white in there and I just forgot.
**This should not be taken as me saying that leftist propaganda is "smarter," merely that it's constructed to appeal to a different sense, if you will. This has no bearing on its rectitude, or fraudulence as the case may be.

[Sarpedon]

not sure the concept of slavery really needs any defending here

yes, "white male guilt" is a thing, but it's not leveraged nearly as much as you think - it's mostly only actively spread by feminists, gawker, huffpo and the like. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," maybe the archetypal white guilt essay, was written by Peggy McIntosh, an anti-racism activist. Not-so-coincidentally, a white feminist.* Black people generally aren't the ones actively going around guilt-tripping people, at least not nowadays.

My point being, while society buys in or doesn't buy in to these terms to various degrees, the thought leadership there is coming from the fringe. "White guilt" has as much to do with white people feeling guilty as it does with people actively calling them out. And I'd argue that the buy-in to leftist propaganda in the US, based as it is on intellectual arguments, isn't nearly as effective across a society as buy-in to right-wing propaganda.*

*I guessed she was white before I went to Google Images to check. I was right. I actually haven't read that post in a long time, so she might say that she's white in there and I just forgot.
**This should not be taken as me saying that leftist propaganda is "smarter," merely that it's constructed to appeal to a different sense, if you will. This has no bearing on its rectitude, or fraudulence as the case may be.

I should've mentioned that I've really never heard the term used by a politician, and the topic only comes up if someone mentions reparations. It's not leveraged, and it's not even propagated by anyone in the black community (well, some figureheads still do, but they're regarded as radicals for the most part) by and large. For the most part, it's all a sort of unspoken, internally spread thing with whites.

And no, I wasn't defending slavery. Was just pointing out that at the time, it wasn't so out of the ordinary.

[indeterminacy]

The key difference is that Iraq was backed by a vote in the US Congress.

fyp. I'm not really debating anything - these are just facts :P It's also a fact that Bob Gates stated, "we have no vital US national security interests in Libya". Liberal interventionism best interventionism amirite?

You've pivoted the subject of this discussion twice now and completely ignored repeated questions on my part that were central to your initial argument.

I don't see any question marks in your previous post. Not being a dick...I just don't see any questions being asked.

I think my position in this discussion quite clear:
- Obama can't be re-elected without a vastly improved economy. Period.
- His meek, confused foreign policy only reinforces a perception of impotence.

Also, understand, bombing Libya is not foreign policy. It's military operations. With respect to policy, I think the White House called their strategy "leading from behind" and the reasoning for the action "humanitarian"...none of us has a fucking clue what their policy objectives are behind the action, nobody has stated them. My guess is we want a say in post-war Libya...for a country that UNLIKE Iraq gave up its WMDs willingly and stopped launching international terrorists attacks decades ago...I think bombing them is a stupid approach.

[Exortius]

fyp. I'm not really debating anything - these are just facts :P It's also a fact that Bob Gates stated, "we have no vital US national security interests in Libya". Liberal interventionism best interventionism amirite?



I don't see any question marks in your previous post. Not being a dick...I just don't see any questions being asked.

I think my position in this discussion quite clear:
- Obama can't be re-elected without a vastly improved economy. Period.
- His meek, confused foreign policy only reinforces a perception of impotence.

Also, understand, bombing Libya is not foreign policy. It's military operations. With respect to policy, I think the White House called their strategy "leading from behind" and the reasoning for the action "humanitarian"...none of us has a fucking clue what their policy objectives are behind the action, nobody has stated them. My guess is we want a say in post-war Libya...for a country that UNLIKE Iraq gave up its WMDs willingly and stopped launching international terrorists attacks decades ago...I think bombing them is a stupid approach.

What do you consider "pretty decent"? Because Iraq today is metric fucktons worse than Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

Page 4.

[Herschel Yamamoto]

*ahahah oh man!.gif*
Man, herschel is just becoming a mouthpiece these days. I think he's getting even more crazy than before.

What? The countries behind Libya are certainly more weighty - all snark aside, I'd rather have France beside me than the Czech Republic. But just because a few big nations were gung-ho against Iraq doesn't mean that nobody liked it. It's easy to talk about "the international community", but 200 countries are very rarely of one mind. Hell, the last time they came close was over the topic of invading Iraq.

  Spoiler:

(in 1991, not 2003)

It's pretty much like you say it was; a decent number of small inconsequential states hopping on the moral support bandwagon during the Iraqi invasion to score some brownie points with the USA. You're deluding yourself by imagining it enjoyed broad international support, or even acquiescence.

The key difference is that Libya is backed by a UN Security Council resolution.

Who over the age of 12 gives a single fuck about what the UN Security Council thinks?

[Spaztick]

Texas. I actually know it's not as common in TN (I really want to move there, FFL will-approves ftw) but it's not just hippies/hipsters. Here, at least, if you're middle class, you're going to get it when it public. In private, everyone is racist as fuck.

Makes no sense to me. I was brought up on the "there are blacks, and then there are niggers" deal.

My grandmother is just flat racist (she told me flat out as a child that she thought everyone should stick to their own race, used to openly use the word nigger until she was told that wasn't polite, and segregation is probably the only thing she agreed about with my dad), my mother is better and only hates Mexican women (probably because my dad had a thing for Mexican women), and my sister is taking the fundie path and only hates non-Christians, and I'd be hard pressed to hate anyone with a triple digit IQ, so I guess my family has slowly improved over a few generations. As far as bigotry goes I think I came out well off on having a sheltering mother.

[Sarpedon]

My grandmother is just flat racist (she told me flat out as a child that she thought everyone should stick to their own race, used to openly use the word nigger until she was told that wasn't polite, and segregation is probably the only thing she agreed about with my dad), my mother is better and only hates Mexican women (probably because my dad had a thing for Mexican women), and my sister is taking the fundie path and only hates non-Christians, and I'd be hard pressed to hate anyone with a triple digit IQ, so I guess my family has slowly improved over a few generations. As far as bigotry goes I think I came out well off on having a sheltering mother.

My family is largely tolerant, strangely. Use of nigger is restricted to trashy people (regardless of color) but otherwise my parents/grandparents largely only hate cop-killers and the "thank god for dead soldiers" types. I especially agree on those two counts, but I'm largely misanthropic - I usually can't stand stupid people, and this country is made up of them.

[Tarminic]

My family is largely tolerant, strangely. Use of nigger is restricted to trashy people (regardless of color) but otherwise my parents/grandparents largely only hate cop-killers and the "thank god for dead soldiers" types. I especially agree on those two counts, but I'm largely misanthropic - I usually can't stand stupid people, and this country is made up of them.

What?


My family (from New Jersey, upper middle class) are pretty tolerant, though the prospect of my sister dating a black guy made my dad uncomfortable. My wife's family, on the other hand? Racist as shit. I had heard the n-word in person maybe once before I met them. Now it's up to a few hundred times. I would say something but then I'd just alienate myself and by proxy her and I'm not willing to do that.

[Reed Tiburon]

What?


My family (from New Jersey, upper middle class) are pretty tolerant, though the prospect of my sister dating a black guy made my dad uncomfortable. My wife's family, on the other hand? Racist as shit. I had heard the n-word in person maybe once before I met them. Now it's up to a few hundred times. I would say something but then I'd just alienate myself and by proxy her and I'm not willing to do that.

Fuck that. What's the point of subsuming your beliefs to put up with their clearly wrong and hateful ones? Not saying you should go start a fight, but generally with people like that "putting up with it" is what everyone else does, hoping someone will have the balls to say something. Kind of makes me sick actually.

[Tarminic]

Fuck that. What's the point of subsuming your beliefs to put up with their clearly wrong and hateful ones? Not saying you should go start a fight, but generally with people like that "putting up with it" is what everyone else does, hoping someone will have the balls to say something. Kind of makes me sick actually.

Cool, next time they say something racist I'll call you in so you'll get uninvited to family events for starting shit instead of the two of us.

[Reed Tiburon]

Cool, next time they say something racist I'll call you in so you'll get uninvited to family events for starting shit instead of the two of us.

I guess you have that privilege when you're white vOv

[Sarpedon]

What?


My family (from New Jersey, upper middle class) are pretty tolerant, though the prospect of my sister dating a black guy made my dad uncomfortable. My wife's family, on the other hand? Racist as shit. I had heard the n-word in person maybe once before I met them. Now it's up to a few hundred times. I would say something but then I'd just alienate myself and by proxy her and I'm not willing to do that.

What's more racist - secretly being afraid your kid's going to have a mulatto baby, or using a word for one of its proper definitions?

[Hellkyte]

Mandatory HPV vaccine = Merck lobbying money, not compassionate conservatism.

(unless you were trying to make the case that he values special interests cash over evangelical crazypantsness)

I would argue that it's irrelevant. HPV vaccines are a damned good idea. Promoting them is a damned good idea. If he listened to a lobby (that donated a WHOPPING 6k to his PAC) and followed it for a damned good idea then more power to him.

[Tarminic]

What's more racist - secretly being afraid your kid's going to have a mulatto baby, or using a word for one of its proper definitions?

My dad was afraid that my sister's addictive personality would lead to her falling in with the wrong crowd, and he felt like her dating a black guy would increase the chances of that guy being in the wrong crowd. It was an ignorant fear, yes, but if my dad bears any ill will toward black people in general he has never said so or acted so beyond what I described above. Regardless, I'm not interested in defending my dad's feelings.

As for your claim that your family "uses a word for one of its proper definitions", well, I don't have a productive response to that statement frankly. I find it interesting that your statement seems to emphasize the fact that it's "just a word".

[Art]

Whoever said Dallas is terrible WILL BE DEALT WITH

[Andrea Griffin]

Democrats suck at fighting dirty.

Obama's ACORN would like to have a word with you...

[Keorythe]

Whoever said Dallas is terrible WILL BE DEALT WITH

Dallas is terrible. But Houston is worse.

yes, "white male guilt" is a thing, but it's not leveraged nearly as much as you think - it's mostly only actively spread by feminists, gawker, huffpo and the like. "White Privilege:

Bring that down to Houston and see how long that belief lasts. Seriously, Jesse Jackson marched a whole 1.2 miles from a "traditionally black college" to the Univ. of Houston to protest the lack of black students at the Uni. The irony blatantly flying over his head and the fact that Afirmative Action was going strong and pushing the acceptance numbers unnaturally higher.