The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

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chuckrh
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by chuckrh »

beantownbubba wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 10:11 am
It seems to me that there is great value in celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day, i.e. recognizing the value and importance of their contributions to American life and recognizing the pain and horror of what was done to them during the long process of being conquered by descendants of white Europeans.

But I don't understand the erasure of Columbus Day, or more accurately, the embarrassment (as opposed to regret) about that conquering and the ways it occurred. It happened. We all benefited from it and the "discovery" of America was a pretty heroic and courageous thing. Why can't both those ideas coexist?
Agreed. The cancel culture thing is out of control. How are we supposed to learn mistakes from the past if we erase it. At first I was pissed about the Jon Gruden situation but he probably had it coming. Strange the NFL is only releasing emails from though. Think they have had it in for the Raiders for a long time. Mark Davis totally outfoxed everyone & got everything he wanted & more. Al Davis would be proud. There was no way they wanted to be a tenant in Rams stadium & the situation in Oakland was untenable. I'm also irked that the Stones have dropped Brown Sugar from the setlist. They did that themselves though.

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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

beantownbubba wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 10:11 am
It seems to me that there is great value in celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day, i.e. recognizing the value and importance of their contributions to American life and recognizing the pain and horror of what was done to them during the long process of being conquered by descendants of white Europeans.

But I don't understand the erasure of Columbus Day, or more accurately, the embarrassment (as opposed to regret) about that conquering and the ways it occurred. It happened. We all benefited from it and the "discovery" of America was a pretty heroic and courageous thing. Why can't both those ideas coexist?
Like many other Southern states, Arkansas eased into MLK Day by taking advantage of the historical accident of MLK and Lee having the same birthday and giving them a joint holiday. Pretty much every state that did that no longer does that, since Lee was courageous and heroic but fought for Wrong.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by Flea »

beantownbubba wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 10:11 am
It seems to me that there is great value in celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day, i.e. recognizing the value and importance of their contributions to American life and recognizing the pain and horror of what was done to them during the long process of being conquered by descendants of white Europeans.

But I don't understand the erasure of Columbus Day, or more accurately, the embarrassment (as opposed to regret) about that conquering and the ways it occurred. It happened. We all benefited from it and the "discovery" of America was a pretty heroic and courageous thing. Why can't both those ideas coexist?
Oh, for fuck sake! What did Columbus do that had not already been done (except to infect and brutalize the indigenous peoples he encountered?). Even the history of the holiday itself is bloody. From Wikipedia:

"The first Columbus Day celebration took place on October 12, 1792 when the Columbian Order of New York, better known as Tammany Hall, held an event to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the historic landing.[5]

For the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1892, following a lynching in New Orleans where a mob had murdered 11 Italian immigrants, President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration.[6][7] The proclamation was part of a wider effort after the lynching incident to placate Italian Americans and ease diplomatic tensions with Italy.[6]"

What the fuck kind of a commemoration is rooted in the appeasement of an ethnic group for political ends???
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by Flea »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 5:37 pm
beantownbubba wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 10:11 am
It seems to me that there is great value in celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day, i.e. recognizing the value and importance of their contributions to American life and recognizing the pain and horror of what was done to them during the long process of being conquered by descendants of white Europeans.

But I don't understand the erasure of Columbus Day, or more accurately, the embarrassment (as opposed to regret) about that conquering and the ways it occurred. It happened. We all benefited from it and the "discovery" of America was a pretty heroic and courageous thing. Why can't both those ideas coexist?
Like many other Southern states, Arkansas eased into MLK Day by taking advantage of the historical accident of MLK and Lee having the same birthday and giving them a joint holiday. Pretty much every state that did that no longer does that, since Lee was courageous and heroic but fought for Wrong.
Fuck Robert E Lee. He spends his days being cornholed in hell by the ghost of Traveller. FWIW, Jefferson, who is worthy of admiration on many levels, is right there with him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ee/529038/
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 5:37 pm
Lee was courageous and heroic but fought for Wrong
Well, I'm certainly not going to argue that Columbus was like MLK. But if you're suggesting he is analogous to Lee, I'm not getting that comparison either.
Flea wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:18 pm
What the fuck kind of a commemoration is rooted in the appeasement of an ethnic group for political ends???
I'm not going to think about it too hard but I'm going to take a wild guess and say somewhere between many and most of them?
Flea wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:18 pm
What did Columbus do that had not already been done
Is that rhetorical? Are you suggesting that he wasn't the first European to sail west across the Atlantic and along the way helped spread the widely believed conspiracy theory that the world is round? If there is some revised history that says Columbus wasn't first, I'm not aware of it and would like to be educated.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

Flea wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:26 pm
the ghost of Traveller.
My impression is that Traveller seems to get more grief than is strictly necessary or justified. Is that because he was white?
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

Flea wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:18 pm
What the fuck kind of a commemoration is rooted in the appeasement of an ethnic group for political ends???
That doesn't bother me. It's politics as usual. However:
beantownbubba wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:31 pm
Well, I'm certainly not going to argue that Columbus was like MLK. [Me, either! JAA] But if you're suggesting he is analogous to Lee, I'm not getting that comparison either.
Both were men with some admirable personal characteristics who were nonetheless Bad People because of their large-scale public acts. That's about as far as I'd go on a direct comparison.

The point about Columbus is that one can celebrate one side or the other of a conflict with high moral stakes, but how can one celebrate both? Lee AND King? Columbus AND the disappeared Tainos?
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

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All that I am saying is Columbus and REL were inhumane hypocritical assholes, and I don't think they deserve laudification.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 7:39 pm
The point about Columbus is that one can celebrate one side or the other of a conflict with high moral stakes, but how can one celebrate both? Lee AND King? Columbus AND the disappeared Tainos?
This is probably the nub of the issue. The "problem" is that I think one can celebrate both sides and I actually do. It seems to me that anything else is just cynical and dangerous historical revisionism. I don't say that w/ 100% confidence, but it is how I feel about it.
Flea post_ wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 7:49 pm
All that I am saying is Columbus and REL were inhumane hypocritical assholes, and I don't think they deserve laudification.
I think you either know a lot more or a lot less about Columbus than I do and that's not trying to be cute. It feels like we're talking about different people. Just fyi I'd put my knowledge at about HS level - I can't recall reading anything academic or an adult bio about him. He seems to me to be a man of his time, no better or worse. Lee, OTOH, should have, and probably did, know better.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

beantownbubba wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 11:41 pm
I think you either know a lot more or a lot less about Columbus than I do and that's not trying to be cute. It feels like we're talking about different people. Just fyi I'd put my knowledge at about HS level - I can't recall reading anything academic or an adult bio about him. He seems to me to be a man of his time, no better or worse. Lee, OTOH, should have, and probably did, know better.
Bartelemo de la Casas was a man of his time, too, and was shocked by what the expeditions which followed immediately in Columbus' wake did to the current residents.

Columbus' depredations were retail and those who followed wholesale, but it was all the same bloody business.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 7:32 am
beantownbubba wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 11:41 pm
I think you either know a lot more or a lot less about Columbus than I do and that's not trying to be cute. It feels like we're talking about different people. Just fyi I'd put my knowledge at about HS level - I can't recall reading anything academic or an adult bio about him. He seems to me to be a man of his time, no better or worse. Lee, OTOH, should have, and probably did, know better.
Bartelemo de la Casas was a man of his time, too, and was shocked by what the expeditions which followed immediately in Columbus' wake did to the current residents.

Columbus' depredations were retail and those who followed wholesale, but it was all the same bloody business.
I think you raise some difficult questions with your previous formulation in this line of argument (i.e. "how can one celebrate both") and I don't have all the answers although as I've said, ultimately I think one can. But whatever the philosophical or theoretical issues are, there is also the down to earth in the mud experience of history as it impacts who we are, what we know and what we learn, which to me looks something like this:

There is a direct line from Columbus to the Declaration of Independence, the good parts of the "American experiment," and the relatively comfortable lives we enjoy. To say nothing of the polio vaccine and nuclear weapons, Birth of a Nation and The Godfather or Heaven's Gate for that matter, Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump, WWII and Vietnam and so, so much more. It's all part of our history and I think it all needs to be acknowledged, studied, learned from, celebrated where appropriate and mourned where appropriate. It makes me very uneasy to decide suddenly (by historical time) that something all good has become all bad or vice versa.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by tinnitus photography »

chuckrh wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 5:18 pm
I'm also irked that the Stones have dropped Brown Sugar from the setlist. They did that themselves though.

i've heard the song a million times and yesterday saw a tweet from Stuart of Mogwai, talking about reading the lyrics and going WTF.

so i did.

wow, i had no idea this was the opening line:

"Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields"


yeah that's a pretty cringey song, talking about whipping and raping slaves.

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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

tinnitus photography wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 11:18 am
chuckrh wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 5:18 pm
I'm also irked that the Stones have dropped Brown Sugar from the setlist. They did that themselves though.

i've heard the song a million times and yesterday saw a tweet from Stuart of Mogwai, talking about reading the lyrics and going WTF.

so i did.

wow, i had no idea this was the opening line:

"Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields"


yeah that's a pretty cringey song, talking about whipping and raping slaves.
In a word, isn't the song about what used to be called miscegenation, and in a salacious, not civil rights, way? The song always made me uncomfortable in a vague way but I never thought about it all that much. My bad. Getting woke is not all bad.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

I think this column belongs in the must read category. While it is specifically addressed to problems facing the Democratic Party it really addresses big societal issues, mostly race related, and alternative ways of thinking about them. Let me know if you can't access the article and i'll try to post excerpts but I think it's all worth reading and it may lose something in summarization.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opin ... 029039208a
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by tinnitus photography »

beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:26 pm
I think this column belongs in the must read category. While it is specifically addressed to problems facing the Democratic Party it really addresses big societal issues, mostly race related, and alternative ways of thinking about them. Let me know if you can't access the article and i'll try to post excerpts but I think it's all worth reading and it may lose something in summarization.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opin ... 029039208a
This has resulted in branding the party as focused on, or at least distracted by, issues of little relevance to most voters’ lives.
agreed here. i read a similar piece a few days ago:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... lem-514992

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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:23 pm
In a word, isn't the song about what used to be called miscegenation, and in a salacious, not civil rights, way?
It's about a slaveowner and a slave, but the slave--brown sugar--is also then-current slang for heroin. The song gets its most deliciously evil vibe by making the slaveowner to the slave as the addict is to the drug, effectively blaming the slave for her own addictiveness/attractiveness.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

tinnitus photography wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:35 pm
beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:26 pm
I think this column belongs in the must read category. While it is specifically addressed to problems facing the Democratic Party it really addresses big societal issues, mostly race related, and alternative ways of thinking about them. Let me know if you can't access the article and i'll try to post excerpts but I think it's all worth reading and it may lose something in summarization.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opin ... 029039208a
This has resulted in branding the party as focused on, or at least distracted by, issues of little relevance to most voters’ lives.
agreed here. i read a similar piece a few days ago:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... lem-514992
This is the piece I liked:

The Case for Deliverism
Democrats can no longer skate by simply on talking about popular issues.

You cannot talk about the same popular items, fail to deliver on them, and expect the voting public to keep listening to you. There are diminishing returns to parties that never seem to get results. At this moment, the only thing that will give Democrats a fighting chance is what my friend Matt Stoller just coined as “deliverism.”

Deliverism means governing well and establishing a record that the electorate needed to win actually feels.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 4:09 pm
The Case for Deliverism
Democrats can no longer skate by simply on talking about popular issues.
You cannot talk about the same popular items, fail to deliver on them, and expect the voting public to keep listening to you. There are diminishing returns to parties that never seem to get results. At this moment, the only thing that will give Democrats a fighting chance is what my friend Matt Stoller just coined as “deliverism.”

Deliverism means governing well and establishing a record that the electorate needed to win actually feels.
This manages to be both totally correct and wholly beside the point. It's not like Democrats don't want to deliver. The primary question is how and the not inconsiderable secondary question is on what? But yeah, if by next November we have no infrastructure bill, no better social spending and no better, more widespread healthcare, it's gonna be really really hard to run as a Democrat.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 4:09 pm
The Case for Deliverism
Democrats can no longer skate by simply on talking about popular issues.
You cannot talk about the same popular items, fail to deliver on them, and expect the voting public to keep listening to you. There are diminishing returns to parties that never seem to get results. At this moment, the only thing that will give Democrats a fighting chance is what my friend Matt Stoller just coined as “deliverism.”

Deliverism means governing well and establishing a record that the electorate needed to win actually feels.
This manages to be both totally correct and wholly beside the point. It's not like Democrats don't want to deliver. The primary question is how and the not inconsiderable secondary question is on what? But yeah, if by next November we have no infrastructure bill, no better social spending and no better, more widespread healthcare, it's gonna be really really hard to run as a Democrat. Hmmmm...time to cue up an "international military crisis"?
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

Why don't the Democrats threaten to primary Sinema? And yes, I just used primary as a verb, which I absolutely hate. Anyway... Sinema's big problem seems to be that she doesn't want to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices w/ big pharma, w/ potential savings of about a zillion dollars. Her smaller problem is that she campaigned on the exact opposite platform last election. Since her position is indefensible, costly and morally reprehensible as well as being hypocritical and fueled, surprise surprise, by big pharma money, she seems to me to be vulnerable. And, oh yeah, there are a lot of old people in Arizona. Like a lot. I say it's time for the Dems to stop fucking around and to start acting like they actually have power even if they apparently have no clue how to use it. Come on Mr. Schumer. We both know that you're not a tough guy from Brooklyn but I bet you know how to act the part.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:19 pm
This manages to be both totally correct and wholly beside the point. It's not like Democrats don't want to deliver. The primary question is how and the not inconsiderable secondary question is on what? But yeah, if by next November we have no infrastructure bill, no better social spending and no better, more widespread healthcare, it's gonna be really really hard to run as a Democrat.
The two are intertwined in questions of implementation. Accepting the reconciliation total will be under 3.5T, what's the best strategy? Fund everything over a shorter timespan and run on getting things done, leaving the next administration to undo--if they can--popular programs? I like that. It worked for Trump and taxes and Trump and Afghanistan. So it's tried and true. Or fund a few things thoroughly and run on those plus getting the next things? That could work and be easier to get, but you've got to get just the right package or someone will not get on board. But it's not undoable.
beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:19 pm
Hmmmm...time to cue up an "international military crisis"?
To quote Gibby Haynes:
There's a time to fuck and a time to crave!
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beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:25 pm
Why don't the Democrats threaten to primary Sinema?
They'd need the candidate to make it a credible threat, which I don't think they have. I'm in favor of a more. direct route--just beat her up in the Senate cloakroom. I bet Klobuchar throws a mean punch! And I hear Feinstein carries brass knuckles. Let's see if sweet reason can carry the day.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by chuckrh »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 4:06 pm
beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:23 pm
In a word, isn't the song about what used to be called miscegenation, and in a salacious, not civil rights, way?
It's about a slaveowner and a slave, but the slave--brown sugar--is also then-current slang for heroin. The song gets its most deliciously evil vibe by making the slaveowner to the slave as the addict is to the drug, effectively blaming the slave for her own addictiveness/attractiveness.
Agreed. & the smack was definitely a factor for the Stones at that point. BS is very much a Mick song & was perhaps a message to Keith. Mick actually came up with the guitar riff. I personally have seen Keith "forget" how to play it & blow it up in concert. The thing about the cancel culture is where do you stop? & does it only apply to white artists? The Stones elected to stop playing BS & Star Star themselves, which is the only saving grace. If you started going through their catalog there is plenty that someone is not going to like. Times have changed certainly but by erasing currently unfashionably material an opportunity to learn is gone. I think we are turning into a nation of wusses, oh so sensitive. If you don't care for something, fine don't listen. That's my practice on most rap music (not all). There's plenty to object to in that realm. I don't hear anyone objecting to that. This discussion started out with the current situation with Gruden. I think the NFL is being very selective & quite possibly used it to get back at the Raiders since they have all been a thorn in the side of the majority of the league & it doesn't seem right. They should release everything. I'm in no way condoning what Gruden said. At first I was pissed about it but when more stuff came out I could understand the anger. Another problem is it most likely it is representative of the culture in the NFL & other sports. How are they going to fix the whole culture if they don't release all the tapes>? I would bet the house that there are some big names who happen to be in power who would be affected. Now shut the f up & let me listen to Brown Sugar, haha. PS: Skydog slavin' is about Duane Allman, another well known musician who had a relationship with the devil's dandruff. From Jim Dickinson who was at the Stones Muscle Shoals sessions.

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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 6:01 pm
beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:25 pm
Why don't the Democrats threaten to primary Sinema?
They'd need the candidate to make it a credible threat, which I don't think they have. I'm in favor of a more. direct route--just beat her up in the Senate cloakroom. I bet Klobuchar throws a mean punch! And I hear Feinstein carries brass knuckles. Let's see if sweet reason can carry the day.
As a matter of æsthetics, I still prefer Warren and Duckworth giving Sinema a beatdown in the Senate cloakroom, but I do have a candidate for primarying her: Mark Kelly.

Seriously. He's much more popular, and the Democratic governor would appoint his replacement, who would presumably be an actual Democrat. Kelly's platform would be simple: "Any Democrat Is Better Than My Opponent".

Incidentally, I started counting women in the Senate by party affiliation. They make up a quarter of the Senate now. There are sixteen female Democratic senators, counting Sinema, and nine female Republican senators, again counting Sinema.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

I would suggest there is, at the least, a tension between the two bits I've bolded below:
beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 9:47 am
I think you raise some difficult questions with your previous formulation in this line of argument (i.e. "how can one celebrate both") and I don't have all the answers although as I've said, ultimately I think one can. But whatever the philosophical or theoretical issues are, there is also the down to earth in the mud experience of history as it impacts who we are, what we know and what we learn, which to me looks something like this:

There is a direct line from Columbus to the Declaration of Independence, the good parts of the "American experiment," and the relatively comfortable lives we enjoy. To say nothing of the polio vaccine and nuclear weapons, Birth of a Nation and The Godfather or Heaven's Gate for that matter, Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump, WWII and Vietnam and so, so much more. It's all part of our history and I think it all needs to be acknowledged, studied, learned from, celebrated where appropriate and mourned where appropriate. It makes me very uneasy to decide suddenly (by historical time) that something all good has become all bad or vice versa.
I think you're conflating two things. There is a wholeness to history, where you take the good with the bad and accept it as a piece. I get that. The Kennedy assassination led directly to the Civil Rights Act and Beatlemania. Is that good or bad? That isn't even a meaningful question. It just is. But there's also a particularity to history, where pivotal events lead to massive consequences, with costs and benefits unevenly distributed in ways that don't even relate to each other. The difference between the two is time. The first is the long mountaintop view; the second is being in the battle.

That sounds like I've said the same thing in different ways. I don't think I did, but it's a fine difference. I do like those last two sentences a lot.
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:18 am
John A Arkansawyer wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 6:01 pm
beantownbubba wrote:
Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:25 pm
Why don't the Democrats threaten to primary Sinema?
They'd need the candidate to make it a credible threat, which I don't think they have. I'm in favor of a more. direct route--just beat her up in the Senate cloakroom. I bet Klobuchar throws a mean punch! And I hear Feinstein carries brass knuckles. Let's see if sweet reason can carry the day.
As a matter of æsthetics, I still prefer Warren and Duckworth giving Sinema a beatdown in the Senate cloakroom, but I do have a candidate for primarying her: Mark Kelly.

Seriously. He's much more popular, and the Democratic governor would appoint his replacement, who would presumably be an actual Democrat. Kelly's platform would be simple: "Any Democrat Is Better Than My Opponent".

Incidentally, I started counting women in the Senate by party affiliation. They make up a quarter of the Senate now. There are sixteen female Democratic senators, counting Sinema, and nine female Republican senators, again counting Sinema.
Lo and behold:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/pro ... 01930.html

Of course it's a long way from here to there but at least there are signs of life.
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Beaverdam
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by Beaverdam »

https://apple.news/ACsX0awgcQDuYgxtV-nUqBg

I guess this article is appropriate in the politics thread?!?

My grandfather left his home to fight in Germany partially due to the Holocaust. I will never forget watching Schindler’s List with him. Reading the article just makes me crazy!

beantownbubba
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

Beaverdam wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:16 pm
https://apple.news/ACsX0awgcQDuYgxtV-nUqBg

I guess this article is appropriate in the politics thread?!?

My grandfather left his home to fight in Germany partially due to the Holocaust. I will never forget watching Schindler’s List with him. Reading the article just makes me crazy!
If I took this guy seriously I would be apoplectic, but I don't. Anyone who thinks that there are "opposing sides" to the Holocaust is either a moron, viciously (as opposed to casually or unthinkingly) anti-semitic or a viciously anti-semitic moron. I refuse to let assholes like that into my life beyond showing them the disdain and lack of respect they deserve.
What used to be is gone and what ought to be ought not to be so hard

beantownbubba
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

beantownbubba wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 11:38 pm
Beaverdam wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:16 pm
https://apple.news/ACsX0awgcQDuYgxtV-nUqBg

I guess this article is appropriate in the politics thread?!?

My grandfather left his home to fight in Germany partially due to the Holocaust. I will never forget watching Schindler’s List with him. Reading the article just makes me crazy!
If I took this guy seriously I would be apoplectic, but I don't. Anyone who thinks that there are "opposing sides" to the Holocaust is either a moron, viciously (as opposed to casually or unthinkingly) anti-semitic or a viciously anti-semitic moron. I refuse to let assholes like that into my life beyond showing them the disdain and lack of respect they deserve.
Yeah, well, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Heather Cox Richardson is a lot smarter than I. I didn't realize how systemic this is and how deep it goes. She provides the chapter and verse. So, they're not necessarily morons (the jury is out on that) they're misguided at best and I guess we can each fill in what this is at worst. The last line is a doozy.

I very rarely post whole columns so I think it's ok to do so occasionally when the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

"On October 8, the executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, told a teacher to make sure to follow Texas’s new law requiring teachers to present opposing views on controversial subjects. The Carroll school board had recently reprimanded a fourth-grade teacher who had kept an anti-racism book in her classroom, and teachers wanted to know what books they could keep in their own classrooms.

“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” the curriculum director said. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust,” the director continued, “that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s systematic murder of about two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population—about six million people—during World War II.

“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” one teacher said.

“Believe me,” the director said. “That’s come up.”

The Texas legislature passed another law that is going into effect in December. S.B. 3, known as the Critical Race Theory bill. It specifies what, exactly, social studies courses should teach to students. Those guidelines present a vision of how American citizens should perceive their nation.

They should have “an understanding of the fundamental moral, political, and intellectual foundations of the American experiment in self-government; the history, qualities, traditions, and features of civic engagement in the United States; the structure, function, and processes of government institutions at the federal, state, and local levels.”

But they should get that information in a specific way: through the Declaration of Independence; the United States Constitution; the Federalist Papers, including Essays 10 and 51; excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; the transcript of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate; and the writings of the founding fathers of the United States; the history and importance of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964; and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

While they managed to add in de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America—and I would be shocked if more than a handful of people have ever read that account of early America—there are some pointed omissions from this list. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees Black voting, didn’t make it, although the Nineteenth Amendment, which grants women the right to vote, did. Also missing is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, although the Civil Rights Act of the previous year is there.

Topics explicitly eliminated from the teaching standard are also instructive. Those things cut from the standards include: “the history of Native Americans,” and “[founding] mothers and other founding persons.”

Under “commitment to free speech and civil discourse,” topics struck from the standards include “the writings of…George Washington; Ona Judge (a woman Washington enslaved and who ran away); Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings (the enslaved woman Jefferson took as a sexual companion after the death of his wife, her half-sister),” and “any other founding persons of the United States.”

The standards lost Frederick Douglass’s writings, the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that forced Indigenous Americans off their southeastern lands, and Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists defending the separation of church and state. The standards lost “historical documents related to the civic accomplishments of marginalized populations” including documents related to the Chicano movement, women’s suffrage and equal rights, the civil rights movement, Indigenous rights, and the American labor movement.

The standards also lost “the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong” and “the history and importance of the civil rights movement.” The legislature took three pages to outline all the things that teachers may not teach, including all the systemic biases the right associates with Critical Race Theory (although that legal theory is not taught in K–12 schools), and anything having to do with the 1619 Project.

Teachers cannot be forced to teach current events or controversial issues, but if they choose to do so, they must “strive to explore that topic from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.” Supporters of the measure said that teachers should teach facts and not “choose sides.”

The lawmakers who wrote the new standards said they had been crafted to eliminate redundancy. In 2019, the state wrote standards to teach character traits—courage, integrity and honesty—and instructions to include particular people or events could simply duplicate those concepts. “If you want to talk about courage, talk about George Washington crossing the Delaware, or William Barret Travis defending the Alamo,” a member of the state board of education said.

Editing from our history Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the National Farmworkers’ Association—she was eliminated by name—as well as Abigail Adams and Frederick Douglass and the 1924 Snyder Act (by which the nation recognized Indigenous citizenship) does more than whitewash our history. That editing warps what it means to be an American.

Our history is not about individual feats of courage or honesty in a vacuum. It is about the efforts of people in this country to determine their own fate and to elect a government that will enable them to do that.

A curriculum that talks about individual courage and integrity while erasing the majority of us, as well as the rules that enable us to have a say in our government by voting, is deliberately untethered from national democratic principles.

It gives us a school that does not dare take a position on the Holocaust."
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Flea
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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by Flea »

So I guess McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" is right out.
Now it's dark.

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Re: The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

Here's something you don't see very often: An argument in favor of lifetime judicial appointments. Well written and worth reading although I doubt it will change many minds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... p_opinions
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