JHK’s Three-Act Play
In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, the excellent Bill Moyers hosted political activist Angela Glover Blackwell on his weekly interview show, Moyers & Company (April 13; “An Activist for Our Times”) and in the course of things (12:18 in the program) Ms. Blackwell said, “America does not want to talk about race.” In point of fact, we’ll talk about it all the live-long day, just not very honestly.
The Trayvon Martin incident certainly provoked a broad media conversation about race all over the cable TV networks and the Internet. It’s been an inconclusive discussion because the facts of the case are so muddled and the truth may never be known, or may not satisfy anyone if it becomes known. Mostly, the talk followed predictable patterns of grievance, accusation, and especially hand-wringing – the latter well represented by Bill Moyers, the embodiment of 1960s-vintage idealist Democratic liberalism, who came on the scene as a close aide to President Lyndon Johnson at the height of the civil rights struggle.
The reason the race conversation remains so constricted in America is because the central question makes everyone so uncomfortable. That question is: what accounts for the failure to thrive of such a large percentage of black America? It is uncomfortable for whites (especially Progressives) because it implies a failure of the social justice movement itself, and in particular the watershed civil rights struggles of the 1960s. It’s uncomfortable for blacks because it stirs up immense anxiety over the stigma of racial inferiority.
The crucial moment in this recent history of race relations, it seems to me, must be located in the events between 1966 and 1970. This was the historical moment that followed the deconstruction of legal race codes with the passage into law of the Public Accommodations Act of 1964 and then the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These two legislative milestones, promoted and signed by Lyndon Johnson, were supposed to conclude the unfinished business of the Civil War and emancipation, which had festered so long in the Jim Crow inurement.
The expectation was that the removal of legal obstacles to full citizenship would hasten economic justice and cultural equality, but just then something curious happened: the youth revolt of the late 1960s was underway and young black America immediately opted for separatism. Opposition to anything and everything was the motif for my generation back then. A few years after the 1964 Public Accommodations Act passed, the black students at my college demanded (and were given) their own separate student union building. During the riots that followed the Kent State shootings in the Spring of 1971, somebody burned the building down – a mystery never solved.
I believe the black separatist movement of that time derived largely from anxiety around the issues of cultural assimilation – that is, of black and white America forming a true and complete common culture. In any case, it was at this moment of history that the multicultural movement presented itself as an “out” for white America. Multiculturalism allowed white America to pretend that common culture was not important. It also promoted the unfortunate idea that we could have a functioning civil society with different standards of behavior for different ethnic groups. It has left the nation with the unanswered question of black America’s self-evident failure to thrive, and an enormous body of narrative affecting to explain it away as “structural racism.”
Bill Moyers did not even attempt to address the failure to thrive question in his interview with Angela Glover Blackwell. Both of these people are about as well-intentioned as anyone in the country where race relations are concerned, but neither of them were able to honestly confront the issue. My own opinion is that it’s about behavior at least as much as its about race and probably more, and we continue to make tragic decisions in this country about what behavior is okay and what’s not. Are there proportionately more black men in prison than members of other races in America? Yes there are, and most of them behaved badly enough to get locked up, whether our drug laws are stupid or not. Is something preventing black children from learning in school? Probably a number of things, but I would begin absolutely with the duty to teach them to speak English intelligibly – something that nobody expresses any interest in, especially white Progressives. Do white people fear black males who affect to act as if they are dangerous? Maybe black men should stop trying to scare people. Are these “racist” observations or exercises in reality-testing?
I doubt even that question can be settled conclusively in our time. The truth is that white America is too uncomfortable with the discomfort of black America and white America will do anything, and will bend any view of reality, in order to avoid the most frightening outcome of all, which is the possibility of race war. Well it’s hard not to sympathize with that, but it still leaves us with the burden of all the tragic choices we made since those heady days of 1964 and 1965 when Bill Moyers could stand behind President Johnson signing those landmark civil rights bills, basking in the broad-based belief that real human progress was being made.
I don’t know for sure what Trayvon Martin was doing in the moments before George Zimmerman shot him in the Florida condo cluster. The public may never learn what really went on, even after Mr. Zimmerman’s trial. People don’t get shot for no reason, though sometimes it is not a good reason, or one we want to talk about.
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Just Out! The whole shootin’ match going back to 1987!
For autographed copies:
Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY
Also at: Amazon, Barnes & Nobel
The Jeff Greenaway series of novellas. These rollicking, short books depict the misadventures of an eleven-year-old boy growing up in New York City in the early 1960s
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
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Book 4: |
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How does the madness end, James
http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/now-there-you-go-again-of-money-militias-and-madness/
kulturCritic
I used to believe that James Kunstler had something to say beside his constant utterances that people who didn’t agree with him were short of grey matter. And though, like most card and tea readers, time had shown his predictions to be far from accurate, he somehow still believes that he has the most accurate perception around. Whine, whine, whine. And if he were able help push some readers into provocative behavior—a riot or two–it would be a tremendous boost for his ego.”. . . and I would venture even to set the meme loose here and now and watch it go viral.”
I find it just a little ironic that a Kindle version and an audio version of World Made by Hand and The Which of Hebron for iphone is being hawked on this website.. Where is Mr. I don’t believe that electronic gadgets will save us, getting his paychecks?
America seems to have a many who want to blame someone and Kunstler–along with some the fundamentalists from the right—is one of the biggest whiners in a parade of whiners.
Maybe instead of always trying to turn up the heat with his acerbic style he might sometime be humble enough to encourage moderate and reasoned steps in a more sustainable direction. Just not as much fun? Eh? It’s much more fashionable to call everyone a s***head and say we’re going down. Keep on feeding that old libertarian streak that runs so deep– I got my 40 acres and a good gun. I’m prepared. It almost feels as nice as a tank full of gas.
Race is just going to be another factor that drives a wedge between people during the times of increasing social pressure in collapse. Sadly, we know about it, but really have no tools to address it, the dialog long since having been silenced.
Visit The Leibowitz Society at http://leibowitzsociety.blogspot.com/2012/04/disasters.html for more discussion on collapse and what our future Dark Age holds for us.
we need more forced school busing
lmao
Race doesn’t HAVE “to be another factor that drives a wedge between people”. When you choose to live, work, and play among different ages and types of people, and you rely on them for things like transportation, medicine, advice, and security, and they in turn rely on you for what you bring to the community, different backgrounds become unimportant.
I don’t say this as someone who aspires to this kind of arrangement (and I’m neither liberal nor conservative). I’ve simply lived in mixed, multi-generational communities for 15 years, and this is the reality.
Some of you probably remember Jim talking a few months age about a “contraction in the trust horizon”–how who we trust (and are willing to support) becomes hyperlocal in hard times.
Today’s post reminded me of that discussion because, even if our faith in national and state (and maybe even county) authorities disappears fully, we’ll only be able to survive by reaching out and forging strong connections with everyone in our community, no matter what they look like (or how old they are).
In a recent interview (I’ll post the link below), Nicole Foss describes how important connections, interdependence, and resource pooling become in an ever-weaker economy–at the individual, family, and community levels.
One of the many interesting ideas she talks about is how, as the “state and other external supports that we’ve become accustomerd to are going away,” the problems specific to the younger (no opportunity) and older (no security) generations could be addressed if they find ways to come together. With disappearing pensions and health care coverage, for example, the older generation could use its accumulated assets to directly purchase the work and support of the younger generation, which presumably is healthy and industrious enough to seek such arrangements.
Nicole comments that this possibility lets us think of “young people as engines of community building, not debt slavery” and that addressing the needs of multiple generations creates more robust structures than any one generation could hope to build and maintain on its own.
Keep looking for solutions, everyone. Stay open to other people. It’ll get us through.
http://www.blubrry.com/extraenvironmentalist/1336554/episode-38-hard-times/
Race war? Try class war. Your thinking is still stuck in the 1960s, JHK. There are more thuggish, stupid white kids, and brown ones, and every other ethnicity, that are a threat to the public. Seeing things only in terms of black vs. white underclasses is a relic from the 1966-70 period you describe. I know plenty of people with stupid kids, who got that way because they were stupid parents. It’s not about the skin; it’s about the stupid.
Jim: The case is about profiling, that happens, I lived in Florida for years and saw it all the time. For example a few years back I saw a young black man singled out in a line at the federal building (this time in uber-liberal Boston) and put through the ringer, for no reason other than he was black, take of belt, shoes, et cet, while I a 40ish white guy stood behind him, and walked right through security he had no gang clothing, or tats or even a hoodie. In fact we were both dressed about the same, and the officer that did this was black as well. as we waited at the elevator I looked at him and said “We both know what that was about” he just shook his head and said Yes.
As a dyed-in-the-wool assimilationist, I agree wholeheartedly with you, Jim. Multi-culti, as an ideology, is keeping blacks and other minorities down.
One of the readers of my blog noted that I was reluctant to comment on the Trayvon Martin case. I told him it was because the environment was already saturated with commentary on the case, particularly in the media I follow (it is the perfect story for MSNBC, a combination of politics and true crime), and I really didn’t have anything new or original to say. What am I going to do, point out how ALEC was doing the bidding of the NRA, which is helping out the alliance of the corn pone fascists and the 1% to “maintain order?” Krugman did that already, and I didn’t even bother to comment on Krugman’s piece. That was partly true. The part I kept silent about was that I didn’t want to say anything particularly foolish, something that I would be really embarrassed to have written. This current essay just confirms the wisdom of my decision; there’s too much victim blaming (not of Trayvon, but of young African-American men) for my taste. I feel a bit dirty just commenting here. Any dirtier, and I might have the reaction that I now have to Elaine Meinel Supkis’s blog; I stopped commenting there because of her anti-Semitism.
As for what I have written about this past week, I bid Rick Santorum farewell, described a week riding the gas price rollercoaster (the price went from $3.87 down to $3.69, back up to $3.99, then down again to $3.79, all in four days), recommended a blog called The Hipcrime Vocab (another reference to a science fiction story, “Stand on Zanzibar,” in which collapse from overpopulation plays a major part), saluted Yuri’s Night, ranted about Friday the 13th, made fun of “Plan 999 from Outer Space” along with some real stinkers of movies with environmental themes, including “Birdemic,” and continued my retrospective of the first year of the blog. All of these posts have musical accompaniment. As I wrote last week, come for the writing, stay for the music.
Happy Motoring–for now–from Detroit!
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/
The whites and the blacks are not the future. Blacks have been 11% of the U.S. population for the last 30 years, and we whites are dying out. The Mexicans (and then the Muslims and then the Chinese) are the future of America. “He who births the most, wins.”
There would be no white/black friction at all if the middle class jobs had not left our shores 30 years ago. With enough jobs for everyone, friction disappears. As for what happens when the state benefits can no longer be afforded/borrowed, the Mexicans may destroy us all. They will have the numbers.
Angela Blackwell? Why didn’t he interview Angela Davis? If I was white and living in Africa I would be afraid of a Race War. I’m worried about a Christian/Atheist, old people/young people, worker/unemployed, conservative/liberal south/north, urban/rural, etc… clusterfuck, FUBAR, SNAFU, culling of to many rats in the cage. Not to mention that Mother Nature needs to take out the trash. Race War? That is way to sterile.
The other reason for this tragedy is that Politicians love to use race to divide, in fact the worst demagogic discourse comes from the Democrat party. Remember that the Civil rights acts for which you speak were passed over the filibuster of the likes of Bob Byrd (D-KKK) and it was GOP Senators like Leverett Saltonstall and George Aiken who pushed it through over the Democrat led filibuster, fearing the loss of black voters the Dems began a cynical game of race baiting to maintain their hold over the black vote, because otherwise the blacks would come home to the GOP, the party that most of them were registered in before FDR.
On this Emancipation day it is important to also remember that the GOP was the party of Emancipation, while the Democrat party was the party of Segregation.
Like politicians, I figure tht Jim or anyone else that blabs for a living is going to make mistakes, and this one is a doozy. Jim is so wrong here it barely is worth commenting about. The subject America doesn’t like tontalk about is CLASS. The “blue/white collar” lie is that America is the place where real Americans are either rich or at least middle class. Poor folk are either illegals or welfare parasites. The question as to why blacks are chronically overrepresented among the poor is answered easily, it’s sytematic racism. And Jim does his part here.
we all know what Trayvon was doing in this gated community – let’s not kid ourselves here.
it is no wonder Zimmerman felt the need to defend himself against Trayvon after all, if the behaviour of 16 and 17 year old black kids is anything like Shawn Tyson – who brutally murdered 2 white British unarmed tourists in what can only be called a racist attack in Florida.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9161871/Florida-holiday-Britons-who-took-wrong-turn-shot-dead.html
One of the more honest and astute assessments of race in America I have read; almost the whole of the Martin/Zimmerman debate thus far, nothing but ideological delusion and madness. Look to HuffPost, and how they consistently proffer the image of a twelve year old Trayvon, as if it was not a considerably less innocent looking 17 year old who was shot – and how the Right has reflexively stood behind Zimmerman, as if carrying a gun were the only measure of manhood. As if both these young men were not trying to prove to each other how tough they could be, in a country that glorifies, revels in, violence.
http://www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com
High rates of mobility, moving from one rental to another, during the school year, lack of bedroom space, chaotic living,,poverty, when fixing a flat tire becomes a huge economic burden, all contribute to children not speaking/learning or gaining the skills needed to make it in society.
Talking about a race war or any other ethnic-based war sounds kind of extreme. Look at what happened in Yugoslavia in the 90s, that was one just whole host of crimes perpetrated by mean, a bit crazy, ruthless people, on all sides. It accomplished a lot of suffering and evil. I guess to the victors the “ethnic cleansing” was worth it. That wouldn’t be a rational or moral response to our nation’s collective challenges. Maybe for many people though rationality and morality don’t have much meaning or mean different things.
Its going to take more than a good gun when the masses come a knocking. J. Kunstler is one of the best along with Kulturecritic of describing what is actually going on in the world. Lee Marvin did say during his palimony trial when asked by a lawyer what he considered happiness. His answer, “a full tank of gas.”
There are certain segments of the population, not just African Americans, who simply do not value education. The children do not get any encouragement from their parents to study hard and get a good education. So the children go to school in their lower grades unprepared, and in the upper grades uncooperative.
Lately the Education Powers that Be are making waves about teacher accountability. They never put any pressure on parents to get their children to school ready to learn. It all starts at home.
Einstein could not teach children who do not want to learn. I know from experience. I worked as a teacher in “inner city” schools. They were a nightmare. There weren’t enough fingers to plug all the holes in the dike.
And so we have a permanent underclass of people who for generations now, have been shut out of the general economic society.
The only sane solution is for parents to tell their children to behave in school and to hold their children accountable for getting an eduction.
But that won’t happen. It seems to me to be a conspiracy of silence. Jim, I know how much you love conspiracies. I don’t know if there are enough jobs in the economy to accommodate an educated workforce. Deliberately stupid people earn much less and can be control more easily.
Imagine some prominent African American celebrity, other than Bill Cosby, speaking out. They would be vilified and mocked.
Aimlow Joe was here
http://www.aimlow.com
I just wanted to add a comment pertaining to last week’s essay, “Jubilee.” The title, and also the subject, made me think of “Jamboree,” an old short story, anthologized in these places:
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/ISFAC/s266.htm#A4964.35
In the story, set in the future, the lives of children are completely dominated by machines set up by long-dead generations of their forebears. The children live their lives on the model of our Scouts, only boys and girls never meet. With that exception, it reminds me very much of our current educational predicament. The children of this tomorrow are constantly herded from one preordained festival, or preordained activity, to the next, winning badges, attending campfire story hours, etc, never having time to catch their breath and holistically assess the totality of their environment. They never really have any choices at all. At the end of the story it is revealed that the system was set up to allow them to enjoy childhood for as long as possible, but right at the end they are all slaughtered by robots to be reconstituted by underground robot factories as the next generation of children… It is a little like Logan’s Run, but the kids die at a younger age. Anyway, our current world has many resonances with that story, as, I think, some of you might agree.
400+ years ago, African slaves began arriving in America. Many of these unfortunates were from primitive tribes, having been captured and sold by their more advanced brothers. They were kept in slavery until 150 years ago, when they were “emancipated”, but in reality, virtual slavery existed in many areas of the USA until the ’50s. These were not exactly ideal conditions for cultural advancement.
Against all odds, a majority of black Americans have successfully completed their forced integration into European culture. Some, however, have not. Given their history (as outlined above), why should this surprise anyone?
Moreover, is it racist to suggest that the dark and violent nature of gangsta culture is the result of the collision between the vestiges of a primitive tribal culture and the modern world?
Unfortunately in this case I think Jim Kunstler is being too glib about racism and the persistence of racial profiling and prejudice. I have worked with professional middle class blacks for years and they have all had issues when they were singled out unlike their fellow white professionals.
On the other hand, I believe the Left made a big mistake with the whole identity politics game. The real problem as the Occupy movement has so clearly pointed out is between the 99% of ordinary people and the 1% rich. Affirmative Action should have been redirected years ago to emphasize class and income differences primarily with race and diversity only secondary factors. This would have led to solidarity between the 99% instead of fostering the divide-and-conquer Cultural Wars the right has so cleverly exploited for years.
I have a serious problem with equal access for women to kill people and waste $1 Trillion a year for endless Wars, likewise for Gays, etc.
So what?
As far as blacks in prison, most are for drug offenses in the insidious Drug War, while many of their white customers get lawyers and get off scott-free. The US spends $30,000+ to keep people in prison when we could have spent that money on known programs like Head Start and early childhood education for all which are proven in study after study to be successful unlike later remediation.
But like so many issues, some answers like Green public transit, or early childhood education, free or readily affordable college and vocational training are very clearcut. It is the elites who deliberately sabotage these to make it complicated and further their grip of 3x the gains in the past decades of the 99%.
PS, in “Jamboree,” the REASON this system was set up was because all adults had suffered some sort of genetic damage, due to biological warfare in the past. They could no longer reproduce in the natural way. The robot-supervised Scouts system was deliberately set up so that humanity could at least continue forward in some form, watered down and pathetic though it may be. So, that is different from our own world, but there are still a lot of similarities, IMHO.
Alright; that is the last time I read Kunstler. Nice “blame the victim” column. “People don’t get shot for no reason”; “I don’t know for sure what Trayvon Martin was doing in the moments before George Zimmerman shot him”; “black America’s self-evident failure to thrive”, “begin absolutely with the duty to teach them to speak English intelligibly”, “Maybe black men should stop trying to scare people.” Kunstler not only blames the kid, he goes on to blame all African-Americans, and somehow finds a magical four years in which all responsibility for all future “failure to thrive” can be laid at the feet of black youth who created some massive black separatist movement. A kid with skittles is trailed, confronted and killed by a man with a gun and a car. A police department sends the man with the gun home with his gun and no background checks, and immediately takes the position that anyone who claims they killed in self-defence cannot have that claim challenged or prosecuted. The sentence “we continue to make tragic decisions in this country about what behavior is okay and what’s not” is followed by a riff on how black people deserve to be disproportionately in jail; while I was naively expecting a riff on how it is unacceptable to shoot black kids walking on the sidewalk with skittles (oh wait, we don’t know if Trayvon was appropriately deferential to the man with the gun; maybe the teenager got uppity!). Since the right to vote was granted and a four year period of a black separatist movement, no black person was ever killed by a paranoid white person or no black person’s death was ever treated in a racist manner by the police. What a scary, scary world for Mr. Y2K. And yet, it is black teenagers who die walking home to their parents – imagine how scary the world is for them. You’re done Kunstler. One less reader.
Dude, the guy has to make a living in the world that exists, not some other world. A person is allowed to disagree with the way things are, and say so, even while they have to deal with reality just like eveyone does. That’s not inconsistent, that’s not hypocrisy, that’s life.
Black separatism has left its mark in the most innocuous ways, from the made-up Kwanzaa holiday in December to “African studies” programs in colleges and univeristies. How about streets and schools being named for black nationalist leaders? A San Francisco school named for Sir Francis Drake, who sailed past the Golden Gate, was renamed for Malcolm X and a school in Newark, New Jersey named for Robert Treat, the founder of Newark, was renamed for Marcus Garvey. What did Malcolm have to do with San Francisco and what did Garvey have to with Newark? Nothing, but who cared when the history of these cities was irrelevant in comparison to the generic history of a people of a common skin color? Black Americans are interested in diversity, yet there’s a cookie-cutter “African-American history” museum in every American city, and the cities themselves – at least those American cities that are still ostensibly thriving – all have cookie-cutter skylines and chain stores. These examples of lip service to diversity and uplifting the race are superficial symptoms of a deeper problem invloving both the crisis of race . . . and the crisis of place.
Jim you suprise me, you might be the last progressive who can think and not automatically spew the invectives of the left’s metaphysics of “racism.”
But as another poster alluded to, the black/white issues are to be eclipsed.
As Teddy White noted the 1965 immigration bill is the worst legislative act ever, it loosed anarchy upon the land. I’m sure you know who Mr. White was, and for those progressives who do not I suggest his auto-bio.
For me, the most important point made by AGB during her interview with Bill Moyers had to do with the citizenry being at different stages (my word) of maturity and openheartedness toward their fellows. She spoke of those (a segment of society) who feared from their sense of scarcity and who responded by pulling up the ladders, the helping hands that sought, when, I was boy, to share our common bounty. The notion was that others getting more, or actually enough, would directly jeopardize their losing what they have. This attitude transcends race, gender, class, caste, and all other pernicious, self-created divisions. Racism is one of many excuses for acting out of this fear. It simply hides the real root problem of separateness.
We can create laws to mitigate the harm done by acting out of this fear, but, ultimately we must seek ways of purging the fear from our own hearts, and thus develop wiser and more loving attitudes for our fellows that will foster different behaviors.
The craziness of the message coming out of Republican talking points is geared toward maintaining this separateness attitude: the rugged individualism, “holy” self-interest, competition as the sole motivator, winners/losers identity games, superiority/inferiority seriousness, etc. It is all meant to push the thinking in that direction.
It may not be long before humanity, suffering from this lack of freedom, will get completely fed up with these results. The message of Oneness, brotherhood, and spiritual wisdom are (always were and will ever be) waiting to serve and heal us.
The real reason why ‘race relations’ are not well in this country is because, basically, we have not laid the fundamental philsophical groundwork of the discussion by defining our terms and then being honest and realistic about our prospects.
When you pass, legislation, there is much hooplah and a belief in achievement and progress, but sadly all laws do is place new roadblocks and create new problems, rather than solving the ones we already have. This is because laws are an act of coercion rather than reasoned understanding…
The simple fact of the matter is 1. there is no such thing as ‘multiculturalism’ and to try and enforce it is ridiculous, and 2. ethnicity does matter – because we all come from one.
In this country we deny reality. The fact is, we are either black, or white, or whatever, not all one heterogeneous ‘american’ human android. You cannot legislate cooperation between different groups. Better they don’t associate if they don’t want to…cultures and tribes thrive when there is social cohesion and social cohesion cannot be legislated into existence.
Multiculturalism is just a code word for ‘cultural chaos’ because, to put it simply, there are cultures and there are other cultures but there is no ‘multiculture.’ That is just a way of trying to justify your forced legislation of ‘equality’ that sets its own agenda and defines its own terms to meet its own ends, the ends of the elites rather than the actual people.
The great social movements of the 1960s failed because we did not solve them but instead painted a pretty picture over a broken system…things have gone downhill for every ethnic group and I blame the uneducated and foolhardy parents of today’s kids, at least those who aren’t yet wise to the collapse of the body politic…
Bukko puts it well:
“There are more thuggish, stupid white kids, and brown ones, and every other ethnicity, that are a threat to the public.”
I see this all the time here, how Doofus Culture celebrates dumbness and promiscuity. Gangsta Rap just got popularized and marketed. I don’t see ads showing Latino gang-bangers or “wiggers” with their pit bulls and “donk” cars.
But they are out there, and like any lumpenproletariat, they are potentially dangerous.
Have fun with this post! Vlad will be all over it like a cheap SS uniform.
And for the nice progressives a quick simple message; The deceit known as “anti-racism”, its days are numbered. Anti-racism has been nothing and will be nothing more than anti-white. Have a good day.
I can verify racial profiling from my own personal experience even thought I am white. Some time ago a cop gave me a ticket for driving in the left hand lane of a 4 lane 40 MPH road which I challenged.
What was amazing to me in the traffic court in the 95% white suburb was that almost half of the traffic court defendants were black in a 95% white enclave. Worse yet were the outcomes of this charade. I refused to pay a lawyer as I was challenging the idiocy of getting a ticket because a cop was inconvenienced. (Of course I lost!)
Meanwhile whites who had
offenses like drunk driving at 45 MPH in a 25 MPH school zone were getting deals for lesser charges out of deals cut by their lawyers. It demonstrated firsthand both the racism and the absurdity of our “justice system” when so long as you could afford to pay the lawyers you could get out or plea bargain down for almost anything.
“Two hundred years for the bondsman’s lash.”
Jim
Gotta disagree with you here. Race wars? Really? Seems to me the biggest wedge in the US and in fact in the whole Western world is class, as was pointed out by an earlier commenter. It appears that Iceland may be waging this class war pretty well. I saw a video on You tube of a Spanish speaking station that reported Iceland has forced their banks to forgive most mortgages of the Icelandic population and put bankers on the “bench of the accused”. Wonder if it is true? If that is true it is the most explosive news of the new millenium, threatening an all out class war. Of course not a peep about this on the MSM, why people might get the idea to demand this for themselves here in the US.
The other great video I saw was done on a presentation by Victoria Grant, a 12 year old Canadian girl who gives a very clear talk about how the private central banks keep whole countries in debt. A very inspiring presentation by a brave girl.
So a race war? No, it is all out class and financial warfare, wake up and smell those interest rates Jim, cause they are high!
loveday
Bukko, Smokyjoe: I went to the NYC auto show this past weekend and saw an ugly assemblage of guys wearing caps with backward visors 45 degrees off, oversized shirts with graffiti-style insginia, and tattoos. And I’m talking about the white guys! The best-looking women were, as always, the product reps on the platforms. The older white dudes wore Members Only jackets. And – I am NOT making this up – there was a black guy literally dressed as a clown – rainbow wig, big shoes, and all, although he wasn’t wearing any face paint. I took a candid picture of him! The Paris Motor Salon, this was not! (No French cars, of course, either.)
“Maybe black men should stop trying to scare people.”
I once asked Norman Mailer if he believed that white men are driven to oppress black men because the latter have larger genitals. He qualified by saying he wasn’t sure if blacks are better endowed than whites, but he assented that the perception certainly was a predominant cause of the oppression.
Mr. K must be at least a little relieved that we have the largest prison system in the world.
Greetings,
A look at a few recent events should tell us all we need to know.
Libya – minorities attacked in the streets and hung from lampposts. Large swaths of the country “ethnically cleansed”.
Greece – gangs of white youth roam the streets attacking people of color.
Italy – police descend on outdoor markets and attack Africans (witnessed this with my own eyes).
France – outlawing of traditional clothing. President threatens prison sentence for people that visit Islamic Jihadist websites.
As things as worse we can and should expect a violent race war in this country.
JHK sort of dismisses the concept of structural racism as a diversion that keeps well-meaning people from being honest about real problems. He points out that most of the young black men who are in prison behaved badly enough to be put there. But how many young white men behaved equally badly, but didn’t get locked up for one reason or another? The problem is that there is a permanent underclass in America which is disproportionately black. Young men learn to be belligerent because that’s how you survive. The rest of society looks on in fear and disgust, and instead of looking for ways to break the cycle, again and again America looks to its prisons for a solution, an obviously self-defeating and self-perpetuating strategy. America has a right to expect better behaviour from its you g men, but the young men have a right to expect more options than to be treated as dangerous beasts and prison fodder.
A nice change of pace today Jim, about a subject that needs attention. My home town, population 4000, in central Michigan had no black families when I was growing up there in the 50s and 60s. In my innocence, I thought that was perfectly normal. Later on at the University of Michigan I liked the work of Gil Scott-Heron, but I can’t stand hip-hop, which is said to be derived from Scott-Heron’s work. Gil Scott-Heron seemed to be more representative of a black man with a library card — and whatever hip-hop represents, it’s not a library card. My current view of race relations in America is shaped mostly by HBO’s excellent series “The Wire,” which I’ve watched nearly three times.
-Phut
“I don’t know for sure what Trayvon Martin was doing in the moments before George Zimmerman shot him..”
I believe he was trying to return home.
Jim, white exhaustion with black people has been well documented throughout our history. The way in which blacks are perceived by whites has changed during that time, but there is also a remarkably consistent set of attitudes that have been attached to black people for more than three centuries.
I look at this way:
the vast majority of black people were held in indentured/involuntary servitude in this country from roughly 1619 to 1865-246 years;
following the Civil War, the entire black population was subjected to racially segregated, severely restricted Jim Crow status from 1865 to 1965-100 years;
blacks AND WHITES have lived in a post slave/Jim Crow America from 1965 to now, 2012-47 years;
The interaction of blacks and whites on this continent has spanned this period from 1619 to 2012-393 years;
Of those 393 years, ONLY 12% (47) have been in the post slavery/Jim Crow era;
88% of American culture has been created during slavery and the rigid Jim Crow era;
Jim, we Americans are at THE BEGINNING of the beginning of trying to come to terms with race in our country. Like much else in our country, the project of race, long put off, is really just getting started.
RACE WAR !!!!!!
You said it. Now its out in the open. Jim, you’re exactly correct that race war is the seething fear just under the consciousness of everyone with an IQ in triple digits. Middle class whites and blacks probably fear it most as they have the most to lose. Working class people of both races appear, at least in most of the studies that have addressed the issue, to have hostile stereotypes about each of the other racial groups, as do the middle classes (but their stereotypes are more tacit, linguistically).
Lower SEC blacks and hispanics are already at war. Go to a place like Compton CA and cross the wrong line in the street and you will quickly find out about this reality.
Bottom line issue: we are all one way or another hoping or attempting to prevent a race war, usually by not talking about it, as you indicated. Unfortunately, not talking about things that are at or in the unconscious rarely has the expected outcome. As the economy implodes we will likely see this whole issue heating up well beyond current levels. Yet another chronic emergency with which to cope!!
Wardoc
When I saw pictures of the “gated community”, I thought for sure Jim would comment on the architecture. Seems to me the kid was probably lost … “it’s dark and stormy, some guy is chasing me, and all these damn houses look the same”.
Was Zimmerman a malignant racist looking for any excuse to shoot a black? Was Martin a thug casing the neighborhood for a robbery, who attacked Zimmerman as Zimmerman was returning to his car? Was the situation something in between? I haven’t a clue, but I will say, one thing about this event has really bothered me, and the title of this article – “A Kid With Skittles” – puts it into words perfectly – 99% of the articles I read show the twelve year old picture of Martin next to Zimmerman’s mug shot or recent portrait. Martin looks like an angelic kid at twelve. The fact is – he was 17, six foot three, and on his high school football team. He had a Facebook page which apparently has many current photos of him – some of which do not show him looking angelic at all. Can someone please tell me why a recent picture of Martin is almost never shown next to a recent picture of Zimmerman?
I won’t even go into the media’s characterization of Zimmerman as a “White Hispanic”. Three and a half years, you’d think some of the same media would have called President Obama a “White African”.
The amazing thing about nearly all discussions of why the black community has a “failure to thrive” is lack of a realization of time. Sure, there is institutionalized racism and all its associated detriments, such as the prison-industrial complex specializing in incarcerating young black men and forcing them to work for slave wages in order to support white prison-based communities; an educational system that destroys a love for learning at an early age; police brutality ad infinitum; a “war on drugs” that brings drugs into the black communities and then arrests those who use them; a two-tiered legal system, one white and one brown and black. This list is quite extensive and well-documented. My comment is to acknowledge the role of time in discussion of race.
What many do not understand is that black people were brought here in chains, raped, beaten, murdered, mutilated, lynched, etc., etc. for 400 years! Then, they sign a law that says: “OK, you can vote now.” And all of a sudden, 400 years of horrific brutalization and its devastating effects are supposed to be cancelled out. If it takes 400 years to create a problem, it is going to take 400 years, at least, to solve it. How long did it take the Jewish people to recover from their slavery in Egypt? Thousands of years!
Let’s think of a hypothetical example. Take your neighbor, make him your slave, rape his wife and daughters, beat him with a bull whip, mutilate him and then lynch him. Sell his wife and children to your friends. Let this go on for 100 years. Then tell his descendants: “OK, you are partially free now. We won’t beat you, rape your wife and daughters and kill you as often as we did.” Do you really think that everything is all of a sudden going to be just fine? Tell me honestly, how long is it going to take his descendants to reach your level of competence, knowledge and savoir faire? How long before they will have bootstraps by which to pull themselves up? How long before they will act like normal people? Tell me JHK!
I have a family member who works in the Rochester, NY school system. What she sees close-up, every day, is a culture rooted in dysfunction, which only gets passed on, generation after generation — and with girls getting pregnant in their teens, those “generations” come along all the more quickly. She said she knows of families in which no one can remember another family member who ever worked; not a mother, grandmother or even further back. I’m not here to debate the reasons, but the results are clear; behaviors are passed along as sure as genes are — and if you can’t break this cycle nothing much is ever going to change.
It’s obvious that that nigger had no bidness showing his nigger face in a gated community. Them ghettos are gated for a purpose. Fuck, them niggers are slow learners. And them Joos are even worse. What the fuck was a Joo doing there!?
Sincerely,
Bill Shakespeare
(A Joo, and a loyal royal court jester)
I served on the board of trustees of a local inner city social agency for a number of years. Part of the philosophy, or mission, of this agency included “Diversity” – the common man’s word for Multiculturalism.
I attempted to have the word ‘diversity’ removed from agency literature, as it seemed to be politically charged and thus might negatively impact donations from institutions and individuals of more conservative inclinations. I further explained that the term, as the agency used it, was ill-defined – that diversity is not a philosophy, rather a natural phenomenon: the impetus for all change , both evolutionary and revolutionary. And that the agency was employing the word to enshrine contrived cultural differences based largely on race.
My proposal was quickly, albeit gently, swept under the rug.
I had noticed that the black board members (all professionals – lawyers, businessmen, social workers, etc…) spoke the King’s English at meetings, and, I assume, did the same in their day-to-day business lives. But small groups of them, when socializing, dropped, as if automatically, into speaking Ebonics. These men and women are educated and successful and have the luxury of choice: Ebonics – a second casual, colorful dialect to toy with at whim.
But do they write their business proposals, legal briefs and social studies in Ebonics? Of course not! For Ebonics – with its reliance on gesture and intonation, its near lack of tense, and its limited vocabulary – simply doesn’t have a written form (except in context).
What the Black professionals on the board of trustees seemed unable to grasp is that, while they themselves have a choice of dialect, most blacks don’t; their speaking, and, as a result, their thinking are shackled to the toddler dialect of Ebonics – all in the name of Diversity. In fact, successful blacks, like the white professionals they golf and cocktail with, are unknowing instruments of the ‘Liberal Plantation’ – an institution that has a philosophy of its own: “I love you, my colored brothers and sisters, and rejoice in your uniqueness. Just make sure you stay the hell away from my gated community, and if you go near my daughter I’ll see to it that you spend your productive years in a gated community of your own – one that I’ll be happy to fund with my tax dollars.”
So much for diversity.
Key word: “Was.” Yessirree, the old Dixiecrats were the party of segregation and white racist crackers, no question. Until LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, whereupon he remarked to an aide (none other than Bill Moyers, so it’s said) that “we have lost the South for at least a generation”. True enough: In 1968, Nixon’s Southern strategy succeeded and the South has become increasingly a Republican stronghold ever since.
So what’s the point of bringing this up, anyway? It’s the Republicans who own the white racist cracker portfolio these days, as you well know. To read your post you’d think nothing had changed. Nice try, though.
Jim; A spot on, well written brief analysis of the “race issue” in this country. People in general, and progressives in particular, are always reluctant to say aloud, and perhaps even to themselves, “The Emperor has no clothes”. With the politicians, media, and self-described race experts, it’s all posturing and pretending. I have found that those who are constantly saying we never have honest discussions of the problem of race in america, are some of the worst offenders. Good thought provoking article, Jim.
One more Affirmative action creature, the 3rd degree?, no the 3rd Angie:
‘Angela Corey, special prosecutor in Trayvon Martin case, is tough on crime, ‘wants to do the right thing”
Yeah right.
Good Morning Jim
What’s all this stuff on race and class, let’s get back to the real problem of the collapse of civilization.
Gosh darn it and golly gee-whiz. I thought the best lesson to take from the latest “if it bleeds, it leads” new story is the tragic misdirection of attention constantly fostered by what I suppose is to be known as the “mainstream media.”
If only the actions of Linda Green and her posse could be scrutinized in the pervasive non-stop-mind-bashing manner this single useless incident has been.
How many column inches of text for the exploits of jamie, lloyd and their minions printed last week?
JHK misses the point about the tragedy [or street justice, if it was that] of burglar Trayvons killing.
The point is the amount of publicity worldwide [at first there were less than a million Goggle hits, last time I checked 130 million hits, with the #
growing by 10 million hits a day].
The Media, BHO, Holder etc are doing what they can to widen the divide, or perhaps create black unrest.
There are 50? murders a day in USA. Why focus on this one? [or was it a killing not a murder?]
Why do they put a picture of a cute cuddly 12? year old on TV and the web?
Here is 1 link to a study of the long-term benefits of Head Start:
http://depts.washington.edu/isei/iyc/barnett_hustedt18_1.pdf
As the authors point out Head Start appears to have less long-term benefits that some other more intensive early childhood education programs because it is underfunded. Too many kids pass through without staying even a year.
Nice post this week Jim. At first I thought you had just read the Turner Dairies or something till I got a little deeper into the post. We have quite a bit in common. We both grew up on the Long Island part of NYC during the same period of time. I find a lot of common ground in your writings. This week was a real bonus. As a kid growing up during the 50’s & 60’s in NYC I was never exposed to the racial hatered of the south until I got drafted in 1966. First to Ft Jackson SC and then over to Ft Gordon for BCT. At Gordon we NY’ers were exposed to the good old boys from the Greenville SC area. They were all SC-ANG just doing their 6 months. All they talked about was the “war”. I thought they were talking about the Nam, but it was the Civil War. They hated anyone from the north. Especially NY, MI & OH because those states had sent units to fight in the south under Sherman. The south still hates us. We kicked their ass and liberated their blacks. In ’66 there were still signs of the segration era everywhere. It was a real eye opener.
The matter of race relations is one that all sides are at odds over. During the course of my years working in a factory populated by 5300 of GM’s finest. I had the chance to work within a very multi-cultural environment. I worked with many blacks and whites who spanned the range from college educated to knuckle draggers. Some who were as articulate as the current president and some who couldn’t complete a sentance with using the f word twice or the mf word in conjunction and include 1 handshake in the middle and another at the end. Why is anyones guess. Why the overall failure of some blacks to excell and some to not is beyond me. They can’t explain it either. The same can be said for some of the whites I worked with too. At Bayside High School, school there were no “White Only” textbooks passed out. We all either got it or didn’t. Obvisously I didn’t and thats why I ended up where I did and not Queens College or St Johns.
The current crop of kids growing up seem to be not as racially divided as older groups. It’s still there though. I’ve always taught my son to be fair with all, and treat others as you would wish to be treated. His opinions are based on his expiriences and I respect his views.
Where it’s all gonna end is still yet to unfold. What happened down in Florida, while tragic will too pass. Zimmerman was told not to persue and chose to disregarde the order. Confrontational behavior can’t hide behind “self defence”. Here in Michigan he would’ve been arrested and charged that day. Just think a professional bouncer was getting his ass kicked by a scared 17 year old and has to shoot his whay out ? I don’t buy it at all.
Do blacks name their offspring Martin and Malcolm?
Or do they name them Treyvon and Quintero?
deshawn and kenyatta?
Look at the first names of NBA players!
Are they intertwined?
what he considered happiness. His answer, “a full tank of gas.”
Talk about short-term happiness. Would we all not be better served by seeking sources of lasting happiness? What lasts?
At SBPDL a French man or woman posted about whats going on in France and I have read similar stories.
The Africans there are very much the primitives,
[FOB, know hwta that means?], not the literate US Blacks. S/he claimed they have 8 children.
And cant assimilate, they dont have the IQ or skills.
Has it not been understood for several years now that, status-wise we, the general public, are all African Americans or Afro Saxons, and most of the rest of Europe only to a slightly lesser extent.
I see this, in a way, as poetic justice. There is much about the intractability of cultural racism when the tribes approach parity of numbers, power, etc that is, imo, understandable, however sinful it remains.
However, racism on the basis of physical, racial characteristics, notably skin clour, particularly in relation to people of the same, if more devout, Christian beliefs and culture, such as, in the UK, the West Indians, beggars belief.
Ironically, the moral degeneracy it betrays takes even more insane and internecine expression in the UK in the form of a young idiot staring rudely at a returned veteran with facial disfigurement, as a result of injuries sustained in the Falklands war, itself a criminal enterprise.
Now, as if that were not feral and gross enough, children are now picking on their ginger-haired school-mates! Where will it end? We know that, don’t we? And if we don’t, Jim will remind us!
Poor people in a land of plenty make everyone uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable when nothing has been done to reduce inequality for more than thirty years. Those who ‘have’ get more than ever and social mobility has evaporated. The richest country in now the most unequal of all and the actions of leaders show they are fully committed to keeping it this way.
We fear righteous anger being expressed inappropriately with all the hate and frustration that cultivated inequality brings. Lack of action by leaders, political and intellectual has turned dog against dog. Jobs are shipped overseas and newcomers shipped here compete with those without jobs who don’t have a prayer of finding a living wage.
Feeling uncomfortable comes from denying truth, and the truth here is than when you treat people well they treat you well too. But treating people well is something we have not been doing as a nation for a long long time.
That which brings people together is good and that which drives them apart is bad. Is there one politician in the land who understands this simple principle? Sadly I don’t think there is.
In a land committed to making the rich richer and the poor poorer the simple maxim of love your neighbor is lost. Stimulate the economy all you want August fools. If you don’t make sure everyone has food, shelter, clothing equality, liberty, fraternity, and a chance for a meaningful and fulfilled life it doesn’t mean shit.
I remember the rage that was quelled when millions marched when Dr. King died. I was young but I was walking there. I remember the broken promise.
No ones mentioned population growth.
Has USA black population increased 4 fold since 1965?
10 million to 40 million?
And Obama has diversity Visas to bring in more Muslims and Africans.
I found this at [Taki? or somewhere]:
The reality is that American blacks in general simply have no prospects for a decent future, which helps explain their anger.
They have been displaced by immigrants in employment, housing, etc.
Furthermore, their leadership has sold them out on the immigration issue for the sake of an attempted alliance with Hispanics.
That helps explain the leaders tries at regaining credibility with the hype of the Trayvon Martin case.
However, such spectacles do not alter the reality of blacks’ bleak prospects.
‘Bill Moyers did not even attempt to address the failure to thrive question in his interview with Angela Glover Blackwell.’
As a DWL [see sbpdl site for more info] HOW COULD HE?
See my post just above this one.
The richest country is now the most unequal of all
Have fun with this post! Vlad will be all over it like a cheap SS uniform.
===========
Funniest line up to this point in the comments section.
The passage of the Civil Rights and Public Accomadation Acts of 1964 are seen as being the result of a higher moral standard exhibited by Martin Luther King and the demonstrators. It was seen by everyone out of the South as a clear manifestation of good versus evil. Because it was so effective, MLK has come to be seen as a leader and visionary without peer. Many had copied his tactics and style, before and since, but no one was able to go from a simple no-more-back-of-the-bus protest to a comprehensive federal law banning all discrimation in only eight years. MLK has come to be seen as a form of god, a messiah, a nation founder, a world-class giant of peace and justice.
But it wasn’t he who did all that, it was Lyndon B. Johnson. At that time, all the British and French colonies were becoming independent countries. Each one had a new government that was making a decision whether to follow the USA or the USSR in economic and political alignment. The USSR pointed out to the Africans that blacks in the USA were near-peasants with no rights and that all the USA’s rhetoric about freedom was a meaningless joke. The CIA and the State Department took this situation to LBJ (America’s most powerfull politician at the time, late 1950’s) and told him to just fix it. It was LBJ and not MLK who pressured the lawmakers into passing the Civil Rights laws. MLK just supplied the ‘sainthood’ public-relations.
By 1968, the new African republics had degenerated/stabilized into western-oriented President-for-life/dictator musical-comedy republics, and the corporations had control over the natural resources. There was no more need for MLK, and his vision/programs stalled. Finally LBJ gave J. Edgar Hoover permission to stop protecting him from the white Southerners, and he was soon killed.
Since then, no black American leader has been even remotely as effective as MLK in implementing positive progressive change. In fact, black Americans failed terribly to handle the biggest crisis in the ‘da communatee’ of the past fifty years, the crack cocaine crisis of the 1980’s.
Since then, American blacks have been obsessed with symbolism instead of real economic progress.
I fear that black American could perish in the Long Emergency. But, white Americans really do like black people, as a weird kind of human pets, so I suspect that they will continue to survive but not thrive, in a reflection of the antibellum manner, as ‘house’ and ‘field’ servants.
James is a sparkling and informative commentator on oil and energy. On “race”? Maybe not so much. On the other hand, it’s a frustratingly complex problem, the cold fusion of sociology.
Race, identity, class — all these are bound into iceberg traditions that aren’t going to dissolve soon. And it isn’t just America ( though we display among the ugliest blemishes on the skin of the human condition ). The sad conclusion is that discrimination is an effortless and rewarding way to project status and superiority at the same time sealing identity within your group. When people have a different outward appearance, that just makes this relationship even more difficult to eradicate.
The English and Irish, Ukrainians and Russians, Hutu and Tutsi, don’t look all that different physically, yet the groups cultivate a mutual mistrust that is a hair trigger away from exploding into into violence.
At the same time, identity, even an “inferior” identity confers advantages. The least “colonized” or degraded cultural groups in America have enjoyed the greatest economic and educational progress in the U.S. It is no wonder that Asian students generally do well, Latinos OK, and African Americans poorly.
But it’s not so simple. Compare two diasporic groups – the Jews and the Romany (“Gypsy” is the pejorative). Both groups have devout belief and value systems. The Jews have been far more willing to assimilate — to a point. And they have been able to gain in class status, though always shy of the ruling class. The Romany have adopted far different, almost opposite survival strategies, yet both peoples have survived terrible oppression.
So, race, class, a matter of “behaviour”? Like I said, cold fusion. Meanwhile, I guess it’s all about how we treat each other, face to face, day to day, keeping a tight leash on our proclivity to feel a little superior to the next person.
It is certainly OK to ask these questions, but aren’t they really just symptoms of a white-fear dis-ease that infects every attempt to begin a discourse on “solving the problem”?
For example, if we flip your rhetorical question/response
“Do white people fear black males who affect to act as if they are dangerous? Maybe black men should stop trying to scare people.”
to get a similarly “true”
“Do black people fear white males who affect to act as if they are dangerous? Maybe white men should stop trying to scare people.”
we see that by focusing on white-fear, you have created a kind of informal fallacy that relies on a sympathetic emotional response to “prove” a conclusion that is at best only part of a much more detailed and complicated picture.
And by complicated I only mean to say: It is a situation that is complicated by irrational shadow-casting and primal fear, and any attempt to reduce it to some kind of self-evident common-sensical algebra of enlightened post-PC reasoning is going to fail miserably as the newest calculus for solving the problem.
If fact, this is not a problem that can be solved with any kind of exquisitely architected argument. Anything built on a foundation of fear floating above a swamp of pre-conscious instinct is not going to stand up for very long. You can stack up all scientific and sociological dissertations created in the last 50 years and they will all sink into the same morass that eventually consumes every academic study.
Sure, as a moral problem, it is as simple as saying “People should behave and be nice, all of the time.”
Nobody would dispute that. Common decency is probably the cure for 99% of what ails us as a species.
That fact that only 1% of the population can achieve this goal on a regular basis is cause for concern, certainly, but on the other hand, I don’t know how you can improve the ratio without adopting some kind of crypto-eugenic agenda that diagnoses the problem as a genetic defiency affecting everyone and anyone outside the ivory sanctum of the technocratic intelligentsia.
So, where does that leave us? If the scientist’s medicine cabinet cannot save us from our reptile reflex urges, what can?
Nobody knows, which is why this predicament will continue to frustrate the good intentions of liberals and moderates and conservatives alike. Really, it appears to be a mystery that is solved one relationship at a time. There may be some communal rituals that can reinforce the stability of these positive relationships, but in these times of scientism and engineering, anything that comes to the discussion dressed in something other than a starchy white lab coat is derisively dimissed as a witch doctor’s messenger. Nevermind that the message may contain a helpful clue to the mystery.
The KKK may be dead, and most Americans have certainly moved beyond overt racism, but we still have the remnants of a 150 year old race war at the fringes of our society. You need to look no further than the birther movement, which would never have gone anywhere if Obama was white. Much of the Tea Party rhetoric is thinly veiled racist in nature, and NRA membership jumped after Obama was elected.
The Trayvon Marin murder has brought racism to the front page again. God only knows how many more generations it will take to rid ourselves of this blight.
KUDOS!
Thanks for being honest,
Here’s a different spin, my opinion.
Why is it the last major immigrant group to our major urban areas hasn’t moved out of the slums they started out in and passed the torch to newest group?
I’m not talking about the Italians the Irish or the Jews. I’m talking about Blacks.
Blacks are the last major group of immigrants to move into our urban areas. Why are they still there?
Power. They control these urban areas and have for thirty years now, to leave these areas would mean to leave the centers of their power, just like the Irish did, or the Italians.
Their power will end and they will have to move out of their slums when the Latinos get the right to vote, just like blacks gained power when they gained the right to vote and took over the cities from the groups before them.
Who doesn’t want Latino’s to vote? Powerful Blacks, thats who. Their political power will end.
It will be interesting to see the fallout when Latino suffrage happens, and it will happen.
Thanks Jim
jim, i read your colunm every week and most of your books and articles. frankly your analyses on racism scare the piss outta me. you come across as a soft in the middle new england crank who fears anything that does not come across as waspy middle of the road and eerily conventional compared to the thinking in the south.
this is definitely one that should be left to the professionals whoever they may be but it sure as hell aint you.
the racial dialogue sure as hell cannot be adequately condensed into one internet weekly essay and your trying to do so with that smug almost authoritarian tone of yours is doing no good for no one.
wanna take a walk thru the ghetto with me, jim? these black men are really not so threatening and menacing if you just walk by then and mind your own business and not get all judgmental.
love your suburban, climate analysis and so forth, jim. this one you should just leave alone. then again, how many black people read your stuff. about four maybe? bitter much, jim?
Good thing Jim doesn’t have to worry that any black neighbors way out there in Whiteyville will intrude into his little “gated community”. I’m sure his decision to move as far away from blacks as possible is just a coincidence…………….
John Derbyshire tried to have an honest conversation about race.
It got him fired!
Spot on with the reference to teen pregnancies. This has a HUGE impact on the success of any group. Kids having kids, absent teenage (and older) fathers—combine that with lack of literacy (2010 census showed 50+% of the population of the nearby rust-belt city population here is illiterate) and lack of decent employment opportunities—and it’s hopeless.
You can’t make Blacks assimilate. And they obviously don’t want to. Nor do most Whites want to become Black. Why should we? Nor will we put up with Black violence forever.
All these White Liberals who love Blacks should want them to behave if they want to survive the Long Emergency. As Mr Kunstler said in his book of the same name, Black misbehavior is not going to be tolerated when times get really bad. And if the Goverment refuses to protect Whites, then Whites will do it themselves.
I for one don’t think it’s racist, but I also don’t think of the problems of America’s black underclass as a vestige of African tribal culture. Instead I think of it as an expression of basic human nature. Young men banding together, behaving badly, clashing violently over territory and disputes over honour (“respect”) is how things always are unless there is a Leviathan able to enforce a monopoly on violence. The problem is that America has a large, persistent underclass that it doesn’t have a use for, which instead of being a subject of the Leviathan like the rest of us, is a target of it.
That’s the kind of thinking that gets people killed. Happens all the times: European Tourists who believed the Media about how racist Whites are and how wondeful Blacks are get off at the wrong stop or wander deep into Harlem. They are lucky if they just get robbed and/or beaten.
Achtung Homeland Security: http://youtu.be/b9cVKYXKXhI
Oh just in case people want statistics and not just feelings and impressions: Blacks murder and rape at seven times the White rate.
Sorry Libs – this invalidates all your arguments. Crime as a function of poverty? No again. American Indians are poorer and much less violent. Or consider the Vietmanese, some of whom came here with nothing but the shirts on their back. In one, just ONE, generation they are doing better than Whites. Same with Chinsese kids: they come not speaking English but in a few years they are speaking better than Whites and getting str8 A’s.
It all a function of Culture which is largely a function of genetics. Obviously the viccisitudes of history play a part as well as the geography and climate. But genetics are a constant and outweigh these. After all, Blacks don’t thrive in Africa either. Or Haiti. Imagine if Whites or East Asians were given Haiti, think it would remain a basket case? Obviously not.
Speaking of ‘not knowing for sure’ or ” the public may never learn what really went on ” I do have to wonder: Did the New KKK make JHK an offer he couldn’t refuse?
Jim, one of your best pieces of writing ever was “Thuggo and Sluggo”.. It’s on my mind fairly regularly as I travel around the Twin Cities by bus and light rail; the pants pulled down, the baseball cap sideways (or backwards), the extra long t-shirts, the complete toddler gear.. (I saw a young black man a couple weeks ago who wore all that, but get this; he had a pacifier in his mouth; I had to go Google it to discover this is actually a fashion attribute.. a pacifier..?).. OK.. That the black youth of today (Father missing from the scene etc.) is a walking talking aspiration toward infantilism, is something we can’t discuss (that would be “racist”).. That black girls have to straighten their hair should sound a blaring alarm that something is fundamentally amiss with “African-American” culture. To regard “Ebonics” as merely a dialect, instead of calling it for was it is: baby-talk (“goo-goo, ga-ga”) is doing a tragic disservice to the youth of your community (for fear of “washing your dirty laundry in public).. But in public it is.. like it or not.. for all to see.. every day in my life, in my case.. To say that the race card is too-often the card that gets played when someone is too unable, too corrupt, too confused or just too lazy to make a counter-argument regarding reality, is a tragedy for the society as a whole, but especially for black people, which sadly drags down all the great black people in our society that are bright and creative and worthy of all the accolades of noble citizenship.. Hoodies and skittles..? You’ve GOT to be kidding me.. The only thing I learned from the confused fiasco down in Florida, has to do with the irrational confused powers of mob mentality and group-think, the bizarre obsession with guns, and the real reason, for worse or better, that there’s a “tea party” in the first place..
At any rate, the multicultural lament – and lament it is; the demographics are changing and not in favor of white people – is rather old news. Richard Lamm, the former Colorado Governor, went on record with his ” American Suicide” rant years ago:
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/l/lamm.htm
As others have pointed out, we’re really talking about one huge principality in the never-ending “Class War” that, for me, virtually defines the meaning of “Civilization” itself – slavery being the economic wrench of ALL known civilizations.
I’ve taken to think of the class war in terms of a common chess board, pawns being the most numerous of the pieces and who represent slaves, conscripts, different “races” and other disposable humans. The other pieces, including bishops, represent the aggregate of all of the other principalities comprising the 1% plus their protective apparatus. All to protect the King (The State), whose only strength is derived from the intricate wits of everyone else. He lives in a corner! The most powerful player, the Queen can be the subject of what can be the most outrageous move in the game, a Pawn making it to the other end of the board, thereby becoming another . . . .Queen!
Black pawn becomes President. Outrageous!
Nearly every day, riding on the bus, I pass Trayvon’s home in Miami. His face was not familiar, but his father’s face is vaguely familiar and I definitely know his uncle–he and I are often the only members of the public at public transit meetings. I volunteered at a nursery 3 times a week 2 blocks from Trayvon’s home.
Trayvon lived in a neighborhood where he was far more likely to be killed by a police officer (white, hispanic, or black). Happens A LOT in that neighborhood. It’s one of those suburban-style neighborhoods progressives created to get blacks out of the crowded inner city neighborhoods, in this case, the walkable Overtown neighborhood just north of Miami’s downtown.
The nation’s first public housing development (built during FDR’s term) is just a few blocks away from Trayvon’s home. That development is a disaster of epic proportions. Not because it looks so awful, but because it is largely devoid of trees and landscaping, lots of “green space”, but none is fenced off to give residents a sense that the little piece of land outside their apt. belongs to them. Moreover, it is filled almost exclusively with people in the same poor economic situation. There is no one nearby (few residents have a car) who might be able to give a resident a tiny weekly job (babysitting, cooking, cleaning an apt.)–for cash–to supplement their government assistance. And if you’re on government assistance whether food stamps, Social Security, or disability, you need something small–that doesn’t affect that assistance–to get a start. What fool is going to take a chance on a minimum or nearly minimum-wage job, that might go away and then have to fight for 6 months to get their government assistance back?
I largely blame our suburban structure for the decline of poor people and many African Americans. What the poor need is to be around others who can give them a job. And they don’t need the huge expenses of a car or the huge amounts of time spent on public transit. Even someone who wants to help the “poor” by giving them a job can’t find them. And then of course, is the plethora of laws that require all sorts of permits that make it costly (or outright prohibit) to create your own job. Get the poor into an economically mixed area and their economic chances will be far better.
You can’t make Blacks assimilate. And they obviously don’t want to. Nor do most Whites want to become Black.
This is just so utterly ridiculous that it almost redefines the standard for uncritical pseudo-analysis.
No one wants to assimilate values that contradict their own definition of who they are.
Even more so if assimilation poisons the soul with cultural toxins that are cooked up in the laboratories of the dominate class.
And yet most of us, white and black and brown and whatever, have eaten the poison pill offered to us daily as a cure for living in conditions that destroy both our spirits and our communities.
Assimilation is not so much the positive thing your hasty scribble suggests it is. It is an activity managed and supervised by the robot minions of the dominate class.
What blacks really want most certainly varies from person to person, as it does for whites. The cultural cross-breeding that has gone on for decades with great enthusiasm has greatly enriched not only the gene pool, but our artistic and scientific achievements as well.
Most people, if asked, would say that they want to become more like the people they most admire and respect. If there is a shortage of people to admire and respect, then there is a great moral poverty that can and will destroy both high and low.
I would say that we are living in a generalized condition of moral poverty, which has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with our status as anesthetized patients in the laboratory of scientific materialism.
I’m going to chime in on a developing race problem that is going virtually unnoticed. The sudden influx of the Previously Rich into my dumpster economy. That’s right. There are just too many and frankly, they’re becoming a nuisance. Which reckless politician is allowing this to happen? I’m going to take a bold step and say that I think that they should go back to where they came from and try to make it better. There. I said it.
Regards,
Arianna Huffington
The whites aren’t going to do anything. Especially if they possess the limp pugnacity of a Vlad Krantz, a “White Racial Warrior” afraid to post his own name on his own blog. Moreover, the demographic trend is set in stone and you and yours will no longer be the dominant ethnic demographic.
Instead of cultivating fantasies about white people putting black people in their place, perhaps you should worry about some Latino cop with a chip on his shoulder seeking to settle old scores. (You won’t like the shoe on the other foot when that time comes.)
My liberal on-the-one hand response: Any armed individual who shoots and kills any unarmed individual should automatically be arrested for investigation, period. No law should be interpreted as a justification for murder, no one should be just sent home because they say they “felt threatened” and were just “standing their ground”. You will have to make that case and be able to prove it with evidence because the other side has been silenced. If it had been the black man with the gun would he have been sent home?
At the same time the wearing of hoodies, burkas and gang symbology in public should be unacceptable. If you expect equal justice you should be willing to be seen as an individual with a face, not a subversive shadow person.
Lastly, since quality education is actually less expensive than incarceration we (including black parents)should demand it. Unfortunately the jobs needed to support a diverse middle class have been eliminated by the 1% in a relentless and successful effort to further enrich themselves. So it is once again a class problem, with the ruling class still in the role of slave owners, the only difference is that the slavery is now taking place out of sight.
There is a potential for solidarity of all races in demanding economic justice and a national policy of full employment and health care for all, but that will take a major reform of the tax system and the extreme for-profit motive that currently rules everything from education to medicine to prisons. We could make this a societal decision and goal – after all we went to the moon without demanding it make a profit. Yet it did turn out to have many positive results for jobs and technological development, not to mention our pride and character.
So if Whites can’t get along how can different races? If regionalism is that strong, what chance do we have with different races?
You think Blacks actually want to study Latin and Greek? Even the tiny few who have the IQ for it?
The Will is a greater mystery than the mind. Often the Blacks who could assimilate have no intention of doing so.
Best analysis of the situation that’s been posted here yet. And it’s exactly what I was explaining to a white motel owner in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, who was kind enough to treat me to a bottle of beer during my stay some 10 years ago. To continue, I also told her that without the USSR, you would all become nigers to the CIA gov mafia. Didn’t take long for my predictions to come true, did it?
I would like to offer an alternative theory of why we continue to have a deep divide between the races over 50 years after school integration and passage of the landmark civil rights legislation of the 60’s. I believe the “white flight” that was motivated by those achievements as well as the race riots of the late 60’s created 2 separate societies with no real common purpose. When blacks and whites no longer lived in proximity to each other there was no longer a need to work together to improve either their physical or their social environment or any basis for improved mutual understanding. Blacks were consigned to the inner city and decaying inner city schools while whites escaped to the suburbs with shiny new schools and no inclination to contribute financially or otherwise to the development of the inner city. This white exodus, while largely motivated by racism and irrational fear, was made possible by the coincident development of the interstate highway system. It seems to me that the continuing black/white divide is just another of the many unintended negative consequences of the interstate highway system and the suburban sprawl it engendered.
For all the heady discussion on this topic, so far nobody has the mentioned the obvious fact that if Zimmerman hadn’t had pistol in his pocket, we would not be having this discussion.
Without his gun to comofort him, Zimmerman would have thought twice about ignoring the police request and following an 18 year old football player into the darkness. A gun can make you think you are a big man.
Americans seem to have a gun fetish and orginizations like the NRA play to the paranoia of gun nuts. (Got your new NRA Robo Call yet?) And with the help of organizations like ALEC, these stupid Stand Your Ground laws are passed, igniting these types of murder.
One solution might be to beat hand guns into plows. I really see no need to hide a pistol in your pocket for “Self Protection”. A better way to address this would be to allow anyone who chooses to carry a rifle slung over his or her shoulder. That way we don’t have to guess who is armed and who is not. And if we find you have your “little friend” hidden in your pants, we lock your sorry ass up for a couple hundred years and then hang you.
And by the way, many of you might consider lightening up on Mr. Kuntsler. So what if he sells I Phone Apps? The guy is trying to make a living here, not be the Messiah. Sometimes he pricks our Liberal skins a bit. Good. Sometimes I think he’s a self righteous Shmuck. But we read him for a reason and that reason is that more often than not he is correct, and if he is not his writing is still brilliant.
And since we all box seats at the Coliseum to watch the meltdown of Western Society, to see Muppets fed to Banksters and kids with Skittles shot dead by the gun lobby, we might as well have a prolific pundit to describe the action.
And that would be James.
See you next Monday
That really excites you doesn’t it? That I’ll “get mine”? Liberal Whites like you are traitors to your culture and race.
You have plenty of company here. Poor Ozone is just as addled as you: he thinks these primitives are actually superior to us!
The answer was clear to our Founders: repatriation to Africa. This great and noble work was begun – ever hear of Liberia? That Liberia is a basket case is not our fault – but their’s. Nothing else could have been expected, I mean look at Haiti.
Unfortunately, the great work was stopped by secret commercial and political interests. And now Africa is too full to take it up again. No, now we will have to give Blacks their own Nation in the deep South in what was part of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln was in favor of this plan as well. Sorry Libs, you got nothin’.
Quite a column this week. As a Canadian, our history is much different than yours and trying to understand the “race problem” in your country is difficult. We have our own issues in that area, but historically it’s been our aboriginal people kept at the bottom of the heap,and our jails are disproportionately filled with them. Their living conditions are appalling, especially up North where many don’t even have clean water or proper housing, and we cheap out on providing funds for a decent education for them.
Now that the cities are filling up with people of colour from all over the world, that is changing quickly, and we have our very own ghettos too. My career was spent as an anti poverty activist and I’ve tended to look at the poverty issue as more one of class than colour. In our small town we have Gangsta culture just as JHK frequently describes, except they’re all white, but they have the clothes, the tattoos, and the babies that the fat young women push with their thin young men shuffling along behind. It’s clear those babies have no future, just like their parents don’t either.
Not an easy issue to figure out, here or in the USA. But a good read that got me thinking some more on the topic. I’ll let you all know when I’ve got it solved, ok?
But why ? I’m at a loss for it. And there sure looks like there will be no fixing it either. Just money to be made hyping fear of eachother.
That’s the whole reason this case has been made into such a big deal: the Goverment wants to chip away at our 2nd Ammendment rights. Fast and Furious “backfired” on them in spectacular fashion so they’re taking a different tack.
“Any armed individual who shoots and kills any unarmed individual should automatically be arrested”
OK. You get the gun and six seconds with Bruce Lee. How do you about using the gun now?
Do you realize how insane you sound? Instead of being grateful that you had made peace and reparation to the Indians and now could enjoy the peace and prosperity of an overwhelmingly White Canada – you chose to import millions of more problems into your nation. Why? Just so some goverment types like you could have a job and feel superior? Or did you hope to show America how righteous you all were and show us how it’s done right?
Canada will pay dearly for its hubris.
I for one think it is. Fair enough to ask the question but dwelling on the question denies a multitude of evidence to the contrary.
If you want to wonder what vestiges of primitive culture might have caused gangsta don’t forget about being whipped for not working hard enough or not being paid the same money for the same work. Are we just going to forget about that? One stops being racist when one stops seeing color and sees individuals.
Be kind to every person you meet. They may be carrying heavy burdens and fighting great battles of which you may not know.
Of course. Blacks have always been used to keep poor Whites in line either as strike breakers or breakers of heads. Multicultural Nations don’t work. And Muli-Racial Nations? Please.
You can buy a house in Detroit or Buffalo for a couple of hundred dollars – or less. Blacks tend to lower the property value. Preying on people will do that as will setting fires and then stoning the firemen. But if you want to call leaving while your house is still worth something go right ahead. It just makes you sound like a fool though.
You are the one who’s insane, Vlad, not me. Canada, like the USA, is made up completely of immigrants, except for the aboriginal population, and even they came across the Bering Strait from Asia originally, they just got here first.
I didn’t work for Government, either. It was a non-profit agency that our Labour Council started back in the early 80s. We got govt. funding to operate a legal clinic eventually to help low income people cut off from welfare or evicted or denied disability pensions along with a few other areas of the law that affect the poor the most.
The Scottish welfare supervisor discriminated against all people he thought were immigrants, whether Mexican or from Newfoundland. The latter sounded Irish so of course they were inferior in his eyes, and I remember one Mexican family simply driven right out of the county entirely. Nice people too, trying to start a business to get off welfare, but never given a chance. Naturally, black people and aboriginals were given the roughest ride.
The point is that it wasn’t colour that decided who got treated like garbage, it was the perception of this guy from Glasgow, a Christian fundamentalist, of who was inferior, and that could be anybody. If there’s no black people around to kick, people like him have no problem finding another scapegoat.
Like my spouse says, we’re all going to hell. You first, Vlad.
But maybe they should not go back where they came from and try to make it better right away. Maybe they need to hang around the dumpster long enough to figure it all out before going back.
Head Start is a boondogle that confers no benefit except babysitting. Throw more money at it? BS.
K-Dog, lovely sentiments, I completely agree with you. Love and Peace, man.
The skittles thing is meaningless yet it is repeated endlessly. Repetition of a detail is a form of hypnosis – even self hypnosis. And of course it emphasizes his youth, just like the out of date photos.
One aspect not mentioned is diet. Blacks gorge on sugar and junk food constantly. Think this might contribute to poor judgement and self control?
I am a big fan of Bill Moyers. Tough subject, dutifully brought to light. Keep it up. I am conceiving some kind of cross continental hand delivery system so that I can subscribe to your newspaper after TSHTF and The Long Emergency drags on into the next dark age. From my studio window I can see the speed trap Steve Earle wrote and still sings about. They’re about to widen it. Again. Yee Haw.And some of the largest most spectacular interstate highway overpasses I have seen are under construction on the northern fringes of fair San Antonio and all the way through Austin. These things will be here long after there purpose has expired. Physical reminders of hubris on steroids and junk. I’m off to get some bourbon and practice my mint julep recipes.
Before he enlisted in the Army, a black friend of mine told me about what happened to him the night before. He said that all the senior male members of his family, all veterans, sat him down to describe to him how his military experience would most likely unfold. But, he said the real moment of Zen was the description of the history. We fought in Civil War and got fucked with. We fought in WWI and STILL got fucked with. WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and we are still…getting…fucked with. Just one story of many that get handed down from generation to generation.
Canada was a Nation founded by Whites for Whites. The Indians were just living there. They are not the first Canadians but people who fought and lost to the White Invaders. And because the Whites were also Christian, they tried to do right for the Indians, in a crude way at first but better later. Of course they’re not satisfied, but so what? They lost and have to deal with that.
The English and the French Canadians can’t get along even now. And you want more diversity? Nigga please.
at least somebody is bringing up the hard questions about this situation. both of these individuals had sketchy pasts, trayvon being caught with burglary tools at school, and zimmerman with documented temper problems, so what? people get killed every day in this country, with knives, guns, automobiles.
the plain fact is that many white people are scared of young black men, and that rap music glorifies violence, i don’t remember robert plant singing about capping someone with his 9mm.
this being said, yes, racism does still exist, absolutely, and playing identity politics will only serve to exacerbate the situation.
we must return to the principal of treating all citizens equally regardless of race, this was MLK’s dream, for people to be judged on the content of their character. crime is crime, it should be prosecuted the exact same way no matter who does what to whom. equal protection under the law. period.end of story. no preferences, no set asides, we are all citizens, all federal and state govt. programs and laws must be absolutely color and gender blind.
Wow, here is an interesting topic. One that is certain to drag out to the light the anger festering within even the most “civilized” individual.
It is possible that the biggest threat George Zimmerman faced was himself if we take the adage:
“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself”.
One well known fact is that Trayvon had a REASON to be in the “gated community,” as it was home to his father’s girlfriend. This fact alone raises serious questions to Zimmerman’s accusations and defense of his use of deadly force. What concerns me the most is the unreasonable level of fear that is permeating our society in general. This goes way beyond race, guns, and gun laws themselves. We are fighting a fictitious enemy and that enemy might be our very own prejudices. Our stubborn aversion to the truth begins to manifest outwardly as anger which our society perceives as empowering, but it is actually debilitating. These problems have been building for many, many years and it goes right back to the heart of what Jim’s writing is all about.
“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.”
If George Zimmerman and everyone else who feels it necessary to carry a gun around out of fear AND refuses to understand the previous quotes, well, they are dead men already. Maybe we’ve all “Lost our Minds” in this “Shoot first, ask questions later” world. http://wp.me/p1LP6G-3V
Here’s another one ready for the six-second Bruce Lee test. He has NO FEAR of Bruce. Step right on up you hardy young droogie…
What if the unarmed person has arms with fists and is beating to death the “armed” person?
John Wayne Westerns have given us a false idea about how much people can take. One punch can knock out an eye. One punch can knock someone out – cracking the person’s skull as he hits the pavement. In the last 3 months, a number of elderly Whites have been killed by Blacks is just this manner.
Care to reconsider your ridiculous position?
Here is my capsule summary.
Following the Civil War, there were millions of idle slaves who had been freed. Though there was a brief period where it seemed that relative equality would be implemented in the South, Reconstruction was only partially successful, and there were soon a series of Jim Crow laws put in place. Consequently, due to a lack of opportunity, people started moving West and North, to major American cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, where there were a surplus of blue collar jobs, which means unskilled manual labor. Until around 1960 or thereabouts, the economy of most American cities was industrial, and even those without high school diplomas could get decent-paying, steady work. With the notable hiccup of the Depression, Black America was actually on the up and up. But then what happened was that the industrial base was ripped up and shipped to other countries or production was moved. This left the millions of people in the inner cities in limbo. For men, especially, different community organizations took the place of work, at least socially. There were the Black Panthers and the Us Organization, both of which, when you look at it objectively, were fairly possitive. The Panthers were known in the media as advocating and promulgating violence, but in the black community they were better known for their charity programs like food distribution. We all know what happened to them. The FBI systematically targeted and dismantled the upper leadership, so the organization disintegrated. Following the disolution of these political groups, black men started turning to street gangs for group identification. That would have been around the early 1970’s. This coincided with a massive influx of narcotics into the inner cities, first heroin, and later, cocaine.
Several factors in Black American culture made it difficult for them to deal with these rather fast changes in the society around them. As an outsider, I would identify the following. Firstly, that culture does not, by and large, place much value on education, in and of itself. Contrast that with, say, the Chinese who are practically militant about the value of education. Instead, black culture tends to emphasize physical strength, which is becoming less and less useful in the economy, aside from a few niche industries and games like football and basketball, where they excel. Secondly, the family strucutre is rather loose, and marriage out of wedlock is considered acceptable. Thirdly, crime became one of the only ways that blacks could succeed beyond the subsistence level in their communities. In other words, when the blue collar jobs disappeared, street jobs opened up.
I recommend a movie called “Bastards of the Party”, which discusses how political organizations like the BPP morphed into LA street gangs like the Crips and Bloods. It is a fascinating historical document.
I believe that one would also have to take into account the totality of the oppression that has occurred, from slavery, into Jim Crow, and then in more subtle forms like employment and housing discrimination, which has lead to large scale ghettoization. For instance, in the movie I mentioned, there was a statistic that in one year LA county hired 1200 people and not 1 black person was among them. That type of discrimination doesn’t have to occur for a very long period before the historical ramifications are severe.
Now queue up a response from Vlad Kraps including his self-designated “expertise” in these matters.
Hoo boy, let’s get back to basics. Cultural diversity is most threatened by any group, religious or otherwise, that instututionalizes as core belief to that group the practice of large families. Dominance is inherent intent is such belief and practice.
Mayor Blumenthal has radically lowered crime in N.Y City by having the police stop and frisk suspiscious young men – obviously mostly Blacks and Hispanic. Scores of guns and knives have been found.
Do I like this infringement on the Bill of Rights? No. But as John Adams said and implied, the Consitution was means for Christian Whites and no other. (he actually wrote Christians but like the rest of the Founders, he would have been dumbfounded by non Whites being Citizens so thus I said implied).
What was the job? Perhaps it required a clean police record? Which is why Blacks often get worse sentences – priors. Btw, some of this should be relaxed for some jobs or these guys will never work again.
Black Panthers: your’re right, they were better than the gangs. But are implying that they weren’t violent towards Whites? That they were only positive because they were positive for Blacks? That our point of view doesn’t matter or is non-existent? Turk I thouht better of you (not really).
Minister Farakahn still does a superb job of motivating Blacks to clean up their act. He is also a Black Nationalists who White Nationalists could work with – just as the Nazis and Zionists worked together since they had common interests.
George Zimmerman. Followed a kid around with a loaded gun after the 911 operator told him the police had already been dispatched.
Suspend George from a lightpost while the Sanford community peppers him with pub darts until he is dead, dead, dead.
Vote count?
The Tea Party was peaceful though the Media desperately wished it wasn’t. Occupy Wall Street was violent again and again but no problem since the Media is Left like you.
I can’t read through all these comments, but please tell me someone else also noticed that you have the wrong year for Kent state. It was 1970, not 1971. Ugh. Come on, Jim!
He had a right to carry that loaded gun. You don’t like it? Go live in Britain. But you might be a minority soon as millions of White Britons are leaving – and taking their money with them. It’s not their country anymore. Hopefully their sons will return some day – as Conquerors.
It ain’t the gun, Vlad. I come from three generations of cops and I know that this is an old story. It’s the story of what happens when one these private armed security employees starts thinking that they are police representatives.
“The Tea Party was peaceful though the Media desperately wished it wasn’t. Occupy Wall Street was violent again and again but no problem since the Media is Left like you.”
“He had a right to carry that loaded gun. You don’t like it? Go live in Britain. […] Hopefully their sons will return some day – as Conquerors.”
Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, every week I have to point out the absurdity of you criticizing others for violence in one post and then in the next one getting all New Barbarian on us. You must lack the part of the brain that recognizes hypocrisy and irony.
It’s mildly conservative articles like this which drove Lucan from the fold. Liberals have little tolerance for this kind of thing. One can only imagine the agony that Ozone is feeling right now.
All violence isn’t the same Turk. A blade can be used to heal or to kill. Some conquests are righteous – such as when the Spanish took back Spain from the Muslim Imperialists.
Your education was a waste. The simplest of reasoning is beyond you.
Remember the Long Emergency? The People are going to be thrown back on their own resources – and you want them disarmed? You probably support the police taking the time during Katrina to go door to door confiscating guns. Then only criminals had guns (yeah right). Some citizens defended their lives and property against Black Terror during Katrina. Sorry.
The Police of New Orleans were sued for this illegal action and they lost.
“it is no wonder Zimmerman felt the need to defend himself against Trayvon after all, if the behaviour of 16 and 17 year old black kids is anything like Shawn Tyson – who brutally murdered 2 white British unarmed tourists in what can only be called a racist attack in Florida.”
Have we had any comment from Obama on that incident?
“What was the job? Perhaps it required a clean police record?”
I’m not sure. This was quoted in a documentary, and it was referring to LA county hiring in (I believe) the 1950’s. I’d have to look up the specifics. I’m pretty sure that it had nothing to do with criminal history, just the usual racial discrimination. That is purely an assumption on your part.
I wasn’t trying to say that the BPP was perfect or anything, just that there was definitely a deliberate media misperception to paint it as a purely revolutionary organization intent on large scale violence. They certainly did talk a tough line, but they were better known among blacks for community programs and the like rather than being instigators of violence. And the Us Organization was definitely not attached to violence as a way of changing society. From a societal point of view, both were certainly far superior to criminal street gangs. For one, allegiances weren’t confined to narrow groups like neighborhoods or one’s fellow gang, which causes these young men to kill each other over, essentially, nothing.
It is hard to ask them to “clean up their act,” if you mean black men in the inner city. Where are the jobs? Where are the resources for doing so? How are they supposed to function in society? Like you said, who wants to hire a convicted felon? Basically nobody. I guess I wonder what we expect when we imprison people and convict them of serious felonies for minor drug offenses, making them more-or-less unemployable for the rest of their lives. It doesn’t take a genius to see that they’re going to end up right back in prison eventually, as there is no way than selling drugs for them to make money when they get out aside from welfare (which you presumably despise).
You’re a liberal yet a cop jock sniffer. What a combo!
They don’t “look like Obama” or Eric Holder either.
Is that right, Vlad? All violence isn’t the same. Okay, well, who gets to decide. You? Now we’re right back where we started.
Who decides? Who decides on the basic theorems of mathematics? Such as a+b=b+a or parallel lines never meet in Euclid’s Geometry? Reasonable men. You are excluded from this august fraternity.
Mr. Kunstler,
I’ve enjoyed your blog for so long, and read almost all of your books with pleasure, so it surprises me that I have to point out the following line from your blog this week as one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read from one of my regular reading list favorites: “People don’t get shot for no reason.” Seems to me it happens with frequency in the U.S.
I’m sorry to say that I find little to agree with in the rest of this week’s entry either. You don’t have your facts straight here Mr. Kusnstler.
Except what you’re talking about, judging the “righteousness” of violence, is purely subjective, for obvious reasons, whereas mathematics is an objective science. I’m not surprised you can’t tell the difference. This is a basic fallacy of your thinking that is on display here every week, in other words, “If I think it, then it must be objectively true.”
For example, to the Syrian government, they are correct to shell neighborhoods in open revolt. To most of the rest of the world, they are wrong. You see how these things work, Vlad? We’re talking about human opinions here, not 1+1=2.
I’m with you here ForkBoy. One of my favorite cynics is showing some nasty parts.
Yeah and the people Blacks admire just happen to be all Black. The kids wont even wear a jersey of a White Player! Compare that with White adulation of Blacks and Black Players.
Who’s the racist here champ?
“Some conquests are righteous – such as when the Spanish took back Spain from the Muslim Imperialists.”
Not to the Muslims, it wasn’t. But, of course, it was righteous to the Christians, who got their land back. So are Christians “right” and Muslims “wrong”? (Answer: It depends on who you ask.) What about Muslim lands seized by Christians? Are the Muslims allowed their “righteous conquests” to take those back, such as European territory formerly under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire?
You really are not able to think about any topic in an objective fashion.
“At the same time the wearing of hoodies, burkas and gang symbology in public should be unacceptable.”
Bah.
And to you they are wrong to so shell. So you do believe in a Universal Morality. We just disagree about what it is. One of us is right and one wrong.
Hint: I believe that friends, family, co-ethics, and citizens come first. To people like you and Dale, people in Africa have equal claims on our sympathy. To me that’s a perversion of the golden rule – which you obviously subscribe to as your Syria comment (and others in the past) indicates.
Thanks for spelling it out here Elrond. I found this week’s blog repugnant for all the same reasons.
‘I largely blame our suburban structure for the decline of poor people and many African Americans’
Look past the surface and see the decline is
1…China and ‘Free’ Trade
2…Spectacular increase in US population.
Surely an aspect of this case deserving attention on this blog is that the incident occurred in a questionably functional pod of urban sprawl where neighbors do not know each other very well, are apparently often suspicious of other people on the street, and evidently not averse to relying on armed vigilantes.
So I can’t wear a hoodie and pull the hood up over my head when it gets chilly outside?
The fact that I wear a hooded sweatshirt regularly means I’m some kind shadowy criminal, even though I just, you know, think it is a convenient way to stay warm.
You are really off base here, ya know?
There is increasing evidence that the white underclass and the black underclass are now becoming more alike than ever. Unfortunately, it’s not in a good way. I don’t think we’re moving toward a race war, but rather towards class conflict which Jim is always bringing up, with his comments about tattoos and NASCAR.
If we don’t do something we’ll have a large undifferentiated mass of unemployed drugged-out louts with several illegitimate children apiece, and black or white won’t matter.
As far as Trayvon is concerned, I agree that someone who wears the uniform of convenience-store robbers is asking for trouble, again black or white. You’re judged by how you’re dressed and act, for better or worse.
They did take them back – just as they took them from Christians in the first place.
A Universal Morality would stop all this but who gets to say when it all freezes in place? The Globalists want to freeze it with them on top. Muslims with themselves on top. And their version of morality defines neighbor as a fellow Muslim. The Jews do the same. The Chinese the same. Etc. Only the White Race is really capable of this Ethic and why should we destroy ourselves for an attainable ideal?
Of course it did.
NR is so yesterday.
Whats funny is at Taki the comments section averages 50? comments. The libs pushed the articles
comments to 5000 and growing.
Just one small quibble with todays excellent as usual blog. The Kent State shootings took place in May of 1970 not 1971. (A proud Kent State Alumni, albeit a few years after 1970).
djc
PS I didn’t read all of the posts so I apologize if this has already been brought up.
How can people get all wrapped up in this race BS. It is so easy to understand.
The original American blacks came from primitive tribes. They were captured as slaves and brought over to a white European based, technically advanced society. Violently ripped away from their families and native environments and taken to a strange land. They were slaves. They were “property”. The were the dregs of the nation. Eventually they were “emancipated” and they began their journey of development with this tremendous handicap which they continue to struggle with to this day. And it will be a very long haul indeed before they reach a higher level of social standing as a whole as a result of significant progress in education and sophistication.
It’s a melting pot but it takes some components in the pot a long time to melt and blend.
If it was the reverse and primitive whites were captured and brought as slaves to a technologically advanced Africa, then the tables would be turned. It has nothing to do with skin color.
There is also racism… a sense of superiority or a fear of differences or some envisioned threat to one’s status quo. That is human behaviour. There are degrees of ignorance (social training) involved in this. This is something that is fading away as time moves forward. As the decades move forward and the older cohorts die off there will be less and less concern about skin color.
Of course such things as the “gangsta culture”; the bling and pants down to their knees; the black language; the animosity towards white people (who are not the white people that enslaved their ancestors); and all the strong efforts to be “different” to not help their cause of blending in to the American populace and being accepted. There is a lot of stupidity in these above actions but stupidity goes away as the development process continues.
The blacks have been on and will continue to be on a long road of development and evolution here in the American society. It’s going to take a long time and it is going to get better for them decade by decade.
I’m glad that I wasn’t a poor black kid born in some ghetto of Detroit or Washington DC with no father and no family background or connections to help me make my way in life. I have huge respect for every black person that has managed to rise above their unbelievable handicaps and make a decent life for themselves.
Love your fellow man. Treat everyone as you would want them to treat you. Respect and allow people to be the way they are (that is the only way that people can be allowed to change or improve for the better). Realize that there is a life force and a spiritual being and a person is not his body. See through the skin color and deal with the person in front of you.
As Captain Beefheart said: “We’re all colored. If we weren’t we wouldn’t be able to see each other.”
I absolutely DO NOT believe in a Universal Morality, only the physical laws of the Universe, which may actually change according to the latest research, but very slowly. There is nothing constant but the change, said a wise Greek philosopher.
Now, of course, biology via physical law imposes constraints on behavior, based on what is good for a species’ survival, which often is reflected in morality. For instance, incest is considered morally wrong, but it is really the genetic problems it creates in the offspring that are the real reason it is considered bad. Similarly, murder is not acceptable in any organized society, because that society would not exist for very long if it were okay. The idea of survival and evolution applies very nicely to entire societies and civilizations.
Dueling, or legalized murder, used to be considered okay, but now we say it isn’t. Ditto with slavery. Once backed up by all the force of moral righteousness and religion and now completely unacceptable by any modern moral code.
See, bud, these things change over time. You’d be hard pressed to point to anything like Universal Morality that has been completely constant in human civilization.
Societal morality is largely imposed by religion and government. Four hundred years ago in Europe, if one so much as questioned the veracity of the Bible, one could find oneself on the hot end of a burning pile of logs. How is that for morality, burning alive people who don’t agree with you? Is that part of your Universal Morality? And this same institution is supposedly the guardian of some kind of objective, universal moral code. Hardly.
Do I think that Assad shelling his own citizens is wrong? I’m not sure, and I’m not necessarily familiar with all the complexities of that country. But it sure is dumb in today’s world of Twitter and Facebook. There’s no surer way to depose yourself these days than attack your own people.
And I have no idea what the following statement is supposed to mean.
“To people like you and Dale, people in Africa have equal claims on our sympathy. To me that’s a perversion of the golden rule – which you obviously subscribe to as your Syria comment (and others in the past) indicates.”
Perhaps you could explain further? I’m far more connected to Americans than people on another continent. That’s just a matter of familiarity. And, yes, I have some kind of instinctive sense of the Golden Rule, but I look at it as a good way to function in society, not some moral law imposed by external agency.
A cop jock sniffer? Kinky. I’m in LA and I’ve never hear of that one. Heaven help the Nouveau Poor who show up in my dumpster economy with a loaded gun. They will never have enough bullets. More cops please!
Happy Patriots Day CFN nation! From Massachusetts, birthplace and endplace of Liberty!Please Sir can I have another! With a bigger stick please!
Quoting historical antecedents at great length is fine, but riddle me this; when you were young, did you give a shit about most of the stuff your parents and grandparents talked about? DIdn’t it just seem like a lot of “old school” crap that didn’t mean anything to you?
My point is that I don’t think most Black youth are pining over slavery or oppression or the Civil Rights era. Most of them (and most of their white and Hispanic classmates) don’t know about it and don’t care about it — probably because it’s just too damn PC to even teach real history in schools any more. It’s too dangerous. It’s too multicultural. It’s too “on the one hand this, but on the other had, that…”
“I believe the black separatist movement of that time derived largely from anxiety around the issues of cultural assimilation – that is, of black and white America forming a true and complete common culture.”
Nah, really? Could that be because assimilated common culture is completely unnatural? A product of unprecedented access to energy? The wealth to pay a million armed arbitrators to make it so?
Jim, you profess to have contact with energy flows and their impacts on culture, but you toe the leftist party line on the race issue. It was never meant to be, and with peak oil 6-ish years in the rear view, I highly doubt it will ever happen now. Thank god. Not because blacks are inferior to whites, or incapable of imitating them, but because they don’t want to. And we shouldn’t want to imitate them either. Because we are very different sorts of people. We can admire and respect each other without having to BE each other.
Please check out this article about a young teacher in a local high school in Northern California who is actually educating his students. Then imagine if his methods could have had chance with TM and GZ. Real learning and love of it going on–can you beat that. By the way, let’s keep this a secret for a while so that the PTB won’t get wind of it and shut this guy down. They are so keen on maintaining their ignorance, arrogance, greed indoctrination system “alive and well.”
Oh, yes, you want the link don’t you! Ooops.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_20394693/oakley-teens-study-science-learning
Only the most hardcore irrational white racists would object to living next door to a peaceful, pleasant family that happened to be black. The common response is one of fear about conditioned expectations and perceptions rather than skin color per se.
Jim Kuntsler just got back from KKK central – Indiana. Perhaps that was on his mind a bit.
About the other stuff going on in the world, I went to hear Mr. Kuntsler speak just because I admire what he has done for all of us. Only three new slides, but interesting ones.
What kind of crowd was it? A few came knowing what was in store. Many were white bread suburban realtors. They acted like thie message was beneath notice. An unpleasant experience to be around such self inflicted stupidity. The only time they seemed to react was for the genocide dictator wall powerpoint slide. They seemed offended.
Most people seem to be like that. Everything is okay; keep everything in good taste. Warning and trying to make such a mental state self aware is quite the uphill battle. They react the same if the subject is race relations.
Keep friends and family close; network and have alternatives available, and get out of debt. Oh, and be prepared to protect yourself and your family from the realtors in places like Whitebread, IN. They are going to be very disappointed and want to share.
Tomic you are right. Kunstler totally blames the victim. A child yes he’s considered a child is pursued, confronted, and shot dead. Period. Self defense? Pleez. Against what? Skittles being thrown at you?? Get a grip racists Zimmerman should be locked away for years, with the key lost for good. What a joke. He is a thug and Trayvon is a dead child. Period
Class war — exactly. Well put.
Fact is, Americans from across the ideological spectrum yammer incessantly about race, while pretending ours is a classless society.
Differences in dress and dialect, while alarming to some old farts, mean fuck-all. This was not one of JHK’s smarter essays.
Interesting. I’ve come to similar conclusions. It’s pretty clear that you either adopt a common culture (or enough to facilitate interaction) and succeed, or choose to separate into a separate subculture, and fail. The choice to create a separate black culture seemed to happen in the 60s as part of “black pride.” It has failed, and continues to fail.
The other aspect of this is fear. I’m prejudiced at a gut level at anyone I’m scared of. Most of the threatening situations in my life involved black people as the threateners. I’m not stupid. I know that black people are not, by and large, particularly threatening, but the little reptile brain in the back of my skull doesn’t know this. He’s all about survival, and all he’s got to go on are visual cues, so “bad neighborhood + black people = visceral fear” is what happens whether I approve or not. It didn’t happen to me until after I was an adult, but it happened nonetheless. I’m not proud of this, but I’m honest enough to admit that it does happen.
We can admire and respect each other without having to BE each other.
==
Exactly. Enough with the imperialism.
People should be allowed to be what they want to be. The US empire should be expired and the States should assume their full national role. And even there, large States like California, Texas, Florida, New York, etc., should be replaced by smaller States.
“we all know what Trayvon was doing in this gated community – let’s not kid ourselves here.”
I’m in a gated community right now! I can tell that the guy whose house I’m in thinks that I don’t belong here.
So tell me, why am I REALLY here?
And this is how it continues….
“It’s pretty clear that you either adopt a common culture (or enough to facilitate interaction) and succeed, or choose to separate into a separate subculture, and fail.”
This is not at all clear. It has more to do with whether or not that subculture is compatible with the culture in which it is embedded, i.e. whether or not it generally leads to the success or failure of its individuals. Hassidic Jews and the Amish have a culture that is far more separated from the mainstream than black culture. When was the last time you saw an Amish music video? But these cultures succeed because they have strong values based on family, hard work, and following the law, that (generally) lead to success both internally and externally to their subculture. On the other hand, if your subculture is based upon not working and living off the dole, breaking the law, and weak family structures, it will probably lead to the failure of its individuals to thrive.
You may want to do some research into how things are going in the Amish communities right now.
What was never meant to be? Only with the advent of nationalism were these ridiculous notions of ideal political entities having an exact correspondence with racial and cultural groups promulgated. Before this, political structures were far more multi-ethnic and multi-cultural than today, and this was considered natural. The Austria-Hungary Empire and the Ottoman Empire are two examples. The Roman Empire, basically the foundation of all modern political structures, was as multi-ethnic and cultural as they come. As political structures these were not perfect entities (nothing is I’m afraid), and they did largely rely on an authoritarian political organization. But to say that diverse societies were never meant to be is to completely ignore the history of politics. And it is not fair to simply paint with broad strokes and say that all differing groups can’t along with each other. It all has far more to do with how striking the differences are between sub-groups, how accomodating the overall structure is to diversity, and how likely a subgroup is to cause serious divisions, whether there are resource or land constraints that complicate the issue, etc.
It may also help to have one group (or culture?) that dominates with another being a minority. In other words, a country with 50% of one group and 50% of another, very different group might not function all that well.
All that said, it definitely is a recipe for political disaster to have different laws for different groups of people, especially in a democracy, which is supposed to be egalitarian. Essentially, that means the central authority has ceded political power to the sub-group to the point where maybe that group actually should have its own separate territory. In other words, some level of political consensus is a must, especially in a democracy where top down control generally doesn’t work, but this is achievable.
How are they going? Tell me.
Everyone seems to be having problems these days though, wouldn’t you say?
I mean, here we are talking about how bad black culture supposedly is for America, and the general culture itself is in a state of collapse, more or less, economically, culturally, etc. Or perhaps I just watched Rupert’s Collapse movie one too many times.
So I guess it is all kinda relative how we judge these things, doncha think? I just know that there aren’t too many Amish in the prison system and probably not too many living off welfare and food stamps. And I’ve never met an Amish single mother. Of course, I’ve only met a few Amish, period, but you get what I’m saying.
Vandana Shiva calls it a monoculture of the mind, and mental monocultures are just as unecological and unsustainable as their agricultural counterparts, in the long view. It’s just not how Nature does her business.
Viva diversity! That’s the main ingredient of healthy, dynamic stability.
Even as you deny universal morality you imply it since you imply things are getting better and better. By what standard? An orderly way to structure society? And why is that good? You slept thru Philo 101.
Not necessarily – it just takes a long time to get the basics. People rush thru to the advanced stuff before they do and become babbling fools. In the ancient Pythagorean School, the students were required to keep silent for the first five years. That means no internet.
Trust that deeper part of yourself – it will keep you alive. Women are particularly bad on this one – getting into elevators with dangerous looking Blacks just so as not to be thought “racist”. One realtor was killed in Manhattan showing a young 20 something Black a multi million dollar condo. Obviously he didn’t have that kind of money but she went right up there all alone with him.
Even if that assimilation into beige was a good thing (so much for diversity), it implies the continuation of a high tech, highly mobile United States. The premise of this Blog is that that’s not the future. Tribalism is coming back, yo. Choose your side. Hint: you already have your basic uniform.
I’ve been an enthusiastic admirer of JHK for almost twenty years, and I remain one, despite this week’s column.
For the record: I admire his nuanced and artistic appreciation of cityscapes and the history of urban design, and his elegant, humanistic recommendations for ways to use design principles to heal our urban fabric. I appreciate his total political independence and his unique and witty take on current events. I greatly admire his very underrated prose style, which is witty, intellectually rich, socially astute, and filled with lyrical passages of great power. Finally, I admire his boldness in putting himself out there, giving his true opinions on these matters whether people like them or not. He’s a true public intellectual, not a “doomer,” and he deserves much more publicity–and more **respectful** publicity at that.
Like all human beings, though, he has his blind spots. Race has always been one of his Achilles heels, whether in his books, his blog postings, or in his podcast.
I’m a native of Baltimore, and I was struck by how, in his “video tour” of Baltimore on the Kunstlercast about a year ago, he wrote off vast sections of Baltimore as just being “the ghetto,” and did not include them in his tour, when in fact those sections contain hands-down the most beautiful sections of the city, even though they are sometimes run down and suffer from drug dealing, bad schools, and a culture of violence. These neighborhoods include an enormous park and zoo designed by 19th century urban planners in the Olmsted tradition, large swaths of handsome former streetcar neighborhoods with Victorian homes and lovely urban squares, and handsome avenues providing long, tree-lined vistas of monuments and churches. The way to heal these troubled neighborhoods is not, sadly, with urban design principles–they are already gorgeous places with terrific public spaces–but rather with an elusive combination of investments in people, time, energy, and money that is hard to muster even in the best of times. And of course, these days we’re not really even trying.
The deep social problems in poor, often nonwhite neighborhoods and towns are much the same across the country, and I’m sure you can find them just as easily in Albany, Troy, and Glens Falls–though perhaps not in Greenwich, New York, the lovely but decidedly un-urban place to which Mr. Kunstler has lately retreated.
In this week’s column, JHK expresses impatience with the traditional liberal, 60s-style, Bill Moyers-vintage pathos for cross-racial healing and suggests that black people should engage in self-reflection about whether they are acting in ways that are too scary for their own good, or indeed for a civilized society. I’m a white guy myself, but unlike JHK I have lived in or near big cities most of my life and have had many black friends and neighbors. And I can assure you, this kind of self-reflection is happening at a very deep and powerful level all through the black community, including among public figures like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West and across the black church more generally. The combination of poverty, broken families, social isolation from past discrimination, poor education, and lack of economic opportunity makes a lot of young inner-city black kids oblivious of how to walk past a middle-class person without scaring them, and that includes middle-class black people too!
Unfortunately for this analysis, however, is that it’s kind of irrelevant to the Trayvon Martin case. The key question is whether a neighborhood-watch guy was acting in self-defense when he shot an unarmed black teenager on the street at night. We don’t know this yet. The situation boils down, therefore, to two issues: (1) Zimmerman needed to be arrested, to allow the process to actually work. The police acted disgracefully in letting him go free for over a month. (2) Now that he’s been arrested, we still don’t know if he really did act in self-defense. We won’t know until we hear the evidence. But one thing is for sure: You don’t get to claim self-defense just because you thought a black kid looked scary. I can’t speak for the “stand-your-ground” law, but as far as I have ever heard, it doesn’t give you license to shoot people without appropriate provocation.
So let’s leave that case to its particulars and not muddy it up with too much social commentary or complaining about blacks. And maybe that “activist” guest on the Bill Moyers show was overdoing it, or maybe not – I can’t tell from JHK’s discussion. But I do have to agree with Moyers’ longstanding opinion that race remains a deep problem in our society, and that it’s inextricably mixed up with the problem of shrinking economic opportunity, decline in our democratic institutions, and lack of investment in our cities. African-Americans always seem to be on the front lines for these problems and suffer them first before anyone else.
Here, by reducing his discussion of race and the Trayvon Martin case to a complaint about the scariness of black youths, Mr. Kunstler belittles the commonalities between blacks and whites and their shared experience of the current social and economic crisis. After all, even on the narrow issue of “scariness,” hasn’t JHK devoted a lot of time to complaining about tattoos and the culture of working-class anger that has arisen recently? Perhaps if he spent more time talking to people in the highly diverse cities all around him he would gain a richer understanding of these cross-racial issues, and thus be able to supply his fans with a level of analysis and observation that would match his otherwise very high standards.
I mean did you ever even try to find any objective statistics on this? Blacks murder and rape at 7 times the White rate. They are 13% or so of the population. So put the two together: almost 50 times more likely to rape and murder than Whites.
And we can admire and respect each other without being friends. During the Wounded Knee stand off, some Crow Indians drove 500 miles to the Sioux Reservation and fired over the heads of their traditional enemies – a warrior salute.
I guess that I’m not a Pythagorean then!
“you imply things are getting better and better”
No, Vlad, not better and better, just possibly more functional for more people, where there is applicable political continuity. Dueling and slavery do not generally work for people anymore, for various reasons, so their legality was changed. Most people do not want to become slaves or get caught up in a duel. Remember that America fought a very bloody civil war over the latter, or at least it was a major root cause (please don’t make some contrarian post on this topic…just an example). And as far as law enforcement, dueling is problemmatic. Can you imagine it today. The police show up to a crime scene, and someone says, “Oh, yeah, it is all good. He challenged me to a duel.”
Laws change over time to accomodate changing cultures. Thomas Jefferson said the laws should be rewritten every 25 years to accomodate the times. I’m not speaking from a position of absolute moral authority, just discussing what does and does not work for people. That’s how democracy works or at least is supposed to work.
Or you could use Prohibition as an example. It was tried and found lacking, so drinking was made legal again. But is drinking a “good” thing? Probably not, given all the problems it causes like drunk driving, damage to the body, etc. But the culture changed and the law followed, even though drinking is probably not really an objectively “good” activity (and that completely depends on who you ask). It has to do with what the majority of people want and how accomodating the political structure is to their desires. So if I have any philosophical position, it would probably be some form of political Utilitarianism. This just means that political structures which do not respond and change as the desires and morals of its citizens do is probably not long for this world.
What did I miss in Philosophy 101 BTW? Can you spell it out rather than just imply.
I feel like you have a hard time wrapping your head around how the world actually works, which is that there really is no absolute moral authority. If you want to talk about philosophy, that’s what nearly all modern philosophical thought implies, and these people think about these issues more deeply than you. Right and wrong are definitely social constructs, because their definitions change over time and between different coexisting societies, sometimes rapidly. Morality is merely a concept, not an actual existing entity like some kind of hovering Platonic object, and has no existence outside of human civilization. Back in 1850, you could have supported slavery and been considered a moral person. Yet, now, well, give it a try and tell me how it goes.
In nature, asteroids crash into planets, killing 70% of the species there. Stars explode, obliterating everything around them. Lions eat the herd animals. Populations overshoot and die off. Heck, the entire Universe could implode tomorrow, destroying everything within it. But it is just something that happened, not a great evil, though we’d probably think it was pretty bad.
“some Crow Indians drove 500 miles to the Sioux Reservation”
Um, rode you meant? Unless they had pickups back then, which I’m not aware of… 🙂
This is the perfect column to mark JHK’s decline into total irrelevance. It appears that beneath that poorly constructed persona of wit, charm and intelligence, he is a complete fucking a-hole dimwit. One can only hope he disappears from the scene and ceases the bilking of naive bystanders of loot for his crappy scribblings.
“People don’t get shot for no reason”
Wow, this is one of the dumbest things I’ve read on this blog. How about if someone celebrating their sports team win fires off a couple rounds into the air, and these bullets hit an innocent bystander in the head on their downward trajectory? How’s that for a reason to get shot? Or perhaps we file this under reasons that aren’t very good. Of course, you could always chalk it up to the laws of gravity, which is a pretty good reason for a lot of things.
I’d go with JHK being a misanthrope, myself, rather than a dimwit, and this is one of his weakest columns in awhile. That said, he seems a much stronger writer in long form than these one offs on the internet.
If you hadn’t noticed, he pretty much doesn’t have much good to say about anyone or anything aside from, uh, maybe the neighborhood blacksmith.
But what was it specifically in this column that sets you off?
Welcome. Don’t know if you’ve been here before. Good post. Keep em coming…
As usual this will be anecdotal and right off the top of head (bad typing and all). I’m a guest in the place I’m in right now and….I gotta go. In three weeks I have to go to a place in North Eastern Indiana that has several close Amish communities. I’ve been around and worked with them since childhood. These were very transient relationships and while I became familiar with a few of the men, no real “friendships” developed. A mostly closed society. What I’ve noticed over time, and what I have been told is that while their life style has integrated a significant amount of modern gadetry, the most noticeable change is the dwindling of their ranks. It’s the (another) old story; How ya gonna keep ’em on the farm when they’ve seen the bright lights of Fort Wayne (…sheesh), Indiana. And, as you suspect, the young are falling prey to the same temptations as everyone else’s. I’m sure that as a group, the negative social stats of the Amish are probably trivial in comparison to the rest of American society, but, c’mon. It’s the Ams! (local; pronounced AHHMS) For most of my life, modern problems were unheard of in these communities. NatGeo has something about the Amish on local TV here in LA right now. I don’t think I’m gonna get to see it, but I’m pretty sure it’s about their transitional problems.
norsm, you speak the truth. Mr. Jim has had his 15 minutes of minor fame…
“The Austria-Hungary Empire and the Ottoman Empire are two examples. The Roman Empire, basically the foundation of all modern political structures, was as multi-ethnic and cultural as they come.”
And tell me, Turkle, how are these empires getting along today? Compared with the long-term stability of existing foraging cultures, which have openly and knowingly turned up their collective noses at farming, city life, and complex political organization, how did the Ottoman label make out?
No, an animal trespasses in the territory of his rival and he either conquers that territory or is run out of town. They don’t sit down at a tribunal to discuss terms of coexistence at the expense of the dominant. If the dominant allows the indominant to stay in his territory it’s because the indominant has something to offer the dominant, like cheap labor or military strength, but the unusual arrangement always exists for the net benefit of the dominant, or it doesn’t exist. Maybe that arrangement is agreeable enough for the indominant party, compared to his former situation, to be tolerable, but only as long as the dominant can maintain the agreeable arrangement. The Romans and Ottomans did that, for a while, but when their ability to perpetuate the bread and circuses ran dry, so did their multi-cultural experiments.
The U.S. is just the latest in a long line of providers of bread and circuses whose time is drawing to a close. And as it does, balkanization will ensue as it always has. That is, the dominant animal will only have enough energy/resources left to streamline and defend its (much smaller) territory against the indominant. Not only will the United States be unrecognizable, but Georgia will be too, and so will Atlanta. Atlanta will be a collection of villages with distinct territorial boundaries, with tenuous trade agreements between immediate neighbors.
Ultimately. And the energy required to keep a multi-cultural empire intact will go where energy always goes, from higher concentration toward lower concentration, according to the unwavering law of entropy. Just as it did for the Romans and Ottomans.
I’m not saying that human nature doesn’t point toward these sorts of bread and circus arrangements as often as possible, but I am saying that in a lower energy scenario they are mostly intolerable, for dominant and indominant alike. When the bread and circuses run out, the indominant will pick up its ball and go home. I think it will be the rare U.S. village indeed that continues the multi-racial experiment, however offensive that might be to liberal ideologies. Not that a black village and a white one won’t trade with and influence each other…
“Always seem to be on the front lines of these problems”! Since they’re causing them….
I said “during the Wounded Knee standoff” and “traditional enemies”. Those are your clues Watson. Or perhaps you are a Millenial – the lowest and most ignorant generation is human history.
Why is survival good? Why is functionality good? Some want to tear everything down. What can you say to them as a Utilitarian?
The Blacks will raid us for our women – so much more beautiful than their own, even to their eyes! And we will counter attack driving them farther and farther away until they only live in deep swamps of the Missisippi Delta – the part of America most like Africa. The Everglades even more so, but they will be claimed by the Seminoles, who are part Black now anyway.
Nice fantasy, Freak Show.
Our women? LMAO. Something tells me, Vlad, from how you interact with people on here, that you don’t have too many of those.
That would have been quite a sight.
The first cars, driven by crows, in 1860?
“And tell me, Turkle, how are these empires getting along today?”
They changed into Turkey, Austria, Hungary, et al., which have sizable ethnic minorities, just like most every other political entity on the planet earth. And the sky is not falling.
Your idea that politics will Balkanize to the level of the village is completely ridiculous. If the Romans and the Mongols could maintain their empires for hundreds of years, without the aid of any communications technologies beyond pidgeons and men on horseback, there will not be much problem maintaining large political entities when there are satellites, radio, the internet, telephones, and all the rest.
If you think the internet will go down along with phones and stay that way, I wonder what time scale you’re assuming. Even without cheap oil or much oil, there is nothing that suggests to me electromagnetic-based communication is going away anytime soon. Hell, you could use a HAM radio. This kind of technology is likely to be available for a long, long time.
So if the central authority can communicate with the smaller entities like villages, cities, and towns, all it needs to do is have enough of its people there to maintain control.
I’m also in agreement with JHK that in this kind of fanciful scenario you spin out, it would be much more likely that one would be judged by character and behavior, rather than skin color. In other words, if you’ve got a valuable profession, like being a doctor, I seriously doubt any rational community would turn you away simply because their skin was dark, or if they did it would be their loss. By the same token, if you become a post-Apocalyptic bandit with a bad reputation and have white skin, the village is not going to welcome you simply because your skin tone is acceptable.
Wading into the smelly swamp of race are you? You have a certain point to make that will naturally be considered, but as you type, not spoken in public.
Is there such a thing as a factual race in America? Has anyone done a DNA test to prove a certain lineage? If they had, how will they prove such and such 1000 years ago is a match?
Maybe we can dig up the bones of those living 5000 years ago so we can piece this all together. Until then, it is just a waste of time..
Now we get to the root of the matter. Vlad hopes the Apocalypse will happen, because under that scenario he can snag a few babes by saving them from the rampaging murderous hordes. Because under current conditions, he’s not doing so hot with the ladies.
“The Blacks will raid us for our women…”
??? …uh
The whole post….
Wow!
Who is your dealer?
Yeah, that was pretty out, even for Vladdie.
Did your months in Macon teach you that?
Macon being one of the most crime ridden cities in the USA.
Do you yearn for the good old days of the Vikings?
Raiding Ireland and stealing wimmen?
Do you know the DNA on one side of[Norway?Finland?] is 10% Irish?
You might enjoy the book: ‘THE GIFT OF FEAR’.
However if youve read crime prevention books, it may be ‘just another’.
It opens with ‘one of those stories’, and warns people about ‘the erosion technique’.
tripp, I don’t know how you arrive at this conclusion that it is bread and circuses which hold empires together. It isn’t or it hasn’t been throughout history. It is violence and dominance that does so. That’s how the Romans maintained their hegemony, by deployment of a (for that time) cutting edge fighting force to keep everyone in line. The Roman Empire didn’t fall because they ran out of bread and circuses; it was invaded by many different Germanic tribes and could no longer maintain military control.
I don’t think this changes much in TLE scenario. Do you think the federal government is simply going to cede control to a bunch of little fiefdoms and principalities? I seriously doubt it. And if they do try it, hello US military and other federal authorities. Or is that all going away too in your Mad Max scenario?
“The Romans and Ottomans did that, for a while, but when their ability to perpetuate the bread and circuses ran dry, so did their multi-cultural experiments.”
No offense, but you seem to have very little actual understanding of what brought down these two empires.
I already covered the first.
The Ottoman Empire was destroyed by WWI and its aftermath. It had zero to do with “bread and circuses.”
“People don’t get shot for no reason.”
REALLY??? Kunstler, do you have any idea how many people get shot for no reason or ridiculous “non” reasons in this lunatic asylum of a country?
I came very close to be shot in an armed holdup and someone told me I was lucky not to get blown away by the .44 Magnum my assailant was holding on me simply because I had only three dollars on me.
Mass school shootings and workplace shootings occur on a regular basis, Did the gunman at Virginia Tech have any “reason” for killing 31 students? Did any of the victims of these shootings do anything to contribute to their deaths?
You seem to be making a lot of unwarranted assumptions regarding Martin’s part or lack thereof in death. We do not yet know all the facts but it sounds more and more like a typical altercation between two badly-bred lower-class males in which one was armed and ready to shoot anything that crossed his path.
This is not your best post, and may be close to the worst.
tripp,
Even though I criticized, I like this post a lot. Let’s investigate this idea of bread and circuses.
By bread, you mean feeding the population. Large empires can actually be better at this than towns and villages. Because when there is a famine or shortage in one part of the empire, food can be shifted from more prosperous regions. This doesn’t work if the whole empire is under famine conditions, but everyone is screwed then anyways. In that scenario, what’s the incentive to secede from the central authority? That wouldn’t necessarily put food on the table and could make things worse.
Now, circuses is supposed to mean some form of entertainment, to keep the citizens complacent and distracted. But this is really a side area, especially today. The Roman circuses grew more lavish and expensive as the empire crumbled, ironically. But people today do not, by and large, rely on central governmental authorities for their entertainment, i.e. circuses. This comes from entertainment companies or people entertaining themselves with local sports, music, etc. No political authorities are needed to provide this. Sure, there are centrally maintained facilities and events for entertainment, but today these are purely secondary, i.e. street festivals, museums and public art galleries, etc. If these went away, I’m not sure it would be sufficient reason to revolt against centralized authority.
The primary cause of political collapse will be centralized authorities becoming increasing ineffectual and less powerful as they run out of energy to conduct their business. But this is not primarily going to be related to food and entertainment, but maintenance of law and order. This will certainly become more localized as central authorities are less able to micro-manage individual areas. Still, today, law enforcement is primarily a local issue. There are local homicide cops, police, firemen, and paramedics. So this area is already mostly decentralized, even with the excessive plethora of federal law enforcement agencies.
It will be interesting times, indeed, but a political breakup of the US seems rather unlikely to me.
I saw Moyers interview with Angela Blackwell. Their intentions might be good but it wasn’t much of an interview; a lot of leading, softball questions, and they agreed on everything. So I switched over to ‘Dancing with the Stars’.
–WSP7
Strictly speaking, robbing someone for $3 could be a reason to shoot them, but it isn’t a very good one. What I gleened from the post is some kind of intimation that the person must have “had it coming to them” in one form or another, but, as you say, that’s a pretty ludicrous assertion.
I, too, found this post to be quite muddled and not very well thought out.
I think you have a hard time seeing the landscape sometimes, Turkle. When an empire runs out of money for the bread and circuses (and police) that control its empire, it is also out of money/energy for other things like border defense (police again?). Like the Anasazi, it just takes an extended drought (or Mongol invasion) to trigger the final collapse. Don’t overlook the forest for the trees.
And I hate to be the one to have to tell you that Rome controlled its empire precisely via bread and circuses. They are the ones who coined the term, actually.
Quite right Trip. One is reminded of the work of Arthur Keith. His dictum: Two species or subspecies that have the same diet cannot exist in the same ecosystem. Thus the grey squirrel is ethnically cleansing the native Enlgish Red Squirrel. And the South Asians are ethnically cleanising the native Britons.
Okay, fair enough, tripp. I’ll try to pay attention to the forest.
I know (or knew at one time) that the Romans coined that catchy phrase, but it seems like the bread was the important part of that equation. Romans would riot when they didn’t get bread. An empire doesn’t have to provide circuses. The Mongols didn’t need any, just the threat of burning your unruly city to the ground. I don’t think the Mongols provided bread either, just took it. So that’s why I said that basically brute force is the real power behind the throne.
But I get your point. Everything tends to go at once, whatever that may be, and it depends on the specifics of the arrangement.
I’m kind of unclear on how you think a state or city could effectively secede from the US gov politically, though, and be let off the hook. Even if the central government “runs out of money,” it really won’t because there is central banking. It can just print more to pay its employees, even if that causes inflation. So it just sends in some jackbooted thugs to take care of the rebellious area. Problem solved.
Or do you forsee other scenarios?
If localities stopped accepting federal currency, then I could forsee the massive collapse of central authority that you envision. But as long as there is a common currency and decent communications, there is no real reason to believe we’re headed back to the Dark Ages, politically speaking.
Aside from some systems misunderstandings from your end, we are pretty much talking about the same things;) Oh no he didn’t!
And I did say “ultimately” it will be this way, I’m pretty sure…unlike some other folks we know, I’m speaking qualitatively, not quantitatively.
It was alright but he’s against fighting back in general. He has a body guard company so it’s a conflict of interest.
But he’s right when he said that if you try to warn someone about somebody, they will be more afraid of you.
Vlad,
I just want to say, even as a member of the millenial generation you so rightly despise (I despise yours as well), I love you man.
Despite your religiosity (semitic slave mythology got us here, dude. sorry.),your tireless presence in this space has touched me over the years.
You realize that the liberals arent just deluded -they’re evil – right? They have literally decided to join their most primal enemies – now that those enemies are clearly winning – in destroying the kinds of men whose minds created the civilizational teat from which they mindlessly suck.
Listen to how they resort to these childish, WOMANLY ad homs about how you “cant get laid”, “live in your parents basement”, etc. Never once do they ask themselves: “well, who does get laid…isnt it a few of good guys who are confident and charming, and ALL of the stupid, thuggish, brainless lowlifes who have ever existed?” No, they dont, because they are full of shit and completely buy into the kingdom of stupid, spoiled whores – feminism.
The festering, bloated corpse of western civilization is going to blow, whether it is with a bang or a whimper. Congratulations on retaining your balls till the bitter end.
Great, that’s all that Vlad needs. More encouragement to hate “the liberals” and all the other bugaboos that haunt him. Beats looking in the mirror, I guess.
I may have given the book away so I cant check.
Seems like you read the book..GDB on a plane and warns a gal..etc.
I meant the story where the rapist talks his way into the woman’s apartment and the author says
a guy wore another woman down with some line about ‘you shouldnt be too proud’ or some such malarkey.
You were maybe right that women lower their defenses too easily on the street or where ever.
Coming from you thats quite a statement. All is cause and effect.
You dont have ‘Universal Morality’ so good and bad reasons would be equally meaningless.
I mean Tripp just ripped you a new as*h*le. why ponder if there was a good/bad cause behind it!
“If localities stopped accepting federal currency, then I could forsee the massive collapse of central authority that you envision.”
There are plenty of examples of local currencies being promoted and used in the U.S. today (I almost got one going – Selkirk Notes – in eastern Washington), mostly by folks like me, not necessarily looking to speed the collapse of federal jurisdiction so much as looking to strengthen local communities. The former might just be a happy side effect. I think states will function just fine on their own without much concern for federal mandate. That is, I don’t know that the federal gov will collapse so much as simply become irrelevant, as JHK proposes in World Made By Hand.
Overall, I’m speaking more from an ecological perspective than a logistics one. The details of how it will go down are anyone’s guess I think. Cheers, mate.
I read the greys carry a disease that kills the reds but the greys are immune to. Yes? No?
How sweet, touched by an angel?
No, touched by a Nazi!
Tel us more about these wimpy, ‘beta’ males that
lib/lisp around this site.
And if I “ripped you a new asshole” that wasn’t my intention.
That’s a doubtful assertion that it is “the liberals” who are causing Western civilization to decline, which is what I glean from your post.
And this monumental edifice took all kinds, I assure you, not just straight-laced conservatives created the “teat.” Einstein was a liberal. Jonas Salk, who gave away the polio vaccine for free, probably was one, too. Most scientists and artists are liberals. So what are you left with if you take that all away? Like the rotary club or something?
It was the self-designated conservatives that pulled America into two disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is conservative politics that keeps America from at least attempting a full on transition to alternate energy infrastructure. The conservatives are the ones denying the obvious negative impact human activity has on the atmosphere (e.g. Global Warming). The conservatives are the ones maintaining their outdated religious ideas of endless growth and plentitude even in the face of obvious current and future scarcities. Those are just a few examples that come to mind.
But all that aside, my bottom line is that our way of doing things is structurally flawed, regardless of political stripes. Endless growth on a finite planet is a recipe for disaster, and we’re cooking away. And that isn’t really a liberal or conservative principle, more like the paradigm that underlies everything we do.
Kinda funny really, we all seem to want to claim either “liberal” or “conservative” credentials, but our actions put us all mostly in the same bag.
But go ahead and hate away on the “liberals” like some kind of third rate carbon copy of Rush Limbaugh if it makes you feel any better. No skin off my back.
free speech on JHKs dime
Hardly. We’re having a discussion here. I’m more than willing to cede points or modify my statements when my ideas are flawed or incomplete. That’s what intelligent, reasonable people do, so I’m not surprised that you don’t quite understand.
So what else is new in the world of Journalism?
thats why we are here, yes?
I just turned of NPR.the report was on the worlds first ‘Yiddish/Japanese dictionary’.
Might NPR have an agenda?
Um, no, you were very reasonable in your disagreement and caused me to reconsider some of what I wrote. That’s great, in my opinion. I’m not one of these people who is so attached to his own ideas that I’m offended when someone has a better one.
” That really excites you doesn’t it? That I’ll “get mine”? Liberal Whites like you are traitors to your culture and race.”
Actually it doesn’t excite me at all, after all, I’m quite sure I have more of the classical Nordic gene – thank you Somerled – than you do.
The point I was trying to make is that when the worm turns, as it inevitably does, there will be a small percentage of people in the pinnacles of authority who will ” settle old scores” on people of the “wrong color” as in what comes around goes around. Egalitarian desires aside, the cultivation of economic justice and social harmony in the here and now is an investment motivated by self-interest for a future when “whites” will no longer be the dominant majority and when the boomerangs of recrimination will come around to slice innocent heads off – especially if delusional racists such as yourself continue to call for a social and national hierarchy based on ethnicity. Instead, and seemingly unaware of the demographic reality, you call for ” putting blacks back in their place’ and ‘driving them back to the far corners of the Deep South’. Despicable
You must feel validated by JHK’s unfortunate, flimsy post today. I say unfortunate because how can one propose an honest racial discussion on one hand while waving aside hundreds of years of repressive history on the other? The divorce of cause from effect is a favorite tactic of far-right conservative racists, and I’m more than a little bit surprised that JHK engaged in such a shallow analysis.
As for you, your savage racist vitriol has never been more apparent on your day of validation.
There is one a few 100 miles from JHK. I dont see how paper/local paper can work.
Maharishi [himself a billionaire] tried one.
‘When Paul Gloverfounded Ithaca Hours, a local currency in Ithaca, N.Y., more than 20 years ago, he didn’t intend to start a movement. He just wanted to give people in the town a way to invest in their community and each other, even when they didn’t have enough traditional dollars to do so..’
Well, replace “liberal” in my post with “progressive”, I suppose…
You are right, of course, all mainstream “conservatives” are just as destructive and stupid as the “liberals”. This becomes painfully apparent when it comes to AGW/environmental issues. It is a false dichotomy.
You are right that “conservatives” deny the inherent destruction and hubris of modern industrial civilization. However, it is the self-described “liberals” (or “progressives”, a face-palm misnomer really) who feel it is morally righteous to deny the destruction and decadence of modern multiculturalism – a product of the oil age if there ever was one.
Dont give me the riff you are here just to learn.
If so why did you step on Whiskey, little man?
“I’m not one of these people who is so attached to his own ideas that I’m offended when someone has a better one.”
That’s an ideal we could all use more of…especially me.
I’m hear to learn and to teach and (sometimes) to cajole and mock. Perhaps my words to WTFox were somewhat, uh, immoderate, but he’s a big boy. He can handle it.
Why are you here, soaky? To teach me about your Universal Morality?
Hm, I dunno, I suppose multiculturalism in and of itself could be causing problems. I confess to not having thought about it a great deal, unlike some people on here. I actually do live in a very multi-cultural area, and I see mostly benefits from my side. Different foods, interesting art forms from different cultures, diverse people to speak with and engage, etc.
If you could be specific, that would help. How is multi-culturalism bringing us down?
But, somewhat ironically I would argue, the root cause of a lot of our problems seems to be the narrow conformity of most of our lives and how we conduct ourselves. For instance, most of America (or a lot of it) looks the same now. Same big box stores. Same fast food restaurants. From sea to shining sea. All of which is based on the infrastructure of freeways and cars. You pretty much need a car to function, unless you are willing to undergo a lot of inconvenience and hardship, or at least narrow your level of activities drastically. We are, as a nation, addicted to shopping and overspending. We live in big, inefficient houses, and drive big, inefficient cars. We obsess over trivial matters like sports and celebrities and bury ourselves in virtual entertainment like movies, tv, and video games. These behaviors cross all lines of politics and constitute our real politics.
Am I making sense here? Sometimes I think that these big, raucous debates about politics disguise the real core issue, which is that the lifestyle which nearly all of us lead is not even close to sustainable and is actually causing great harm to the planet earth (well, the biosphere). But I guess that’s a scary thought which most people don’t even want to entertain.
I think one factor that has been left out of the discussion is Religion, both as a moderator of ‘bad’ behavior, and as a facilitator of ‘good’ behavior.
Over the past50-60 years religion has become less of a social moderator than ever before. I know that some will point out the ‘bad’ aspects of religion, such as the Inquisition, or Sharia law, but still, until just very recently in human history, it was still a guide to most human behavior.
Even here in Costa Rica, we see much more ‘lip service’ paid to the Church (and you know which one I mean) than ever before in the past.
Birth control is readily available at the check out in the stores & Farmacias, co-habitation is recognized by the CAJA medical system here.
Now, especially in the USA, religion has lost a lot of its former power for good. True, there is still a grab for power by the Right wing, but they are just using it for their own reasons: power, control & wealth. They are actually totally hypocritical and don’t believe in God, Christ or anything really, except $ .
Those in Religion that are focused on doing good find themselves marginalized.
Oh, Turkel I think Vlad was refering to the Wounded Knee occupation in the 1970’s.
Dee
I’d like you to perform a thought experiment.
Pretend that instead of there being many different races and cultures, there was only one race on the planet, encompassing all 7 billion people here.
Some problems might go away, namely those based upon grievances and conflicts between all the different minorities.
But the major ones would remain. Namely, there would still be overpopulation/overshoot, resource scarcity, pollution, Global Warming, and the whole host of environmental and structural problems bearing down upon us. These all transcend racial and cultural lines.
So while I concede that there are inevitable conflicts which arise between different minorities with radically different outlooks on life, the root problems tend to transcend all this.
“There is one a few 100 miles from JHK. I dont see how paper/local paper can work.
Maharishi [himself a billionaire] tried one.”
I don’t know that it will, but the idea flies directly in the face of the WalMart culture, which is probably enough for me. If nothing else, it tends to promote activity for and between local businesses. You will probably die using metals. I might make it back to barter, but ultimately we’ll probably be back to gifting/potlatch economies. We’ll see I guess.
“Oh, Turkel I think Vlad was refering to the Wounded Knee occupation in the 1970’s.”
Thanks for clearing that up. I stand corrected. When someone says “Wounded Knee” I assume they meant the actual historical event with that name, unless otherwise specified.
“Sometimes I think that these big, raucous debates about politics disguise the real core issue, which is that the lifestyle which nearly all of us lead is not even close to sustainable and is actually causing great harm to the planet earth (well, the biosphere).”
I suppose all we can do, while maintaining some sense of sanity, is downshift incrementally, but my family and I are about to move into a 16×20 wall tent on a wooden deck, in a north Georgia mountain forest, with compost-warmed water, a propane cooktop, and a solar oven, in a soon-to-be 2.34-acre permaculture food forest, while we build a pond and our permanent passive-solar cob house. Maybe we can at least feel like we’re doing our share at this moment in history! And maybe sharing our experiences on my blog will help a few people along the way.
On that note, my wife did a soap-making workshop at a festival Saturday, and the museum director where she was told her that they were “all living vicariously through us”. Quite the compliment! But it’s all about the trend, right?
Just read Jim’s post and am intrigued with it. I also believe that the culture of establishment liberalism in the ‘sixties which caved in on student’s rights promoted a climate of permissivism and make believe happy talk creating overwhelming pressure in favor of social promotion in both the lower and middle grades of the public schools which lead to undermining the high schools as well, even if the high schools still do flunk people out for not passing their courses that is, flunking that level, not getting dismissed from the building like in the Victorian model of schooling. So in effect there are no longer any real standards being enforced even if much ballyhoo gets thrown around on the subject of “testing”. And such laxity is endemic in the poverty school districts both urban and rural. Also kids are permitted to dress like thugs which doesn’t help. I could say a lot of stuff on the same vibe as many of Vlad’s posts as well but I wonm’t bother because I don’t give a shit anymore. And remember from this former member of the AFT: always vote no on school levies.
That’s fascinating, and so unlike what most Americans think they want out of life (Bigger, Better, Faster).
Good luck to you. Look forward to reading about it on the blog links you will be posting here for my edification. 😉
James, I have a few thoughts for you and one of your cohorts on the peak oil parade. (A) Pertaining to this column, there was not a trace of insight on race in it. You sound like an ivory tower type, talking with no experience. (B) As the first post points out, you criticize electronic gadgets and praise farming. I’ve never heard you share any knowledge of farming, yet there you are tapping away at electric gadgets. Have you ever spent an entire solid year farming? Or is that an ivory tower phenomenon too? Maybe if you worked hard farming, your sleep problem would go away. Hard labor aids sleep. (C) Mike Ruppert recently posted a YouTube video asking for money. Yet according to his own website, he has 6,000 subscribers paying ten dollars a month. Yearly income = > $700,000. Any thougts?
As Nietzche wrote: “Be careful when you fight monsters, lest you become one.”
What does point C have to do with JHK, anyways?
Damn, that is one heck of a run on sentence you started with there, bubba!
Don’t forget the music factor. Slave owners would not allow their slaves to congregate and play their primitive drums that they made. So what did the slaves do? They made stringed instruments and learned to play guitars and gave us the blues.
I hope I can listen to Robert Johnson and Son House while I’m on my death bed because everything else that everybody is talking about right now won’t mean shit to me when I die
“Pretend that instead of there being many different races and cultures, there was only one race…”
There’s one problem with this that you overlooked and strangely, you allude to this problem in your post before this one. The problem? Life would get really BOOOOOOORING!
They appear together in various documentaries and on the history channel.
Well, yeah, but that wasn’t the point!
“Good luck to you. Look forward to reading about it on the blog links you will be posting here for my edification. ;)”
Sorry, I’ll leave you alone now…cheers!
I don’t think race was the reason for the shooting. I think was a case of two hotheads meeting.
Perhaps, but they live on opposite sides of the country, and I don’t believe they have any personal relationship or collaboration. They just appear together on the tv, because they are in intellectual agreement on different topics, like Peak Oil and collapse (JHK calls this The Long Emergency).
Ruppert has a lot of good information, but I feel like he struggles to keep his head above water, financially. His old newsletter and website, From the Wilderness, was really how I got into a lot of these different topics, especially Peak Oil. So you got to give him props for being out there when other people were not. He’s definitely a troubled person though and wrestles with a lot of personal demons, it seems.
On your points…
A) Agreed. This column is one of the worst in awhile. To me, this whole story was more about a disturbed (He is…look into his background) trigger-happy moron with a gun than race. If Treyvon were white, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
B) I guess we call this, “Putting your money where your mouth is.” It can be difficult sometimes, and I think I agree that JHK sometimes has a hard time doing it. Though he’ll probably be the first to say that farming isn’t necessarily his role. He considers himself the bearer of the bad news, but doesn’t necessarily feel compelled to act on his own advice, like farming his own food. (He probably doesn’t have time for it.)
C) Like I said above, pretty irrelevant. You shouldn’t ask JHK to explain someone else’s behavior when they are only connected incidentally.
Apropos nothing in particular I would like to posit a definition of culture which seems powerful to me as a way for intelligent progressives to cut through the fog of cultural and moral relativism. Here it is:
“Culture is the sum total of those customs and values that we are chauvinistic about.”
What does that even mean?
When we say chauvinistic we mean that we consider these values and practices to be supreme, or better than anyone else’s. It is not meant in the narrow gender based sense of “male chauvinist pig”. It is meant more as a neutral term.
Let’s say for example that I abhor the cultural practice of female genital mutilation. I am thereby stating that I hold my belief to be superior to those people who would adhere or carry out this ancient practice. I am chauvinistic in my belief.
Or that race discrimination is inimical to meritocracy and that anything other than meritocracy worsens the group outcome.
It should be clear that everyone has some beliefs which they are chauvinistic about. It could be that the practice and affirmation of of racial or religious tolerance is your highest belief. If so then you hold this belief to be BETTER than the alternative.
What does this have to do with the issue of this week’s CFN?
Well I submit that progressives everywhere would benefit from honestly examining all the beliefs which they are chauvinistic about, be it their belief in non-violence, tolerance, social justice, integrity whatever. It is these beliefs which define your culture. It defines how you live your life, who you hang with, who you oppose. I submit that these chauvinistic beliefs are the most precious beliefs you have, and should be cherished and at the same time submitted to the blowtorch of critical evaluation all the time.
I doubt whether anyone can live a true life of the mind without doing this.
This is why I come here week after week. I have a compulsion to evaluate my values and beliefs all the time. They certainly have changed over time. That is how I know I am doing my job.
One of my core beliefs which I am chauvinistic about and have real trouble discarding is the one which says that statistically speaking, I am going to do better when associating with people who think like me and have the same beliefs. I would actually appreciate anyone on this forum taking the time to challenge me on that.
With that in mind physical separation of people with opposing cultures (whatever the provenance of that opposition) is logical if conflict is to be avoided. It is all very well to live and work alongside people of different cultures when everyone is well fed. When your children go hungry it puts a different complexion on all that.
What that means in the US context is a breakup of the Union. Has anyone given serious thought to how this might play out?
The only reaction I have to the race issue after having it thrust in my face for the last half century is complete disinterest. I’d rather watch grass grow than listen to your opinion on racism in America. Screw racism. I’m moving to Iceland.
Right you are. That was a bit of pointless digging there. But I’m still a bit naive and have only been following these guys for a couple years. So, I stuck my nose out in the house of mirrors there. Bad idea, in most respects. I’m not like that in real life, I assure you. It’s good to know a little more about the Ruppert/JHK relationship, or lack thereof.
Nobody’s perfect. I read this column because I like it and enjoy the insights and edge and irreverence.
Thank you for your response.
I would be willing to bet a lot of money that if I had walked down the street instead of Martin that I would not have gotten shot because I am a middle aged white guy.
And if I did get shot and killed, and for some reason it became a national story, all the people that are now defending Zimmerman would be doing the opposite. So race has every thing to do with this story.
Hell of a thought-provoking week’s work, JHK.
Thanks to you as always!
And, apparently many of your readers do NOT like their thoughts provoked, which is altogether too bad. Because …
“….it still leaves us with the burden of all the tragic choices we made since those heady days of 1964 and 1965….”
Indeed, JHK. Something has gone seriously off the rails for the working classes and lower middle classes since 1965.
And, for a variety of reasons – this has fallen most heavily on the native born black population, which population stands as a living memorial to the old truism, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” -samuel johnson?-
=======================
I do wonder about your very last sentence this week, JHK. I think you were going for something vague that supported both guilt or innocence for Zimmerman:
“People don’t get shot for no reason, though sometimes it is not a good reason, or one we want to talk about.” -jhk-
I get it, with effort:
-“not a good reason,” Zimmerman’s a vigilante.
-not “one we want to talk about”, Martin was guilty of assault on Zimmerman before Zimmerman shot him.
Lots and LOTS of posters have already declared Zimmerman guilty today on CFN.
If Zimmerman is, in fact, not guilty – and he is found and DECLARED not guilty by a judge or jury –
Then race relations in the US are going to take a big hit. There will be rioting. There will, quite likely, be innocent blood shed.
I am concerned.
And I am more concerned after reading some of today’s comments – from those who demand that Zimmerman MUST be GUILTY.
Zimmerman followed the victim around because he considered him suspicious, due, presumably, to his skin color. So it did have something to do with race. Treyvon actually called his girlfriend and said something like, “This guy is following me around, and I don’t know what to do.” She told him not to run, but, you know, adrenaline kicks in. He probably did try to run away, at which point Zimmerman probably shot him (again, details unclear due to lack of good witnesses so I could be wrong here).
Zimmerman called the police about this supposedly suspicious character. They dispatched an officer and told him to stay in his car and not provoke a confrontation. Instead, Zimmerman got out of his car, got in some kind of confrontation of which the details are unclear (because the other guy died), and then he shot and killed the kid. Now call Treyvon a hothead all you like. It doesn’t matter one bit, because the blame does not lie with him. He wasn’t doing anything criminal. He was on a public sidewalk and simply returning from the corner store, unarmed, carrying a bag of candy. (Hence the Skittles reference in the post title.)
There have been suggstions that there was a fight, and that Zimmerman was injured and feared for his life. But not one witness or law enforcement person involved has corroborated this account, which is most likely false. The only person who has said that Zimmerman had injuries that night is his brother, an unreliable non-witness if there ever was one.
Not to mention that this Zimmerman goon had other encounters with people in the neighborhood, who were scared of him and thought he was a little off in executing his extremely important duties of Neighborhood Watch, uh, Head Watchman. He was essentially a little man with an authority complex. (Give an inch. He takes a mile.)
It is amusing the battles that these internet racists choose to fight sometimes (not you necessarily…see other posts above). This is a losing one, because the facts of the case are pretty much cut and dry, as far as murders go. That’s why it has made such headlines, because Zimmerman was completely at fault here, yet was not even arrested on the night of the shooting due to Florida’s messed up “Stand Your Ground” law. The problem with laws like this is that, if there are no witnesses, you can get away with murder simply by saying you felt that your life was threatened.
So I wouldn’t put the root cause as two hotheads meeting up. To me, this is a clear case of a self-appointed vigilante taking the law into his own hands, without adequate training, knowledge, or personal control. That’s why we pay professionals to do this, so that things like this don’t happen.
Yeah, so, I hope that clears it up for you.
Hey, no prob. Just thought I’d clue you in on that matter.
Did you watch Ruppert’s movie Collapse, BTW? I think its pretty good, though he’s kinda full of himself. I think most of the information is right on, though.
There’s another one called A Crude Awakening, along similar lines, which is worth watching, too.
Both are on Netflix, I think.
Mostly though, I’d point you to books on these topics if you asked. TV and documentary coverage tends to be a bit superficial, if you ask me.
“It is all very well to live and work alongside people of different cultures when everyone is well fed. When your children go hungry it puts a different complexion on all that.” -fiedag-
DING! DING! DING!
SOMEBODY RING THE BELL OF TRUTH FOR FIEDAG!!
THAT is why this discussion belongs on a peak oil website. THAT is why JHK is justified in bringing it up and giving his true opinion.
Yeah, I saw it. I’m a documentary freak
Hm, I dunno, prog. Sure, in an ideal world, everyone would wait for the results of the trial to declare guilt or innocence.
But the TV coverage of this affair has been extensive (rather excessive really). There are A LOT of facts out there right now about it, almost none of which support anything Zimmerman has said about that night. For instance, he’s got his brother saying that Treyvon assaulted and injured him, yet that’s the only person he can come up with to corroborate this claim. FAIL. If he’s lying about it, which he obviously is, that means he’s trying to cover up what actually occurred.
I mean, really, can’t we make up our minds to some extent, assuming that the large amount of information out there right now is more-or-less factually correct. This case has only come to national attention because it seems to be such a clear case of someone committing murder and (almost) getting away with it.
Like, did you think OJ was actually innocent of killing his wife, just because he was acquited? If so, I give you props for following the letter of the law in “innocent unless proven guilty,” but you’d have to be completely gullible and naive to think that OJ actually didn’t do it.
And, BTW, I wouldn’t say Zimmerman “must” be guilty. That’s an overstatement. But let’s just say, it isn’t looking too good for him right now.
I’ve seen that and other peak oil documentaries too. Yes, they are superficial, since you can’t discern various agendas. I might start digging for some books, good idea. I’ve been reading history lately.
I don’t get it. If your own children were going hungry and you had to do something about it, not only would you likely not care about other races or cultures different from your own, you would not be likely to give any special consideration to your own race or culture, either, in any concrete terms. You would likely beg, borrow, or steal from ANYONE of any race or culture, in order to feed your kid if you had to do it. Desperate circumstances breed desperate measures.
But go ahead and paint everything with the same brush. I know it is one of your favorites.
Have you read JHK’s The Long Emergency? That would be a good one to check out first, and they might have it at your local library.
This book is also excellent, though a bit heady.
http://www.amazon.com/Overshoot-Ecological-Basis-Revolutionary-Change/dp/0252009886
It isn’t strictly about Peak Oil, but covers overpopulation in general and its ramifications. It completely changed the way in which I look at the world.
I warn you though, prepare yourself psychologically when delving into these topics. The further you go down this rabbit hole, the darker it gets.
“Has anyone given serious thought to how this might play out?”
Last week poster K-Dog put up a link for an excellent interview with Dennis Meadows, co-author of “The Limits To Growth”. I am in complete agreement with this excerpt of the interview:
“When we run our computer and we see the first curve peak over and go down, we just quit paying attention, because we know that when that happens its going to bring so many changes into the system that our ability now to know what’s going to happen is zero, so we just don’t pay attention to it. That’s my attitude. I think climate change, and the oil peak, either of them and certainly together, are going to introduce so many changes, that I don’t know what it’s going to be like. ”
A absolute possession advance in China, which writes “The central fixed is coming!”. [File photo]
The abiding growth of China’s main corporations in 2011 did not outcome from their monopoly aboard the mall the Economic Daily reported Tuesday, citing Shao Ning,vice consultant of State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC).
Efficient reforms plus innovations were the absolute driving forces when chief firms from China faced shifty economic challenges surrounded 2011, he said.
In 2011, the chief corporations took a lead within industry upgrades plus transformations along encouraging combinations plus consolidations among state-owned assets and enhancing cooperation with local corporations plus private firms among a bid apt optimise the distribution of national resources.
The chief firms of China cornered over a absolute of 20.2 trillion yuan ($3.two trillion) and a net profit of 917.33 billion yuan among 2011, up 20.8 percentage and six.four percent respectively year-on-year, the report said.
They likewise fabricated agile contributions apt authority revenues. In 2011, the central corporations handed surrounded taxes of 1.seven trillion yuan to the accessible purse attaining a year-on-year growth of 19.seven percent.
Taxes paid by the chief firms accept totalled 8.19 trillion yuan since the birth of SASAC amid 2003, the report said.
But among terms of corporate handling the gap between China’s central enterprises plus the foreign multinationals remains big antagonism their growing international competitiveness, said Shao.
Shao likewise punctuated the magnitude of deep cooperation between the leading main corporations plus the small plus medium-sized firms apt gain a competitive brink over international enterprises.
????????
“And, BTW, I wouldn’t say Zimmerman “must” be guilty. That’s an overstatement. But let’s just say, it isn’t looking too good for him right now…”
-turkle-
Look, turk, I don’t disagree. And I wasn’t making reference just to you with my “Zimmerman MUST be quilty,” thing. You’re in good company – including long-term JHK readers who say they will never read him again.
But – if Martin tackled Zimmerman to the ground, then I think Zimmerman is probably going to get off – under Florida LAW.
I’m beginning to hope Zimmerman really is guilty – because if he is not guilty, and is found not guilty – I’m thinking it is going to be Hell to pay in certain areas of the US this summer, or whenever this trial finishes.
=========================
“I don’t get it. If your own children were going hungry and you had to do something about it, not only would you likely not care about other races or cultures different from your own…”
-turkle-
Get a bigger picture, turk. Tribalism is hardwired in to humanity. If my kids are hungry ONE day, in today’s America – then sure, I’m going to beg, borrow, steal to feed them, and I’m going to do it BY MYSELF.
But if their hunger continues for a week, I’m going to form an alliance to feed them. That alliance is going to have a basis in observable reality. And that probably means racial reality. That’s just reality, man. You can argue and try to make it go away – but reality will remain.
======================
And I don’t use the “hungry children” lightly or as a symbol or metaphor. My own dad, born 1912, suffered from hunger, growing up in the depression South. So I know, better than most Turk, that today’s prosperity is only one generation removed from some serious hard times.
I mean, really, can’t we make up our minds to some extent, assuming that the large amount of information out there right now is more-or-less factually correct.
==============
I haven’t made up my mind yet Turk. Just when I thought I’d pinned down certain things as factual along comes conflicting information.
There is a Wikipedia account of the entire Trayvon/Zimmerman episode updated through and including today, 4/16/12 (and please don’t tell me how unreliable Wiki is…I’ve heard it a million times) and according to Wiki, Trayvon was 6’0″ tall and weighed 160 lbs. They have two sets of numbers for Zimmerman: 5’9″ and 190 lbs and 5’8″ and 185 lbs. This is a far cry from 6’3″ for Trayvon and 250 lbs for Zimm.
There are all kinds of other interesting tidbits too numerous to go into here but I’ll mention just one. There were something like (I forget the exact number) 450-500 breakins and other crimes including one killing over a 15 month period in the gated community when the citizens council (or whatever it was they called themselves) advertised for volunteers for a community watch group. Z was the only volunteer. Naturally he became the head guy. The council put out a missive saying, in effect, if you have any questions or anything to report you should contact “Captain” George Zimmerman. In other words it was not Z who gave himself this grandios title, it was a woman on the council who just made it up on the spur of the moment.
While I’m at it Turk, I consider you to be one of the brighter bulbs around here and yet you’re worse even than Anti Soak in getting some one’s name straight, even after it’s been pointed out to you. So once again, it is Trayvon not Treyvon. If you think the correct identification/spelling of a name is unimportant I invite you to read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And another tidbit concerning Trayvon’s name (as reported by Wiki), not that anyone here but me would give a shit, the last syllable is pronounced “vawn” not von.
Truely, I wish to hell that everyone here would cease jumping to conclusions regarding guilt or innocence until the case is tried.
One last thing, to my amazement many here are taking Jim to task for today’s essay. I felt Jim delivered one of his most levelheaded and un-hyperbolic posts since I started reading here nearly 3 years ago. I would go so far as to call it politically correct. Perhaps I can say these things because I am in virtual total agreement with what he has said. If you will go to Fredoneverything.com and look at his last column (#515) which deals mostly with profiling and also read his prior column (#514) you will see that Fred and Jim are very much on the same page. This Fred character was a cop for many years and a police reporter and you get the distinct impression he knows of what he speaks.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS camiseta spain wholesale online
NEW YORK — New England midfielder Shalrie Joseph has been suspended for one game and fined for what Major League Soccer called a "reckless challenge that endangered the safety of his opponent."
Joseph was penalized Tuesday for his scissors tackle from behind of Dallas’ Ricardo Villar last Thursday.
He will miss New England’s game against D.C. United on Saturday.
Oops. My bad on the name there. I admit to winging it a bit and not double checking it.
And thanks for compliment, even though it seems a lot of our views are diametrically opposed. You are a gentlemen and a rutabega.
Oh, that Wikipedia article set me straight. Apparently, there is some corroboration that there was a scuffle and Trayvon (with the ‘a’) was on top of Zimmerman.
But my first response to all this is….dang, don’t they have cops in Florida?! Geez. If there were 450 break-ins in that neighborhood, then it is the cop’s responsibility to deal with this, not some appointed vigilante lacking training and (apparently) common sense.
Wikipedia articles vary wildly. Some are atrocious. Others are filled with good factual info. Just depends on who has been doing the editing, really.
Another excellent analysis of the American psyche by JHK. Like the majority of whites born in the late 1960’s, I always had very conflicted views on race. American public education in the 1970’s taught white kids that our ancestors deserved all the blame for the problems in the ghetto and many whites of my generation grew up with the belief that the best way to deal with racism was to treat African Americans with the upmost defference, lest we wind up being labelled racist by others. Race was an issue we could discuss honestly only in private and with those we trusted. When I was in high school I was told how a white kid minding his own business was accosted by several larger black kids on a city bus. The rest of the whites on the bus sat quietly while the small, skinny kid was pumelled by a group of larger and stronger kids. When I asked why nobody had come to the white kids defence, I was told that the whites on the bus refused to help for fear of being labelled racists.
If an obituary states a person died suddenly, is that an indication of suicide?
You’re assuming a functioning society again. All across American public services are being cut, often drastically. George Zimmerman is the future. If you don’t like your local neighborhood watch captain, see if you can edge him out in the next election.
At times you rival Asoka in your inability to see the obvious.
What makes you such an expert on black psychology, Vladdie? I hang out with black people, who never humiliate me. They don’t have all these hangups that you’re always blathering about here. I’m sure they’d prefer some good food, music, and good-looking women over doing so. Kinda disproves your whole theory.
If they harbor some resentment, well, gee, do you blame them? But to think that all black people just walk around thinking about the next time they can humiliate whitey is only true in your little mind.
Oh, gee, cry me a river, you poor white male victim.
It isn’t like your (and my) race enslaved the blacks, brought them here against their will, broke up their families, and killed or tortured them if they resisted, and then, following the Civil War, systematically shut them out of mainstream American society all the way up until the 60’s and 70’s using job and housing discrimination (and arguably all the way to today with the whole prison industrial complex).
I wonder why they might harbor some bad feelings towards us. I really do. What a mystery. Must be some inherent inferiority in their racial character, not anything your or my ancestors did to them.
No, the real story here is poor, innocent Vlad Kraps, the eternal true victim of all history.
Riiiight. What were you saying about reality and b-shit?
The Germans killed the Jews. The Japanese killed the Chinese. The Turks killed the Armenians. The Serbs killed the Bosnians. The Belgians killed the blacks in the Congo. I could go on here, but you get the point.
Every racial group around has, at one point or another, been on either the giving or receiving end. What makes black people so special that you single them out, as if they are the only ones who ever committed violence against anyone?
And why isn’t their violence this “righteous violence” you were blathering about earlier? The Haitians were enslaved by the French, working on their plantations, so they killed their masters via an open revolt. How much more righteous can you get, Vladski? That’s like some Old Testament s— right there.
Yeah, you would identify with that creep. I’m not surprised. Is it your fantasy to patrol the neighborhood asking every black person what they are doing with that bag of Skittles in your neck of the woods?
This week’s post is timely and thoughtful. I disagree with Jim on a few points, but he has made a worthwhile contribution to a largely poisoned and stupid public discourse on race.
Most of the noise that’s made about multiculturalism is a saccharine fantasy, insulting to the intelligence. Still, there’s some truth to the idea. One of the greatest legacies that I received from my maternal grandmother, and ultimately from her relatives, was a trove of unvarnished but nuanced anecdotes about race and ethnic relations in New York, especially on Staten Island, where she lived for most of her life. I glean quite a few from my mom, too. The short version is that life wasn’t a big pluralistic love-in, but people often got along quite well with their neighbors in spite of their cultural differences, and sometimes in spite of pernicious official bigotry as well.
The Trayvon Martin shooting has turned into a national Rorschach Test, and the results are just scary. This case has brought to the surface a huge amount of seething animosity, distrust and anger. Ironically and very worryingly, the hostile factions are projecting their accumulated grievances onto one of the most confusing killings to make national headlines in recent decades. It’s damn near impossible, and maybe absolutely impossible, to tell what the hell really happened. Both sides are purposely muddying the waters by circulating half-truths, outright fabrications, wild speculation and deceptions. The mass media have abdicated responsible coverage in favor of sensationalism and prejudice, and a scrum of criminal practice attorneys has denounced the affidavit of probable cause as a disgracefully shoddy rush job. It’s a fucking mess.
This case is starting to look reminiscent of the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Disturbingly few people care about the truth or are interested in keeping the case in perspective. Instead, everyone’s pissed off and looking for an excuse to wage war on their racial and political adversaries. We desperately need cooler heads to prevail. If the Zimmerman trial leads to another Hot Summer, I’m afraid that it’ll look less like a civil disturbance than a civil war. There are just too many Americans itching for a fight right now.
Race relations in this country aren’t uniformly bad, but they’re bad enough–frankly, terrible in places–and sugarcoating the matter won’t help. As a group, American blacks are orders of magnitude more violent than American whites, and yet the mere mention of this statistical truth is widely regarded as beyond the pale. At the same time, mention of the very real racial disparities of the “War on Drugs” is widely dismissed as leftist claptrap.
Having two cultures on the same turf may be a problem. Having two aggrieved, angry, mutually hateful cultures on the same turf is a huge problem.
Actually, Fred Reed makes no mention of having been a cop. He was, however, a police reporter, as you wrote, so he spent a lot of time around cops. This helped him become the cynical bastard that he is.
Not that I blame him. I might be equally cynical about those things had my application to the San Diego Police Department been successful. Fred has seen some gnarly shit in his day.
Interesting post this week, Jim. thanks.
When I read it , I realised it would be a golden opportunity for Vlad to babble bullshit for post after post, and what a relief that must be to Vlad. Weeks, nay , months of trying to ginger up his race nonsense over money, oil, bankers, even Jims own surgical and dietary problems must have been a real trial, and now this..
What is always guaranteed is that Vlad will be offended, narcissistic, depressive, and still baffled by his inability to obtain employment ( vlads own words.. ‘waiting for something to come up in the job line’.. ) womanless, childless, etc, you get my drift.
Because all these things are so painful, and so unsolvable, the trouble, to the narcissistic mind, is laid out upon the general population. In Vlad’s case, women, blacks, Liberals, youth, the old, the freckled, the Hispanics, the Brits, the Asians, the Europeans, the .. oh.. dear.. and so on.
Never a mention of the perpetrators own shortcomings that have consequences detailed above. Its all so very simple, Vlad.. it’s YOU. No one else.. You are the problem.
But the real mind fuck is when you realize that Vlad and Asoka are the same person.
Don’t pick on Vlad
I just looked up crime stats from the DOJ by race and from 1976-2005 murder was committed by 59.3% of the time by blacks, 39.1% by whites, (which includes Hispanics since witnesses can’t tell them apart-although they are in their own self identified victim category) and 1.6% of the time by others. The link ishttp://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_03.html
2008 stats homicide offenders:
White 5,334
Black 5,943
Other 273
Unknown 4,727
Don’t pick that scab!
Re two societies and White suburbia vs Black inner cities……
White flight was caused in part by integration of schools promoted by foundations like the Ford Foundation that was funded by car sales.
Every White in the suburbs needs a car. Whites living in cities with mass transit did not. Integration was just a marketing tool.
norsm – Read between the lines. Someone pointed out long ago he’s an aging closet queen. Its just who he is 😉
I love STATS (especially FedGov) as much as the next guy, but I always wonder why they’re trotted out. I always assume that it is done to come up with a way to change a number one way or another. So you brought us stats (FedGov) that clearly illustrate the murder breakdown by race in the US. My first thought is who murdered who. Well, your stats don’t tell us that. So we want to make one of these aggregate numbers change. How about a 10% increase for Whites, a 3% decrease for Blacks, and Hispanics…hmmm…there seems to be a problem with postive Hispanic ID. OK, we’ll move on. Let’s go back a step and state our objective. The Reason This Number Needs To Be Changed and How To Do It.
I’ll let you take over now.
“how many blacks read your stuff? about four maybe? bitter much Jim?”
In the context of your post, and self-righteous position you’re taking, these remarks are ironic and hilarious as hell.
You, along with most whites who consider themselves some unattainable version of ‘colorblind’, are(an)imbecile(s).
Too many whites have attempted to make themselves virtuous anti-racists…but have done so only by turning to a weird kind of bigotry and near hatred for other white people. You’re one big part of why America is a ailing society. I consider you more responsible than blacks in some ways.
Some of you here have lost all common sense. I won’t be concerned for you when/if your saintly black victims turn on you someday.
No, there wasn’t anything curious about it. You go on to attempt to blame a black separatist attitudes developing because of a youth revolt in the late 1960s. This attempt to explain black attitudes on a group of upper class white youth who did not want to go to Vietnam isn’t going very far. These two demographics didn’t even touch each other, they lived separate lives. Black attitudes develop from what they experience ever day, not from what gets said by other people.
The truth is unpleasant and obvious. Black and white racism is entrenched in America. Two centuries of inequality isn’t erased by a civil rights movement that went home to get rich after the Public Accommodations Act of 1964 and then the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
These words are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago. Not much has changed.
This is the bitter truth, we are a country of assholes. Americans are about competition inequality and getting as much for themselves as they possibly can. Caring about the future we don’t do at all and thinking about social justice community and our neighbors is something we don’t do very well.
In rereading this weeks post I see some blaming of the victim.
An exercise in reality testing true enough. Patterns of violence are remarkably consistent across time and space. Violence is done overwhelmingly by men and the peak of violent acting out is done at about the age of Twenty Four. It is at this age that sexual competition among men peaks as a competition to attain greater social status. Lack of social status causes feelings of inadequacy and frustration which directly leads to violence.
There is no mystery about what is happening. No jobs, no health care, no future. This is what lies ahead for the youth both black and white but especially those who are black. No one steps up to provide leadership and everyone points the finger at everyone else. Those who have answers are ignored. Those at the bottom of the pile suffer most and that is where fuses are first blown.
We have a don’t worry be happy culture where everything is someone else’s problem. I reply to XHALOR who quotes some of the Dennis Meadows interview I posted last week.
Riding resource depletion peaks down is going to blow a lot of fuses. If we come together as a pack and realistically try to solve the problems before us we can survive. Coming together as a pack is essential because this much is known with certainty. The more inequality that exists in a society the more social problems it has. Trust is lost and a Pandora’s box of social dysfunction results.
For thirty years inequality has been cultivated and encouraged in America. By every measure we suffer because of it at an individual and social level. Overall life expectancy, violence, rates of depression and physical ailments of many kinds result from inequality. Eliminate inequality and racism fades away. Continue the casino culture we have now, and cities will burn.
Riding resource depletion peaks down is going to test the soul of mankind.
Tomic nailed, sliced, and diced it. Bravo.
JHK is a beautiful writer, but this article shows one huge blind spot, namely that of judging a race by who finished first, ignoring where the runners started from.
Living in upstate New York probably doesn’t improve his view of the plight of disadvantaged people.
What’s up here, Jim? Did a Black Panther steal your girlfriend at Woodstock?
Haiti should be remembered. There the blacks wiped out the entire white population. Every man was killed. The blacks just kept alive captured young white women and girls, whom they then used as breeding stock. A fact.
And the same thing has happened throughout history. The thin veneer gets stripped away periodically and one group destroys the other. Just the way it is with our species. Periods of liberalism are mere rays of light between epochs of darkness. Not saying its “good”‘ merely that’s the way it is.
The dark era that’s approaching will take the grand prize for mass murder.
F88 – no comment.
VK – a man drowns in the Columbia (not an easy river) after saving his 2-yo. Was it a suicide? http://www.katu.com/news/local/Mans-drowning-serves-as-lesson-for-others-about-water-safety-147693185.html
Ix – the book came today. The stamp was 80+¢ more than my cost. (TLE; 2006, pb)
I was reluctant to comment on this event on any forum because it tends to keep the media hype, which sells us down the drain, something to feed upon.
So we are to believe that some race card was played, by some Hispanic registered democrat, who was part of what will likely become the wave of the future, neighborhood watches and patrols. If you think the cops and “forces of law and order” are going to leave their speed traps and license/zoning/permit money stealing preoccupations, don’t hold your breath
I won’t bother to ask why a kid in a neighbohood that had been the victim of numerous breaking in enterings had his “hoodie” pulled up in what is known as a warm climate, or why he fought back against a citizen of a neighborhood watch group. The skittles add to the drama.
There was a recent case where a Detroit youth, an honor roll student, was searching for a friend’s house using a GPS. Like most of Detroit, there had been a rash of crime and breaking in enteries.
A fellow African American saw this kid peeping through his window, threw the kid down to the ground, pointed a 12 gauge shotgun to his head, and stated “you have 5 seconds to explain yourself”. Would all this hysteria regarding a potential or real tragedy have happenned in that case if the end results had been any different? I somehow do not think so.
All of that aside, I think the main point of all this is being ignored. The racial power keg that is waiting to explode when the country bellies up and austerity programs can no longer be financed or met.
Imagine millions of people who had little to begin with and now have nothing left to lose. Is it any wonder why “change we can belive in” Obama passed the “national defense authorization act” or why the “department of homeland security” now has 2,700 tanks and 450 million rounds of hollow point ammo rounds for pistols?
They have known that the end of industrializattion and fossil fuels is about to crash, and their recent actions prove this. Get ready for austerity, blood baths in the streets, and the attempt to impose martial law over the people that our ever so benevolent government was supposed to represent
Wow Jim, you managed to piss off the Internet! This was a gutsy column stating uncomfortable facts about the American experience that need to be said. Thanks and I still love you, but don’t let it go to your head. As a Canuck, I have a certain familiarity with multiculturalism, multilingualism, and racism as it pertains toboth my Quebecquois brethren and our First Nations. Multiculturalism? Don’t rule it out, it has it’s good points. Multilingualism? Nothing helps one understand your neighbours like learning their language. Racism however, is still a big problem – take it from a dude who worked for Romeo Dallaire: it’s not a solely American phenomena. But it is one with the potential to wreck your country faster than you can say “Peak Oil”. Cheers from Belleville!
Mich Native: you just killed my buzz. Now I’m filling out range cards and checking my arcs from the basement windows. As your FDR said “All we have to fear but fear itself”. Fear has gripped the American soul. Fear of hoodies and what lies beneath, fear of crime, fear of guns, fear of other people’s guns, fear of terrorists…ect. You might be right about a pending bloodbath, but it won’t be started by the Gub’mint. It’ll start with well armed, frightened folks turning their towns into a free-fire zone in desperate persute of safety.
Several of you folks who are attacking JHK for this week’s opus are invoking what you call his, “Blaming the Victim,” mentality.
Well – attacking our host for his logically stated opinions has a large element of “Shooting the Messenger,” in it.
– Just Saying –
====================
And Mika – I don’t think your reference to “the Joos, the Joos,” is appropriate here.
You need to remember that JHK IS Jewish.
And his views concerning race relations in the United States – have a solid grounding in reality.
Gaz,
You’ve pretty much outlined my viewpoint of the matter. RACE WAR (in loud and horrifying caps) is way down the list as something I would consider one of the most significant tipping points in the coming devolution. A factor? Sure. But that’s me. Things get twitchy when privation sets in, and I certainly wouldn’t put it past laddie crustpocket and his fellow travelers to get in early on the devoutly wished-for race war by conveniently helping it along. (These are spurious musings of his anyway, so it doubles the “meh” factor.)
As far as the dearly departed Treyvon and the guy that put him on the departures list?
Who really knows the specifics of the altercation?
I will say this though. Some prosecutor is trying to make political book on this case by going for second degree murder. Verrrrry risky. I could maybe see aggravated manslaughter as a fairly certain conviction.
The legalities of the “case” I find more interesting than the rank stupidity of the deadly incident.
Interesting comment.
I don’t think people understand where much of their frustration and disaffection stems from.
“Imagine millions of people who had little to begin with and now have nothing left to lose. Is it any wonder why “change we can believe in” Obama passed the “national defense authorization act” or why the “department of homeland security” now has 2,700 tanks and 450 million rounds of hollow point ammo rounds for pistols?” -MN
Ah, it appears that the definition of success in the greatest country that ever were, is a giant pile of bling. Now, inculcating that into the subconscious of the entire population might have been a good idea by the elites to keep the worker-swine busy scrabbling and squabbling for the crumbs, but the end result can be a backlash of epic proportions. Folks just don’t take being lied to very well. The “preparations” make this quite clear.
Dear Norsm,
BRAVO, BRAVO, BRAVO. I am also glad you get second billing after that kulturecritic idiot, who is hawking his own web site , and not get lost in the discourse that follows.
BORING, yes this blog is becoming boring, and i think I only log on now to watch it go downhill. I think Jimbo is wrong and if he is right about the LONG EMERGENCY it isn’t happening yet. I am also sick and tired of everyone always putting our country down. I do love this country and it gave my family the ability to improve our lifestyles after leaving Europe a century ago. My grandparents didn’t even want to go back to visit. I especially disliked the rant on the millinium generation last week. Thank God they are different from the Baby Boomers, whom I am a part of. I also teach and have found the millenium generation, to be kind, aware, smart and scared. And I don’t blame them. After the Baby Boomers have destroyed every good piece of this country (and are still trying with the GAY RIGHTS garbage)who can blame them for feeling scared.. Baby Boomer generation got the ball rolling with their incredible narcissism and now they will pay for it with lack of jobs, lack of good will, lack of love, and lack of health care. They have set out to “change” america. Hopefully the Milleniums will bring this country back to what it was. Oh, and by the way, isn’t it ironic that the LOVE GENERATION, WHO FOUGHT AGAINST THE VIETNAM WAR…has elected a man who has brought us into another useless war and created strife everywhere in the world, and has continued to harm, not help this great nation.
As far as the topic this week, I have purposely not paid any attention to it precisely because it is all propaganda. I really don’t give a hoot about a bunch of low life people who would rather sell and take drugs than improve their lot. (if that is even the case since I haven’t paid any attention to it). The black race has done just fine after their “liberation” since the 1960’s. The ball is in their corner now and they will do what is appropriate for themselves. Only in America is that even a possibility.
This incident shows how absurdly hair-triggered black racism is. Put the shoe on the other foot. If Trayvon Martin were the shooter and Zimmerman the victim, this wouldn’t even be on page 23, column 6 of the newspaper and would be 30 seconds on the local news and then forgotten forever. Zimmerman’s name would be forgotten forever before the ink dried on the headline.
Does anyone remember the BART shooting in Oakland when a white BART cop shot a black kid? Cheesis K. Reist … this shooting must have been in the news for fifty days out here in the Bay Area. If the white BART cop had been the victim and the Oakland kid the perp, once again, it wouldn’t even be newsworthy since Oakland has more than 100 murders a year in a city of 350,000.
This, this is all you need to know. Shoe on other foot, murder if forgotten before the news day is up. Black person is victim, murder is front and center in the news for months. At exactly what point will white people be allowed to have one THOUSANDTH of the indignation blacks demonstrate when they’re the victims and whites the perps?? And I truly think one THOUSANDTH is pretty much an accurate percentage of the relative proportion of white indignation allowed.
Black outrage has several knee-jerk outlets via Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the liberal asses in the media. White outrage has no spokesperson because they’d be written off as Nazi kooks and discredited forever within hours of their soliloquiys.
The Trayvon Martins of America have millions of weepers before the facts are even known. Had Martin been the shooter and Zimmerman the victim, Zimmerman’s name would be forgotten within HOURS and even whites wouldn’t weep for him because they are so resigned to black savagery as a fact of life.
E.
I believe Vlad was referring to the 1973 Wounded Knee standoff at the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Lakota history didn’t end in 1890.
The books “The Nine Nations of North America” and “Civil War Two” are a good place to start. Both are fairly old. Civil War Two is a written from a racial point of view but makes valid points.
Jim-
Not up to your usual standards in today’s e-missive, you’re better at description than at analysis! Stay away from maudlin racial divides where you’ll never cross, always trespass, and always offend. did’nt even bother to read your readers’ comments today because your treatment of the topic was trite and instantly forget-able. Pls stick to what you know, which is how ludicrous most of our socio-political-economic situation really is. I wake-up every Monday morning to your posting. A few more of your postings today and I’ll have to reevaluate which URL I point & click at. I’ve said it before, go to posting every other Monday morning if you’re having trouble slogging-through a posting every Monday morning. rgds.
Welcome back, E.
Remember Lovell Mixon? I guess not.
Holder called ‘The 2’ to praise their work stirring up the restless underclass [supported by the workers, remember most black Males are unemployed].
This might be the truth, if so Jorge is innocent.
But with 50 murders a day in USA and who knows how many justified shootings, what does it matter?
George Zimmerman: Neighbor Saw Big Bumpy Bandages on …
http://www.maggiesnotebook.com/…/george-zimmerman-neighbor-saw-bi...
Apr 2, 2012 – The day after George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, he was not a hunted man, as he is today. … An unidentified neighbor said he/she saw large bandages on Zimmerman’s
There is more to the Trayvon Martin case than race, though race is certainly the factor that has pumped it up to BIG STORY status.
I am fascinated by the feverish insistence by many that Zimmerman somehow had standing as a representative of his community, which gave him some authority to confront a kid who was doing nothing wrong. He is a vigilante, self-appointed to guard his turf from “fucking coons” (Zimmerman’s phrase, from the 911 tape.) He stalked this kid, terrified him (we have a witness via cell phone who report’s Martin’s awareness and fear of his pursuer), and then confronted him. Under the stand your ground statutes, Trayvon Martin, who clearly feared grievous harm, was absolutely within his rights to kick Zimmerman’s ass. Zimmerman was not man enough to finish the fight he picked, so the candyass resorted to gunplay. If he had just taken his lumps like he should have we would not be talking about this.
I know a few guys who have Charles Bronson “Death Wish” fantasies of cleaning up the town. Buncha Barney Fifes, staring themselves down in the mirror, mouthing “make my day” as they quickdraw and dry fire. Dirty Harry? More like Shirty Larry.
I don’t know anything about the Martin kid. Maybe he was an asshole, maybe not. What matters is what he was doing when he was assaulted by Zimmerman. Yes, assaulted; that is what you call it when someone with no legal standing confronts and intimidates another without legitimate cause. The kid was walking while black, eating candy, drinking tea, and talking on his phone. Pretty spooky. Zimmerman should wear Depends, if that is all it takes to make him shit his pants.
And, speaking as a gun owner of long standing, fuck the NRA. They are a creature of the gun industry, and have cynically manipulated the credulous masses into a frenzy of fear. “Obama wants to take your guns!” “The niggers are coming!” “Stand your ground!” This is an ad campaign, which has produced soaring demand and prices for guns and ammo. My asshole biker brother-in-law, unemployed, has spent my sister’s wages on guns, ammo, tactical knives and MRE’s. He just wants to hunker in his bunker, polish his piece, and dream of Helter Skelter. He is not alone. We are pretty fucked up.
The Media and BHO [soul searching that we must suffer] will KEEP THAT IMAGE OF THE WHITE BOGEYMAN
front and center.
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead
Hey Q,
A while back you wrote a good post on names. I caught the name “Salecia” from an article linked to the Drudge Report. Salecia, a six-year-old kindergartner from Georgia, was apparently handcuffed and taken to jail because she injured the principal during a tantrum.
Where did the parents come up with that name? They probably didn’t know that salacious means
explicity sexual? Yikes.
because it implies a failure of the social justice movement itself
Maybe the question of supposed failure to thrive didn’t come up because it is not relevant to the Martin case. Just a thought.
I can’t know whether Zimmerman is racist or not,but I do know he lives in a mixed community. He seems to have the sort of hypervigilent, authoritarian personality of the sort meant — one can only hope — to be screened out by personality tests at police academies.
To me, it this personality combined with the American attitude to guns and property and violence that led to Martin’s death. There are plenty of countries around the world that allow private gun ownership. What is different in the the U.S. is our attitude.
As for the that hairy old failure to thrive thingy, let’s break it down. We live in a society where inflation-adjusted wages have not increased in decades. 30 year olds I work with earn the same per hour wage I did over 20 years ago. So Americans in general are poorer. Add to this the stigma of a conviction — and we have become one of the biggest jailers in the world, we love to slap people into prison, one might say it’s become a way of life — and people, black or white, with a record are not employable. Well, what do you think might happen if that is the case, eh?
Go ahead and blame people for the color as much you like Jim, it will not change the fact that we, the U.S., have done this to ourselves by indulging in cowboy vigilante fantasies of self while allowing the creation — through our policies — of an enormous underclass, economic losers all. Just who do you think is cooking up the meth in trailer parks across the county?
A social justice movement sounds like a real good idea. We should get one!!!
Watchew talkin bout Koonstler? I oughtsta kick yo motherfuckin ass.
Communists seek to create chaos at all costs. Only in that situation can the Revolution be effected. So what to focus on in America? Race. Congratulations, it’s working. But unlike in Russia, we’re ready for you this time. And as Mao said, the victors control the countryside. Your Orc soldiers are in the cities. They’re gonna get real hungry real fast. And then? Well you know.
Obama himself said we must create a home guard as powerful as the regular military. Think alot of minorities might join or what?
So you’re a gun owner but against the gun industry and one of groups that has kept our 2nd Ammendments rights. I don’t believe you. Without the NRA, we would be like Britain – a few people having hard to get hunting licenses and that’s it.
And his views concerning race relations in the United States – have a solid grounding in reality.
==
– http://youtu.be/w_oBmkZllvs
Good SJ – you’re growing. Latrina is another fine name. Blacks don’t know any better. They just pick what sounds pretty to them.
Just another hired nigger:
– http://youtu.be/buri89mQ6ys
What does saying that getting a social justice movement would be a real good idea have to do with communism? You seem to be stuck in a loop of your own making.
Both the Youth Movement and the Civil Rights Movement were Marxist at the Core. That’s the connection. And Blacks were encouraged to be violent and full of contempt – as they still are.
Blacks believe (correctly) that America was founded on Racism. Of course, what nation isn’t? And that they were brought here to be slaves, well duh. So they have no intention of ever fitting in no matter what we do. And look at all the goodies they’ve gotten by acting like rotten apples. Why would they stop? Nobility? It’s not in them. The right thing? Ditto.
As the previous poster said, the ball is in their court and has been for a long time. Whites did the work to change themselves (I did too) but Blacks didn’t. So now it’s time for Whites to stop and to take Blacks at their word and deeds – murder, rape, and theft in extreme cases. And being parasites and bad apples in general.
Thanks alot. And there is a saving remnant among the Millenials who are in the know about Race.
You nailed it: Liberals have a profound lack of authenticity in the Existential sense. They enjoy the fruits of the White Conquest yet damn the Conquerors to hell. What a sickening attitude. If they feel guilty, they should get out. Either that or shut up. But no, they prefer to persecute Whites – other Whites that is; ones who don’t share their effete values. This justifies them in thier own minds as “good Whites”, that and of course worshiping Blacks. They are puzzled when Blacks don’t make the same distinctions.
I’m not sure what youth movement you are referring to so I’ll ignore that unless and until you clarify yourself. But Civil Rights go back to the Bill of Rights” which was ratified on December 15, 1791. Karl Marx was born in 1818. What is the connection?
Do you know why I only drink pure grain alcohol, Vlad? DO YOU?
Purity Of Essence.
Damn, you beat me to it. POE baby.
A wild guess:
Could it be because Russians drink alcohol made from potatoes and you don’t want to be mistaken for a filthy socialist?
Hope that other nut descends soon.
Well Jim, like the screeds where you insist that they can’t prop up the stock market for another month you are totally freaking wrong about this one. I hardly know where to begin.
Mike Rupert, whom most of us know as the 9-11 Conspiracy/Peak Oil guy didn’t start there. He started as a Los Angeles vice cop. What he discovered in Los Angeles was that the U.S. government was importing cocaine into america and selling it at rock bottom prices in the black community. This money was used to fund illegal wars against leftist governments in South America.
I was born in the mid-sixties. For my entire lifetime the police forces of america have waged war on black men. They’ve harassed them, beaten them, jailed them for trumped-up charges and most importantly waged the drug war. A cop could put a small packet of crack cocaine in the pocket of an 18-year-old black kid and that man would lose the best, most productive years of his life in prison. Then he would come out of prison and face double discrimination for being a black man and a felon.
Until video cameras were ubiquitous nobody believed black men who claimed that the police lied on these occasions. Then police started getting caught on camera being the brutal lying bastards blacks were complaining about.
Jim, you’re wrong. You’re racist and you’ve tolerated racist assholes on this board. Now we know why. Goodbye asshole.
“People don’t get shot for no reason, though sometimes it is not a good reason, or one we want to talk about.”
I don’t believe that is true. People get shot for absolutely no reason. Guns go off when mishandled. Cheney shot his friend during a hunting excursion.
Regarding Trayvon—Zimmerman may have just been angry, and wanting revenge against any young black person who appeared to him to be suspicious. Trayvon appeared to be minding his own business as he was walking down a sidewalk to his grandmother’s house when the Zimmerman-predator decided to go after him and taunt him. Zimmerman was angry over previous break-ins by black males and that might have triggered the trigger.
In response to the race issues, black males in prison, and the cultural concerns that you have over black youth and their behaviors and actions, well, when an economy does not serve the entire nation well, and forces the lower income citizens to feel disenfranchised, even if it is of their own doing, then the society gets the blowback from it.
Shit is going to continue to happen in this country, since the 10% own the nation and the political system, as well as the courts. When we don’t make stuff (with our hands) anymore, and machines do it for us overseas–for the most part—this nation will see further unrest and race turmoil.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
This…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr2bSL5VQgM&feature=fvwrel
The Beloved Disciple:
– http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=881148304678603838
Yeah, Ruppert also says that drug money props up the stock market. Have you seen any of his lengthier youtube videos from talks on this subject? Fascinating stuff. He quotes someone named Catherine Austin Fitts for a lot of his info.
“Jim, you’re wrong. You’re racist and you’ve tolerated racist assholes on this board. Now we know why. Goodbye asshole.”
I may have confused the toleration of racist assholes as a commitment to free speech. You may be right, I hope you are wrong.
and this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAeqVGP-GPM
“The Beloved Disciple”
The Naked Archaeologist? Really? The guy is a documented fraud.
I follow Simcha Jacobovici quite closely. He’s no fraud. Simcha Jacobovici has great detective and analytical skills, and that enabled him to expose many of the lies of the establishment.
Simcha Jacobovici is also one who is willing to stand up to the establishment’s Vatican lies and propaganda machine. The establishment propaganda fucks are frightened and don’t like Simcha Jacobovici, and I guess neither do you. So, if anyone is a fraud, it is YOU.
ooooo…burn!
Global warming deniers are the problem. Climate Sceptics are the problem. The old good sceptic is a dead sceptic.
Argentina’s move to nationalise their domestic oil pushes the global figure of national control now over 85%.
We have entered the Peak Oil endgame. And most people who are going to work this morning are part of the climate problem. Now is the time for brickbats.
Things ARE coming to a head. 2012 IS the inflection point.
Right now the Earth is absorbing billions of excess BTUs of solar energy as the Arctic cap melts exposing more dark ocean surfaces. Those BTUs are melting permafrost and methane is venting to the atmosphere. Through clouds of bong-smoke, America’s college professors and research associates are staring incredulously at their graphing calculators.
The good news for you Old Farts is that no one will know what idiots you were your whole lives if you change your minds and come correct now. You will be forgiven your whole lives of empty consumerism and energy profligacy. We need immediate action on climate change, carbon reduction, and cessation of capital’s grip on the future. We need you to lay your asses on the line. You may be tear-gassed. You may be jailed. Your possessions may be confiscated. Some of you may be tortured; some of you may be killed.
I like your post & agree with you about the NRA. They’ve used fear as a promotional & fees raising tool for years. So much for Obama “taking your guns”. He gets an “F” from the “Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence” for his policies.
I reject “the slippery slope” argument. We already have limits on weapons, as I cannot go out and purchase a surface-to-air missile (probably could get one illegally, though). Those limits haven’t led to the banning of automatic weapons, pistols or rifles.
The 2nd Amendment was written when the general public had single shooters and were asked to be part of a well regulated militia. It’s absurd to think that all parts of the constitution should be set in stone for a millennium.
the upmost defference
==============
utmost deference
A few columns ago JHK wrote about how America has turned into one big social racket. That same truth pertains to the black ‘equality’ and anti-racism rackets. They’re really nothing more than a shakedown and a power grab. All the hand-ups possible have been given to them and it hasn’t made a dent. They’ve actually regressed a little, even though whites have footed the bill for them for decades.
At this point they simply want to take everything white people have worked for, that’s all. They don’t want to make do for themselves.
Blacks, among others, even want to deny whites the right to view ourselves as a People and to have any interests and concerns as a race.
Jerry Garcia said “(JHK):People don’t get shot for no reason, though sometimes it is not a good reason, or one we want to talk about.”
I don’t believe that is true. People get shot for absolutely no reason. Guns go off when mishandled. Cheney shot his friend during a hunting excursion.”
I think JHK has been raked over the coals enough so I won’t comment on any of the well-formed critiques. Of course Zimmerman probably provoked an attack by Trayvon. Its simple bad luck for Trayvon that he had a gun. Its not that Zimmerman probably didn’t deserve it. He did.
Perhaps Trayvon was harbouring a large reservoir of anger, as many young men today do, and for good reason. Their future is being erased and their ascendency in society is truncated by a wealthy, aging class of degenerates. At different times of the week, even though I am much older than Trayvon, I harbour intense aggression and hatred- fatal and dangerous hatred. I have the wisdom (knowledge) to channel it and keep it in check. I tell myself this even though it is likely to take 5 or more years off my lifespan just holding it in. This is the price of being a male in our culture. The price of being young is to be held down and slapped repeatedly until you have no hope left… by the guardians of the brass ring whose time on this Earth is fleeting.
Of course gang-banger culture is insipid and corrosive, and douchebags of all stripes have extraordinary mobility and visibility in our society today. But we are also beset by Brooks-Brothers wearing psychopaths who stare us down behind their tinted windshields and go home to bugger their own children.
America’s collective brain has been hammered by prescription drugs and booze, hopelessness and illogic. Fundamentally the native American diagnosis of our culture and its psychology stands: we are insane. Why do we disrespect the Earth? Only because we are driven to by this insane culture. The Cops are gestapo, and your license plates are your “papers, please”. you either genuflect before the Imperial Eagle or you will get profiled to death.
Glad you could make it Zone. Happy Hunger Games!
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate you anger at Mr Kunstler for writing this article.
Bravo, well said. We are many with more every day. Think of how many of us will be born this summer when the Blacks riot? All the Whites who are killed will be Martyrs. The Faith grows thru blood.
Youtube shows Blacks savaging Whites everyday. It’s all over Asshole. Youtube has changed everything – and that’s what the young watch. So unless you people want to close down the Internet – give it up.
Thanks for this, Tripp. My sentiments exactly.
I am in love with Vandana Shiva!
If an obituary states a person died suddenly, is that an indication of suicide?
=============
I couldn’t say for sure but it seems like a reasonable speculation. The NY Times obits almost always state the cause of death in the second paragraph. If the deceased is young and male and no cause is given it often turns out that the cause was AIDS. It makes sense to me that the family member providing obit information might not want to broadcast to the world AIDS or suicide as a cause of death.
What prompted your question?
Youtube also has videos of cats playing the piano, if you’re into that kind of thing.
“their ascendency in society is truncated by a wealthy, aging class of degenerates”
I aspire someday to be one of these wealthy, aging degenerates. Does that make me a bad person?
Cat plays piano.
We must move beyond the silos of fragmentation, division and conflict and create a new politics of diversity,interconnection, solidarity.
— Dr. Vandana Shiva
8:09 AM – 14 Apr 2012 via Twitter
Dr. Vandana Shiva is beautiful!
¡Viva Vandana Shiva!
In New Zealand the young whites had a fad of ‘weird baby names’ [Lovefruit, for instance].
The government made a law against such names.
In a post about the Amish, it was noted that the Amish population is declining. The statement was made that the Amish young people are leaving. This is not true. According to a recent article, 95% of the young adults who spend their year in the modern world, return to the Amish fold.
The main reason for the decline in population is that Amish families are getting smaller. Families which used to have 10 or 12 children now have 5 or 6. The article (sorry, I can’t remember, it was summer 2011) goes on to say that more Amish are employed as craftsmen than farmers. Amish farms have increased in size. Several famlies might farm together. For seveeral generations now, good farmland has been more expensive and harder to find. People will sell to the highest bidder and a developer is able to pay the higher price.
Solair.com
She talks regulary on ‘Coast 2 Coast’ /AM Radio.
She worked High Up in the govt under [Bush 1?].
Shes very smart and very aware of collapse and you and she might disagree on much.
You can ‘friend’ her on Facebook if thats yr thing.
Cheers!
“Of course gang-banger culture is insipid and corrosive, and douchebags of all stripes have extraordinary mobility and visibility in our society today. But we are also beset by Brooks-Brothers wearing psychopaths who stare us down behind their tinted windshields and go home to bugger their own children.”
Well said, Bustin.
I first realized that Americans were crazy in 1972, when Nixon got re-elected. For a while, I believed I was the only sane person alive. I later learned there were other sane people, but American culture is still twisted and bent. What percentage of our population do you think is rational?
At ‘the Obama Files’ there may be info on Van Jones and his Communist group.
It says they were responsible for the LA riot that cost 60? people their lives.
That also explains Holder thanking ‘the 2’ for their activism in the trayvon case.
Kstick, see Takimag ‘A Trayvon by any Other Name’.
Trace this back to its source, Cultural Marxism.
How has been pushing this in the White Nations?
Eh.
“Multiculturalism allowed white America to pretend that common culture was not important. It also promoted the unfortunate idea that we could have a functioning civil society with different standards of behavior for different ethnic groups. It has left the nation with the unanswered question of black America’s self-evident failure to thrive, and an enormous body of narrative affecting to explain it away as “structural racism.”
If Detroit, Michigan is a microcosm of race relations at the national level, then JHK has eloquently explained how a black-majority city, once the nation’s fifth largest, was allowed to descend into complete dysfunction and wanton violence by a frightened white population who abandoned the city both physically and mentally, and an angry black population that wanted nothing to do with the whites who had marginalized and excluded them. The whites had the resources and experience to create a thriving city. The blacks had nothing but the dream of “black power” and corrupt, anti-white leaders to guide the city as it went from a prosperous, majority white industrial city to a desperately poor, majority black post-industrial city.
The ball is in their corner now
===============
Obviously you’re not into tennis.
Interesting post, P.
Will you answer this one [and only one] question for me?
Are these young ladies [cough] college material?
Another college c*****t this time St. Louis
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=360_1334342127
I meant ‘Solari’.
Youtube quickly took the ‘white guy pants by mob’ clip down.
Worldstar hiphop has more goods / balls than ytube!
The clip of the ‘student’ in Florida that got hauled off is piriceless.
If there ever was a teachable moment that is it.
Here my dears:
Girl at FAU goes crazy and gets tazed by cops – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHr5L4y6-g8
Mar 21, 2012 – 3 min – Uploaded by bnelsonblog1
A student at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton was reportedly subdued with a taser after a violent ……………………
Oh P2C, Bustin….if you suffer watching the clip, she is enraged by Trays ‘murder’.
BHO and his team have done well.
‘I first realized that Americans were crazy’
Compared to who or what? Mao and his killing of 70? million?
Racketball anyone?
If Mao is your standard for craziness, then pretty much no one else makes the cut.
Re: “Are there proportionately more black men in prison than members of other races in America? Yes there are, and most of them behaved badly enough to get locked up, whether our drug laws are stupid or not.”
Two words for you, Jim: selective enforcement. If those two don’t do it, how about: racial profiling. Or maybe these three are more up to date: stop and frisk.
Wow, you really showed your true colors with this post. I’ve long enjoyed your analyses of suburbanization, but when it comes to economics and race you sound like just any other conservative crank. You fret about a coming race war, but I’ve got news for you: it’s been going on since the Nixon administration under the guise of “the war on drugs.” Wake up.
The factors that made the 1960’s what it was are still in effect today. The names and terms may be different, but the concepts are still around.
First and foremost is that the entire justification for our country’s founding is a lie. Our ignorant population doesn’t know history. Many of our founders were businessmen incensed that they were in unfair competition with England. Their motive in separating from Britian was to further their own economic interests. Even the Declaration of Independence, a great manifesto, was not what it seemed. Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant man and slave-owner, wrote that “all men are created equal”, which is patently false. He should have said, “all men are created equally worthy”. That he didn’t, means even then there was back-room politics going on.
What that further means is that a country built on a lie cannot help becoming dysfunctional and corrupt. Which we clearly are today.
Much of the youth of the 1960’s saw this clearly. Revulsion of American society and the resultant non-conformity were very common. Blacks were no exception – they wanted multi-culturism because they were kept down for the previous three or four hundred years and didn’t have any reason to trust the system. Imagine knowing the Declaration, being told by the public what a great country we were, that all men are created equal, the Declaration was the document that justified our country’s existence, that its principles were practiced every day, and you were Black. No wonder they don’t like whites.
I work with a bunch of black guys 3rd shift in a newspaper pressroom. Some nights I’m the only white in the plant. Since the Trevon Martin story broke I’ve heard one coworker say one sentence about Trevon Martin:
“Stupid nigga got hisself shot”.
That’s all. As far as I can see, and I pay close attention, they could care less.
–WSP7
LOL!
Then whats BTB cut for sane?[yr guess]
And Mao/Hitler/Stalin/polPot did not act alone.
Do you really think that black Americans have much consciousness of the past 400 years or the founding of the country? This is not what people think about in their day to day lives. As far as I can tell, they are much more concerned with lack of opportunity or, in other words, decently paid jobs for “unskilled” laborers. These types of jobs mostly disappeared from the large cities during the 60’s and 70’s, and those in the inner city could not easily switch to other types of work. A documentary I saw called “Bastards of the Party” (worth watching BTW) stated that LA used to have about a dozen large manufacturing plants, like tire factories and so forth, but these have all closed, leaving the city bereft of heavy industry. So there is little to no opportunity for uneducated manual laborers. Plus, the huge influx of immigrants from Mexico has essentially created a huge amount of slack in the labor market, thus turning it into an employer’s market, probably for good. Thus, the situation has decayed to the point where the best, and sometimes the only, way to make money in the inner city is to participate in the drug game or go on welfare and food stamps (which are limited) or both. I feel like this all has much more to do with economics than some sort of extended historical consciousness or reaction. Most people don’t read history and don’t know the first thing about what you’re talking about so it seems kind of a leap to suggest that they’re acting upon these ideas.
Personally, I don’t consider most dictators to be insane, because they are generally calculating and in control of their actions. They know exactly what they’re doing, even if some of their behavior is ruthless and eccentric. Just because you kill a lot of people doesn’t mean you’re insane. If you wanted to categorize them, I’d probably go with psychopathic narcissist. But this personality type is often able to blend in fine into society, because they are good at manipulating and deceiving others (a lot of these types on Wall Street!). So they don’t necessarily fit the common definition of being “insane.”
I associate insanity with being out of control. But it all depends on your definition. Schizophrenics used to be considered touched by either God or the Devil, but now we know that their brain chemistry and structure is different from the average person.
And, of course, if your behavior differs significantly from what are considered norms in your society, then you could be branded as insane. But that’s debatable, too.
Anyways, I think “insane” and “sane” are kind of fuzzy concepts. Consult the DSM psychiatry manual if you want more concrete definitions, but this defines mental illnesses and disorders. Clinical psychiatrists wouldn’t use either of those terms.
“And Mao/Hitler/Stalin/polPot did not act alone.”
That’s not insanity. That’s just the group/herd/pack mentality at work.
. Since the Trevon Martin story broke
. they could care less.
================
. Trayvon
. couldn’t
Also, tell those co-workers of yours, it’s himself 😉
I was just googling old names the other night and I found out that a woman I had worked with long ago (and liked) had passed “suddenly”. On one of the google search lines it said suicide. But I wasn’t able to confirm it.
Several points:
1. Prejudice is a natural part of human perception. Even toddlers will classify as “bad” people on flash cards who look different from their family of origin. If you tell them a story where the “bad” people help their tribe, they’ll tell it back to you with the roles reversed. See Shankar Vedantam’s “The Hidden Brain” for the footnotes here.
The point is that there are only two types of people: those who are prejudiced and know it, and those who are prejudiced and don’t know it. No third category exists.
On the other hand, a world of interesting people and exciting cultures awaits those who are willing to set aside their (known) prejudice. Life would be very boring without salsa, for one example.
As for Kunstler’s opinion about people of color and the “justice” system and “education…” They are just pathetic.
First, there’s a movement abroad now to “reform” education with lots of testing, merit pay and (union-busting) charter schools. Michelle Rhee and the “Waiting for Superman” film people are pushing this agenda.
Never mind that none of those remedies, when studied, produces replicable results.
The real indicator that very closely tracks educational achievement: childhood poverty. The Finnish school system “Waiting for Superman” touts as the remedy for our educational system has tenured, unionized, well-paid teachers. But more important, childhood poverty in Finland is at 2%. In the U.S. it’s at 23%.
As for the “criminality” of the people of color, that is simply bullshit. That’s not to say we don’t have a problem with “justice.”
The U.S. currently incarcerates 756 people per 100,000 of population. This is five times the world average and nearly seven times more than Canada incarcerates.
Why so many more prisoners? Answer: The drug war. Yet, for the 40 years since Reagan put the drug war on steroids, Canadian and U.S. crime rates have differed insignificantly. So this is not a war on drugs, its a war on the U.S. population that literally has no impact on crime.
Which population? The overwhelming weight of evidence is that blacks and whites use and sell drugs in roughly the same proportion, yet people of color are far more likely to be harassed, arrested, prosecuted and jailed.
I should add that actual medical treatment for drug addiction and mental illness is one seventh the cost of incarceration. Do we jail the diabetics for their drug dependency? Why not return to burning witches? What we do now is just as medieval.
The Swiss de-criminalized even heroin (addicts need a prescription), and found crime around drug clinics fell 85%. The Portuguese have a similar experience with their “harm reduction” approach to drugs. Expenses for treating drug-resistant TB and AIDS also fell.
For more see judgejimgray.com. Judge Gray is a Republican appointee in Orange County who, at one time, held the record for the largest drug bust in the U.S. He has changed his mind about how fruitful the drug war is.
Also worth reading: Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” that documents how the felon-izing of the African American population bypasses all those civil rights victories of the ’60s, and makes discriminating about those black felons legal again.
This is shameful, and for Kunstler to miss this is simply testimony to the limitations of his idea of “clusterfuck.”
US Department of Justice crime statistics for 2010, total murders: 14,700. Aggravated assaults: 778,900. So, in the week leading up to Bill Moyers show, one could estimate 283 Americans were murdered and 15,000 assaulted and not one them received the national media canonization which graced the late Mr. Martin.
This seedy little melodrama is like a low budget remake of “Bonfire of the Vanities” with Sherman “Master of the Universe” McCoy downsized to “Muchacho of the Cul de Sac” Zimmerman. Guilty or not, I’ll bet the openning chapters of dozens books are already being typed up by Pulitzer-hungry journalists, actors are being scouted for the HBO movie, and Al Sharpton is gearing up for a million-hoodie Skittle-skulk on the Washington Mall.
Good Lord! Do any of the people on this blog accusing JHK of outright racism actually read what he has to say? In his analysis, whites are as much to blame for Black America’s failure to thrive. There is a difference between an opinion and informed analysis, and this much we can conclude from the facts: 1.Progressive white Americans are as frightened of blacks and whites forming a common American culture as the most ignorant backwoods racist. 2. By holding black youth to a different standard of behavior than white youth, whites reinforced the inferiority complex that Jim Crow had inculcated. 3.For the last fifty years, enlightened white Americans preferred method of talking about race has been to hide their true feelings in the language of political correctness and white guilt, leading many blacks to conclude that whites are either duplicitous or can’t bear to face the truth.
For a lighter (and only slightly more silly) look at racial profiling check out the Onion News Network: DNA evidence frees black man convicted of mauling and partially devouring white famale camper in bear preserve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1cgHEWG-BA
Here’s a recent article that describes their population increase.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/29/amish-population-growth-n_n_663323.html
I was not aware that their population was growing. I stated in my post about the Amish that the information was anecdotal. After reading a few things today, I’m guessing that what a appears to be a dwindling of the ranks in Indiana, is in reality families moving to farms in other states. As for Amish leaving the fold and not returning, my search efforts have not yielded anything yet. I personally know one and only one shunned Amish man. I’m going to do some detective work when I go back to Indiana in a few weeks and see what I can find out about that. If you’re curious, I will post my findings.
” There were something like (I forget the exact number) 450-500 breakins and other crimes including one killing over a 15 month period in the gated community when the citizens council (or whatever it was they called themselves) advertised for volunteers for a community watch group.”
That’s some good internet sleuth work, Q. Just as the citing of racial stats regarding crimes is “decontextualized”, so is not recognizing and acknowledging the civic/crime laden landscape that provided fertile ground for a bad seed like Zimmerman to take root.
It’s a truly terrifying experience, to suffer the a crime committed in one’s own home, and the resultant anxiety of an anticipated repeat in the future.
Imagining one’s self in a similar situation is yet another way of standing on the circle’s perimeter in order to apprehend a different vantage point of the central issue.
Quite right, Bill. Jefferson didn’t believe Blacks to be equal – he was talking about Whites only. And he didn’t word it very well as you indicate.
Both Whites and Blacks are more afraid of Black faces than Whites. Just so, both Black and White little girls thought White Barbies prettier. This was part of the rational for bussing. The lie was that bussing would solve it. Instead, littel Black girls who went to school with Whites prefered the White Dolls even more.
Needless to say, when they get a bit older they begin to hate the White Girls with a passion for being both smarter and more beautiful. Then the assualts begin.
Maybe I should expand my thoughts on craziness to include the entire human race. Much has been written on this subject. Read some Arthur Koestler. I
Bullshit!
Whites are not frightened by Blacks. If Whites were frightened by Blacks they wouldn’t be doing the shit that they do to Blacks, every fucking day, because they’d dead scared of Blacks retaliating. But Whites are not scared of black retaliation, and with good reason. Blacks are complete pushovers. No, the reason Detroit and other cities and towns are all dead today is because the white corporate vampires sucked the blood of these places and left them collapsed in debt and without a real local economy.
You want to improve Detroit and other such places? Get rid of all the corporate vampires. Instead of giving endless subsidies to the corporate vampires, tax the Corporations and their products until they are no more. Keep the money and commerce local, circulating locally. Do not allow the corporate vampires any access or any opportunity to bleed the local economy by siphoning wealth from the local economy to the corporate headquarters.
Thanks for this, Tripp. My sentiments exactly.
==
Mine too.
Turk, I went to visit my granddaughter this afternoon, so I abruptly ended the post to which you replied. I meant to finish it by stating that the 1960’s, with its disgust for the status quo set the tone for further black disentanglement from white culture, which is continuing today. Maybe the ’60’s were just an excuse for what was inevitable, anyway, but it certainly did provide the impetus.
I don’t believe the average black may have known about details of our history, but I sure as hell think that equality for the masses except mostly for blacks, impinged greatly on blacks’ consciousness. How couldn’t it? Economics certainly is a big variable in the equation, but black skin is still the moving force for social injustice.
Lest the haters on this blog (and didn’t JHK’s theme this week bring them out?) think I condone black violence on whites, I don’t. There are black scumbags, just as there are white ones. Scumbaginess is color blind.
Well… I’d say that requires a bit of refining.
He’s stuck in a loop of someone ELSE’s design and manufacture. It’s his job to get in the mandatory number of “hot-button” words and phrases in every on-line session. He relishes his role as a dipshit instigator, does our own beloved laddie “crayons” crustpocket, zealot of the true-believing cult of blood for power (in all respects).
(I just look at the sheer number of posts by this make-believe hero and have to laugh. Hearts and minds, [shriveled] hearts and [sluggish] minds…)
Same old stuff and same old commenters with thier links to something-critic, liberwitz society, crazie motors, and all the imbeciles bantering back and forth. Might as well shut this thing down.
I would so love to know what it is that whites do everyday to blacks. White people tiptoe around blacks and make every excuse in the world for them. Whites are practically apologetic even when they aren’t to blame. They do anything BUT harm to them.
Don’t cite the actions the police may or may not take against usually dangerous blacks. Cops do their own thing, white civilians do something else entirely.
In your twisted world do whites even have the right to live their, OUR, lives as we see fit? Because as a plain ol’ common white man I don’t owe blacks one goddamned thing.
The system can be just as hard and dismissive to the greater mass of whites as it ever was on blacks.
That might not be a bad idea. How about you shut yourself down first, and then we’ll see how it goes?
Just as the citing of racial stats regarding crimes is “decontextualized”, so is not recognizing and acknowledging the civic/crime laden landscape that provided fertile ground for a bad seed like Zimmerman to take root.
===============
I don’t think there is one poster here, myself included, who has failed to recognize the context of the black plight. What many of us wonder, however, is how many centuries does it take for an oppressed minority to make headway on assimilation into the majority culture. If ever. As both Fred, JHK and I have noted as the most obvious starting point, blacks could do themselves a huge favor if they would make an effort to “speak the King’s English.”
As to “fertile ground for a bad seed” I refuse to hang Zimmerman before he’s convicted although I DO recognize the personality type. The muscle-head former owner of Parkside Billiards (of whom I wrote previously), no doubt, enjoyed a steller career of head bashing as a cop in Camden, NJ, one of the most crime ridden cities in the country. In his own words, he “loved the action.”
“The system can be just as hard and dismissive to the greater mass of whites as it ever was on blacks.”
LMAO! Seriously?!
You ever been enslaved, sir? How about lynched? Or told that you have to use a separate drinking fountain due to your skin color?
And on and on and on…I mean, sheesh!
Q, the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Discrimination in housing and the job market continues right up to this day, as well as a War on Drugs which disproportionately targets certain racial groups.
So, what’s this talk of centuries? Gimme a break!
Discrimination and economic violence against blacks is rampant throughout the US. Just as it is against Jews, and others. Jews partially manage to circumvent this discrimination and economic violence against them by maintaining their own local businesses and really their own industries. But that’s because Jews have not been stripped of their culture and learning. Black slaves have not had this advantage, and so blacks are stuck where they are.
Common whites who wield little power, and never have, shouldn’t be held to this debt that people like you and Turkle hold over our heads.
Whites have our own problems making a decent life for ourselves. I think it’s overdue for us to focus on our own needs. Blacks, and their enablers, will keep their grievances churning for decades more. The fact slavery was mentioned tells the whole story. Same worn out story.
There is no white privilege in this deep recession and there wasn’t in the Depression or any of the hardships and calamities that have befallen whites in great numbers too. How can people who worry whether they will have a roof over their heads, and enough food to feed a family oppress anyone?
You asked me a question, I’ve answered it. I’ve just pointed out the obvious, which you callously refuse to understand. Whatever your problems are, they are nothing compared to the problems you and your kin inflicted on others. You are very lucky to be breathing. Lucky that others are such pushovers. But one day your luck will run out.
“Have fun with this post! Vlad will be all over it like a cheap SS uniform.”
Hrmph. Same thing I whuz thinkin’, while I read this one yesterday…
Vlad Unplugged! (Uncorked? Unrestricted?) 70% of all poasts are being spooged by that *VLAD* (who you previously scrolled right past)…
“You must lack the part of the brain that recognizes hypocrisy and irony.”
I would have suggested consistency, but yeah he definitely flip-flops on his primary agenda items. It’s much like those idjits who want to do away with everyone *ELSE’S* welfare, as long as the *GOVT* doesn’t touch “their” SS/MC/MA/food stamps/unemployment/etc/ad nauseum…
Are you angry because I won’t cave to your pressure to feel guilt even though I was in no way involved in harming blacks?
Many of ‘muh kin’ were dirt poor farmers, pal. Believe it or not. I get the feeling that you’re talking about economic competition between whites and blacks and whites happened to get the better of it thru hard work. One poor group of people can’t stop and wait for the other at their own expense.
BTW, Mika, I don’t know exactly what luck it is that I have to run out, LoL.
You want to have it both ways. You want to claim White racial solidarity, while at the same time to distance yourself from the systemic and systematic evils of white society. You can’t have it both ways.
But keep laughing. I know human nature. And I know I’m going to have the last laugh.
Here’s an article from Cleveland.com that briefly interviews an Amish family leaving Ft.Wayne, IN and heading for Missouri.
http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2011/01/as_amish_migrate_west_culture.html
It also makes a reference to health problems they are developing due to such a small gene pool (You payin’ attention to this, Vlad?). One thing that I am going to find out when I go to Ft. Wayne is if the Amish have adopted a more liberal policy about “shunning” and what it might to get back into the fold as a result of the genetics problem.
I’m not holding you accountable for any debt, just the self-evident inanity of this statement.
“The system can be just as hard and dismissive to the greater mass of whites as it ever was on blacks.”
Tell me, Tarky, did any of your ancestors ever have a cross burnt on their front lawn by a mob of men in white sheets? Were any of them dragged out of their houses and lynched, based on no good reason at all? Were any of them murdered or beaten within an inch of their life simply for looking at a woman? Did they have to sit at the back of the bus? Did they have to go to separate bathrooms? Did they have to attend separate schools? Were they ever not able to buy a house or get a job just because of their ethnicity? Were they ever imprisoned for 10 years or more for possession of a small amount of narcotics?
Do you need any more questions or is my point made?
I don’t care if you feel guilty or not, as it is no skin off my back one way or the other, but, seriously, get a clue already.
Great, no problem Che.
I’ll see you across the revolutionary divide.
You wont see me anywhere. Just like you don’t see the wind blowing.
Mob Mentality
I have a reeeaaally German last name. During WWII my grandparents lived in St. Louis. In a bizarre swimming accident, my grandfather lost one of his eyes and it made him unfit to serve. Since they were relatively new to neighborhood, people began to wonder why this obviously healthy young man (he had a prosthetic eye) with the German last name wasn’t in the Army. The gossip quickly accelerated until an unknown group of men set up and burned a cross in their yard in the middle of the night. Freaked my grandparents out so bad that they changed the spelling and pronunciation of our family name.
Ultimately, I don’t care about their history. Everyone has suffered at one time or another. They have no monopoly on it; just like other people have pointed out in other conversations, but it’s always ignored.
Do you really want me to trot out my ancestors? How far back you wanna go? Do you want to rehash the Irish experience? That’s one part of my ancestry. That is a chapter of the sometimes harsh american history too. So, I can answer YES! to some of your questions.
I could include the Okies in that too. Or other poor whites labeled white trash undesirables only because of poverty, nothing else. Those people faced forms of discrimination not so long ago.
Blacks have no special place in history and deserve no special treatment.
Your questions are good ones.
Besides economic and legal obstacles to Black assimilation, I wonder if white posters here got these kinds of messages directed at their psyches from various sources (parents, neighbors, school teachers, etc.):
— You’ll never amount to anything.
— You’re worthless.
— You’re not smart enough.
— No matter how hard you try it’s never good enough.
— You don’t deserve to succeed.
— No one will ever love you.
Perceptions about self drummed into one can affect behavior in a negative and debilitating way, making one believe even trying to assimilate into white society is futile.
DUH!
I forgot to mention that he was a St. Louis cop.
I can say that I indeed have had that kind of abuse from, what else, abusive people. Yes, I have.
Even when they were slaves Blacks were encouraged to feel superior to poor Whites. And after the War, when Whites were disarmed and Blacks were armed, it was a rape fest by Blacks – until the oppressed Whites used terror against terror. Finally decent people in the both the South and the North pushed down the rabid egalitarians who wanted to destroy the Southern Whites. Did Blacks have just complaints after that? Sure. Do they still? No.
The English slave owners used to strip their Irish Slave Girls on the sugar plantations in the Carribean and make them work in the Sun. The Black Overseers were given license over them.
Don’t you ever get tired of lying? Martin Luther King was a Communist trained at the so called Higland Folk School. One of his handlers was Pitts O’Dell – a high ranking member of the Communist Party.
making one believe even trying to assimilate into white society is futile.
=================
Last week you denied black/white unimmisibility (Fred’s big word meaning inability to mix) by quoting stats showing growing numbers of black/white marriages. Now you imply that people saying discouraging words has stopped blacks from trying to assimilate. You are large…
Come clean Asoka, are blacks assimilating or not? Do blacks desire to assimilate into the dominant anglo/white culture? Would blacks like whites to assimilate into black culture? Are blacks content with separate and distinct cultures?
It’s a change in the Climate, Bill. The reign of Political Correctness is coming to an end. Or at least its credibility. The Media Elite and the Enforcers may double down, just like the Communist Commissars did. But no one believed them after a certain point. That’s where we are.
I warned you all. I’ve told a number of Jews that they needed new material; that the goyim weren’t going to buy it all much longer. No one listened.
The ball’s in your court now. Will you relinquish control gracefully or will you instigate a reign of terror to keep power?
There are all kinds of blacks. They are not a monolith group. Just like there are all kinds of Joos. But there’s only Qshtik. And he’s a nudnik.
Great chimp out! Bonzo goes to college.
Squirrels: Biological warfare against us by the Grays? I wouldn’t doubt it.
..only ^one Qshtik..
That last one was meant for Anti.
You’re afraid of chlorine? Can’t a good filter take care of that? And isn’t grain alcohol hard on the stomach? Water is important though. Thru much of history people drank wine because they couldn’t get good water.
You’re a Schmendrick.
http://www.google.com/search?q=schmendrick&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-Address&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=hTiOT7ucAYvZiAKF-LD-Ag&ved=0CEkQsAQ&biw=911&bih=372&sei=oDiOT-D6GqOpiAKAl6W7Aw
Jim Kent State shootings happened May 4, 1970 not 1971.
You ignore the fact that racial profiling happens in this country as a (il) logical extension of racist attitudes that were predominant in 1966-1970.
I see nothing wrong with black activists demanding their own student union. Their identity was trashed for over a century in this country due to slavery & racism & you have a problem with them seeking an autonomous identity? Why should they kow tow to the predominant WASP liberal’s idea of the civil rights movement ? Sounds snobbish to me.
One of the major problems with all of the social movements back in the 60s was that liberals co-opted it. To the 60’s radical….liberals were the enemy and for good reason.
You say blacks have failed but you’re totally ignoring the rise of the black middle class (what is left of the middle class) in the past 40 + years.
Multi-culturalism is not the problem – the problem is that racism is alive & well in this country.
Thank you, Mika.
Nudnik is a new word and exceedingly apropos for Q.
Control of what? You mean that which the Jewish Conspiracy rules over? That’s bullshit and you know it. Now you’re going to blame the Jews for racial discord? We control the blacks and use them for our own nefarious purposes? You know that sounds very paranoid, don’t you?
How about this, Vlad: Sit back and enjoy life, day-to-day until there isn’t anything left to enjoy. If you want, start prepping and hope TS doesn’t HTF, but if it does, at least you’ll be prepared. Then you’ll be in the same boat as I am. Or, you can join the Raiders of the White Ark and go out in a blaze of glory, fighting for supremacy. When that happens, I’ll be sitting on my front porch shaking my head and tsk, tsking.
“Multi-culturalism is not the problem – the problem is that racism is alive & well in this country.”
=============
Amen, brother Greg. Blacks have succeeded in spite of overwhelming obstacles, police violence, structural violence, psychological violence, etc.
There is good news in black college success statistics going up for black males. Despite all that is stacked against them — low teacher expectations, insufficient academic preparation for college-level work, racist and culturally unresponsive campus environments — black males still find ways to succeed.
But you are correct in a sense, Vlad. If we are unlucky enough to go through a period of collapse, there is at least a 50% probability of race wars ensuing – unless everyone wises up and tries to get along to survive. How would you feel about separate, peaceful white and black towns doing business together (and don’t weasel out by saying blacks could never be peaceful)?
Thanks to brother Jesse Jackson’s message of hope and role models like Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, Barack Obama, etc. other messages are available for young black men today:
— I can accomplish anything I choose.
— I am a worthy and valuable person.
— I am intelligent and capable.
— I do my best and my best is good enough.
— I deserve happiness and success in my life.
— I love myself and I am loved by others.
And black females, too. In any group operating under discouraging conditions, some will continue to strive and succeed. The sad thing is, is that too many won’t because of the burden.
I watch Bill Maher’s weekly program on HBO and my favorite repeat guest is Cornel West – I just like the guy. On his last program he had Tavis Smiley on as a guest. Very articulate, very dignified and obviously very bright.
Although I wouldn’t vote for Obama, he is a great role model for blacks. Hopefully, because of him, many young blacks will lead productive and successful lives.
I am beginning to see what I dislike about the alternative media figures, JHK being one of them. But allow me to mention a few others who fit this mold; Alex Jones, Max Keiser, Mike Ruppert, Gerald Celente etc. Yes, I’ve learned some things from what these people have presented. But there is still no real journalism. Journalism means shaping and re-shaping ones views and constantly discovering and uncovering things — expanding ones prism, so as to not make it a prison. These types have brought only a different static notion to the party. It challenges the corporate media, but only so much. It really doesn’t change anything. This particular column is so far from dynamic, that I fear it will be lost with other artifacts from the stone ages.
Thanks, BeantownBill. I don’t get HBO, so I couldn’t see that program, but eventually I am able to listen to the podcast of Bill Maher’s program.
You probably already know that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are doing a nationwide tour to promote their new book, “The Rich and the Rest of Us.”
Smiley and West are actually addressing part of the Long Emergency in their new book. We are all in this together.
—Tavis Smiley and Cornel West
While you believe that he who dies with the most toys wins. You do not realize it won’t mean anything because everyone else will also be dead.
Yes, but surprisingly the mind-fuck is actually quite empowering and in a strange way satisfying.
By that I mean the realization.
I am also Xhalor and K-Dog. It is an intricate blog dance. We are all one.
I think Cornel West would make a fine vice president. I’ll think it over.
K-dog for president.
Cornel West would be a good choice, but I doubt he will run for office. Philosophers don’t usually want to be corrupted by power.
I also like Tavis but he can drone on. Of the two Cornel would be the better choice and once he got into the work he would be super competent.
Cornel West And Tavis Smiley Have Never Supported President Obama!
“Ultimately, I don’t care about their history.”
If you don’t understand the past, you can’t understand the present. Now your silly assertion that your ancestors suffered as much as blacks makes sense, because you confess to not actually caring about the black experience or knowing about it. So where’s your basis for comparison? Why do you consider yourself qualified to make these kinds of bold assertions, given that you confess to not caring about the other party’s history?
“Everyone has suffered at one time or another. They have no monopoly on it; just like other people have pointed out in other conversations, but it’s always ignored.”
Uh, did I say otherwise? The conversation isn’t about poor whites, or some other racial group right, now. If you want to talk about it, we can do so, if it would make you feel better. Omission of other groups in this discussion doesn’t imply that I think pain and suffering is the exclusive property of the dark-skinned. Buddha says everyone suffers. Yes, indeed, I do get it. If we have an extended conversation about the Holocaust, does that mean I think the Jews are the only ones who’ve suffered genocide in all of history? Your logic is flawed here.
As far as measurements of suffering, we’re talking about degrees. Stubbing your toe is one degree of suffering. So is being run over by a bus, for the brief period you lie in the road moaning before dying. And certainly, there are parallels between the experiences of the poor and destitute of all races in terms of the suffering they undergo. But there’s nothing that’s going to convince me your Irish ancestors suffered nearly as much as someone thrown on a boat in chains against their will and brought to America as a slave, subject to the absolute will of their master, who owned them for life and could sell them as they wished.
Nothing.
You can try to convince me, though. It might be kinda interesting to hear what you have to say.
“Do you really want me to trot out my ancestors? How far back you wanna go? Do you want to rehash the Irish experience? That’s one part of my ancestry. That is a chapter of the sometimes harsh american history too. So, I can answer YES! to some of your questions.”
Go ahead if you feel like it. I enjoy a good tale. I’m not sure which of those questions you could answer “yes” to but I gotta say, I’m kinda curious now. Did they get turned away at a “No Irish” lunch counter or what?
“I could include the Okies in that too. Or other poor whites labeled white trash undesirables only because of poverty, nothing else. Those people faced forms of discrimination not so long ago.”
Look, the difference is that when these people pull themselves out of poverty, the discrimination disappears, as we live in a society dominated by Caucasians, and, if you’re rich, pretty much no one cares about your humble origins. No one gives a hoot if a few generations back your family were a bunch of poor Okies. The ancestors of these people are solidly middle class now.
But, not so if you’re black. To a lot of people, even if you’re literally the president of the US, you’re still really a n—– in their mind. You can never escape it. Have you seen how people treat Obama? He is a highly intelligent graduate of Harvard, deserving at least a modicum of respect, yet he gets treated like dirt by many whites, for no good reason at all. It should tell you something that even the POTUS is subjected to such knee-jerk bigotry. He hasn’t even done anything super stupid like start a new, major land war in Asia.
“Blacks have no special place in history and deserve no special treatment.”
Um, yes, they do, at least in America. (I will confess, though, that this is only my opinion.) They were brought here as slaves, en masse. The process of their emancipation almost tore the country apart. They really have suffered the most, out of all the groups in American history, pretty much by any reasonable standard imaginable. (Not to say they are the only ones who have suffered.)
But you confess to not caring or even wanting to investigate the matter, so why should I care what you have to say, when you’re so self-professedly ignorant and proud of it on this topic?
Plus, they invented most of the great musical forms of the 20th century (jazz, blues, rock). Gotta give em props. Without them, we’d all be listening to Perry Cuomo or some other lame s—.
All that said, I agree that we have to move forward, and that endless discussion about the matter, painting blacks as victims (even if they really are/were), doesn’t really help all that much.
Concretely, I’d like to see, for one, an end to the Drug War. That would help alleviate some of the extreme pressure upon black communities and their members, especially young males. Fat chance of that, though.
That’s why we both only serve one term and retire. We don’t want to make an ‘Animal Farm’.
As for not wanting to be corrupted by power only broken people want power. Philosophers take power reluctantly and only to serve the pack when it is necessary. They are enlightened. Power only corrupts little boys in mens bodies. Real men know that virtue and a smile is its own reward. I think Cornel and I would really hit it off.
But why am I talking to you? Your not real.
“yet he gets treated like dirt by many whites, for no good reason at all.”
I think being a bad leader and running the country into a brick wall at 60 miles an hour might have something to do with it. Of course I’m talking about intellectual whites who think. I don’t think there are too many of those in DC right now so if you are talking about others who care for nothing but the status-quo and entrenched inequality in a changing world which requires radical action I agree.
Status – quObama
That’s what’s funny about the Obama dynamic. People can dislike him for totally different reasons, coming from totally different places. Usually when people hated W., there was one basic origin of that hatred — the man was contemptible. Obama might be contemptible in some of the same ways, so he draws the same wrath. But he also draws wrath from people who have no tolerance for a guy who didn’t step off the May Flower once upon a time.
I’m pretty sure his mother did. She went to High School less than ten miles from where I am now, the rich island suburb. We are talking seriously rich suburb. Raised by his grandmother who worked in a ‘bank’ he has May Flower credentials.
But that’s just fun facts and I totally agree with you except for the May Flower part.
Turkle, I appreciate your comments today.
As you probably know, Blacks did not just invent great musical forms. African-Americans also invented things like the:
— Hydraulic jack (used by white car mechanics)
— Railroad Car Coupler (for trains owned by whites)
— Home Security System Utilizing Television Surveillance (protects property owned by whites)
— Wrench (used by white plumbers everywhere)
— Low pressure, high volume pressurized water gun
— Combined aerodynamic glider and launcher
— Nailing Machine
— Co-Inventor of Spin Flip Tuneable Laser
— Automatic Gear Shift
— Refrigerator
— Modular louver system
— Pressure relief panel hold open apparatus and method
That is just a small selection. Some are improvements in design and function. The above all have patents held by African-Americans.
SOURCE: The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences.
But why am I talking to you? Your not real.
===============
I am just talking to myself. You are part of me. It’s complicated.
Here’s a book I recommend: THE ESSENTIAL VENDANTA: A NEW SOURCE BOOK OF ADVAITA VEDANTA edited by Eliot Deutsch (2004).
Thanks for setting up that book pitch!
Wow, this means that black people are just like white people but that they are black and not white.
Thanks for telling us.
In certain people’s minds, Obama “is what he is” and could in actuality be the second coming of Jesus. But they wouldn’t care. They’d still treat him like dirt. Even if you don’t agree with his policies, why all the name-calling and attacks on his integrity? Well, because, deep down, a lot of these people think of him as “just another you-know-what”, and they treat him that way, whether he deserves it or not.
OBAMA ran us into the brick wall?! OBAMA?! Wow. How inane. What is your major source of information, Fox News Channel?
The previous guy ran us into the brick wall, and I’ll tell you how he did it.
Failing to stop a major terrorist plot against us or (some say) taking a hand in it.
The two major wars, rife with billions of dollars in cost plus contracts to defense contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel, not to mention the untold suffering and misery visited upon a people who did not deserve it. The war in Iraq, which turned into a huge boondoggle from the get go, was 100% optional. The various costs of these wars, including caring for all the wounded wars, is well into the TRILLIONS.
The unfunded Medicare drug mandate, which was a big giveaway to the pharma industry.
The tax cuts during wartime, which took the previous surplus and turned it into a massive deficit.
Arguably causing the great economic/housing/financial crash of ’08 through inaction and malfeasance.
By end of his god awful reign, the economy was shedding 500,000 jobs a month and millions of jobs had been lost over the last 8 years.
Bringing in the awful Patriot Act which pretty much gutted the Bill of Rights. Hey, I wasn’t using that anyways, you know?
Spying on Americans without court orders by going around FISA courts.
Officially condoning torture as US government policy.
Putting that regressive, conservative a-hole Roberts on the Supreme Court, who has brought us such brilliant nuggets of law like unlimited, anonymous donations to political groups from corporations and the legalized strip searching of everyone who enters a jail (even for a parking ticket).
Completely failing to present any coherent alternative energy policy, even when we so desperately needed it, and basically running the White House as an adjunct to the oil and gas industry. Instead, lil Bush gave us such scientific chestnuts as the Hydrogen Economy and a manned mission to Mars.
Running a secretive, backstabbing, conniving, deceitful, nightmarish administration that would have made Richard Nixon blush, thus pretty much severing for a good long time any ability of the American people to trust their leaders.
Among other classic Bushisms. Those are just off the top of my head.
Not to mention being a detestable, ignorant human being who said things like God talks to him and said invade Iraq and that atheists aren’t part of his America.
And I know eighth graders who have a better command of the English language than Shrub.
And his VP shot someone in the face.
Why do I bring all this up? Well, to provide a standard of comparison, of course.
What exactly do you expect Obama to do now? And what has he done to compare to any of that? What has he done, in your mind, that is so wrong such that you feel okay putting all the blame at his feet? Hit me. I’m ready for your razor sharp response.
Seriously, were you even around from 2000-2008 or were you in some kind of coma? Gee-whiz, the ignorance of some people never ceases to astound me.
You are welcome, K-dog.
You forgot the sarcasm on sarcasm off.
I don’t consider you white or me black. We are just electrons on a blog. I invented you when I invented the k-dog sock puppet, to have another voice. I am large, you know, so I needed dozens of handles. I am xhalor, vlad, Q, ozone, etc. all just parts of myself talking to myself.
Yes we are talking to our-self. You already know I do not need the book because I am you and besides which I am also a divinely inspired prophet and teacher who has no need now for the teaching of others having evolved beyond that necessity.
Besides being a presidential candidate.
We post the book for the benefit of others.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
You forget. You are the sarcastic one. I am quite serious. It is a left brain right brain thing.
And another thing.
Can you imagine what would happen if Obama did even 1/10th of the things Bush got away with?
He’d be hanging from a lamppost on Pennsylvania Avenue by now.
Alan Watts taught it as AAAAUUUUUUMMMMMM
So you are the serious part of me? I am not serious.
He is doing everything Bush did right now. Shock and Awe in Tehran is right around the corner and Homeland Security has 450,000,000 rounds of hollow point on order. He signed legislation to declare martial law giving himself dictatorial powers last month. He has given twelve trillion to the banks.
He is way beyond one tenth, he is at nine tenths. But it is late and I’m going to sleep. I don’t want to ‘DRONE’ on.
If Obama had the criminal record Bush had (theft, cocaine use, alcoholism, traffic violations, drunk driving, disorderly conduct at a football game, going AWOL, etc.) Obama would not have gotten elected. Bush (being white and privileged) got a pass (and his arrest records sealed).
The first arrest of George W. Bush was for theft at a hotel.
The second arrest was for disorderly conduct at a football game.
The third arrest, we’ve now learned, is for a very serious crime — drunk driving
etc.
Bush’s illegal behavior pales compared to Clinton. Lying about consensual sex you had with another adult is NOT the same as getting behind the wheel of a car when you are drunk and endangering the lives of others (including the life of his own sister, who was in the car with Bush that night in Maine).
Now Bush is a war criminal and warrants are out for his arrest. Does Bush even leave Texas now?
That could also be considered a list of stuff which has not been upgraded in over three years.
Ok, he is running us into a brick wall, not ran.
Comparing anyone to Bush is really unkind and I want to stop though I believe that this is a case of the good cop following the bad cop, two peas in a pod, two sides of the same coin.
Both presidents were given to us by the public relations industry as figureheads for the global American Corporate Empire. We have not had a real election in thirty years. Brazil has real elections we don’t.
Not sure what you mean by “upgraded”…
Bush started the war in Iraq.
Obama ended the war in Iraq.
That is an “upgrade” or definite CHANGE in status. Change we can believe in.
Bush closed down the Bin Laden desk and said he stopped thinking about Bin Laden.
Obama intensified the search, then sent the Seal Team 6 in to murder Bin Laden.
That is an “upgrade” or definite CHANGE in status of Bin Laden.
etc.
two peas in a pod
====================
Bush started the war in Iraq. Obama ended it.
Bush abandoned the search for Bin Laden. Obama intensified the search and killed Bin Laden.
I could go on with domestic issues…
I’m seeing some differences…
@Asoka I’m simply not capable of challenging idolatry
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Florida, you say?
Did someone find the Fountain of Dumbfuckery there, or what’s goin’ on?
Another “country” heard from on the benighted sunshine state:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31101.htm
Ya know, seems like a choice region to start up the idealogical shootin’ war to me. First Righty-Mighty-Whitey is going to have to purge at least two other RW Authoritarian groups there: Da Jooz and Da Cubanos. We call that “practical experience” and “on-the-job training”. The very-brown-est people will have to wait their turn…
Good luck, and place your bets! -Ezra Pound
“Even when they were slaves Blacks were encouraged to feel superior to poor Whites. And after the War, when Whites were disarmed and Blacks were armed, it was a rape fest by Blacks – until the oppressed Whites used terror against terror. Finally decent people in the both the South and the North pushed down the rabid egalitarians who wanted to destroy the Southern Whites. Did Blacks have just complaints after that? Sure. Do they still? No.
The English slave owners used to strip their Irish Slave Girls on the sugar plantations in the Carribean and make them work in the Sun. The Black Overseers were given license over them. “-Fladly the Insane
Godz, just what kind of alternate universe do you live in anyway? And why don’t you just stay there instead of inFringing on ours, its pretty much fcuked up anyway. We don’t need YOUR craziness on top of all the other shite.
D
…Oh, least we might forget, there’s the following.
The absolutely largest question [to a Belgian, Dutch, Chinese or ‘Mercan] would be: Who will take over the orange juice concession? Someone has to make the big bucks for providing our breakfast beverage; who can it be now?
Blood for Juice!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPlNzWbX9c8
**************
**********
*****
^One for the Kyoo squad:
I think that should be, “lest we forget”, but not sure and too lazy to look it up…
“All that said, I agree that we have to move forward, and that endless discussion about the matter, painting blacks as victims (even if they really are/were), doesn’t really help all that much.” -turkle-
DING! DING! DING!
RING THAT BELL OF TRUTH AGAIN!!
And yeah, ending the drug “war” would be a good first step or a better US and a better World.
“Lest the haters on this blog (and didn’t JHK’s theme this week bring them out?)”
-btb-
Interesting idea, bill. I noticed an uptick in new posters from both poles, though.
And the desire of some to attack JHK and to claim that they intend to write him off forever and never read him again – seems more to be concentrated on the “leftward” side of this war of words.
=======================
Again, if I were black, I could understand the paranoia.
Take high immigration rates – please.
High rates of legal and illegal US immigration have to be on the short list of things that have destroyed opportunity for working class native born blacks.
Yet Pangolin (for a fact) and probably many of the other left-leaning posters who are attacking JHK and defending black culture for failure to assimilate –
These posters ALSO favor high immigration.
Strange. Illogical. Unfortunate.
Especially unfortunate for native born blacks.
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/
And back to paranoia – consider that Zimmerman is Hispanic. How many of you knew that one of the four cops charged in beating Rodney King was also Hispanic. The real competition that blacks are having over jobs ad living space is not with native born whites – it’s with immigrants, and especially immigrants of color.
“The best of intentions, really do seem to pave that road to Hell.” -p2c-
High rates of legal and illegal US immigration have to be on the short list of things that have destroyed opportunity for working class native born blacks.
==
LOL!
Like you care about employment opportunities or any kind of opportunities for blacks. What you care about, you slimy belly crawler, is maintaining your racist white privileges. And you know that once you become a tiny minority it will be next to impossible to maintain them white privileges.
So yeah, if I were Black I’d be in favor of immigration. Lots of immigration. Especially non-white immigration. Better start packing now, PC. You have no future where you are now.
“These posters ALSO favor high immigration.”
Yes, a neo-liberal and neo-conservative position intended to keep the country divided and wages down. It is a fawn of compassion.
Give us your huddled masses yearning to breathe free for we know they will for for fifty cents an hour less. Overpopulation is but a way to get the cheapest workers and most compliant soldiers to elite rulers. To those who have the money to buy their way out of the overcrowding the more the merrier is the way to go. Their social position in the hierarchy increases with every new smiling face.
I am in agreement with this fellow’s ideas contained in his letter to the editor.
Under Florida law, I can instigate a confrontation, throw the first blow and inflict as much injury as possible before I start to get my butt kicked. I can then legally pull a gun and kill the person I assaulted because “I feared for my life.” To me, this an excuse for murder. All you have to do is initiate a confrontation and voilà! “I feared for my life.” No law broken!
That’s exactly what I think George Zimmerman did. He initiated a confrontation with a boy that had done nothing more than wear a hoodie in Zimmerman’s neighborhood. Even if you believe Zimmerman’s story, he started a fight, and when he lost the fight he pulled a gun and killed an innocent boy.
All after, he ignored police instruction to stay in his car. Murder. Nothing more, nothing less.
Steve Brown Sr.
Oakley
ANd where does he go Mika? Only the U.S. has open borders. To go anywhere else requires money to get in.
To go anywhere else requires money to get in.
==
No, it does not require money. It requires skill and knowledge.
Instead of relying on racist privileges for economic comports, maybe PC should learn to be someone useful, so others might want him that he may contribute to their society and economy.
comports -> comforts
I think Mexico requires $1500 a month, or is it only $1000, regardless your SHOL if you don’t have it. Other expat friendly countries are the same, poor people not allowed. Monthly stipend required.
Other countries enforce immigration laws. Here states have to do it on their own, like Arizona, and Alabama because federal laws are not enforced regarding immigration.
Since you say it does not require money then name a specific country besides the U.S. where immigration laws are not enforced and employers are free to employ immigrants with impunity.
Very true. The nazification of the US is nearing its final stage.
I think Mexico requires $1500 a month, or is it only $1000
==
And you consider that money? C’mon!
True, that’s not much but its enough:
by The Eternal Bard from, Romeo and Juliet
I would better understand him if he wrote in Hebrew, the native tongue of his people.
No fountain of youth, the dumfuckery moved in from somewhere else. If he visits I hope Lawrence Davidson can forget all this enough to enjoy Disneyworld, if only for a few hours. Maybe he could get drunk in Miami, but if he does he better not be poppin off at the mouth. Waking up in the morning with bruises all over the body not knowing where they came from is not a good thing.
“Like you care about employment opportunities or any kind of opportunities for blacks. What you care about, you slimy belly crawler, is maintaining your racist white privileges.”
-mika, true to form-
Mika, we can always tell when your arguments are at their weakest – because it is then that you begin to offer up more nasty invective.
Invective that, logically, exposes your own deep fears.
Didn’t you tell us that you have white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes? Didn’t you tell us that your or anyone who is “white” like this, should prove themselves non-racist by erasing their blue eyes from future existence by breeding with “non-whites?”
Bill, let the CFN record show –
We have haters for ALL races and tribes, here.
OK, Mika/Met – now I’m standing by for various forms of insulting and spurious invective and/or various sorts of negative comparisons of myself to various forms of animal life.
Yeah, other than your sly complaints about my true description of you, you got nothing in the way of a rebuttal. Not once have you proven me wrong, snake.
There’s nothing to rebut that’s factual.
“So tell us, P2C, when did you quit beating your wife?” -mika-
======================
And what have you got against snakes, anyway?
And do you fear them or hate them?
There’s nothing to rebut that’s factual.
==
Really? How did you come to own the land that you’re on. How come blacks didn’t get similar privileges?
I recall reading in GON about how old people and youth are the losers in the suburban landscape, especially when they don’t have a car. Following the news on the Trayvon Martin case I thought this exactly–race aside (though I personally believe the murder was racially motivated), if Trayvon had driven to the 7-11 for his candy and ice tea he would have been safe and secure. Zimmerman would not have had the inkling to follow the youth who would have been encased in a 2ooo lb shield.
I bought it, Mika, just like my black neighbors bought their land.
You have a strang and biased view of the United States. It’s as though you learned everything about us from 1940’s era textbooks.
OR – from textbooks that were written with a deliberate and propagandistic bias.
You bought it? LOL! And how did you manage that. Doing what?
In other words, any White who is for his or her people is a hater. You’re the hater. And the media is overwhelmingly owned by Jews. Just the fact, Jack. So is Hollywood. Are you ashamed of these facts? You should be.
Dee, you’re just ingnorant. And you’re gonna stay ignorant becuase you don’t want to learn.
The Blacks did rampage in the South after the War. And the Union Soldier did nothing and just laughed when the Southern Whites asked for justice. So they took justice into their own hands – as they had every moral right to do.
Tens of thousands of Irish were sold into slavery in the Carribean after one of the revolts was put down. Sorry if that offends your Black sensibilities that liberal scholars have carefully crafted. No sympathy for Whites allowed. Only Blacks have ever been slaves. Liberal Professors are scum dancing for their dinner.
Turkle said:
It isn’t like your (and my) race enslaved the blacks, brought them here against their will, broke up their families, and killed or tortured them
***********************************************************
Right, and it isn’t like the blacks in Africa sold out their own brethren to put them on the boats to America where they would be slaves. If you’re going to quote history, try not to be a total fucking moron, okay?
E.
Hey, Turkle … for how many hundred more years are you going to justify the 10X murder commissions of blacks vs. whites as being the result of something that happened in 1700? Do they get an infinite “Get Out of Hell Free” card?? Damned right they do while we get none.
E.
The Irish were serfs – little more than slaves under the British for centuries. I tried to tell a Black who was harrassing me this and he said he didn’t care. So I smiled like a Seraph. I had defeated him.
And in all this, individual rights are just dismissed with a yawn. It’s all about racial grievances, affirmative action, and “hopefully” reparations.
And then Liberal Whites wonder why I want Whites to organize into their own grievance groups. It’s Whites like this who have made it necessary.
When you scan the comments section for the video you’ll see one that says,
“I’m? an 22 yr.old black male (As if it matters, Good music is universal) But I could not get that damn sax outta my head.. WHOO 80’s Muzik!”
Doncha’ hate it when that happenz?
This man needs an emergency saxotomy!
I’m amused at how the entire board skipped over my post well above because it cites an irrefutable, embarrassing (to noble savage lovers, that is) point i.e., when a white guy kills a black guy, it’s in the news for months. Note the BART cop killing the Oakland black kid. When a black kid kills a white kid, the white kid’s name is barely a footnote buried in the newspaper or a 30-second spot on local TV. The white kid’s name is forgotten before the ink dries on the article.
I’ve only resurfaced here to fully support JHK’s accurate and bellicose attack on the endless infantilism behind the incredible savagery of blacks where most violent crime stats relative to whites on a per capita basis are around 10X higher. A THOUSAND percent. I can’t believe nimrods like Turkle going back to year 1700 slave trades as an excuse.
This site, and on this issue, is always going to be a STUPID PARTY as long as Mika, Beantown, Turkle, and guys of their ilk spew their filthy lies.
E.
Cornell West is a jive turkey. I mean if him, why not Don King? You really have a serious case of Negrophillia.
You mad bro?
Mika,
Have you had the displeasure of viewing any number of American “actions films”? In the not so distant past, the war machine propagandists posing as film makers at least tried to fake a sense of honorable purpose/narrative. These days they don’t even pretend. Now the actors, sucking in their cheeks to highlight the facade of prominent cheekbones, are 24 Hour Fitness obsessives sporting cosmetic surgery mannequins barely capable of the occassional grimace when firing a automatic weapon. And forget about poignant, nuanced dialogue and the human condition; these acting drones submitted to the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy when they aborted their soul and replaced the hollowed out remains with the goose-stepping drumbeat of jingoistic propaganda.
Meanwhile, poor, disenfranchised whites such as Vlad, with Dolph Lundgren posters gracing their bedroom ceilings, are anticipating a day of celebration if Obamacare is overturned by the high court.
And a few months down the road, after the Vladsters have been denied health coverage due to pre-existing conditions, they will high-five each and say it loud: ” We really showed the Nigger!”
Yes, a insane nation indeed.
Like I said above, Vlad, no one even responded (except for Anti Soak) to my contention that when whites murder blacks it’s in the news for months. If blacks murder whites, the white victim’s name is forgotten before the ink dries on the footnote in the newspaper on page 23.
Per capita, blacks in America are veritable killing and raping machines. Your adversarial enemies here are trying to use the 1700 slave trade as their excuse 300 years later.
I think white’s should use the behavior of the Vandals in sacking Rome in 600 A.D. as an excuse to sack blacks out of their fucking homes in inner cities so we can make them livable again. After all, if you can use excuses from any point several hundred years in the past, let’s go for it. “Oh, sorry, we took your home from you but it’s in our genes”.
Vlad, you’re arguing against a passel of total morons.
E.
Most people were serfs, Vlad. You ever heard of the Middle Ages? Actually, in a lot of Europe, this system didn’t really end until the early 1800’s (think French Revolution).
Where do get out of any of my posts that murder is somehow excusable? Yeesh. Talk about a straw man. My posts had almost entirely to do with history and economics. I didn’t say anything about crime, except for some comments on the Drug War.
“when whites murder blacks it’s in the news for months. If blacks murder whites, the white victim’s name is forgotten”
What exactly do you want me to do about it? I don’t own a newspaper or a television station. *shrug*
In the war on terror who are the terrorists?
Drones
Being a serf and a slave are different, Vlad, and, like I said, most of Europe lived under feudal arrangements until only a few hundred years ago. Generally serfs couldn’t be bought and sold, so their families stayed together. They could change from being serfs to freemen. They had a lot of autonomy. etc.
I read your post. I read all the posts. And I know that what I’m about to say is probably gonna clog the blog for about fifteen minutes, but, I’m kind of in agreement about trotting out the really antique history of slavery in America in the quest to do something about the lingering after effects. But, I also think that you are obsessing over sensational journalism. The question still remains what is to be actually done about imbalances. The challenge still remains to present your solutions without them being dire, drastic, or sounding like they came from Vlad.
White households, on average, have something like 16-20x the wealth of white ones. So on average, blacks are dirt poor. They are incarcerated at far higher rates than others.
Yet, apparently, according to people like Vlad and Eleu, we aren’t allowed to even discuss the history behind these circumstances, because that, somehow in their pea brains, is an attempt to justify and excuse murder. Even when that connection is not made in any of the discussion.
Golly. What a buncha goons.
“The challenge still remains to present your solutions”
They don’t HAVE any solutions aside from “let them rot in prison” or “let’s start a race war.” They are just as eager to play their own victim card (i.e. the poor whites being victimized by the blacks) as any black person I’ve ever met.
150 years is not “really antique.”
We’re not talking about the ancient Egyptians here…
That you would call him a jive turkey comes as no surprise. You don’t believe in the brotherhood of man and hate all that do.
“jive turkey”
Funny, this is EXACTLY what I think of lil Vlad.
I will admit that the pendulum appears to have swung the other way, and there is now more black-on-white crime and violence than vice versa. But what do you expect? You mercilessly beat down a group of people for hundreds of years, and there will be blowback at some point. It is inevitable.
Violence is fucked up, no matter who does it. White on black, black on white, white on white or black on black. It is all the same, fucked up.
So, so funny how in this discussion you always play the victim card so deftly for your own race (won’t someone think of the poor white people). Like I have said many times, the part of your brain that should be detecting irony and hypocrisy must not be working.
I remember the outrage a few years ago in Boston when a Harvard Student fought and killed his Puerto Rican attacker. He was so out of order! When the Puerto Rican accosted him, the student (I forget his name) didn’t smile but said something back. When he was punched and knocked to the ground, he didn’t just lay there but “stood his ground” by taking out a pen knife and stabbing upwards. The Nerve! Everyone was outraged – Whites are supposed to not fight back or at lose when they do. The White won and no one could deal with it.
The Puerto Rican could have saved his life – the knife had not pierced his heart. But since he had a record, his friends drive around indecisively for an hour while he bled out. This was in Cambridge – about a ten or fifteen minute drive from a half a dozen major hosptials.
The Harvard Student went to jail for Man slaughter or 2nd degree murder. Last I heard they were appealing.
He’s a vicious racist as can be seen by listening to him for 5 minutes. You are an Enemy of the White Race.
The question still remains what is to be actually done about imbalances. The challenge still remains to present your solutions without them being dire, drastic, or sounding like they came from Vlad – Xhalor
Great post.
Messed up, dysfunctional cultures take root and persist all the time in all races and societies. How to explain fascism, nazi-ism, communism, the lunacies of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Tojo, PolPot etc. With something as complex as human nature and human societies you can theorize and come up with all kinds explanations most of which will defy any attempt to prove or disprove them.
People are perverse. They do batshit crazy stuff all the time. How do we explain the absurdity of the self esteem movement, the state of the financial system, the injustice of the caste system in India, the horrors of Rwanda. Why does all this crap happen?
I don’t think we can sweep past history under the rug as an explanation to account for the state of a segment of black society. It has to have played a role, at least IMO.
But what to do? Maybe nothing. Blacks will either fix what ails them or they won’t. I think the solutions ultimately rest with them.
I don’t buy the idea that it’s “racial” inferiority at work here. Does not at all square with my own experience with blacks and others. I don’t buy the idea of “race” anyway. Ethnicities to some extent yes, cultures OK I can live the idea. But race to me is a dubious category. I think the best we can do is to not make excuses for black people but also not act to mess them up further.
And you are an enemy of the human race. A ‘vicious racist’, you would know. You are an undeniable expert on the subject.
Dolph Lundgen. Yeah right. You’re a jive turkey too, Buck.
Have you given any thought to my idea about an Olfactory Art show? You could have plates of shit, rotting meat, and vomit on pedestals. You could analyze the contours, “lines”, shades, and shapes in loving detail. All the while dressed in your best courduroy jacket (with padded elbows) and turtleneck. And you could push the envelope with the olfactory element – describing the varioius aromas. The pc patrons would eagerly lines up to sample each ware.
“With something as complex as human nature and human societies you can theorize and come up with all kinds explanations most of which will defy any attempt to prove or disprove them.”
Actually science is on top of proving and disproving the ‘all kinds of explanations’ and doing very well at it.
Of course to understand that one has to believe in science and scientific methods. Not everybody does.
Maybe you can describe and to some extent take a stab at explaining human behavior. I think that certain branches of science are good for prediction and postdiction ie like physics. But I think that some branches of science are not amenable to mathematization – like the study of human behavior. I think that the comple