[Tainari88]

I would hardly characterize my opinion as a philosophy. I decided quite some time ago to reject American propaganda as a thought experiment, and used it to argue against leftists. What I found was that my empirical case was far stronger when I did that, and finally reached a point where I could no longer defend radical egalitarianism.

I don't accept your explanation Blackjack. I think you are justifying your own privileges and don't really care about equality because in your paradigm of nationalism you see yourself and your individual interests as primordial and your ethnic group and class category as primordial. In other words, you don't want to know, or even contemplate any equality. It doesn't serve your interests. Period. I won't make excuses for you Blackjack. You are a class conscious snob person, with a need to not have his taxes confiscated by a 'left leaning' state apparatus. Period. Empirical knowledge if it contradicts your own class conscious self interest? Will be roundly rejected by you. Very few or none of your class Blackjack21 commit (suicidio de clase) or class suicide. Yep, you fall into that category quite neatly. It also answers why the Brahmin doctor friend of yours does the same. Class identification. It bolsters my argument of class being linked to almost all forms of discrimination of the lower classes, and it also solidifies a power based relationship. Nothing new there for me to do.

I'm not exactly oppressing you Tainari88. That is in your imagination.

Lol. Sure, you are Blackjack. Didn't you try putting me down with moron and idiot? Lol. Verbal abuse. But since I don't give a damn about that part of oppression? No me importa. If all the successful women in my family had listened to that bullshit from a bunch of class conscious discriminators over the years? And it kept them from accomplishing things? Life would be truly full of stupidity now wouldn't it? You also judge people by how much money they make, or if their nation is financially solvent or not. The USA's deficit is pretty high. A lot of bankruptcies in the USA. Interesting I ran across a youtube video of the ten 'most' intelligent people in the world. A few had some low brow, fairly low paid work. Money did not motivate them. Hmmm? Different value system maybe?
Should I make sweeping statements about how 'valuable' the entire country is due to this problem? (financial insolvency).Lol. I put the blame where it goes--who is causing the financial issues? Identify them and hold them accountable. Usually it is some globalist multinational international capitalist class elites. Bankers. Elites and their powerful apparatuses. I don't equate ordinary working people, middle class people as the respresentative of why a nation fails financially. Not if it is under some form of capitalism Blackjack. Most nations are.

I think it is an interesting thought exercise for women who claim the United States is sexist to try any other country in the world that they think is less sexist. I don't think there are many places you would find more accommodating. Britain has had two female prime ministers but tends to be more sexist culturally than the United States, and it is getting worse since their immigrant population is inherently sexist. France? Well, there's Marine Le Pen... Do you think Merkel makes Germany less sexist than the United States?

Blackjack, there is a lot of things going on in many nations. Some of them good, and some of them bad. One has to choose what kinds of problems one chooses to deal with. The solution is not for all the non-Americans to be wanting to pull up stakes and move to the USA. The solution for most nations is to create enough stability economically, socially and politically to be able to have people prefer to stay put in their native nations and avoid the hassle, problems and instability and risk that goes hand-in-hand with immigrating to another country. Thinking your own nation is living in isolation from the claws of neoliberalism, and its need to be incesting itself, with other countries to perpetuate the same economic system, but in a much less developed form, that leads to a consistently worse economic shape than the first world countries are in, is the epitome of short-sightedness. That is why I think your brand of nationalism is short-sighted, and not intelligent in the long run. The structure is going to break you in half always. Got to work with what is here and developed. You can't revert to past shit (your brand of nationalism),that no longer works, or was shown by history, to run into such horrific problems, that they wind up losing to liberal forms of power.

It's also completely broke, so I don't know if I would be bragging about that.

It is broke. Which makes it a dangerous place to be pushing sexism, racism,and colonialism, and to squeeze unrealistic forms of repayment Blackjack. You can't charge people money they can't repay, the plan is buying a land base for fire sale pricing. Puerto Rico is not the only one to be targeted by those vulture banksters. It makes the island a powder keg of violence, and rebellion in the near future, if it continues on the road it is currently on. I am pro independence on that issue. I think Puerto Rico is another culture, has another history, and never was meant to coalesce into, and integrate itself, with the USA. The Puerto Ricans voted against becoming USA citizens in 1917, before and during the Jones Act Blackjack. You read the insular cases and found them very bizarre. I remember reading your opinion on that. So? Bizarre shit, and weird colonial relationships, with your kind of Virgin Island, Libertarian style no-taxation haven. That is what Puerto Rico faces now. Crypto currency moguls (Puerto cryptos),descending on the island wanting to buy up cheap land and be free of taxes from Uncle Sam. Create the island in their own plan and image. They had a meeting with a bunch of Puerto Ricans. Do you want me to post the video? How that went over? It is not pretty. The privileged like you? Men with money that they want to be free from the claws of liberal taxation needs to move to some islands in the Caribbean. They don't give a shit about some Puerto Ricans that lived there for 500 years and more and who speak Spanish, and are not interested in moving to a USA state. They want to remake the island as if there was no one there for five plus centuries. If they continue with that bullshit? I predict they will get some problems with the locals. For sure. Why is there trouble in paradise Mr. Jones aka Blackjack? The inferiors? No. The greedy. Lol.

You think this is going to work in the long run for the best for the USA? For the Caribbean region? For the world? I don't think it is. You are going to have angry people over time. Or people moving into the USA. To your neck of the woods. Spanish speakers and with college degrees and without them moving there to find work. More pressure. More Latinos moving in. Why? The bad decisions by the greedy. And the 'multicultural'. Who don't care about lily whitness and white race dominance either. Nationalism. Dead again with this stuff.

You might love it for your financial portfolio @blackjack21. A man who hates paying taxes. But you got to go and physically live there (6 months out of the year). Among the Puerto Ricans, or you may pay to live in gated communities, far from the rabble that broke into your place and left your China behind. Rabble American and islanders. Not quite isolated well enough. I will tell you this? The cops have left by the tens of thousands. From 27,000 cops to 7,000 cops left and they say crime is going up due to that. Why? The banks want to be paid first before teachers, clinics, road repair, water pipes repair, sewage updates, government employees, pensions for public sector employees and retirement, cop, fire fighters etc. So? The local Puerto Rican cops LEFT. To get a higher paying job in the mainland. Make more money, and get some real benefits and pay. With running water that is predictable, and electricity not mired in FEMA rules of backward grid types, and corrupt deals from local and federal government contractors. Also get decent public school funding. They left. You move there to protect your money? You might get some problems with the locals. The non criminal and the criminal. But if tax havens are all you care about? Give it a shot?

And if some American tax dodgers get shot by some radical Puerto Ricans pissed off at bad economic conditions while the class conscious think their stuff is untouchable? and make the news? They need to analyze what exactly did they do to shake up such hatred? Think about that. You can brag about saving some taxes as some crazy Boricuas shot you in the ass out of what? Snobbery? Lol. I think Naomi Klein covered it in her little book, "Battle for Paradise: Disaster Capitalism". I like Anthony Bourdain's take on it Blackjack. I will put in his short take on the situation on the island. Eh? Women running the show has nothing to do with failure. It is the power relationship and banks. Something the USA may have issues with too. You nationalists will have a mighty battle with those people as well trying to not destroy your imagined meritocracy and every class in its proper genetically determined slot place, una mierda as a thought as well.

So are the French and the Italians.

Latinos. Lol. I don't know. All roads lead to Rome for many people. You made me smile with this one. I am smiling. No jodas hombre!

Ok. Let's try Kenya, Japan, or Malaysia then. They are very different countries with very different cultures and languages. Is this "sexism" based upon some shared hatred of women? Or is it more or less reflecting the natural state of affairs?

How many times do I hate to repeat to you something Blackjack21? Eh? Sin verguenza (shameless man)? Human beings shape their society according to many factors culturally and economically. I am old fashioned with my research methods in cultural anthropology. You go out there do your 'thick description' and ethnographic studies and cultural studies and historical and empirical research. What are similar human traits? Why do they differ? What are the underpinning causations behind it? Power relationships? Do they change over time and why? Is there a pattern? It gets interesting. One of the most prolific and best selling authors of feminist literature is Japanese. Did I know this? No. Had to do research. It turns out feminist graphic novels and lit for reading on a bus, train or subway in Tokyo is about feminist perspectives. Spain as well. The shit one digs up about culture is almost endless Blackjack. No use making sweeping statements outside of cultural contexts. Culture is one of those great mysteries still in this world. My father was a linguist. His obsession were origins of words and dictionaries and tracing the origin of language families. No matter how hard the linguists tried? Could not get a hold of the first spoken human language and who spoke it first and why a grammar emerged. Too complex. Languages are living things. So are cultures. They emerge, die off, and another takes it place. Then you got places like Israel that revive dead languages to create an 'ethno/religious/cultural' state. It is fascinating really.

I'm more or less of the same persuasion. That's why I find all the "Trump is a sexist" stuff immensely funny. Who cares if he is a cannibal? As long as he cuts my taxes and gets the government out of my life, I frankly don't care.

I can't think that way Blackjack. I see my relationship to many others and other cultures, languages and nations and class of peoples? As all interlinked. I see things like nature does. She doesn't create boundaries and borders. She deals with topographies and tectonic plates, metamorphic rock, versus magma or shale, etc everything in an interdependent system relying on the existence of each other in a very cyclical and cause and effect style of natural manifestation. One part of the system is dysfunctional? It has to correct it somehow to gain balance. Humans are not separate from that system. I frankly care if we can't get our shit together in time to avoid disaster. If we don't care about large groups of people losing out on being able to stay stable? You will get mass immigration, resource scarcity, pollution and scientific disaster....in the making. I have a little boy of 7 years. I don't give a shit about my future anymore. I am old. Fifty three I turned three days ago. I may have 20 more years left of life. A blink of an eye. And I am no more. But the future I leave my little boy? It concerns me Blackjack. It sure does. I can't afford to not care.

People used to yammer on about doctors and lawyers being "elite." My father was a medical doctor. When I was a kid, most medical doctors were white men. Look around you today. Most doctors are Asian. They still make a better living than mechanics, for example. Are they oppressors now that they are not predominantly white men? What about Indian CEOs? I have a good friend who is from India (Brahmin). You might find it surprising, but in these debates he would more often than not side with me. The funny thing in America is that leftists would scarcely believe we were friends, because he has dark skin. He votes Republican, and lives in a pretty tony neighborhood. If you want to understand that dynamic, the best way to do that would be to read Charles Murray. However, he is derided as racist. The IQ argument is the most easily backed up by empirical evidence.

I don't really give IQ much credit. Some person handed my father the results of a school based IQ test long ago. I am a 142 apparently. What the hell does it mean? Not much. I can go and get hit by a truck and have some neuro-cognitive decline of a drastic nature. At that stage having universal health insurance would be critical,and the necessary infrastructure, and trauma care available to survive it. Months or years of physical and neurological therapy as well. All of us are vulnerable to the whims of fate or accident. Dumb luck. Or Divine Intervention. Privilege is ultimately fragile Blackjack.

You can believe that all you like. However, that is ideology speaking. It is not empirically true.

What is empirical true Senor Blackjack? According to a brilliant book I bought when my little baby was born about how babies learn? They are born with all cylinders firing off and little sponges of exponential learning capacities. You can see it on the big screen there with your medical coding software. The infant brain is a great thing. A phenomenon of power. So are many aspects of infant characteristics. That as adults we no longer have. The sleep cycles of small children are very deep and very interesting. Empirically speaking they are quite great. But if you see them as ínferiors? That is as far as you will get in understanding what makes babies brains tick. I am interested in how they process language so fast and perfectly. While adults acquiring new languages do it imperfectly, with accents and making errors so obvious, that native speakers can tell if a person speaks that language as a native or not right away. I learned English Blackjack at the age of 5 years old. Spoke only Spanish before then. No one says "Öh Tainari you must have spoken another language. You got an accent on your English"and this or that. They just assume I never spoke Spanish. No accent different than a native speaker. The same for my mother and father. They instead are surprised I speak other languages with equally native fluency. Why can a kid do that? A five year old? And an adult can't eh? Fascinating. They are not the ínferior you think they are Blackjack. They are just different.

That is a religious precept and has zero meaning in a government that rejects religion. That is like saying that marriage is about love when the word love doesn't occur at all in our law. However, such rhetoric does fool people who get their convictions from their emotions more than their thoughts.

I won't get into the political or legal history of marriage. Suffice it to say many alliances were not about love or romance. But convenience, self interest, property and negotiating and bartering. But humans do need companionship as well.


I won't argue with you about how you have lived your love life Blackjack. It looks like you were never in love. Some scientists studied the mental and emotional states of being in love of humans. It is interesting what they found out. I did not get your luck with love. I got some serious love in this life. For that I am eternally grateful. I think one scientist and psychologist stated that being in love was a state that is about the opposite feelings of fear. Love and fear are two of the most primal of human emotional states. It is also about pain and pleasure at the same time. About a lot of interesting things. It sure does feel damn good to be in love and to be loved. Emotions do have an influence on actions or inaction for sure. Erich Fromm is the psychological expert I like for my politics Blackjack. He deals with the concept of love and reason overcoming instinct in human beings. Who knows how much we are built to want love or be loved in our psychologies and physical existences?

I think Blackjack it would be presumptious of me to speculate about your own emotional relationships. I don't think it is my place to do so. But? I do think you are a good thinker. Maybe being a good lover can be there someday for you hand in hand? It might make you happier.....just suggesting?

I have not argued otherwise. You seem to be drawing the conclusion that not finding equal value is finding no value. It's a binary consideration for you. It is not for me.

No, what I am arguing is placing a value judgment on something that is not about some class system you justify in your head. You have to have that need for superior/inferior judgment. Not placed there by mother nature,but by your human error filled power based fear, fear in sharing power or losing power through your political formation BJ. In a socially and erroneously static state, that doesn't have a scientific basis really, to something never meant to be judged that way by you, or of your political persuasion. It is in error. It lacks complexity and empirical techniques. Start with giving people good diets, good educations, good housing, stability, rights, and invest in the entire human people. And then you can do the luxury of believing you are living in a true meritocracy.

Buenas noches BJ. I edited finally got the time!

[Hindsite]

You are a class conscious snob person, with a need to not have his taxes confiscated by a 'left leaning' state apparatus. Period.

I don't know about blackjack, but that sounds like me alright. I am in the redneck category too. Now that I see you have me figured out for the most part, I guess there is no point in reading the rest of your propaganda, since it will probably not help me one bit at my age. Anyway, I don't like to read a lot. Good luck with blackjack though.

[Tainari88]

I don't know about blackjack, but that sounds like me alright. I am in the redneck category too. Now that I see you have me figured out for the most part, I guess there is no point in reading the rest of your propaganda, since it will probably not help me one bit at my age. Anyway, I don't like to read a lot. Good luck with blackjack though.

I love to read. It helps you to not believe in right wing pro-capitalism, redneck or petite bourgeoisie propaganda--telling you that selfish nasty politics is the only system worth pursuing.
Lol.
Take care of yourself Hindsite and go to a Jesse Norman concert someday...you might wind up liking opera!☺

[Hindsite]

Take care of yourself Hindsite and go to a Jesse Norman concert someday...you might wind up liking opera!☺

I thought I told you that type opera just sounds like hollering that hurts my ears. I like the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. Dolly Parton, especially.
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/dolly ... pry-member
HalleluYah.

[blackjack21]

I don't accept your explanation Blackjack. I think you are justifying your own privileges and don't really care about equality because in your paradigm of nationalism you see yourself and your individual interests as primordial and your ethnic group and class category as primordial.

My nationalism is civic, not ethnic. In my criticism of the establishment, I have routinely pointed out that the effort to drive down the wages of the working class (of which I am not a member) adversely affects blacks and Hispanics even worse than it does whites. For all the criticism of Trump as some sort of racist, he has indeed fulfilled a big part of his promise to Hispanic Americans and black Americans in driving down the unemployment rate and improving wages for people, while simultaneously cutting their taxes.

In other words, you don't want to know, or even contemplate any equality.

Allowing others to live off the fruits of my labor certainly doesn't serve my interests. I am simply countering someone like Elizabeth Warren or Barack Obama who say, "You didn't create that." I sure as fuck did, and the government wasn't there to help me during my workday either. They are there to take nearly half of my wages though.

You are a class conscious snob person, with a need to not have his taxes confiscated by a 'left leaning' state apparatus.

Snobbery isn't the opposite of economic egalitarianism. Most Americans are not in favor of economic egalitarianism. Americans are generally seeking upward mobility, and that is why they no longer trust the establishment to look out for their interests.

Empirical knowledge if it contradicts your own class conscious self interest? Will be roundly rejected by you.

That's rubbish.

It also answers why the Brahmin doctor friend of yours does the same.

Before he was an American citizen, we made sure that he had an H1-B with the option of becoming a US citizen. We also had another colleague who was black who was being grossly underpaid for his work. We took that to the management too, and he more than doubled his salary. He is from Cameroon, speaks French as a first language, and didn't understand how to negotiate a better salary for himself. He's done very well for himself. This was back in the late 1990s. Your type of socialist doesn't want to see those people rise up. You just want to drag everyone else down to live in mud huts and have a ramshackle existence.

Didn't you try putting me down with moron and idiot?

You consider that oppression? Your economic ideas generally don't make sense. Rather than point that out to you, I pointed it out when you said something that made sense. Perhaps you are just oversensitive and maybe a little neurotic.

You also judge people by how much money they make, or if their nation is financially solvent or not.

That's a bit of a one dimensional characterization of me.

The USA's deficit is pretty high. A lot of bankruptcies in the USA.

Indeed. Our governing establishment puts their interests ahead of the national interest. That is why they are on the outs. That's why establishment politicians in Europe are facing the same thing. Even Brazil has a new leader, if you haven't noticed.

A few had some low brow, fairly low paid work. Money did not motivate them. Hmmm? Different value system maybe?

That is fine. I have no problem with that at all. I have a problem with people who like to use state power to acquire for themselves things at other people's expense. That is why I have been routinely critical of the establishment in the bailouts engineered in 2009--taking tax payer money and then paying out six and seven figure bonuses. If the communists came and decided to execute Hank Paulson, I would not be coming to his defense.

The solution for most nations is to create enough stability economically, socially and politically to be able to have people prefer to stay put in their native nations and avoid the hassle, problems and instability and risk that goes hand-in-hand with immigrating to another country.

Now who is judging people by economics, social values and politics? Maybe some societies aren't motivated by that sort of thing. Maybe they want to implement a medieval Islamic state, because religion is what motivates them. According to the multiculturalists, we're supposed to be accepting of all these different ways to live, aren't we?

I am pro independence on that issue. I think Puerto Rico is another culture, has another history, and never was meant to coalesce into, and integrate itself, with the USA.

Hey. We agree on something!

You read the insular cases and found them very bizarre. I remember reading your opinion on that.

I find them enlightening, and generally suggest that others should read them. I would use terms like "peculiar" rather than "bizarre," since the Insular Cases illustrate how the US operates in different contexts. It is a bit of a chore to hash through Downes v. Bidwell. Additionally, when I suggest people do that, they think that I'm proffering some sort of "evidence" that will make them agree with me. I think people should read them so that they can open their eyes to how the United States is actually structured constitutionally and how it actually runs in view of being sovereign over nations it has no intention of incorporating into "the People."

Bizarre shit, and weird colonial relationships, with your kind of Virgin Island, Libertarian style no-taxation haven.

Right. Why? Because I do not receive value for the taxes I pay and my income isn't tied to this jurisdiction. The Virgin Islands is even more peculiar than Puerto Rico.

That is what Puerto Rico faces now. Crypto currency moguls (Puerto cryptos),descending on the island wanting to buy up cheap land and be free of taxes from Uncle Sam. Create the island in their own plan and image. They had a meeting with a bunch of Puerto Ricans. Do you want me to post the video? How that went over? It is not pretty. The privileged like you? Men with money that they want to be free from the claws of liberal taxation needs to move to some islands in the Caribbean. They don't give a shit about some Puerto Ricans that lived there for 500 years and more and who speak Spanish, and are not interested in moving to a USA state. They want to remake the island as if there was no one there for five plus centuries. If they continue with that bullshit? I predict they will get some problems with the locals. For sure. Why is there trouble in paradise Mr. Jones aka Blackjack? The inferiors? No. The greedy. Lol.

I think we could create an entire thread on that, since it has little to do with the OP. In fact, your citation of Anthony Bourdain illustrates exactly what happens when the tax incentives for corporations go away. Bourdain noted Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Detroit in the same sentence. What do they all have in common? Left-of-center political policies that lead them to economic disaster. With Puerto Rico, however, some of the problems were beyond their control.

And if some American tax dodgers get shot by some radical Puerto Ricans pissed off at bad economic conditions while the class conscious think their stuff is untouchable? and make the news? They need to analyze what exactly did they do to shake up such hatred? Think about that.

Sure. When it happens to the poor migrants, the media calls it a "hate crime."

I like Anthony Bourdain's take on it Blackjack.

I do too.

You nationalists will have a mighty battle with those people as well trying to not destroy your imagined meritocracy and every class in its proper genetically determined slot place, una mierda as a thought as well.

We do--the world over. The bankers may be the ones getting shot at Tainari88.

I am a 142 apparently. What the hell does it mean? Not much.

It means that you can get through a college curriculum that people with an IQ of 90 cannot.

I can go and get hit by a truck and have some neuro-cognitive decline of a drastic nature. At that stage having universal health insurance would be critical,and the necessary infrastructure, and trauma care available to survive it.

Regrettably, our medical knowledge isn't as sophisticated as the establishment would have you believe.

Privilege is ultimately fragile Blackjack.

No doubt. That is why the well off are leaving California, and even the United States--and taking their privilege with them.

They are not the ínferior you think they are Blackjack. They are just different.

I didn't say they were inferior. I said they were not equal. You just pointed that out in a very lengthy manner.

I won't argue with you about how you have lived your love life Blackjack. It looks like you were never in love.

Never married. That's a big difference. If I grew up in the Midwest, I'd probably be married. I grew up in a very liberal area and the invective against men now is worse than it was when I was growing up. If anything, just getting away from leftists would probably make me happier.

Start with giving people good diets, good educations, good housing, stability, rights, and invest in the entire human people. And then you can do the luxury of believing you are living in a true meritocracy.

George W. Bush tried that in Iraq. It didn't work out so well. Universalism is dangerous in my opinion.

Take care of yourself Hindsite and go to a Jesse Norman concert someday...you might wind up liking opera!☺

I'm not much of an Opera fan either. I do enjoy symphony though. A friend of mine and I were huge fans of Midori Goto's playing.

Ironically, I'm also happy at an AC/DC concert. Diverse tastes, I guess.

[Tainari88]

I thought I told you that type opera just sounds like hollering that hurts my ears. I like the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. Dolly Parton, especially.
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/dolly ... pry-member
HalleluYah.

I love Dolly Parton. She is intelligent. sweet, good, talented and authentic. Tremendous respect and admiration for her as a person.

Can't say enough good things about her. Her imagination library for young children? I love it! May she always have every good thing in the world. She is the best!

[Tainari88]

My nationalism is civic, not ethnic. In my criticism of the establishment, I have routinely pointed out that the effort to drive down the wages of the working class (of which I am not a member) adversely affects blacks and Hispanics even worse than it does whites. For all the criticism of Trump as some sort of racist, he has indeed fulfilled a big part of his promise to Hispanic Americans and black Americans in driving down the unemployment rate and improving wages for people, while simultaneously cutting their taxes.

Don't agree with that at all Blackjack. The wages have remained relative to cost of living increases and benefits and affordable housing, affordable health care, etc as abysmal still. Especially in the African American and Latin American communities. Total disagreement with your assessment Blackjack. The only big difference tax cuts the Trumpetista man has done of any real significance has been with the ultra wealthy. I also don't like Hispanic American. No. It is badly thought out that word. Hispanic has a root origin of "Spain"and most Latin Americans never grew up, were born or have culturally specific ties to that region of the world. Nor direct links to that culture except speaking Spanish. You can say that because an African person speaks English they are English or Anglo.....call them English Americans? No, you would not. So I am against Hispanic for most Latin American people Latino is different. It is a very inclusive word. Covers a lot. Apparently the old Romans thought the Iberian Peninsula or Spain was a good place to hunt for rabbits. The name stuck. We are not from the land of the rabbits Blackjack. That would be a Spaniard. Most Americans are not even of Anglo extraction but German and Irish, etc. And the 'Hispanos' are very contentious too. Spaniards are culturally rebellious and regionalistic and always fight against Madrid, and the idea of centralized power. The Basques want to pull away all the time, so do the Catalonians, the Galicians, etc. Spanish unity is not very strong. Never has been. You would know this if you studied Spanish culture in depth. Lol. But most people don't.

Allowing others to live off the fruits of my labor certainly doesn't serve my interests. I am simply countering someone like Elizabeth Warren or Barack Obama who say, "You didn't create that." I sure as fuck did, and the government wasn't there to help me during my workday either. They are there to take nearly half of my wages though.

Lol. Go ahead and believe in an overblown ego and selfishness Blackjack. Thinking that your own individual greatness is somehow responsible for your comforts in life. It is not. Every damn thing you ever accomplished in this world is based upon group contributions. No way around that. You can pound your fictional fantasy of individual accomplishments into the ground and it won't make them true. Ever. Did you invent and think of every thing you touch in your day with your fingers? Did you sew your own clothes, and pull the fruits and vegetables out of the ground that you eat? Or any other product? No you did not. It is all from a source coming from groups. Individuals organized into production groups and with group goals economically shaped, creating a system you benefit from. You thinking that you have the right to live apart from that is the biggest lie of all. But if you want to believe in that? Who am I to stop you? Lol. Go ahead. Fruits of your greatness? No.

Snobbery isn't the opposite of economic egalitarianism. Most Americans are not in favor of economic egalitarianism. Americans are generally seeking upward mobility, and that is why they no longer trust the establishment to look out for their interests.

Most Americans think if you work a full time job you should be able to make end's meet. Many work at a full time job and can't make end's meet and need to find a second job. They forego seeing their kids regularly and having a decent personal life. How long are they going to be able to keep up that bullshit? Who knows? Without a balance between work, family and personal life? You will have burn out and desperation. Which you have now. The establishment loves to cater to corrupt powerful interests that feed off of keeping people with two or more low paid professions, and don't give a shit about the overall picture because they are tunnel visioned fools. In many ways.

That's rubbish.

It will Blackjack. I have read you a long time. Maybe we can start a thread some day on all the empirically presented evidence you have been presented with that you roundly reject because it is interpreted as unpalatable 'leftism' to you. You are almost knee jerk with that stuff. Really.

Before he was an American citizen, we made sure that he had an H1-B with the option of becoming a US citizen. We also had another colleague who was black who was being grossly underpaid for his work. We took that to the management too, and he more than doubled his salary. He is from Cameroon, speaks French as a first language, and didn't understand how to negotiate a better salary for himself. He's done very well for himself. This was back in the late 1990s. Your type of socialist doesn't want to see those people rise up. You just want to drag everyone else down to live in mud huts and have a ramshackle existence.

You are painting me the way you want me to be painted. Lol. I don't want to see Black people succeed eh? Like who? My son? Yet you won't adopt a Black child. You won't volunteer to go and teach coding to who? Yet I am the one holding the Blacks back now? Do you see how horrible that sounds? No, I don't think you do. My type of socialism is not about talking sheer shit about don't let the kids get expensive laptops because they don't respect the money involved. They are 90 IQs and not worth the effort. Etc etc. No, that is not I Blackjack. That is YOU. No, I am a reasonable and scientific thinking socialist. Thinking that within a reasonable and effective framework full of well researched ideas and measured for greatest efficacy implementation, the great leap forward is possible. All within efficient forethought,and sound economic policy one can get great schools, decent housing, good medical care, and excellent development within a reasonable and environmentally respectful base. That means that exaggerated ostentatious wealth and vulgar flashing of wealth and ego is not going to go over well in that system. Just as an egotistical selfish maniac wanting billions to 'live on modestly' is sheer bullshit. No one needs billions to 'live'. They need billions to control and have power over others. Most adults don't need even 100k a year salaries to live well. In some states a lot less even. Be reasonable. I think people should not be making thousands of times more in salary than the lowest paid worker in their organization. It is not only unfair and not a good thing. But socially irresponsible. A single individual sitting on funds that should be circulating through to help many in need? When a person needs a regular and reasonable amount of material things to live. Not exaggerated shit that not only is not good for the entire globe in terms of having to produce for small elite groups only? But? Will wind up obsolete for future generations.

You consider that oppression? Your economic ideas generally don't make sense. Rather than point that out to you, I pointed it out when you said something that made sense. Perhaps you are just oversensitive and maybe a little neurotic.

No, you are feeling uncomfortable because you did imply I am a moron and idiotic when I am not that. Not even by some test you happen to respect and that I don't respect. It had to do with your own ideas about the Left you have issues with. I am not a corporate liberal at all. I don't believe in that at all. I am into true equality. Not hypocrisy. Apparently that makes you uncomfortable for some reason. Or you are indifferent. You don't care. The reality of this is Blackjack? You can't influence anyone if you don't care about them. You can't. People are not stupid, dumb or as ignorant as some think they are. If they know you don't give a shit about them? You don't respect their ethnic group or are patronizing them in some way....which you do all day and every day? You ultimately? Are not going to be doing a damn thing of influence on those people. You will be limiting yourself severely. Especially in California. Because most of the people there are not white and don't vote for the Right in big numbers. Not only are you a minority in that state politically? Ethnically? But in terms of you being socially effective and influential--you fail. Big time. Due to lack of caring. Lack of caring? Leads to NO INFLUENCE. Period. El Fin de Blackjack influence.

That's a bit of a one dimensional characterization of me.

No Senor Blackjack. I am reflecting on the values you have spouted so far in our exchanges. I am. I don't know you in real life, but in fora debates it is only about exchange of ideas and political viewpoints, data, and information. It is not about getting to live with someone for many years and knowing their true personalities. That takes a lot of time Blackjack21. Dedication. And one usually does that with people one cares for deeply. Time is precious. Really great friendships and loving relationships take up a lot of time. I decided to debate with you for various reasons? One reason is that you are thorough in your replies. And long. So am I. And I think that makes for satisfying contrasts in thoughts. At least for me. Others love brevity all the time. You also are arrogant as hell. Lol. Arrogant men thinking they know a lot more than little ole me. Lol. That is very common. Especially for men of your political persuasion. But? I leave this fora for years sometimes, I will do that again soon. And when I return periodically I find people PMíng me about very old threads saying to me that they liked my responses. It surprised me Blackjack. Why are people digging up my old posts? Maybe I have some validity in writing this. After all. I know you don't like what I write. I don't write anymore for others. I haven't done that for a long time. I write for me and because I want to or like to. But then? One should focus on what is valuable. Do projects that one respects and loves. Don't waste time on trying to convince people that their political viewpoint is invalid. Life teaches a lot of stuff to people. No need to tell them they are wrong. Enough time for that when people get older and realize how many life mistakes they have committed. I will be truthful with you Blackjack. I kind of like you a lot more now that I have debated you. You can paint me any way you like. Lol. It won't be true probably. But? At least you want to talk....el progreso happens in many forms.

Indeed. Our governing establishment puts their interests ahead of the national interest. That is why they are on the outs. That's why establishment politicians in Europe are facing the same thing. Even Brazil has a new leader, if you haven't noticed.

Populism and the Right is gaining ground because the neo-liberal forces insisting on the lower classes in many nations, to compete with the Third World destabilized people migrating en masse into the First World is a problem. But if they keep thinking that the solution is to have ignorant types screaming and hating on 'the foreign' and it becomes unstable? Due to not addressing the issue of stability in all the nations to keep people from leaving in the first place? Will ultimately fail. Unless you endorse an ethnic cleansing war Blackjack? That perspective is not going to do well in creating peace, prosperity and safety for many in a nation. It leads to destabilizing influences.

That is fine. I have no problem with that at all. I have a problem with people who like to use state power to acquire for themselves things at other people's expense. That is why I have been routinely critical of the establishment in the bailouts engineered in 2009--taking tax payer money and then paying out six and seven figure bonuses. If the communists came and decided to execute Hank Paulson, I would not be coming to his defense.

Yes, I hate fake socialists and fake power hungry selfish bastards in every ideology of the political spectrum. Yes, indeed, they exist in every political stripe. The fake lying pieces of crap hanging on to their political spoutings when in reality it is about their own selfish stealing, lying selves. I have no compassion for those fakers at all. If you are a capitalist and pro business then be consistent. If your effing bank fails. Don't come crying to the federal government taxpayers to bail your ass out of your own bad capitalistic selfish stupid decisions in financial problems.

Now who is judging people by economics, social values and politics? Maybe some societies aren't motivated by that sort of thing. Maybe they want to implement a medieval Islamic state, because religion is what motivates them. According to the multiculturalists, we're supposed to be accepting of all these different ways to live, aren't we?

Look Blackjack, you don't spend time studying diametrically and drastically different from you cultures. You don't. I can tell by how you write on this forum. You don't hang around and study different languages all day long and analyzing different cultural modes of thought, etc. It is not your thing. You really don't understand or are truly caring about dealing with getting to what makes cultures vary all over the world. That is not your field. It is mine. The first thing you need to do if you want to get to understand cultures you never been exposed to before is to leave your value judgments at the door. You need to immerse yourself in their way of life. For years. And even then? You will never have an insider's perspective on what that human experience is all about. You will be an outsider but an informed one after doing a hell of a lot of work. That is why so many mistakes are made by political leaders and governments who come from extremely different cultural matrix from each other. They assume that the other party shares their values and their values are universal and all encompassing. They usually are not. Values and cultures vary enormously. Being human is also about what is shared without a doubt. One can assume for example that someone who is a healthy adult? Has to eat, has to have a certain amount of physical exercise, has to be brought up by a culture, speaks a language that influences their way of thinking. Etc. etc. Air, is necessary for life, water too, food, minimal medical treatment, dental care, if they are educated (someone taught them things). People reproduce by the same method. Generally. Many things are just universal. Others are not at all. That is what one has to realize. And go from there.

One has to do a lot of work in a society to understand how it functions at all. Arabic for example? It is one of the five top languages spoken in the world. How is it written? Who has developed that culture? And you go deep into it. Before you know it? Weird ass behavior becomes very normal and understandable. For example someone when I was teaching a class asked me why Muslims bent down so low to the ground while praying and worshiping and how come Catholics had pews with cushions you pulled down and did not require that. I said, "Well think about it? You got something low to the ground...you are humbling yourself. You are near the dirt, the lowest of the low....that is to remind yourself that God is greater. You are nothing. Keeping the ego in check. Kneeling in church does the same effect. You are nothing in suffering in front of the Cross and the passion. Your problems are not as great. Check the ego again. There is a theme. A pattern. You go one by one....you find meaning in supposedly scary differences.

Hey. We agree on something!

Yes we do. But I think I agree not believing Puerto Ricans are the inferiors, and knowing we can do well running our own society if we get rid of that long, long history of being a colony of other nations who never gave a shit about us for many centuries. And I am not interested in pursuing a Boricua Empire. Colonizing the world into dancing salsa, drinking pina coladas, and eating piononos. I love the idea of a peaceful island nation, having good relationships with the rest of South America, the rest of the Caribbean islands, and Europe, Asia, Africa and the world. And being a good neighbor to all. Simple and unambitious of dreams of grandeur. YOU? I suspect is to get rid of the darkies. Lol. I am sorry Blackjack. I really think that is why you want us to be independent. Not out of equality or solidarity with Puerto Ricans. But you don't like people who are not of your ethnicity, mindset, etc. Lol. I do.

Dr Roades the Cancer Doctor racist man...read about his great opinion of us:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-horrifying- ... 1507897479

I find them enlightening, and generally suggest that others should read them. I would use terms like "peculiar" rather than "bizarre," since the Insular Cases illustrate how the US operates in different contexts. It is a bit of a chore to hash through Downes v. Bidwell. Additionally, when I suggest people do that, they think that I'm proffering some sort of "evidence" that will make them agree with me. I think people should read them so that they can open their eyes to how the United States is actually structured constitutionally and how it actually runs in view of being sovereign over nations it has no intention of incorporating into "the People."

Oh Blackjack. The Native American tribes are ruled by the same department as Puerto Rico and American Samoa, Guam, etc. It is about imperial ambitions and how to cope with expansion of the American Empire. All empires have bizarre reasoning legally speaking about invading lands and cultures that are not part of the initial system. Rome had that too. It is very interesting. Guam has WWII American troops leaving Guam when Japan invaded in WWII and they did not warn the Chamorros (native Guam people)...only warned the 'white'Americans and had them evacuated. A lot of weird racist incidents with the unincorporated territories histories. We had Rhodes. Dr. Rhodes. Here is his perspective. Being a doctor and a racist as he was? Would you approve of his 'solution' for Puerto Rico? Here:

Right. Why? Because I do not receive value for the taxes I pay and my income isn't tied to this jurisdiction. The Virgin Islands is even more peculiar than Puerto Rico.

I wonder Blackjack? If you were a native Puerto Rican? Born and raise there? Would you think things were going well? Lol. I don't know. One of the failings of the way the Right thinks about things is being incredibly unable to be put in other people's positions which they deem their ínferiors. Could you?

I think we could create an entire thread on that, since it has little to do with the OP. In fact, your citation of Anthony Bourdain illustrates exactly what happens when the tax incentives for corporations go away. Bourdain noted Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Detroit in the same sentence. What do they all have in common? Left-of-center political policies that lead them to economic disaster. With Puerto Rico, however, some of the problems were beyond their control.

Well Blackjack the issue is not Law 936. Or anything like that. It is about how international capital works. If they can pull up out of there and go to a place to set up shop a lot cheaper? They will. Again, they are not about national loyalties. They left the Rust Belt in bad shape too. It is not about respecting their presence. It is about dealing with shifting markets that only favor a one sided powerful group. It will be problematic for many nations. Not just PR. Or the USA as well. But many.

Sure. When it happens to the poor migrants, the media calls it a "hate crime."

I am sorry Blackjack. I don't have tolerance for very obscenely wealthy people living in the lap of luxury and surrounded by bodyguards, and gated communities when outside the walls there are very very bad living conditions for the vast majority of people in their own nations. Ferdinand Marcos, comes to mind, many dictators, and that ass of a president with Gold T's everywhere too. I don't really find a big soft heart for those people. Lack of conciencia colectiva. I am my brother and sister's keeper in my value system Blackjack. I don't think I am content to live apart from the majority of society's problems. I find it not only unrealistic but callous and heartless to do so. And ultimately again? Ineffective. Again, if you don't care? You don't influence. Period.

I do too.

Yes, he thought that the limbo state Puerto Rico was in was a problem waiting to come back to create issues over time in a big way. I don't think he was wrong on that. I wonder about that man committing suicide? With a young daughter and a lot of money? It seems he was in fairly good health? Who knows what led him to that action? People get depressed. And sometimes they don't even know how to snap out of it. It is hard. Life can be a challenge even with the ones with all the best circumstances. Love and reason again. Love and reason. What I like best.

We do--the world over. The bankers may be the ones getting shot at Tainari88.

Lol. They think they are invisible and no one is noticing what the hell they do. Untouchables. Like Al Capone. Lol. No, they are not. They better change their ways or they will find the system they dearly love and that they manipulate will collapse and they will be like Mussolini, killed by the mob.

It means that you can get through a college curriculum that people with an IQ of 90 cannot.

I don't know about that. I started out in journalism and mass communication, then switched to anthropology. Then went on to more anthropology and more individually structured curriculum. I got straight A's and perfect scores in International Politics. That professor back in the eighties wanted me to make a career of it. He said I was outstanding at it. Lol. I was very good at theater too. Did registers and different accents from all over the world well. That was my father's influence I think. Southern bell accents, British accents, New Yorker accents. Lol. All of them. Hee hee. I love hard workers Blackjack. I am realizing that well disciplined people with a lot of hard work and efforts get a lot farther in life than supposedly 'brilliant' slackers ever do. Also people who love to listen and learn from others and never believe that they are the best at anything. Self critical people do well too. Hard on their own mistakes and a lot softer on others. That is the best way to be.

Regrettably, our medical knowledge isn't as sophisticated as the establishment would have you believe.

I used to work in the early two thousands for a public health/preventive care center for the state. I learned a lot. Prevention of disease is a lot cheaper than treating an advanced illness. But? Somehow the cheap and effective doesn't really get the highest priorities in this society. The expensive and the profit driven does.

No doubt. That is why the well off are leaving California, and even the United States--and taking their privilege with them.

Ultimately the important thing is if the privileged start seeing the writing on the wall and start becoming open to dealing with social and economic issues without selfish shit involved. Because if they don't? The same pattern one sees in many nations' revolutions will be there destiny as well.

I didn't say they were inferior. I said they were not equal. You just pointed that out in a very lengthy manner.

Ay Blackjack. Here we go again. My point is simple. Let me be crystal clear. Again. What is equality? For me? And for science too. Don't place value judgments on what is found in nature. Most of nature has a specific purpose for all of its creations. It evolved that way. Mutations. Alleles. All of it is about a part of evolution. Nothing is unchanging. Over time everything changes. Let me give you an example Senor Blackjack. You got an A bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It dropped on some pregnant women. When they were autopsied? They found the fetuses being arrested in different evolutionary stages. Reptilian skin on the babies. Strange things revealed. Medical doctors had to conclude that as fetuses we (the human species) were part of all the lower life forms. At some stage of development. We cycle through our past stages while developing...sort of like a movie that says, this is what we were before now, and this is who we are in the present, this is the new instruction to follow. Does it ever occur to us? That without the presence of all that went before and struggles for the right to live now? Is also connected to us endemically? That all of us as humans are interconnected? That what happens to one part of our planet inhabited by all that fantastic diverse and varied beauty of cultural legacy? Is all part of a whole. That we have the choice to use it to solve problems, or to destroy it out of hubris, pride, arrogance and ignorance. Denying our common bonds for the sake of short term gains and superficial forms of vanity.

No se, Blackjack. We are limited in many ways still. Got a lot to learn.

Never married. That's a big difference. If I grew up in the Midwest, I'd probably be married. I grew up in a very liberal area and the invective against men now is worse than it was when I was growing up. If anything, just getting away from leftists would probably make me happier.

Lol. We are everywhere. The Borg from Star Trek.....'resistance is futile'. Lol. I want to get away from dumbells screaming at me in parking lots talking about 'Go back to Mexico.'Lol. I want to say to them, I am not Mexican you dumb ass idiot. But what use is it to talk to you? You think of us like some big morass of sameness. Because for you? We are. Lol. Oh, ignorance and all that comes with it can be so tiring Blackjack. I don't like the Right at all. Especially the most ignorant and nasty and selfish among that group. No, I don't.

George W. Bush tried that in Iraq. It didn't work out so well. Universalism is dangerous in my opinion.

No, what works are people who are within themselves members of various cultures and societies. That can see many things at once. Working hard on making it work. It is called, multilingual, multicultural and incredibly open minded and well educated people. Translators, diplomats and people who see a lot of common ways to work together cross culturally. Being lovers of only their own culture and never seeing any value in other cultures? Not much different than the screamers in the parking lot I ran into Blackjack. Those kind of thinkers? Will bring war, and death to the world with their tunnel vision limited shit thinking. For sure.

I'm not much of an Opera fan either. I do enjoy symphony though. A friend of mine and I were huge fans of Midori Goto's playing.

Ironically, I'm also happy at an AC/DC concert. Diverse tastes, I guess.

I was reminding Hindsite that he lives in Augusta, Georgia. The most famous Opera singer from that city internationally recognized? All over the world one of the greatest is Jesse Norman. A black woman from Georgia. His hometown. A black woman from a very small city in a very bourgeois artsy profession. A contradiction to stereotypes. Lol. It was my way of telling Hindsite to stretch himself.

I don't like opera either. Lol. The only exception is Andrea Bocelli. Always loved him.

[Potemkin]

I don't like opera either. Lol. The only exception is Andrea Bocelli. Always loved him.

You should listen to some of Mozart's operas, Tainari....

In fact, here's the whole damn thing....

[Tainari88]

You should listen to some of Mozart's operas, Tainari....

In fact, here's the whole damn thing....

Hmm. Mozart eh?

How are you doing there Potemkin? You schemer extraordinaire. I am stuck here with piles of boxes full of junk to sift through. I found my father's old plays, and short stories and poems. Made me smile. Also his diplomas....lol. Old photos from when he was a young man in the Air Force. He looks a lot like my son....lol.

I am thinking of my father's smile. I love your smile too Potemkin. You have a lovely smile.

Here is a set of songs I would love to see produced and set to ballet someday darling. I wish they would do that one someday. They did it on public television way back in the seventies. But it would be great set to a new arrangement today. Something Lin Manuel Miranda of Alexander Hamilton fame. Another pro independence man that Mr. Miranda. All of the best of us are....pro independence.


What do you think @Potemkin about the debate I have going with the @blackjack21 here?

I am starting to like his answers. They are getting increasingly spontaneous with me. A great insight to him as a person. He is sick of leftists. He doesn't realize the dumbells with the racism are hard to take. He needs to live in my shoes for a while....suffer the dummies who love racist nationalistic narrow minded ignorant stupidity. Lol. Lock em in the room with those and suffer....

Big kiss Bellisimo!

you know I like para los viejitos:

Will you dance with me Potemkin? This number....come on....you can try at least....Hee hee hee...

[blackjack21]

The wages have remained relative to cost of living increases and benefits and affordable housing, affordable health care, etc as abysmal still.

They are finally heading in the right direction. If they can cut illegal immigration to the United States, things will finally get better for our working class.

The only big difference tax cuts the Trumpetista man has done of any real significance has been with the ultra wealthy.

It's also a major help to small business owners. That's where most of the hiring comes from in America.

I also don't like Hispanic American. No. It is badly thought out that word. Hispanic has a root origin of "Spain"and most Latin Americans never grew up, were born or have culturally specific ties to that region of the world. Nor direct links to that culture except speaking Spanish. You can say that because an African person speaks English they are English or Anglo.....call them English Americans? No, you would not.

They would be called Anglophone. White is a badly thought out word too. It doesn't stop the conversation.

So I am against Hispanic for most Latin American people Latino is different. It is a very inclusive word. Covers a lot.

Except they aren't Latin either, and don't speak Latin. They have no ties to the Roman Empire.

Most Americans are not even of Anglo extraction but German and Irish, etc.

I'm English and Irish. I get called "white." I suppose I could throw hissy fits from here to kingdom come about it, but I really don't see the point in it.

You would know this if you studied Spanish culture in depth. Lol. But most people don't.

I've been there, so I am well aware. That's also true in the UK. The Cornish, the Scottish and the Welsh have various independence movements.

Lol. Go ahead and believe in an overblown ego and selfishness Blackjack. Thinking that your own individual greatness is somehow responsible for your comforts in life. It is not. Every damn thing you ever accomplished in this world is based upon group contributions. No way around that. You can pound your fictional fantasy of individual accomplishments into the ground and it won't make them true. Ever. Did you invent and think of every thing you touch in your day with your fingers? Did you sew your own clothes, and pull the fruits and vegetables out of the ground that you eat? Or any other product? No you did not. It is all from a source coming from groups. Individuals organized into production groups and with group goals economically shaped, creating a system you benefit from. You thinking that you have the right to live apart from that is the biggest lie of all. But if you want to believe in that? Who am I to stop you? Lol. Go ahead. Fruits of your greatness? No.

You think like a banker or a politician. Everything done by someone else is somehow yours to expropriate. People generate things of value and exchange them for comparative advantage. That doesn't mean that you get to drive off in your neighbor's car. If you want to call that a lie, have at it. I wouldn't try that as a defense in a court of law, though.

The establishment loves to cater to corrupt powerful interests that feed off of keeping people with two or more low paid professions, and don't give a shit about the overall picture because they are tunnel visioned fools. In many ways.

Yes, and they are facing a political comeuppance in the West.

You won't volunteer to go and teach coding to who?

What makes you think I haven't?

No, I am a reasonable and scientific thinking socialist. Thinking that within a reasonable and effective framework full of well researched ideas and measured for greatest efficacy implementation, the great leap forward is possible. All within efficient forethought,and sound economic policy one can get great schools, decent housing, good medical care, and excellent development within a reasonable and environmentally respectful base.

Yes, but even you are moving to Mexico, not Cuba or Venezuela or Bolivia. We've been hearing about this utopian vision for many lifetimes. Yet, it always seems so elusive.

No, you are feeling uncomfortable because you did imply I am a moron and idiotic when I am not that.

Well you do advocate for an economic system that produces dismal results everywhere it is tried. What's the excuse for Maduro's government? I suppose it's all the outside forces that just don't want to get along with Maduro's government, because it cannot possibly be the fault of socialists. Right?

Apparently that makes you uncomfortable for some reason.

I've travelled far and wide. I've seen how most of the rest of the world lives, and I would not like to join them.

Do projects that one respects and loves. Don't waste time on trying to convince people that their political viewpoint is invalid. Life teaches a lot of stuff to people. No need to tell them they are wrong.

I think your ideas are based on unsound assumptions. The world will change in ways you do not expect. Many of the efforts put forth by what are now called "social justice warriors" do not pan out as hoped.

For example, in efforts to establish pay equity for women, academics and politicians devised a system of categorizing jobs and skill levels. They asserted that women working as receptionists had a similar skill level to men working as HVAC technicians. So what did they do? Push for higher wages for female receptionists.

You may thing that is a project worthwhile and respect and love such work. Market forces respond. How? It becomes a market opportunity to automate phone routing. So now there is nobody answering the phone. A computer does it.

I've said before when I was working at Bank of America, I remember telling my boss' boss that corporations would soon be outsourcing entire chunks of their workforce overseas. He said, "that'll never happen." Do you know what I was working on? A call routing application for customer service at a bank. A huge chunk of those jobs went to India. That's great for India, but it sucks for people who used to do those jobs who are now slinging coffee at Starbucks or something, or perhaps are unemployed or underemployed. Most repetitive work will start getting automated over the next 20 years. It will be making those with lower skill levels and lower IQs more and more redundant.

Due to not addressing the issue of stability in all the nations to keep people from leaving in the first place? Will ultimately fail.

That's another one of those universalist/Olympian assumptions that there is some collective "we" who can manage situations all over the world. We cannot. So such efforts will fail. That is why I reject the idea that egalitarianism is going to set all things right.

Unless you endorse an ethnic cleansing war Blackjack? That perspective is not going to do well in creating peace, prosperity and safety for many in a nation. It leads to destabilizing influences.

That is already happening. The largest recent example was the deliberate destabilization of Syria by the Obama administration. They will never be called out for it, because being a Democrat means never having to say you are sorry.

Yes, I hate fake socialists and fake power hungry selfish bastards in every ideology of the political spectrum. Yes, indeed, they exist in every political stripe. The fake lying pieces of crap hanging on to their political spoutings when in reality it is about their own selfish stealing, lying selves. I have no compassion for those fakers at all. If you are a capitalist and pro business then be consistent. If your effing bank fails. Don't come crying to the federal government taxpayers to bail your ass out of your own bad capitalistic selfish stupid decisions in financial problems.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Look Blackjack, you don't spend time studying diametrically and drastically different from you cultures. You don't. I can tell by how you write on this forum. You don't hang around and study different languages all day long and analyzing different cultural modes of thought, etc. It is not your thing. You really don't understand or are truly caring about dealing with getting to what makes cultures vary all over the world. That is not your field. It is mine.

I don't purport to be a sociologist or anthropologist. However, I am both well travelled and well read. I'm not fluent in any other languages. This is true, but I can speak a few hundred words of Russian, and with no traceable accent--enough to freak out Russians who think I might be a spy or something. I'm more "studied" in German, but don't speak it very well.

I find the linguist influence on Marxism hysterical. They are going to have to outlaw languages like Italian, French, Spanish, German and Russian, because they are sexist languages. They genderize nouns and add declension on top of it. You're all going to have to learn to speak politically correct English you know.

The first thing you need to do if you want to get to understand cultures you never been exposed to before is to leave your value judgments at the door.

Do you mean like acting nonplussed when you see a Masai toddler crying in a patty of cowshit and covered in flies, because that's just how things roll in rural Kenya? Or being contemplative and inquisitive when an ISIS fighter throws a homosexual off a building?

You need to immerse yourself in their way of life. For years. And even then? You will never have an insider's perspective on what that human experience is all about. You will be an outsider but an informed one after doing a hell of a lot of work.

Right. That's why I gave up on egalitarianism beyond equal application of the law, and even that is a very frayed pretense anymore.

That is why so many mistakes are made by political leaders and governments who come from extremely different cultural matrix from each other. They assume that the other party shares their values and their values are universal and all encompassing. They usually are not. Values and cultures vary enormously.

This is why I throw up in my mouth a little when politicians talk about our "shared values."

Has to eat, has to have a certain amount of physical exercise, has to be brought up by a culture, speaks a language that influences their way of thinking. Etc. etc.

Yes. We're going to have to get after those Germans. Das mädchen for a girl? Why neuter for young girls and masculine for boys, but feminine for women? Do you think we should start a campaign to feminize mädchen?

Yes we do. But I think I agree not believing Puerto Ricans are the inferiors, and knowing we can do well running our own society if we get rid of that long, long history of being a colony of other nations who never gave a shit about us for many centuries.

Let me again state that I did not call Puerto Ricans inferiors. However, they have yet to hold a plebiscite with a large voter turnout and tell the United States they want to be an independent nation. I think that would be good. You could hyperinflate away the debt, just like Venezuela.

YOU? I suspect is to get rid of the darkies. Lol. I am sorry Blackjack. I really think that is why you want us to be independent. Not out of equality or solidarity with Puerto Ricans. But you don't like people who are not of your ethnicity, mindset, etc. Lol. I do.

A lot of our legal system's 20th Century quirks are built on blending jurisdiction and creating legal fictions--like US citizens who live in a country over which the United States is sovereign. I'd like to see independence as just one more spanner in the works of the establishment.

We had Rhodes. Dr. Rhodes. Here is his perspective. Being a doctor and a racist as he was? Would you approve of his 'solution' for Puerto Rico?

Lower than Italians! Ha. My first cousin is half Italian. My Irish grandmother used to call me "lad" and call him "boy". We still get a laugh out of what today's social justice warriors would find appalling. When he has to drive his wife somewhere, he says, "I'm driving Miss Daisy." Some people find humor in these things, others horror. It's hard to figure on Dr. Rhodes. The US military has been known to conduct medical experiments on people. Hell, the no-man-in-the-house rule flagged by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1960s suggested that the establishment knew they would be destroying black families with that policy. That's one reason I will never vote Democrat.

I wonder Blackjack? If you were a native Puerto Rican? Born and raise there? Would you think things were going well? Lol. I don't know. One of the failings of the way the Right thinks about things is being incredibly unable to be put in other people's positions which they deem their ínferiors. Could you?

Small states can be immensely successful. Hong Kong, Singapore, Israel, etc. However, that has a lot to do with their system when they have no natural resources. Puerto Rico is fucked under US rule. That should be obvious to all Puerto Ricans, but evidently it is not.

Well Blackjack the issue is not Law 936. Or anything like that. It is about how international capital works. If they can pull up out of there and go to a place to set up shop a lot cheaper? They will. Again, they are not about national loyalties. They left the Rust Belt in bad shape too.

Right. That is why Donald Trump won. It's the lack of tariffs that allow them to do that. America is a huge consumer market, and tariffs dictate where they can and can't go. They like being able to go wherever they want. I think tariffs against China is a lot of fun. It's screwing up the establishment, and that makes me happy.

I am sorry Blackjack. I don't have tolerance for very obscenely wealthy people living in the lap of luxury and surrounded by bodyguards, and gated communities when outside the walls there are very very bad living conditions for the vast majority of people in their own nations. Ferdinand Marcos, comes to mind...

When the very wealthy are exploiting the poor in dangerous working conditions at rock bottom wages, you have a very good point. You can't say that about Bill Gates though. Maybe Jeff Bezos. Inequality is not always about exploitation.

I am my brother and sister's keeper in my value system Blackjack.

That's Christianity, not socialism. Jesus wasn't pushing a dictatorship of the Proletariat.

I wonder about that man committing suicide? With a young daughter and a lot of money? It seems he was in fairly good health? Who knows what led him to that action? People get depressed. And sometimes they don't even know how to snap out of it. It is hard.

Money is the solution to a lack of money, but not much else. That's why materialism's rejection of the metaphysical and adoption of atheism and hedonism has proven hollow.

Lol. They think they are invisible and no one is noticing what the hell they do. Untouchables. Like Al Capone. Lol. No, they are not. They better change their ways or they will find the system they dearly love and that they manipulate will collapse and they will be like Mussolini, killed by the mob.

Hrmm... I started a thread on all the banker suicides. For whatever reason, nobody here was interested in the subject at all. Maybe that's what has been happening.
Why are so many bankers committing suicide?
BANKER SUICIDES – IS SOMETHING GOING ON?

Young banker's suicide becomes twelfth in financial world this year

I got straight A's and perfect scores in International Politics.

I did too, in business. I wasn't too serious about school when I was younger and dropped out of college. I was in B2B e-procurement in higher ed when the dotcom bubble popped. So I worked part time and went back to school. At that point I understood the corporate structure of colleges and universities. Did it in 18 months too. I do not recommend that to anyone. The very sight of a book made me nauseous for years after that, but I had to get it done quick or I knew I would just quit again. I didn't get valedictorian though, because I had no intention of going to the graduation ceremony.

Did registers and different accents from all over the world well. That was my father's influence I think. Southern bell accents, British accents, New Yorker accents. Lol. All of them. Hee hee.

Yes. I do too. My grandmother was from County Cork and my grandfather from Yorkshire. So I was quite good at that, and it sometimes came out involuntarily if I drank too much. Even though I can barely speak Russian, that is why it freaks them out that I can utter the number of phrases that I can with no traceable accent (from their perspective).

I used to work in the early two thousands for a public health/preventive care center for the state. I learned a lot. Prevention of disease is a lot cheaper than treating an advanced illness. But? Somehow the cheap and effective doesn't really get the highest priorities in this society. The expensive and the profit driven does.

My father was a medical doctor. I began to have a more skeptical view of the profession later in life. Part of that was because I worked on a medical billing system mapping ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes to treatment codes and billing codes. Medical texts started looking more like cookbooks with lots of Greek and Latin words.

Denying our common bonds for the sake of short term gains and superficial forms of vanity.

Yes, but you should still be wary of the coccodrillos, Tainari88. They may not see you as their equal, but rather as their lunch. Perhaps they have a lot in common with bankers. Cold blooded too.

[Potemkin]

Hmm. Mozart eh?

But of course!

How are you doing there Potemkin? You schemer extraordinaire. I am stuck here with piles of boxes full of junk to sift through. I found my father's old plays, and short stories and poems. Made me smile. Also his diplomas....lol. Old photos from when he was a young man in the Air Force. He looks a lot like my son....lol.

His legacy lives on, Tainari....

I am thinking of my father's smile. I love your smile too Potemkin. You have a lovely smile.

Here is a set of songs I would love to see produced and set to ballet someday darling. I wish they would do that one someday. They did it on public television way back in the seventies. But it would be great set to a new arrangement today. Something Lin Manuel Miranda of Alexander Hamilton fame. Another pro independence man that Mr. Miranda. All of the best of us are....pro independence.

That sounds awesome Tainari!

What do you think @Potemkin about the debate I have going with the @blackjack21 here?

I am starting to like his answers. They are getting increasingly spontaneous with me. A great insight to him as a person. He is sick of leftists. He doesn't realize the dumbells with the racism are hard to take. He needs to live in my shoes for a while....suffer the dummies who love racist nationalistic narrow minded ignorant stupidity. Lol. Lock em in the room with those and suffer....

Everyone likes to think of themselves as the centre of the world, but in fact humanity is like Pascal's God - a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere....

Big kiss Bellisimo!

And a big kiss right back atcha, Tainari!

you know I like para los viejitos:

Will you dance with me Potemkin? This number....come on....you can try at least....Hee hee hee...

I'm dancin' right now....

[Tainari88]

Aha, @Potemkin and @blackjack21 I got answers for both of you. Replies, yes indeed. But I got busy today and could not find time to reply. I will find time tomorrow and this weekend.

Mucho amor,

Tainari

[Tainari88]

They are finally heading in the right direction. If they can cut illegal immigration to the United States, things will finally get better for our working class.

The problem has always been with employers and people hiring. Landlords renting, businesses depending on immigrant customers, and so on. The USA economy has fed off of immigrant labor for many many generations in the USA. But, the economy is changing. They need educated people with high tech skills Blackjack, that know their way around technology. The low skilled professions are not going to get anywhere except in some key industries in which American legal labor just sees it as slavery as well. Low paid, no benefits, barely surviving. They don't want those jobs. That is where the undocumented create their niche. Most well educated Latin Americans I know are not interested in leaving their home nations. They have great lifestyles in their home nations. The majority of Latin Americans who are interested in coming here can't make end's meet in the urban cities of Latin America either. They leave their small towns or ranches to the big cities and can't compete with urban Latin Americans with better educations and more connections and established professions. So they go for the USA. For the service industries, etc. Those jobs have dried up terribly here. And they pay way too low for most of the towns that have a deficit of those workers. In my home state? Colorado, they need workers to work in the ski resort hotels, the restaurants and the construction projects in these booming tourist towns. But? The rents are astronomical so the undocumented can't stay there unless the industries provide some kind of subsidized housing for them. So many things that are problematic. In the end, what you said about AI or Artificial Intelligence will be replacing many many low skilled jobs. What does this mean worldwide? Harari's book deals with that a lot. He has one called Homo Deus. It is about the future with low skilled, no formal education work forces, being without work en masse. All over the world. How to cope with this problem? Also, Europeans and other well off socialistic nations like Sweden, France, Finland, Norway, Denmark, even China won't have large populations of educated native citizens abandoning those nations to come here for immigrant style wages and work. The days of the 1840's Irish potato famine is OVER. You won't get mass immigration from stable economic nation states. The USA only has new immigrant pools of workers from depressed economic states. Like Latin America, Africa and some parts of Southeast Asia. That is it. The rest of the 'white' nations are not going to be giving up their people whom they heavily invested time, money and skills in for the USA to benefit from. They won't do it. I know. I had to do a lot research on it.

It's also a major help to small business owners. That's where most of the hiring comes from in America.

Burdening small businesses with paying high health insurance premiums is a problem. Many counties tax small businesses a lot compared to huge corporate tax rates. The USA is notorious for putting small businesses out of business due to favorable conditions for corporations. They are not even handed at all there either. A mom and pop hardware store near a Home Depot or a Lowe's will go under quickly. Not even Sears can compete unless the change their business models drastically. The pace of change is going to make a lot of small business owners part of the working poor and lower middle classes living paycheck to paycheck as well.

They would be called Anglophone. White is a badly thought out word too. It doesn't stop the conversation.

All these generic catch-all categories do a piss poor job of dealing with diverse markers with individuals, groups and everything else. Whiteness doesn't say much about a person. It won't tell you what is meaningful to know. Such as: education, talents, age, marital status, profession, ethnicity, religion, political persuasion, socioeconomic background, class system category, and tendencies and health, sex and national origin. It says very little the word "White".

Except they aren't Latin either, and don't speak Latin. They have no ties to the Roman Empire.

The way Latino or Latin is interpreted in the Latino community makes it more appropriate than Hispanic. Plus if one analyzes why all the romance languages are called romance languages? It comes from that root of both vulgar Latin and classical Latin. Classical Latin died off since it was only spoken by a small elite of Rome, and were Roman citizens mostly. The vulgar Latin survived and was spoken by the common people and slaves. The vast majority of Roman residents. It goes to show you Blackjack21 that in history what survives is not the elitist--but the common people. The low class. They are the majority for most inherited culture, language and labor too. The elite are expendable over time. The simple fact that the group evolves and the individualistic and elitist are gone over time. Not enough of them to have a long term impact over time over things like passing on language use. Anyway Portuguese and Spanish and French and Italian among others are all from one family. Latin root languages. Anglo/English comes from a German language root. The Germans were considered barbarians by the Romans. Uncultured, uncouth types. Lol. The Roman Empire had tremendous influences in countries like Spain and Italy, France, etc. Not that much in Germany and England. Yet the nations with the "Spanish" influence are the ones with what? Not ancient roots? It is the opposite. You got ancient Mesoamerica, ancient Africa and Ancient Latin influences all fused together in our nations. Anglos and English in Bill Bryson's book called Mother Tongue, in which he deals with the history of the English language states that English was a no prestige whatsoever language spoken by illiterate English peasants that no noble or elite would be caught dead speaking. Latin and French is what the landed and wealthy spoke way back in time in England. It is fascinating how a peasant language that no one would publish in that language got to be so spread over the world. So commonly used and is the world's second language studied by a lot of people. If you study it Blackjack? It teaches you a lot about money, power and influence based on conquest, imperialism, and genocide and imposition. And it also teaches you how the low and humble can become the upper crust and powerful. Because it all CHANGES not because one language is superior and others inferior. No, it is about a lot of interesting and complex things and rarely has to do with what the elite do or don't do in society. It has to do with military might, empire, wealth, and fights for power, many of which failed for many centuries and took a long time to emerge the victor. They can also lose that position to others doing a lot of efforts to compete. It is not about anything innately superior. Another book I love is Michael Crawford's Language Loyalties. How people are attached and loyal to their maternal or native languages.

I'm English and Irish. I get called "white." I suppose I could throw hissy fits from here to kingdom come about it, but I really don't see the point in it.

You usually don't have to because you swim in 'privilege'. The entire society is geared to speak English (your native language), to a masculine viewpoint in many tech professions (most of them are males in your profession) and you are never seen as ''different" and éthnic by many.....you are seen as the 'mainstream' person. No one really thinks you deviating from a set norm in the USA. In California you might not be....but remember Blackjack, you are not a working class man. You are a man with at least a six figure income living in good neighborhood and are respected as 'successful'. For you? The hissy fit are for the disgruntled. Lol. I don't know, you tend to be pissed about leftism, you might have a hissy fit over that.

I've been there, so I am well aware. That's also true in the UK. The Cornish, the Scottish and the Welsh have various independence movements.

You are not really Irish or English anymore Blackjack. To be that? Got to be born and raised in that land, with that culture and that history influencing you all the time during your formative years. You are an American with an ethnic background rooted in English and Irish immigrants from the past to the Americas. You are an American and don't speak English like an Englishman. You certainly don't speak English like Potemkin....the Scot. Lol. You are American and you are exposed to American many cultures melding there for a long time. There is little of American culture that is purely English. You are multicultural by default being American to a certain extent.

You think like a banker or a politician. Everything done by someone else is somehow yours to expropriate. People generate things of value and exchange them for comparative advantage. That doesn't mean that you get to drive off in your neighbor's car. If you want to call that a lie, have at it. I wouldn't try that as a defense in a court of law, though.

You are not a Marxist for economics. I am. I follow Richard Wolff's ideas about transforming the economy. You agree or you don't. That is your imperative. I think you should know that making property and class as something that you are super attached to because it solidifies your privileges is more akin to a pro capitalist liberal and a pro capitalist banker than I will ever be Blackjack. Didn't you mention that you worked for Bank of America? I have never worked for a bank. Ever. If I had to choose between you and your comfortable salary and alone man with no dependents with expensive China living on his own in an expensive neighborhood and have to take a few thousands more from you in taxes to feed a struggling mother working full time with two dependent children to make her life breathable to make that happen for her? Even though they are not your kids....but her husband is dead and she is in need? As a socialist you can bet your bottom dollar that I would. I would take that shit from you FAST. How much do you need to live a good life. You tell me, "Tainari I love to travel and I have 8 weeks of paid vacation a year. Check. I will give that to you. Tainari I like eating wine with my dinner at home that I enjoy. Check. Yes. You can do that....I need my car Tainari....yes, one car. To get to work you are a single man. Don't need two cars. I need a two to three bedroom home with two baths. Have relatives coming over and so on....Yes. But if you tell me, Ï need six vacation homes, yachts, never work for the rest of my life, live off interest only, have a maid full time in my house, gardner full time, luxuries that are rare as hell because that is MY RIGHT? No. I will say, "Nope, you don't need that. There are others in this society that need basics. You can't have luxuries until everyone's basic needs are met and we as a whole group are much more comfortable, educated, well fed, and well taken care of in the basics at least FIRST. You got to sacrifice. After all this is your nation no? You want your neighbors, and fellow citizens to do well. Crime to go down and for all of the best people to have their needs met no matter what. That is fair no? You don't agree? Why? And it better not be some self-centered and ego fueled reason of power grabbing and wanting more than what is reasonable. But if you think you are a fine coder? And you can be of great value to others in this society? Have your people who you influence petition that you get more for a lot of years due to your true loving nature, hard work, and social consciousness. Lol.

If you do the math? If all of us were assessed fairly in that way? All these serious poverty traps and health problems and issues would be gone. If you want a mathematical and scientific model of this type of socialism in action. Ask me. Again, Richard Wolff has all the Ivy League credentials and many many economists have a lot of working models for my type of socialist organizing of society. It works. Better than top heavy inequality of distribution of wealth for sure.

Yes, and they are facing a political comeuppance in the West.

Yes. so will any selfish people who only care about tax cuts and self centered shit that is about retaining their privileges and not dealing with widespread failures in the system over all.

What makes you think I haven't?

What you have written so far Blackjack. For example saying that you are only interested in hiring the supposed coders who are not "White" (that generic word again!) due to having a financial incentive to do so. You are motivated by personal gain. Not because you care. You implied as much. I doubt you care enough about low income kids of all backgrounds to go and give up your free time to help them get six figure salaries in the future. If you did? You would be a different type of man than the one I have read so far on this site. But you hate leftism. If you think leftism means sacrificing for others even if it hurts your wallet very much? You won't do it Blackjack. You don't strike me as a particularly religious man at all. Not even the hypocritical kind. I could be wrong but you don't strike me as a holy roller and go to church five times a week kind of man. No. Am I wrong?

Yes, but even you are moving to Mexico, not Cuba or Venezuela or Bolivia. We've been hearing about this utopian vision for many lifetimes. Yet, it always seems so elusive.

Well, I invite you to open a thread with me on the histories of all those nations. I have studied Latin American history for many many years. I am moving to Mexico that happens to have a socialist president I have been following for years since he was elected mayor of Mexico City. I have observed all his 'fights' internally with the Mexican bourgeoisie and the Mexican Right for many many years. The Morena Party was fighting for years and years. AMLO (Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) is a socialist. A Mexican socialist. The PRI and the PAN tried to stop him for many election cycles. It no longer works. Not even fraud on a massive scale worked this time. Too many Mexicans voting for him now. Mexico has a very deeply embedded Left. I worked in Mexico in the past and visited almost all the Mexican states. I have a godson there now. I have a lot of ties to Mexico. Including specializing in Mesoamerican ancient civilizations. I am going to sink every last penny of mine in Mexico Blackjack. Take it out of this economy. I think this economy is going to tank eventually. Too many others doing some damage. Lol. Plus, I am not attached to money. My husband is retiring soon and what he will be getting is enough to live in Mexico without working. Time for me to do some things I have put on the back burner. But? I do plan on going to both Venezuela and Cuba too. In Puerto Rico I got tons of tourists in my little young person's job there in the tourism stuff, met a lot of Venezuelans, all one hour from Caracas. My mother was invited to Havana to work and do education programs. Cuba is a known element and I looked up the requirements to live there. It is not hard. I have all the pre-requisites. A socialist from Puerto Rico sued the USA government for the right to be considered a Puerto Rican citizen ONLY, it went to the highest possible court. He won the right. One of the things he did Blackjack was to establish an embassy in Cuba. For Puerto Rico. Which according to the USA's laws is illegal. Not allowed. But the Cubans don't care. They allowed it. You figure it out Blackjack. Puerto Ricans have more in common historically, geographically, linguistically and culturally with the Cuban people and the Cuban nation than they do with the USA. The ties are deep and long. So Cuba is not some unknown element. Venezuela is the place that originated the Taino Arawak Indian group that populated the island about 5,000-3,000 BC. We have mitochondrial DNA shared with them as well. Chavez tried to sell us cheap oil. Sila Calderon our governor (a woman from the PPD party on the island tried to do a deal), it was slapped down by the USA. A lot of things we could do on our own but if we need DC say so with no political voice or vote there? None of it gets anywhere. You are right. We are fucked for sure. But? How long that shitty relationship will continue without some kind of blood being spilled and shit being bad? Your guess is as good as mine. The Venezuelans are watching us, the Colombians want an embassy from us there but the USA says no. The Dominicans want us in their nation. You would be surprised. How many of these small places and nations want ties with us....but the USA isolates us on purpose. To make sure they control. It is not helping us. Our business model there? Is obsolete. Even the ones who might have your very same economic suggestions Blackjack think it is not functional. It needs to be scrapped. But? No. The banksters need to be paid first. No bankruptcy allowed, workers and fleeing to the states. Adding to more Latinos. Deporting the undocumented. Importing the documented. Latino power.....get rid of us in one way, get others another way. No one deals with what they should deal with BJ, STABILIZE the nations to stop the flow. Stop the musical chairs.

Well you do advocate for an economic system that produces dismal results everywhere it is tried. What's the excuse for Maduro's government? I suppose it's all the outside forces that just don't want to get along with Maduro's government, because it cannot possibly be the fault of socialists. Right?

Blackjack, got to study all of the whole of Venezuelan history. From Simon Bolivar to Hugo Chavez Frias and Maduro. Coups and everything else. Venezuela has an issue. It has had a huge oil reserve. But it wasn't improving the life of average Venezolano. I read a lot about it Blackjack. There is a great book but it is in Spanish by a Spanish from Spain journalist called Ignacio Ramonet. He interviewed Chavez about why he dealt with the issues of overthrow. Who were the Venezuelan bourgeoisie before Chavez? Why were the lower classes so agitated with the status quo before Chavez? why are there so many socialist movements in Latin America? What message do we have that the Latinos like? Lol. Because our elite and ruling class is incredibly inflexible and the social mobility is like cement. Whenever there is a change? It is like populism. Why Trump appeals for example to the American populists. But in Latin America? Most of our poor are not European and are not Rightists. At all. They don't see themselves in rich and comfortable European faces. The message is going to vary. Latin America doesn't have extremely developed capitalist and healthy balanced economies with socialist safety nets to pay off the underclass. We also have interventions from the Colossal from the North with corporations and rapacious profit motive capitalists with very very powerful ties to military and government force interventionist policies squashing any possible progress made. We got a lot of things going on. Personally, I never liked how Maduro dealt with things. He lacks some pragmatic and well thought out plans. But? A failed drone trying to assassinate him and supposedly done by the USA gov't won't help. The USA is not the Nice Guy in Latin American societies. We have a different idea of what Yankee governments are all about. Totally different than what someone like you sees it as? And even you don't like the current elite in the USA Blackjack. Imagine the ones with the issues with a long memory feel? Lol.

I've travelled far and wide. I've seen how most of the rest of the world lives, and I would not like to join them.

You can bet you have not lived our lives. You have not lived my life. The youngest daughter of two Puerto Ricans who were dirt poor and were born in one in the Great Depression and the other one before WWII broke out in Europe. Who came as migrants to the USA. Dealt with some bad racism. Because my parents were dealing with an era of some bad racism in the USA in the 40s, 50s, 60s. You don't give a shit about their discrimination. I happen to think you are not open about the ones you see as the ínferiors. Thank goodness my parents never let that crap hold them back. Despite all the obstacles? They got a bunch of advanced educations. My mother never got anything less than an A in any academic subject she tackled. Valedictorian. My father a cum laude graduate. Learned Japanese too. Besides Spanish and English. Linguist. Bright. Artist. Fantastic painter, writer, and everything else. Both of them. They weren't from the bourgeoisie of the island. No. They came from rural places, poor, my paternal grandfather was an illiterate peasant. Fruit seller. Without any land. Poor as dirt. Died when my father was 8 years old.

Both of them had every reason to give up and fail, not be who they became. Or start taking bribes from the conservatives who wanted them to back statehood or some bullshit they did not believe in. Never gave up. At all. Even if it costs them their lives. That is who I come from. Some fake fucking weak ass socialist I am not. At all. I don't believe in fakers. No Blackjack. That is not I. I am not some doctor's son with privileges in the USA swimming in his element and with his English language the only one he speaks well and fluently. No....my parents taught me to be humble, be free and be ME. And be consistent. In everything. Don't be a damn fake piece of lying shit in politics. So I am not.

I also am Latin in style. Not Anglo and lacking in some passion while speaking. I am me. And I choose to be that way. The Mexicans tease me for a style they keep confusing with Cuba. I say no....not Cuban style. Puerto Rican. They smile.....we all know each other in Latin America. Our singers, songs, gossip, art, bad politics, good politics, problems and joys. All of us.

I think your ideas are based on unsound assumptions. The world will change in ways you do not expect. Many of the efforts put forth by what are now called "social justice warriors" do not pan out as hoped.

Do you know how many people used to tell Martin Luther King, Jr, or every single progressive movement was told that to not fight for any change? Do you want to go back to a time of African Americans not voting? No social security for older people? No pensions for older Americans? No days off and working over eight hours with no overtime? No women voting? No attempts at creating a less lop sided power structure? When you criticize Saudi Arabia for cutting off hands and the way they treat women? What part of the political spectrum has fought for all the supposed 'better'rights that Americans enjoy nowadays were fought by who? The RIGHT wing arrogant types with privileges who HATE progress? Who want NO CHANGE. Who hang around blocking rights and taking away rights instead of adding on more rights? I can answer that one for you Blackjack. THE LEFTISTS. Not the right. The right is comfortable hanging on to SHIT privileges that are always keeping people back from having more choices in their lives. I have issues with liberals. Because of accepting that capitalism forces one class to labor and constantly be scrambling to live, while others just coast along.....worried about there 4,000 china....stolen by the rabble that breaks into their home. They aren't concerned with rights not directly going into their own existences and class categories. Short term, and weak thinkers in social movements for sure. Shaking up xenophobia and latent racism to get a crooked gerrymandered and less than popular vote based system to work for them in their crooked ways. For how long? Maybe....you can fool some of the people for some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. That is what the USA is going to be coping with soon. Good luck with that BJ. I will be in Mexico. Dealing with the Mexican scene. On a plane to Havana in 2020. My contribution to the USA? Working for many years, paying taxes and raising a child so he is an upstanding and hard working and good kid not giving the society any burdens or troubles. Love all societies. Do good in all of them. In the end? We are all humans. All one. That is my philosophy. What is yours?

For example, in efforts to establish pay equity for women, academics and politicians devised a system of categorizing jobs and skill levels. They asserted that women working as receptionists had a similar skill level to men working as HVAC technicians. So what did they do? Push for higher wages for female receptionists.

Who did that Blackjack21? The Right types or the Left types? Or was it both? You tell me. I am curious. At your job?

You may thing that is a project worthwhile and respect and love such work. Market forces respond. How? It becomes a market opportunity to automate phone routing. So now there is nobody answering the phone. A computer does it.

AI is fascinating. I was reading that Yuval Harari book Homo Deus. He gets deep into how technology is going to transform employment, jobs, how people communicate, how they date, love, eat and sleep and every aspect of human life. But again, in the end we are all one. Human. One species.

I've said before when I was working at Bank of America, I remember telling my boss' boss that corporations would soon be outsourcing entire chunks of their workforce overseas. He said, "that'll never happen." Do you know what I was working on? A call routing application for customer service at a bank. A huge chunk of those jobs went to India. That's great for India, but it sucks for people who used to do those jobs who are now slinging coffee at Starbucks or something, or perhaps are unemployed or underemployed. Most repetitive work will start getting automated over the next 20 years. It will be making those with lower skill levels and lower IQs more and more redundant.

Again Harari touched on that book. I have read the entire book on that subject. If they get rid of truck driver and driver as employment in the USA? That is the most common job. And it pays fairly well in most places. They eliminate that job? What to do with those workers? The purpose of automation should be to free up time and space and efforts so that human beings can work less hours and have time for their own development. And benefit from their own self improvement and development. Have stronger ties with their communities and their families. To have a real shot at self realization. But, if the goal is to make them feel useless, redundant, and not wanted? Get ready for some serious destabilizations and people actively seeking to destroy all the system that they see as oppressive. Humans are after all social beings. We can see it when we touch our belly buttons. The cord to our mothers. Someone we were attached to. If we can't feel part of something? Then why preserve it? That is the question the cloud coders and all the high tech workers should be wrestling with? How can I make this species better and more satisfied? How to balance work, play, recreation and give opportunities? How do I support the behaviors that work and get the behavior that is problematic to deal with becoming problem solving behaviors? That is enough to keep you busy Senor BJ for the rest of your life. And mine too.

That's another one of those universalist/Olympian assumptions that there is some collective "we" who can manage situations all over the world. We cannot. So such efforts will fail. That is why I reject the idea that egalitarianism is going to set all things right.

The Collective We is already here BJ. You got Walmart ChinaMart full of goods from a culture half a world away from us. Producing for us. To trade with us. You got Mexicans, Central Americans, Chinese, etc in San Francisco all of them with their own restaurants, small businesses based on habits, paradigms and traditions from places far away....from California. You got huge organizations like the UN, the ONU, the WTO, and the EU, and you got organizations running around everyday interacting with the most far flung cultures, languages, geographies, topographies, tribes, cities, governments, exchanges of banks, money, currencies, crypto, etc. all of them in a big ass WE COLLECTIVE....influencing your life right now as we speak. That you choose to ignore it? That is up to you. I don't. Can't ignore the advances of interdependency. It is everywhere. You assume you can focus on what "nationalism" or I see you changed your category to centrist. Lol. Whatever BJ. You need to cope with interdependency. It is a law of nature. It is also evolving in human economic structures. Deal with the WE. ASAP. It might surprise you if you knew that if you work on shifting the system to be more inclusive and less exclusive you might get some serious progress. And avoid war. That is a good thing.

That is already happening. The largest recent example was the deliberate destabilization of Syria by the Obama administration. They will never be called out for it, because being a Democrat means never having to say you are sorry.

Never liked liberal hypocrisy or Conservative hypocrisy. Take responsibility for these messes made and don't repeat that shit. But somehow they always repeat the same mistakes. Afghanistan was a mess for the British. Vietnam was a problem for the French....and so on, yet no one wants to learn from other nation's mistakes. Thinking they are the exception. That lack of humility rears its ugly head again in history. Ay Senor Blackjack. When will we learn from our historical past properly eh?

I agree wholeheartedly.

Once you get rid of the fakers and liars and who don't live their politics or their principles? You got the true believers and the consistent and we can fight it out with some decent results. In my theory? You can't do much about the fakers but get rid of them out of power. Then you cope with the ones who are sincere. In my opinion, the differences in those with sincere differences tend to make deals and do the right thing in the end. The ones with the fake shit and the lies? No. Not to be trusted. Not even as foes or enemies. Can't trust a damn thing they agree to do.

I don't purport to be a sociologist or anthropologist. However, I am both well travelled and well read. I'm not fluent in any other languages. This is true, but I can speak a few hundred words of Russian, and with no traceable accent--enough to freak out Russians who think I might be a spy or something. I'm more "studied" in German, but don't speak it very well.

I find the linguist influence on Marxism hysterical. They are going to have to outlaw languages like Italian, French, Spanish, German and Russian, because they are sexist languages. They genderize nouns and add declension on top of it. You're all going to have to learn to speak politically correct English you know.

You don't know much about linguistics BJ. If you did? You would not have said what you said. Lol. I can go for a thousand pages about different language families, grammars, histories, etc. Why Mandarin can say something without a plural and imply there is more than one, while in a Native American language they indicate a plural by repeating the first syllable of a noun. Why? Suffice it to say that each language is like a particular house or architectural blueprint. And trying to make another house design fit a structure it was never built for is not good for understanding it. Lol. Chomsky is a brilliant linguist. You should read how he interprets language and what it is suppose to mean. You just want to be what? Sexist? Without having a SJW monitor your politically incorrect language? Lol. I don't care about what some liberal types want. Neither should you. Be free. Not worried about trivial shit. I don't.

Do you mean like acting nonplussed when you see a Masai toddler crying in a patty of cowshit and covered in flies, because that's just how things roll in rural Kenya? Or being contemplative and inquisitive when an ISIS fighter throws a homosexual off a building?

You think there are not third world conditions in the USA? Alabama had hookworm outbreaks and contaminated water, toddlers drinking contaminated water in Flint Michigan and the kids will be permanently damaged. Their IQ since you put so much stock in that permanently low because of lead ingestion. All done by USA citizen politicians to other people in their own country. I am nonplussed? Aren't these people supposed to be an example on how to treat others in their society. Aren't they wealthy and can afford basic shit like clean water and no hookwork and open sewers? What happened? Appalachian white kids of your gene background, English, Welsh, Irish, Scotch, living like people in Africa.....WHY? Hmmmm. Maybe it is about priorities set by people in power to change things but they don't. How about homosexuals? In Wyoming they killed a gay kid. Matt his name was. Matthew. Gays and homosexuals have been killed in many states for being gay. Some thrown off buildings but it was deemed a suicide. They overdose on drugs due to the pain of self medicating. They commit suicide. Opioid epidemic. All these lily white people overdosing on prescription drugs because a pharmaceutical drug company needs to send millions of pills to small towns in Ohio to profit. They are 'superior' to the Kenyans and the Saudi....in ethics? Aren't they? You tell me how ethical these American types are?

Right. That's why I gave up on egalitarianism beyond equal application of the law, and even that is a very frayed pretense anymore.

It is. You are right about the law. I agree. But laws change if you pressure enough politically to change them. Not easy to do. But doable. Nothing is set in concrete. Not even laws.

This is why I throw up in my mouth a little when politicians talk about our "shared values."

I throw up when they say how they believe in equality and justice and the American way and they are a bunch of lying pieces of shit with all their promised equality when they never live the values they spout. The Trump is not Mr. Truth and never tells a lie. Lol. Obama was a liberal schemer liar as well. What else is new in politics BJ?

Yes. We're going to have to get after those Germans. Das mädchen for a girl? Why neuter for young girls and masculine for boys, but feminine for women? Do you think we should start a campaign to feminize mädchen?

You got me confused again with white liberal pro Hillary Clinton voter for president 2016. All that constant energy behind crap ideas of language policing is not me. Lol. But it seems to me that it irritates you. Lol. I just laugh. For me if your life is that content that you have time to be some language police? You got too much time on your hands.

Let me again state that I did not call Puerto Ricans inferiors. However, they have yet to hold a plebiscite with a large voter turnout and tell the United States they want to be an independent nation. I think that would be good. You could hyperinflate away the debt, just like Venezuela.

Look like you did not learn much by reading Balzac insular case. And many others. Doesn't matter how many plebiscites we hold. And if we vote. It is not about what we would want. It never was. It is strange how you still think colonialism is about what the colonized may want. It never is. But? You can think all you want about this or that. In Limbo we shall remain. Only if the USA needs a change will it change. The only way in our history we got some change in a fairly quick way? Bullets and violence. The USA respects that shit from colonies. Not talk and pleading, and votes. No. What makes things happen for some kind of moving the needle with Yankee governments are bullets and violence. Then they put some energy and attention behind figuring out what went wrong. That is the way it is not only with the USA but with many countries that colonize others and wake up to the 'locals' aint happy.....only when the locals are violent and revolting. Then they say, "Shit, crisis. Got to respond. Can't sit on my fat ass and do nothing anymore. It is urgent. Send in the troops." That stuff doesn't work BJ. Don't wait for violence. Do the right thing while there is still time. All the court cases said that Puerto Rico is a foreign thing in a domestic sense. It doesn't make sense. Why? Because they want to control but not give rights. So they have to come up with legal gymnastics. It doesn't matter......I can tell you this. The pro Independence Puerto Ricans died. Many did. How many Puerto Ricans who back statehood have died for their ideal? Confronting the USA to be the 51st state and give their life for that cause? The answer is 0. None. Cowards. All of them. They scream and cry and so on. But they have not been able to move the needle for integration. It is obvious. We are in the state we are currently in because the USA gov't wants it to be that way. If it changes? There will be a legally binding plesbicite. And not the one held recently with only 23% participation rate of the voters there. No.

A lot of our legal system's 20th Century quirks are built on blending jurisdiction and creating legal fictions--like US citizens who live in a country over which the United States is sovereign. I'd like to see independence as just one more spanner in the works of the establishment.

I am not about independence to be anti establishment. I am pro independence because I think that is the best possible chance for Puerto Ricans taking complete and absolute responsibility for their own destinies. For Puerto Ricans having to create a life for themselves and being able to make important decisions to improve their own circumstances. The first party in Puerto Rico that was voted in by the Puerto Rican local voter and not a military government appointee appointed by the USA federal government was Luis Munoz Rivera. 1948. They were into a path to independence as well. No Puerto Rican thought the USA was going to do what they wound up doing. They thought the USA went to war with Spain to 'liberate'us and give us a lasting independence. Not what actually happened. Statehood party did not even show up on the political scene BJ til 1968. After Castro and Cuba gave them the eebie jeebies and they decided they could not trust Puerto Ricans with independence ideas anymore. Lol. Cooked up political alternative. But they put lots of money behind it. Could not have Anglos speaking English promoting it BJ. We would not identify with someone like you with bad or no Spanish talking to us about being a state. No. So they had a Cuban guy who resided in Puerto Rico that Castro sort of kicked out that owned cement factories and was wealthy be the voice of the statehood movement.

Lower than Italians! Ha. My first cousin is half Italian. My Irish grandmother used to call me "lad" and call him "boy". We still get a laugh out of what today's social justice warriors would find appalling. When he has to drive his wife somewhere, he says, "I'm driving Miss Daisy." Some people find humor in these things, others horror. It's hard to figure on Dr. Rhodes. The US military has been known to conduct medical experiments on people. Hell, the no-man-in-the-house rule flagged by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1960s suggested that the establishment knew they would be destroying black families with that policy. That's one reason I will never vote Democrat.

I am sorry BJ. I don't believe you care about the plight of black families. Or Latinos either. I don't think you care. Nothing you write gives me that impression. Really. So what you think is right about the racist language has no weight for me. Remember? You care about the people you write about? You got some influence. You don't really care about them and don't see them as equals to you? You don't have much influence there.

Small states can be immensely successful. Hong Kong, Singapore, Israel, etc. However, that has a lot to do with their system when they have no natural resources. Puerto Rico is fucked under US rule. That should be obvious to all Puerto Ricans, but evidently it is not.

It is talked about a lot BJ, But there is a blackout on the Puerto Rican side of history. You only hear the USA side of the story here for obvious reasons. Again, if things don't change soon? You will have problems in the near future. Another hurricane knocks out the power and FEMA no longer has money to spend there? No jobs and no infrastructure and mass exodus to the states? How many choices left in that scenario? Ghost nation. Like the Native American tribes. And not the successful ones either.

Right. That is why Donald Trump won. It's the lack of tariffs that allow them to do that. America is a huge consumer market, and tariffs dictate where they can and can't go. They like being able to go wherever they want. I think tariffs against China is a lot of fun. It's screwing up the establishment, and that makes me happy.

You definitely don't like the globalist multinational liberal elite. For sure. Lol. Who knows how all of this pans out. I think the USA is growing weaker with time with this lack of loyalty to at least national interests. They are so beyond the pale with that? Who knows where they wind up BJ. In that? I do think you are right about that.

When the very wealthy are exploiting the poor in dangerous working conditions at rock bottom wages, you have a very good point. You can't say that about Bill Gates though. Maybe Jeff Bezos. Inequality is not always about exploitation.

Gates is a pro capitalism liberal in his ways. And he is promoting computer literacy, vaccines and sex education controls in the Third World. He wants to get a lot more advanced skill sets from the Third World youth. After all if they have access to many things and can bring up their nations' GDP? They wind up being new customers for Microsoft. It will kill the nationalist stuff again. It all does.

That's Christianity, not socialism. Jesus wasn't pushing a dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Yes, there are a lot of cold blooded cocodrilos. But? If you are looking for cocodrilos only in a dark swamp? That is all you will find. While you are looking at the stars above you in all their heavenly glory? And have always the best of love and respect for all of our human common bonds? The cocodrilos will be pacified with your love vibrations. Most animals do well with respecting their natures and allowing them to live true to their natures yet without trying to change it. Let the cocodrilos do their job. In the end they are part of the eco system too. And they in the end are part of our reptilian DNA....they are us and we are they.
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I ran out of time. But I will answer the rest on Saturday tomorrow BJ.

I know you don't see me as my equal. That is clear as day. I don't have much of a high expectation from the very conservative males on this board anyway.

But I have enjoyed the debate. Because you took the time to write things. That is good.

Equality is about internal innate value. That old evolutionary theory about struggle for existence. My ancestors and yours as well, fought mightily for many hundreds of thousands of years....so that we can be here. Writing. My parents learned to read and write and taught me. I use that great invention. It makes me equal. In some ways.

Genesis. Cuando nada quede en la tierra, que evoca a Dios....solo queda una lumbre....y esa sera el amor, el amor, para empezar.

A great song. A Puerto Rican one. I like that one. It is all about what gives us life. And @Potemkin will appreciate that. It is all about my real name.

Be back tomorrow to finish the rest I ran out of time. Got to pick up my boy.