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By Patrickov
#15067999
Potemkin wrote:This why the private property rights on which capitalism is founded are essentially atheist. The steward has seized the property of his Master, which he had given freely for all his servants to enjoy.


A simple rephrase would make the two compatible.

"Private Property Rights" = "Rights of stewardship protected by law from violation by other people -- also only having entitlement up to stewardship".

The only problem out here is that the Master sometimes seems very lenient on monitoring His stewards.
User avatar
By blackjack21
#15068007
Tanari88 wrote:Oh uh, late looks like both you and Relampaguito aka @blackjack21 got some studying to do about what are cultures like when they are living next to each other and have daily interactions.

That leaves you with a single generation language-based notion of assimilation versus acculturation. How does that play down through generations?

My grandparents were from the UK and Ireland. They were English and Irish respectively. Their kids were ethnic Americans. I'm an American. Here, nobody would look at me as any different from any other American. If I go back to Ireland, they say "what's your first name?" "Oh, you must be a Catholic." "What's your last name?" "Oooooh... ... you must be English." There, they pick me apart. Here, nobody cares. Some people never feel quite like they fit in. A Russian Jewish friend of mine notes, "Here in America, I am a Russian. But back in Russia, I am a Jew." That's one generation though, and he's an agnostic Jew. His kid? He's an American ethnic. He can speak Russian, but not that well. His kids? They're American through and through. That's assimilation.

A black guy like Ben Carson? That's assimilation. He speaks English well, studies, works his way up in a world where people don't look a lot like him, but he becomes successful. By contrast, someone from his old neighborhood who sticks with ebonics, gangsta culture and doesn't interact with whites except in work or commercial transactions? That's acculturation. After many generations, it's still "Can I axe you a question?" Still struggling with be verbs and tenses. I have a friend who's a speech therapist who thinks ebonics could be thought of as a distinct language if not just a dialect.



Some of this you could attribute to a history of oppression, but there is also a lack of the social capital you speak of. This is something that Bloomberg indicates about young minorities--he's spot on with poor minorities, but it's not politically correct at all, he will be pilloried for it, perform some pathetic act of contrition, and all will be forgotten in the fraud that is Democratic party politics.

Now to a liberal of the mid-20th Century, this is what assimilation and acculturation look like:



It just didn't pan out that way...

Tainari88 wrote:The African Americans are assimilated people. They were assimilated a long time ago. Prohibited from speaking the languages of their past. Either give it up or face death or pain.

Check out a black church and a white church. There's more than just a skin color difference. My next door neighbors are black. They watch black television almost exclusively. Is that assimilation? They're well spoken. Husband is a nice guy, but isn't terribly bright. Wife is a retired nurse and studying for a master's degree. If I had "white entertainment television (WET)" would that be "racist"? It's not considered racist if blacks have channels dedicated to them, or if Latinos do. So why should white people try to assimilate to liberal globalist ideals? Shouldn't we just have our "white" TV programs? Why would that be so threatening to the liberal order?

Black people's roots were certainly destroyed, but to say that they are all assimilated is a stretch. Takes this from Minnejean Brown--socially well spoken, well adapted, but looking at a Little Rock Central High classroom fifty years later, she's still stunned by the racial divide which isn't based so much on hostility but on who people feel comfortable associating with according to one of the black students.



That's acculturation too--just that when it lasts such a long time, it doesn't sound like sweetness and light.
By late
#15068037
Tainari88 wrote:
Why even go through all this chaining and whipping and chasing and drama if it is not about MONEY my dear @late?




Not rocket science..

You build the future you will live in. If you don't, then of course you will have trouble.
User avatar
By Tainari88
#15068108
blackjack21 wrote:That leaves you with a single generation language-based notion of assimilation versus acculturation. How does that play down through generations?

My grandparents were from the UK and Ireland. They were English and Irish respectively. Their kids were ethnic Americans. I'm an American. Here, nobody would look at me as any different from any other American. If I go back to Ireland, they say "what's your first name?" "Oh, you must be a Catholic." "What's your last name?" "Oooooh... ... you must be English." There, they pick me apart. Here, nobody cares. Some people never feel quite like they fit in. A Russian Jewish friend of mine notes, "Here in America, I am a Russian. But back in Russia, I am a Jew." That's one generation though, and he's an agnostic Jew. His kid? He's an American ethnic. He can speak Russian, but not that well. His kids? They're American through and through. That's assimilation.

A black guy like Ben Carson? That's assimilation. He speaks English well, studies, works his way up in a world where people don't look a lot like him, but he becomes successful. By contrast, someone from his old neighborhood who sticks with ebonics, gangsta culture and doesn't interact with whites except in work or commercial transactions? That's acculturation. After many generations, it's still "Can I axe you a question?" Still struggling with be verbs and tenses. I have a friend who's a speech therapist who thinks ebonics could be thought of as a distinct language if not just a dialect.



Some of this you could attribute to a history of oppression, but there is also a lack of the social capital you speak of. This is something that Bloomberg indicates about young minorities--he's spot on with poor minorities, but it's not politically correct at all, he will be pilloried for it, perform some pathetic act of contrition, and all will be forgotten in the fraud that is Democratic party politics.

Now to a liberal of the mid-20th Century, this is what assimilation and acculturation look like:



It just didn't pan out that way...


Check out a black church and a white church. There's more than just a skin color difference. My next door neighbors are black. They watch black television almost exclusively. Is that assimilation? They're well spoken. Husband is a nice guy, but isn't terribly bright. Wife is a retired nurse and studying for a master's degree. If I had "white entertainment television (WET)" would that be "racist"? It's not considered racist if blacks have channels dedicated to them, or if Latinos do. So why should white people try to assimilate to liberal globalist ideals? Shouldn't we just have our "white" TV programs? Why would that be so threatening to the liberal order?

Black people's roots were certainly destroyed, but to say that they are all assimilated is a stretch. Takes this from Minnejean Brown--socially well spoken, well adapted, but looking at a Little Rock Central High classroom fifty years later, she's still stunned by the racial divide which isn't based so much on hostility but on who people feel comfortable associating with according to one of the black students.



That's acculturation too--just that when it lasts such a long time, it doesn't sound like sweetness and light.


I read this very quickly Relampaguito. You need a lot of explanation. I am not surprised. It has to do with your perspectives and who you are?

I wish I could be as fast as you are with your replies? Hmmmm. I got to do a big pile of laundry, go to Mexican immigration and pick up my IDs to go and get a bunch of things done.

You essentially have a very weak situation with your inability to understand other people's life experiences or cultures. It is something I am trying to figure out how best to make it easy for you to understand the differences. Not because you are inferior to me in any way, but because you never dedicated any serious hard work to getting to that place of almost automatically understanding what shapes other people's life experiences.

You didn't put in the work.

I am trying now to figure out if you are interested in knowing how that works or not? I am going to wait on your answers.

@blackjack21 are you interested in spending time on figuring out why humans like that Little Rock video lady you posted think the integration of Black students in the 1960's in Little Rock High School and others were a failure? Because you posted that to me long ago and I don't think you fully understood what my replies were back then?

Mandela, the leader of South Africa and who lived most of his adult life under the Apartheid regime in South Africa, decided the road to peace was about peaceful co-existence of both races and allowing both races to marry, share lives together and for the cultures to either acculurate and or assimilate according to the nature of that multicultural society. The native Afrikaaners weren't interested in pulling up stakes and leaving South Africa. Neither were the British background South Africans or the Southeast Asian South Africans, and then the ethnic African ones like the Zulu, the Xhoso and many others? How does one take all the diversity and try to make it work for the best progress of all citizens in that land? Regardless of class, race, language, culture? A tough damn task for sure.

Mandela had a plan. Do you know it?

You don't understand a lot of things about what is identity for people. That is obvious by your answer? You aren't even aware of why the Irish and English ancestors of yours were interested in picking you apart? And the Americans never asked you much about your background? That is a serious lack of self awareness BJ.

If you are interested in that topic? Open a thread with my name on it. I will dedicate some time to explaining it all in detail for you. Cultural anthropology is what I have read about exclusively for decades. Everything I had with concentration, time and efforts has been dedicated to figuring all that stuff out and how to make it make sense for students.

Are you interested in that or not?

Let me know.

Propaganda? It works? You got to get back to the center of what propaganda is about? Persuasion, messages, creating a truth that is about mythology. Joseph Campbell's great old series...."The Power of Myth". It reminded me of my years with breakfast conversations with my mother in Colorado. She and I would start off the morning with conversations about Campbell's series on "the Power of Myth". Because @blackjack21 human beings give tremendous propaganda and psychological power to the myths that dominate their world.

That is what true propaganda is all about. @Potemkin is one of the greatest thinkers I have ever come across that deals with the idea of what propaganda is supposed to do. He mentions Goebbels, and others....I would love for him to come in here and in his concision? Get to the core of how effective good propaganda is in shaping societal attitudes, behaviors and etc. It is a form of mind control after all. But is that so bad?

You see Bellisimo Potemkin? I did an opening for you?

Relampaguito you let me know how much time you want to put in to the idea of what all you wrote there breaks down into....in terms of self knowledge?

I got to go wash clothes....it sucks dealing with laundry!
#15068197
Tainari88 wrote:You essentially have a very weak situation with your inability to understand other people's life experiences or cultures.

I have eyes and ears just like you, but I see the world differently in part because of our different life experiences. Your Johann Baum example isn't as strong in my view, because Johann Baum's children end up fully assimilated with some awareness of ethnicity. For example, two dear friends of mine both have parents from Germany. One of the families' children weakly understands German, and the others understand it well. The latter, you could call them multicultural or bi-cultural. They know their cousins in Germany, for example. Well, both of them know their relatives in Germany. But in the first family, mother was German ancestry but born in America and father was from Germany. In the latter, both parents were from Germany.

Assimilation or acculturation is relatively simpler for a European going to America or vice versa than for other races. So I would say that race will always play a persistent role, even though the left consistently disagrees with that assertion.

Tainari88 wrote:You didn't put in the work.

That's true, but I do not have the ambition to become an anthropologist on the one hand, and I have enough life experience to disagree with theories with which I'm presented as well when my experience differs from theories I've learned. For example, you speak of your notional Johann Baum. In modern Democratic party context, this guy facing oppression and loss of his culture has "white privilege" to left leaning Democrats and should be prepared to pay higher taxes for "reparations" to blacks. I can tell you that Irish laborers were ruthlessly exploited in America too, and they didn't see that as a privilege.

Now, on the other hand, I have a Mexican friend I went to school with. He does nothing with his life. Virtually nothing. He's from a rich family--Pemex-affiliated. He gets up in the morning, his breakfast is made for him, he goes mountain bike riding all day, comes home, his maids have a meal ready for him, etc. He's fully fluent in English and Spanish, just as you are. Yet, he's literally done no work professionally in his adult life. How many rich Mexicans do you know now that you are living there? I have a high school girlfriend I used to keep up with when I was on Facebook who's husband is a Mexican billionaire. He works very hard and she's a stay-at-home mom. Can't say anything about the kids as I've never met them, and I'm not on Facebook anymore. However, I'm sure they are quite privileged and live very different lives from the lady who keeps my house or the men who tend my garden--both from Mexico.

I have a black friend I rarely see now that he has moved to Washington. He's from Cameroon. Speaks fluent French and English. When he finally got his US citizenship and a passport, he liked flashing his passport. He is quite funny. He used to say, "Hey man. We Americans got to stick together. The immigrants are coming here and taking all the jobs." Then he'd laugh.

Another long-term friend from my days in banking was from India. He already spoke fluent English. He did very well for himself. He's better off financially than I am. Participates in politics, community organizing, etc. In India, he's from the Brahmin caste, so it's sort of an expected thing for him.

Tainari88 wrote:Mandela, the leader of South Africa and who lived most of his adult life under the Apartheid regime in South Africa, decided the road to peace was about peaceful co-existence of both races and allowing both races to marry, share lives together and for the cultures to either acculurate and or assimilate according to the nature of that multicultural society. The native Afrikaaners weren't interested in pulling up stakes and leaving South Africa. Neither were the British background South Africans or the Southeast Asian South Africans, and then the ethnic African ones like the Zulu, the Xhoso and many others? How does one take all the diversity and try to make it work for the best progress of all citizens in that land? Regardless of class, race, language, culture? A tough damn task for sure.

Mandela's plan hasn't exactly materialized in peace and harmony among races. Wouldn't you agree? My sister dated a white South African guy and spent some time there. White South Africans knew that Apartheid wasn't a fair system, but they feared what was to come and a lot of that is an issue now. Going back to Bloomberg's moronic farming comments, Robert Mugabe thought that he could just seize farms from white people, hand the properties over to black people and everything would be fine, because like Bloomberg he saw it as digging a hole, putting in a seed, covering it with dirt and watering it, and voila everything comes up roses. Zimbabwe went from an agricultural exporter to an importer with food shortages almost overnight.

Tainari88 wrote:You aren't even aware of why the Irish and English ancestors of yours were interested in picking you apart?

I'm exceedingly aware of why they do it. There were no "white people" in Europe until very recently. Everyone could be picked apart by religion, class, ethnicity and linguistic background, and still can be to a significant degree. My surname is Cambro-Norman. The English see it as English, but the Welsh don't. As for assimilation, the Normans in Ireland were to assimilate to become "more Irish than the Irish themselves." They even pick apart Norman surnames in Ireland. Powers, Fitzpatrick, Fitzgerald, Burke, Clare, etc.

Tainari88 wrote:That is a serious lack of self awareness BJ.

In my circles, we do know each other's background but it is not a front and center as an issue, because it plays almost no role in American life among whites if you are two or more generations away from immigrants.

Tainari88 wrote:Propaganda? It works? You got to get back to the center of what propaganda is about? Persuasion, messages, creating a truth that is about mythology. Joseph Campbell's great old series...."The Power of Myth".

Indeed. I think Trump is likely to win--not saying he can't or won't lose, because he pulled an inside straight in 2016--because he understands the mindset of working class people, and he likes them. When I was a kid, I used to make rounds with my father--a medical doctor. This was long before HIPAA, etc. That would be strictly forbidden today. I got to the point of being able to correctly diagnose things when I was 11 years old. By contrast, Donald Trump would muck around on construction sites when he was a kid. As a kid, your mind is like a sponge. Trump understands working class people and most Washington politicians don't. Did you see the video clip of Bloomberg telling you how he could teach you to be a farmer? "You dig a little hole, put in the seed, cover it with dirt, water it and up comes the corn." That might work for 1 corn stalk. Corn farmers very frequently are addressing between 2k-10k acres. They need to be meteorologists, botanists, biochemists, mechanics and futures market hedgers among other things. If your harvester breaks, you get out an fix it. There is no AAA out in the middle of nowhere for combines and harvesters. Trump gets that, and that's why he's developed such a bond with blue collar and working class people. When Donald Trump Jr. gets up and says, "I'm probably one of the very few sons of a billionaire that can drive a Caterpillar D-10 bulldozer", that resonates with those people in ways that is completely beyond the comprehension of people like Mike Bloomberg or Hillary Clinton. They think the way to address that is to trash Donald Trump, and not to get a better understanding of what it's like for a construction site worker, factory worker, or farmer; what policies would benefit them; and, then generally relate to people better. Instead, they have decided to characterize vast swathes of the electorate as ignorant bigots with white privilege. Take this one from the libertarian Tarl Warwick (who's from Vermont and part of Sander's constituency).



Sanders--like Joe Biden--has this idea that white people do not experience poverty. I had that as a tagline when Biden had said, "Poor kids are every bit as smart as white kids" or words to that effect. Where I am from, you just don't see white people busing tables. So it seems true if you don't get around much. They have higher paying jobs or they're homeless. That's also true of DC and a lot of urban areas. Yet, go to a cafe in Wyoming or Montana or rural Pennsylvania or West Virginia, and it's not uncommon at all to see poorer whites working lower paying jobs. This is why Washington pols are seen as being so totally out of touch while they simultaneously grab on to this "wokeness" stuff and criticize people and talk about "white privilege". Obviously, that's not going to resonate with a white bus boy in West Virginia who can't afford college, but it does nothing to stop Democrats from spouting all the "white privilege" nonsense as though every white person were middle or upper class.

Trump's propaganda works, because he's speaking to the truths of people ignored by Washington. It's not simply because he is spouting lies all the time.
User avatar
By Tainari88
#15068238
blackjack21 wrote:I have eyes and ears just like you, but I see the world differently in part because of our different life experiences. Your Johann Baum example isn't as strong in my view, because Johann Baum's children end up fully assimilated with some awareness of ethnicity. For example, two dear friends of mine both have parents from Germany. One of the families' children weakly understands German, and the others understand it well. The latter, you could call them multicultural or bi-cultural. They know their cousins in Germany, for example. Well, both of them know their relatives in Germany. But in the first family, mother was German ancestry but born in America and father was from Germany. In the latter, both parents were from Germany.

Why do you think it is easier for Johann Baum to assimilate than another ethnic groups that remain in the USA and go back and forth to the other originating nation? Clarify it for me please Blackjack?

Assimilation or acculturation is relatively simpler for a European going to America or vice versa than for other races. So I would say that race will always play a persistent role, even though the left consistently disagrees with that assertion.

Why would you say race plays a persistent role? You are arguing about some type of left that is what? Be specific? Neo-liberal? Why is assimilation relatively simpler? And why are you generically asserting that most Europeans a very big generalization are all easy to assimilate in the USA? You need to very specific BJ.

That's true, but I do not have the ambition to become an anthropologist on the one hand, and I have enough life experience to disagree with theories with which I'm presented as well when my experience differs from theories I've learned. For example, you speak of your notional Johann Baum. In modern Democratic party context, this guy facing oppression and loss of his culture has "white privilege" to left leaning Democrats and should be prepared to pay higher taxes for "reparations" to blacks. I can tell you that Irish laborers were ruthlessly exploited in America too, and they didn't see that as a privilege.

BJ, you really need to understand the nature of unpaid slave labor, and being considered a cow or a horse and having your father's neck lynched in front of you, and having such terroristic threats that entire groups of families move out of a state and leave far away into the North. Did the Irish get that? Only through the potato famine years and so on where they forced in such huge numbers from Ireland. Being white immigrants and new arrivals? Their progeny did get positions of power. Politicians, (The Kennedys, The Reagans, etc.), and many other professions that were basically prohibited for blacks to enter and be successful in even though American Blacks were part of American society way before most of the Irish immigration had arrived. You don't want reparations? You see it as a way of exploiting white innocent people who never enslaved anyone? No, BJ, I think you just want to accept the reality that the history of the USA hasn't been one of justice for certain groups in this world.

Now, on the other hand, I have a Mexican friend I went to school with. He does nothing with his life. Virtually nothing. He's from a rich family--Pemex-affiliated. He gets up in the morning, his breakfast is made for him, he goes mountain bike riding all day, comes home, his maids have a meal ready for him, etc. He's fully fluent in English and Spanish, just as you are. Yet, he's literally done no work professionally in his adult life. How many rich Mexicans do you know now that you are living there? I have a high school girlfriend I used to keep up with when I was on Facebook who's husband is a Mexican billionaire. He works very hard and she's a stay-at-home mom. Can't say anything about the kids as I've never met them, and I'm not on Facebook anymore. However, I'm sure they are quite privileged and live very different lives from the lady who keeps my house or the men who tend my garden--both from Mexico.

So, the point about class being a very significant factor in a society you get? My question was not that. My question was about have you ever asked the people low on the totem pole economically why they never became coders, and professionals? I ask that question all the time here....in this neighborhood. It is very very interesting what the replies are like from the working class Mexicans. Do you think you can hazard a guess what those might be BJ?

I have a black friend I rarely see now that he has moved to Washington. He's from Cameroon. Speaks fluent French and English. When he finally got his US citizenship and a passport, he liked flashing his passport. He is quite funny. He used to say, "Hey man. We Americans got to stick together. The immigrants are coming here and taking all the jobs." Then he'd laugh.

Hmm...do you think he should never have become a citizen BJ? I think you are trying to state something? What is it? That you accept Africans? But not the Obamaphone lady? Come on BJ...what is all this taking the black friends out of the closet and dusting them off all about? Are you trying to prove you are not a racist? What are you then BJ? You want all the immigrants here who are here without permission to leave? I live in Mexico. The land of $2 dollars an hour for wages. I don't see things like you do BJ. For me the Mexicans are human beings looking for a paycheck just like many Irish ancestors were fleeing the potato famine in the 1840's. In fact, they have more roots to this land because they live next door and not across the Atlantic ocean much further away from the USA. Relampaguito, what are you trying to say? That you want a united nation and you think the only way is segregated communities and people categorized by abilities and talents and IQ and to stop the programs for saving the people from things that are not saveable? Clarify what you want BJ.

Another long-term friend from my days in banking was from India. He already spoke fluent English. He did very well for himself. He's better off financially than I am. Participates in politics, community organizing, etc. In India, he's from the Brahmin caste, so it's sort of an expected thing for him.

Do you want a Brahmin class in the USA? Lol. There was a man once who opened a school where he got the kids of the Untouchables and educated them like Brahmins and he had the idea of doing it with a certain mindset. I wish you would see it. It clarifies the errors of thinking that caste and class is something that is about just raising the kids in a different environment. It proves one very important thing. You want real change? You can't do it in isolation. It takes a whole world practically on the same page to get to real change. Real change that is true improvement is hard. And unfortunately history is saying that it requires blood and truly deep conflict for it to be resolved enough to see a social and economic change that is permanent.

Mandela's plan hasn't exactly materialized in peace and harmony among races. Wouldn't you agree? My sister dated a white South African guy and spent some time there. White South Africans knew that Apartheid wasn't a fair system, but they feared what was to come and a lot of that is an issue now. Going back to Bloomberg's moronic farming comments, Robert Mugabe thought that he could just seize farms from white people, hand the properties over to black people and everything would be fine, because like Bloomberg he saw it as digging a hole, putting in a seed, covering it with dirt and watering it, and voila everything comes up roses. Zimbabwe went from an agricultural exporter to an importer with food shortages almost overnight.

No, BJ, the problem is fear. Fear of the other, fear of losing control of the money, fear of sharing power with people who they have learned to not trust, not share their power with, and whom are seen as the enemy or the inferiors. It is fear in the most profound level in which an unfair system finds its roots in. And also objectifying other human beings BJ. Dehumanizing them with phrases like "Leftist Animals" and so on.....you want to get rid of the globalists and what is the solution to it all? Do you seriously think that African Americans should be shipped back to Africa and Mexicans to Mexico and all the rest to their respective countries of origin? Do you seriously believe that other people's cultures for them? Are meaningless BJ? Think about where the ultimate consequences of what kind of society are you going to advocate for? What do you think will be the advantages of such a society? What will be the fallout and the disadvantages? Think hard about how many millions of people are going to be dealt with in which their entire life's work, security and families will be destroyed in order to make way for some form of cultural isolationism in order for people living in fear of the other to feel safe from them? Because there are small and great moments BJ in which I see people and know how limited we all are in experiences, barriers, etc and I still feel connected to every single one of them as if I were part of a greater whole. It is wonderful. That sense of connectedness. But all of that is very fragile BJ. Unless you work hard on feeling it and making it a reality? It slips away from all of us....and we are left with a sense of bereft feelings. A lot of human beings milling about but no sense of connection to all of them. At all. You see them as all alien to your life and experiences. They are no longer really human....do you understand me BJ?

I'm exceedingly aware of why they do it. There were no "white people" in Europe until very recently. Everyone could be picked apart by religion, class, ethnicity and linguistic background, and still can be to a significant degree. My surname is Cambro-Norman. The English see it as English, but the Welsh don't. As for assimilation, the Normans in Ireland were to assimilate to become "more Irish than the Irish themselves." They even pick apart Norman surnames in Ireland. Powers, Fitzpatrick, Fitzgerald, Burke, Clare, etc.

Si, this is significant BJ. I think we should work on that thread (about identity) there are lagoons of not understanding what it is about in this paragraph. Got to cope with the deficits.
In my circles, we do know each other's background but it is not a front and center as an issue, because it plays almost no role in American life among whites if you are two or more generations away from immigrants.

That is true. American life is about forgetting a past from a continent that is far away and also painful. The past among immigrants is in general a painful past. It is logical that it is that. And human beings are good at avoiding pain. For growth, or for denial. But either way? Dealing with it often is not easy and is painful in some way for the immigrants to discuss. Why did I have to leave my society and come here? Was I successful or not? Did I lose something along the way? It is interesting that the USA has a love/hate relationship with its immigrants. For it is a nation filled with them...yet, they can't seem to get past the need to have an assimilation that they think is absolutely imperative to have....to eliminate a threat? Threat from who and why? That is interesting.

Indeed. I think Trump is likely to win--not saying he can't or won't lose, because he pulled an inside straight in 2016--because he understands the mindset of working class people, and he likes them. When I was a kid, I used to make rounds with my father--a medical doctor. This was long before HIPAA, etc. That would be strictly forbidden today. I got to the point of being able to correctly diagnose things when I was 11 years old. By contrast, Donald Trump would muck around on construction sites when he was a kid. As a kid, your mind is like a sponge. Trump understands working class people and most Washington politicians don't. Did you see the video clip of Bloomberg telling you how he could teach you to be a farmer? "You dig a little hole, put in the seed, cover it with dirt, water it and up comes the corn." That might work for 1 corn stalk. Corn farmers very frequently are addressing between 2k-10k acres. They need to be meteorologists, botanists, biochemists, mechanics and futures market hedgers among other things. If your harvester breaks, you get out an fix it. There is no AAA out in the middle of nowhere for combines and harvesters. Trump gets that, and that's why he's developed such a bond with blue collar and working class people. When Donald Trump Jr. gets up and says, "I'm probably one of the very few sons of a billionaire that can drive a Caterpillar D-10 bulldozer", that resonates with those people in ways that is completely beyond the comprehension of people like Mike Bloomberg or Hillary Clinton. They think the way to address that is to trash Donald Trump, and not to get a better understanding of what it's like for a construction site worker, factory worker, or farmer; what policies would benefit them; and, then generally relate to people better. Instead, they have decided to characterize vast swathes of the electorate as ignorant bigots with white privilege. Take this one from the libertarian Tarl Warwick (who's from Vermont and part of Sander's constituency).

Oh BJ, you truly think Trump is a blue collar dude that understands his base? I disagree I think he is a lifelong narcissist that is self serving and I don't think he is going to fight for the working man. At all. Only history will prove where his loyalties lie. He hasn't done much for working class people in my opinion. More obsessed with that liberal who did not get much done, Obama and tearing down any little shit thing the dude did while in office.


Sanders--like Joe Biden--has this idea that white people do not experience poverty. I had that as a tagline when Biden had said, "Poor kids are every bit as smart as white kids" or words to that effect. Where I am from, you just don't see white people busing tables. So it seems true if you don't get around much. They have higher paying jobs or they're homeless. That's also true of DC and a lot of urban areas. Yet, go to a cafe in Wyoming or Montana or rural Pennsylvania or West Virginia, and it's not uncommon at all to see poorer whites working lower paying jobs. This is why Washington pols are seen as being so totally out of touch while they simultaneously grab on to this "wokeness" stuff and criticize people and talk about "white privilege". Obviously, that's not going to resonate with a white bus boy in West Virginia who can't afford college, but it does nothing to stop Democrats from spouting all the "white privilege" nonsense as though every white person were middle or upper class.

I guess you never saw Bernie Sanders going to ancestry.com and having that ancestry trace done and how poor his ancestors were. They were dirt poor and not only that were from a town where a massacre occurred. It is interesting. You don't know much about that old Jewish socialist at all do you? It has nothing to do with the woke liberals speaking derisively of the white working classes BJ. It has to do with containing the globalist capitalist class from oppressing everyone who is struggling in this world. It is simple as that. You might think the remedy for it BJ is what? Segregation? Separation? Going back to nationalism? Getting rid of neoliberalism? What do you want to replace it with BJ? Get to the core of what you are advocating for?
Trump's propaganda works, because he's speaking to the truths of people ignored by Washington. It's not simply because he is spouting lies all the time.


I know BJ. I felt he got to the core of many complaints against the Bush family, the Republican sellout class too. But, I was never convinced he was going to fight hard for the lower classes against the global capitalist class or the neoliberals BJ. No, he is not really a well shaped ideologue and a person who has been consistent politically his entire life. He is an opportunist by definition and he will blow where the winds of his own survival take him. If he has to betray that farmer in the middle of the field you speak of to do so? He will not hesitate. He throws anyone under the bus if it is about either his survival or theirs. I find it strange you don't notice it BJ?

Thank you for being so forthright. I appreciate it a lot.

I think we should explore what identity is about for most human beings. A great subject.

I will leave propaganda themes to you and @Potemkin. You @blackjack21 mention propaganda on your profile as a big interest. Give it a shot. I am just a cultural anthropologist.

Who does laundry! ;) :)
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By jimjam
#15068256
blackjack21 wrote:Trump's propaganda works, because he's speaking to the truths of people ignored by Washington


I agree. Aside from hot air, propaganda and tokens …….. what has he done to help them? I see him as, essentially, an elitist front man carnival barker who does his job very well. In NYC we call this a Con Man. Distract and entertain the "people ignored by Washington" while taking care of his fellow plutocrats who now have another trillion or so financed by the $ printing press he has commandeered and enviscerating environmental protections so that greed can better rule the day. Where is better more affordable medical care for the peons? Still waiting for infrastructure repairs that may have been financed my the multi billion dollar tax gift to billionaires and corporations that brag about paying zero taxes. As a Republican presidential candidate, Trump said he would eliminate the national debt in eight years, which was $19 trillion in 2016 ….. it's $23 trillion today …. :?: And much more but ………. I do not have to do the laundry like Ms. T88 but I must take out the garbage

Tainari88 wrote:Who does laundry!

Boring …….
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By blackjack21
#15068300
Tainari88 wrote:Why do you think it is easier for Johann Baum to assimilate than another ethnic groups that remain in the USA and go back and forth to the other originating nation? Clarify it for me please Blackjack?

In your exegesis of assimilation, you noted how much of identity was language. I agree in some respects and disagree in others. I would say at least several other factors play a significant role:

1. Level of development. A German in an American context is often dealing with a similar level of development--agriculture, market towns, industrial trades. By contrast, a nomadic hunter-gatherer society just fundamentally operates differently. Agriculture-based societies necessarily have the concept of land ownership of one sort or another, whereas nomadic or hunter-gather societies generally do not. So the German and the American may have different words for tree, field, and so forth but they already share common concepts as they are agricultural and industrial societies.

2. Common values. Germans and Americans (until very recently) share a Judeo-Christian heritage. One sings "Oh Tannenbaum" and the other sings "Oh Christmas tree", but they already have common religious elements. Of course, I provided a superficial explanation here, but it clearly goes much deeper.

3. Race and Physical Characteristics: Someone from Germany and someone from America probably have common DNA roots anyway. My DNA is mostly British isles by commonality with other people genotyped, but my Y-DNA haplogroup is I1 M-256--something Anglos, Germans, Swedes, and Danes have in common.

However, that doesn't mean that persistent differences do not last that make assimilation more difficult. For example, in the European Union as in the Roman Empire, culture South of the Rhine River and culture North of the Rhine river remain as different today as it did during the Roman Empire. The strains within the European Union--while in a much more modern context economically--break geographically along similar lines as the Roman Empire. Germany doesn't play well with Italy, and so forth. The British are bowing out and opting once again for "splendid isolation." Within Europe as a whole, Roma people have been there for many many centuries, but simply do not assimilate. I see some of the same problems that Marxists see, but I do not always agree with the causes and I almost always disagree with their proposed solutions.

Rei Murasame used to participate here, but she was sort of run out for being a avowed fascist. She and I were very different in that I'm not a fascist/totalitarian and think exterminating entire races is a fools errand. As I said before, one only needs to see Israel today in the context of a society destroyed by the Roman empire and the rather extreme oppression of the Nazi government to see that even that extreme violence tends to strengthen cultural identity rather than weaken it. I have much more in common with 18th and 19th Century American Republic values, rather than dictatorship and epaulets. However, Rei and I would discuss DNA linkages and linguistic backgrounds. For example:
Language and genetics.

This horrifies the modern liberal and leftist, and Rei and I shared a disdain for the closed mindedness of America's elite. Come to think of it, I remember reading "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom back in 1987-1988. I was every bit the student he was talking about in a sort of passive sense, but even then I had reservations about social structure and institutions in the West and the embrace of sort of disposable families, marriages, relationships, etc.

Tainari88 wrote:Why would you say race plays a persistent role? You are arguing about some type of left that is what? Be specific? Neo-liberal? Why is assimilation relatively simpler? And why are you generically asserting that most Europeans a very big generalization are all easy to assimilate in the USA? You need to very specific BJ.

Generally today, that's going to become harder to understand because the American leftists are pushing 1691 as the founding of the United States, rather than 1776 or 1789 so that they can continue to sow the seeds of discord over the compulsory exploitation of labor that occurred principally in the Southern part of the East Coast. New England was a very different experience, more populous and basically fleeing religious oppression in the UK and the fights between Catholics, Protestants and other sectarians. So politically, the United States was founded on a maximum of personal religious freedoms, so it could embrace Episcopalians, Methodists, Quakers, Shakers, Baptists, Catholics and so forth. Culturally, that created a society that embraced the English language and a Protestant work ethic that more or less defined the United States until the early to mid-20th Century. By separating church and state, the United States created a modicum of peace/domestic tranquility.

However, to go deeper into race, I think Darwinian Sexual selection plays a role in humans too. I was raised with the integrated busing that came up in the early presidential debates when Kamala Harris was attacking Joe Biden. We did in fact have it in California too. I actually had a number of black friends as a young kid. By the time I was a teenager and living in the suburbs, I could name one black friend--one cursory friend who was a fellow musician. However, I noticed that generally among my peers too. In a private school that actively admitted blacks and Hispanics--even helping poorer families who couldn't pay, we saw precisely the same sort of self-segregation as in the video I showed above. Black kids were into break dancing and would get together to that end, while white students were playing hacky sack or whatever. The most integrated racial relationships were music (which I was heavily into) and sports (football was crazy where I went to school). Outside of those contexts, races simply separated. There was no active hostility. There was no order. There was no Jim Crow. There was not wink-wink, nudge nudge. It simply wasn't that way at all.

I think that's basically encoded in people. It's not strictly voluntary or cultural or somehow taught to people. Study: White and black children biased toward lighter skin

A white child looks at a picture of a black child and says she's bad because she's black. A black child says a white child is ugly because he's white. A white child says a black child is dumb because she has dark skin.

This isn't a schoolyard fight that takes a racial turn, not a vestige of the "Jim Crow" South; these are American schoolchildren in 2010.

See, you put it like this:

Tainari88 wrote:Caudillo? Lol. You? You are too uptight to be Latin American by far....BJ.

See? You have a stereotype of a Latin American and an Anglo, and you can make that separation in your own mind straight away without ever having met me. Is it race or ethnic based? Absolutely. Do I take offense to it? Not in the slightest, nor did you intend it that way. Yet, we can see that straight away.

Tainari88 wrote:Hmm...do you think he should never have become a citizen BJ?

No. Quite the contrary. I think he's a solid guy.

Tainari88 wrote:I think you are trying to state something? What is it? That you accept Africans? But not the Obamaphone lady? Come on BJ...what is all this taking the black friends out of the closet and dusting them off all about? Are you trying to prove you are not a racist? What are you then BJ?

Well, first and foremost, you wanted an explanation of why I think it is harder for different races to assimilate. In political debates, the only reason I would avoid a term like "racist" is because it stifles conversation into very fixed rubrics. My friend is an interesting case study, because he fits the Charles Murray discussion. He's high IQ. He does well in the IT world. In terms of "cultural capital", he was way out of his depth, but we helped him remedy that, because the bank was underpaying him significantly. However, he assimilated in the US to a significant degree and decided to pursue citizenship, whereas he did not feel accepted in France. Part of that was race and part religion, as he was a Muslim.

Tainari88 wrote:That you want a united nation and you think the only way is segregated communities and people categorized by abilities and talents and IQ and to stop the programs for saving the people from things that are not saveable? Clarify what you want BJ.

I've already stated that it was a mistake to abolish an economy for people with lower IQ and lower skills, because it simply rendered them unemployed. The 17th through the 19th Centuries saw gross exploitation of labor. Much of the 20th Century attenuated the effects of that exploitation and living standards soared. However, part of the Cold War effort to destroy the Soviet Union was to put foreign nations and their economies before our own. That was bad enough in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, from the 1990s forward, both parties abandoned blue collar and working class people and basically destroyed their ability to live without government handouts. I think that needs to stop. I think the vote buying needs to stop--e.g., "you don't have to 'find' a job if you just vote for me. I'll give you welfare and benefits." I don't think we should be propping up the communist government and economy of China. It makes absolutely no fucking sense to have sanctions on Cuba or Venezuela and then have a free trade agreement with China. So I'm frankly done with the establishment. I'm not listening to them anymore, and I'm enjoying watching them come apart at the seams.

Tainari88 wrote:Do you want a Brahmin class in the USA? Lol.

We pretty much already have one.

Tainari88 wrote:There was a man once who opened a school where he got the kids of the Untouchables and educated them like Brahmins and he had the idea of doing it with a certain mindset.

The Flynn effect shows that you can eliminate a lot of IQ differences when you address the socio-economic deficits. However, there are still differences that persist.

Tainari88 wrote:You want real change? You can't do it in isolation. It takes a whole world practically on the same page to get to real change.

That kind of change you are talking about is political, and mostly anything that requires universal agreement is tenuous at best. New technologies have been far and away the biggest drivers of changes. People will adopt new technology far faster than they will new cultures. ISIS will learn Twitters and radicalize people over social networks before they realize that once you have such technologies, the backward world they are looking for is disappealing to the overwhelming majority of people. In America, one of the few real fundamentalists types are the Amish.

Tainari88 wrote:Dehumanizing them with phrases like "Leftist Animals" and so on...

I'm talking about people who are advocating hedonism, drug addiction, casual relationships, etc. That is an appeal to the reptilian brain. That is an appeal to live without the frontal cortex playing a significant role in ones life. Math is racist, and all that nonsense. Or those MS-13 thugs who kill savagely with impunity, and Nancy Pelosi talks about their "spark of divinity" but nothing for the people they kill. I frankly do not see myself as their equals at all. Yes, I do think they are inferior and barbaric.

Tainari88 wrote:You see them as all alien to your life and experiences. They are no longer really human....do you understand me BJ?

Yes, I've heard the "think globally, act locally" stuff since I was a kid. The reality is that all humans have a prejudicial relationship to their own point of view, and I'm not different in that way. I have nothing in common with somebody shooting up heroin on mass transit and shitting on the sidewalk. It's a stretch to say I don't see them as human, but I do see them as not having any agency or capacity to contract. I think incarceration in prison environments is too harsh, but I do think we need to re-open mental facilities and simply find better ways of dealing with mental illness, etc.
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By Hindsite
#15068302
Potemkin wrote:This why the private property rights on which capitalism is founded are essentially atheist. The steward has seized the property of his Master, which he had given freely for all his servants to enjoy.

I am a Christian and own my home as private property and believe it is very much a Christian idea as well as is capitalism. Even our own nation and U.S. Constitution is founded on Christian ideas. Unlike Obama and many others on the left, I hope America remains a Christian nation. That is why I will vote again for the Trump of God in November.
Praise the Lord.
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By Tainari88
#15068348
@blackjack21 you gave me another long set of replies! I am finally done with laundry.

I will be back with detailed thoughts about what you wrote about.

First I am going to post two different backgrounds of these two men. One is Jeff Bezos. The second is Bernie Sanders. Data storage, cloud storage, propaganda. I am thinking who love exploring such topics? You Relampaguito. Those three concepts are your deepest interests. I think a good debate about transforming society in a context you will fully understand from me? Is letting you be who you are. And being able to tell your story. You then can synthesize why you back your idea of change for American society. Once you do? I will come in and tell you why I think I disagree. Give you real concrete examples of why I disagree. And let the chips fall where they may.

That is the best way of allowing people to decide what works.








Sanders BJ is a socialist. But compared to us Latin American socialists? He is a moderate or a strong liberal. He is the only declared socialist in this country that has been able to climb through the conventional channels of politics. Do I think he can beat Trump? I do. But? What will he inherit? And how much can he accomplish in a hypothetical 8 years? I don't really know. I don't even know if the man will live through eight years. The VP will have to be almost a carbon copy of his politics to be able to pick up the slack.

The USA might be married to capitalist and consumerism obsession of expansion of money and consumption lifestyle and turning human beings into batteries for a future world run by a Jeff Bezos. If that is the case? The planet is going to make sure the USA empire is destroyed. Other nations will fill the power vacuum and life goes on....I see this as a long long race for the culmination of expression of the species. The Homo Sapiens, Homo Deus Harari's books delve into...it is in the end? My deepest wish that we pull together to get to that place of connection. Where the mind, the corazon and the human spirit can work as one for a future where we can be proud to go extinct. Having fulfilled our greatest potential.


You are a part of that world I see in the future, BJ, so are all of us.

The first man Jeff Bezos dedicated his life to extending the concepts of consumption and preserving consumption patterns of humanity because BJ? He is not going to change the premise of capitalism. He is very aware that infrastructure change is needed because the world the Earth is very much finite. There will be a point in which people will not be able to consume at the same level as the times of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. At all. What kind of world will the future generations inherit. Jeff Bezos is creating a culture where your primary role in life is to be a customer/consumer. That is the focus. Of his entire sweat and work.

That is where the core values of capitalism lies BJ.

How fulfilling is it being a customer? It is a relationship based on economics and trade only? Shopoholics Anonymous does exist? It can be an addiction and compulsive thing. Is that really healthy? Would you want a wife who had to spend all your money buying stuff all day long? Would you remain married long to such a woman BJ? If the message is that consuming is what you should do all day? She is responding to that message? Is it healthy? As a socialist? I say, "no, it is not healthy. Do people (the entire human person) gets completion and fulfillment from being a customer or consumer only? I would state that they don't. It is a limited relationship.

That is where I will start with a sense of identity BJ.

I will come back to answer you Blackjack.
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By jimjam
#15068364
Tainari88 wrote:How fulfilling is it being a customer? It is a relationship based on economics and trade only?


I am 75 and formulated a plan over 50 years ago where I would eschew purchase of giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbits and such at Easter time as well as a new car every 2 years (and on and on and on) and accumulate instead assets that would permit me to live to the grave without endlessly dancing to the dollar. Eventually I got to a point where I had zero debt and fine comfortable and modest homes in South Florida and the coast of Maine. I am now in the 16th year of a vacation with no end. Regrettably, I do not own a giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbit.

I have always been amazed at the useless junk people spend their $ on and see $ as the world's most addictive drug. It is a daily event here in Florida to see driveways covered with useless crap as people try to recoup maybe 10 cents on the dollar via "yard sales".
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By Tainari88
#15068369
jimjam wrote:I am 75 and formulated a plan over 50 years ago where I would eschew purchase of giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbits and such at Easter time as well as a new car every 2 years (and on and on and on) and accumulate instead assets that would permit me to live to the grave without endlessly dancing to the dollar. Eventually I got to a point where I had zero debt and fine comfortable and modest homes in South Florida and the coast of Maine. I am now in the 16th year of a vacation with no end. Regrettably, I do not own a giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbit.

I have always been amazed at the useless junk people spend their $ on and see $ as the world's most addictive drug. It is a daily event here in Florida to see driveways covered with useless crap as people try to recoup maybe 10 cents on the dollar via "yard sales".



If you have an entire society pushing a message ( a propaganda one) that you got to BUY something, consume somthing, be a customer and be on amazon.com buying shit all day and every day? What world will you be dealing with?

I don't know how @blackjack21 lives his life. I happen to think he would rather be reading books or doing his coding rather than buying shit on amazon.com all day and when it breaks or he loses it? Having anxiety attacks about it all day long?

Consumer relationships being the center of civilization is not what socialism is about. But capitalism sees it as essential. Value clash. Identity clash.

Where is the entire whole human person going to be able to manifest a social context that will mine their abilities and meet their needs? With customer and consumerism only? This is what that effed up value system has wrought @jimjam ?





The capitalists have not dealt with the damage they have wrought with thoughtless consumption? Yet they want to expand to space and keep the consuming going....Bezos is not paying well his low totem workers...make robots, keep consuming, the plan for some or for all of humanity? Or are we going to be leaving the Blacks, the Mexicans, the Untouchables in India, the x and the y poor white working class and etc.....to live on this shit of consumption as the upper elite live in some isolated space station living a beautiful life far from it all? Get the CORAZON....before all there is? Is a kind of dystopia for putting $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Greed drug dealer culture as the ONLY OPTION for humanity!
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By Hindsite
#15068523
jimjam wrote:I am 75 and formulated a plan over 50 years ago where I would eschew purchase of giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbits and such at Easter time as well as a new car every 2 years (and on and on and on) and accumulate instead assets that would permit me to live to the grave without endlessly dancing to the dollar. Eventually I got to a point where I had zero debt and fine comfortable and modest homes in South Florida and the coast of Maine. I am now in the 16th year of a vacation with no end. Regrettably, I do not own a giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbit.

I have always been amazed at the useless junk people spend their $ on and see $ as the world's most addictive drug. It is a daily event here in Florida to see driveways covered with useless crap as people try to recoup maybe 10 cents on the dollar via "yard sales".

Wow, your story seems pretty close to mine except for the desire for giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbits. My two homes are both in Georgia and I rent one.
HalleluYah
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By jimjam
#15068633
Hindsite wrote:Wow, your story seems pretty close to mine except for the desire for giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbits. My two homes are both in Georgia and I rent one.
HalleluYah

That is interesting. You and I disagree 100% of the time but I sense that you are good natured. You really should look more into giant pink fuzzy bunny rabbits though. I am fairly certain that they guard The Secret Of The Universe.
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By Donna
#15068647
blackjack21 wrote:Sanders--like Joe Biden--has this idea that white people do not experience poverty. I had that as a tagline when Biden had said, "Poor kids are every bit as smart as white kids" or words to that effect. Where I am from, you just don't see white people busing tables. So it seems true if you don't get around much. They have higher paying jobs or they're homeless. That's also true of DC and a lot of urban areas. Yet, go to a cafe in Wyoming or Montana or rural Pennsylvania or West Virginia, and it's not uncommon at all to see poorer whites working lower paying jobs. This is why Washington pols are seen as being so totally out of touch while they simultaneously grab on to this "wokeness" stuff and criticize people and talk about "white privilege". Obviously, that's not going to resonate with a white bus boy in West Virginia who can't afford college, but it does nothing to stop Democrats from spouting all the "white privilege" nonsense as though every white person were middle or upper class.


I don't think that's a fair criticism of Sanders and it's largely hyperbole based on one comment he had made while trying to pivot for POC voters. He is the senator who led bicameral legislation again opioid manufacturers, one of the largest predators of impoverished, predominantly white rural communities and has spent a great deal of time and energy over the years advocating on behalf of the Rust belt in the senate. Bernie Sanders is a friend to the American worker (which is why Trotskyists are calling him a social fascist lol). The reality is that his policies will help poor whites more than any other platform. That is the final abstraction of the situation. Trump on the other hand is effectively bribing them. He's offering them 'permission' so to speak to behave as racial chauvinists in the public cultural sphere in exchange for permissiveness on his tax-cuts, deregulation, attacks on social security, and other policies which continue to run decidedly in contrast with the real interests of the working class.
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By Tainari88
#15068709
blackjack21 wrote:In your exegesis of assimilation, you noted how much of identity was language. I agree in some respects and disagree in others. I would say at least several other factors play a significant role:

1. Level of development. A German in an American context is often dealing with a similar level of development--agriculture, market towns, industrial trades. By contrast, a nomadic hunter-gatherer society just fundamentally operates differently. Agriculture-based societies necessarily have the concept of land ownership of one sort or another, whereas nomadic or hunter-gather societies generally do not. So the German and the American may have different words for tree, field, and so forth but they already share common concepts as they are agricultural and industrial societies.

2. Common values. Germans and Americans (until very recently) share a Judeo-Christian heritage. One sings "Oh Tannenbaum" and the other sings "Oh Christmas tree", but they already have common religious elements. Of course, I provided a superficial explanation here, but it clearly goes much deeper.

3. Race and Physical Characteristics: Someone from Germany and someone from America probably have common DNA roots anyway. My DNA is mostly British isles by commonality with other people genotyped, but my Y-DNA haplogroup is I1 M-256--something Anglos, Germans, Swedes, and Danes have in common.

However, that doesn't mean that persistent differences do not last that make assimilation more difficult. For example, in the European Union as in the Roman Empire, culture South of the Rhine River and culture North of the Rhine river remain as different today as it did during the Roman Empire. The strains within the European Union--while in a much more modern context economically--break geographically along similar lines as the Roman Empire. Germany doesn't play well with Italy, and so forth. The British are bowing out and opting once again for "splendid isolation." Within Europe as a whole, Roma people have been there for many many centuries, but simply do not assimilate. I see some of the same problems that Marxists see, but I do not always agree with the causes and I almost always disagree with their proposed solutions.

Rei Murasame used to participate here, but she was sort of run out for being a avowed fascist. She and I were very different in that I'm not a fascist/totalitarian and think exterminating entire races is a fools errand. As I said before, one only needs to see Israel today in the context of a society destroyed by the Roman empire and the rather extreme oppression of the Nazi government to see that even that extreme violence tends to strengthen cultural identity rather than weaken it. I have much more in common with 18th and 19th Century American Republic values, rather than dictatorship and epaulets. However, Rei and I would discuss DNA linkages and linguistic backgrounds. For example:
Language and genetics.

This horrifies the modern liberal and leftist, and Rei and I shared a disdain for the closed mindedness of America's elite. Come to think of it, I remember reading "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom back in 1987-1988. I was every bit the student he was talking about in a sort of passive sense, but even then I had reservations about social structure and institutions in the West and the embrace of sort of disposable families, marriages, relationships, etc.


Generally today, that's going to become harder to understand because the American leftists are pushing 1691 as the founding of the United States, rather than 1776 or 1789 so that they can continue to sow the seeds of discord over the compulsory exploitation of labor that occurred principally in the Southern part of the East Coast. New England was a very different experience, more populous and basically fleeing religious oppression in the UK and the fights between Catholics, Protestants and other sectarians. So politically, the United States was founded on a maximum of personal religious freedoms, so it could embrace Episcopalians, Methodists, Quakers, Shakers, Baptists, Catholics and so forth. Culturally, that created a society that embraced the English language and a Protestant work ethic that more or less defined the United States until the early to mid-20th Century. By separating church and state, the United States created a modicum of peace/domestic tranquility.

However, to go deeper into race, I think Darwinian Sexual selection plays a role in humans too. I was raised with the integrated busing that came up in the early presidential debates when Kamala Harris was attacking Joe Biden. We did in fact have it in California too. I actually had a number of black friends as a young kid. By the time I was a teenager and living in the suburbs, I could name one black friend--one cursory friend who was a fellow musician. However, I noticed that generally among my peers too. In a private school that actively admitted blacks and Hispanics--even helping poorer families who couldn't pay, we saw precisely the same sort of self-segregation as in the video I showed above. Black kids were into break dancing and would get together to that end, while white students were playing hacky sack or whatever. The most integrated racial relationships were music (which I was heavily into) and sports (football was crazy where I went to school). Outside of those contexts, races simply separated. There was no active hostility. There was no order. There was no Jim Crow. There was not wink-wink, nudge nudge. It simply wasn't that way at all.

I think that's basically encoded in people. It's not strictly voluntary or cultural or somehow taught to people. Study: White and black children biased toward lighter skin


See, you put it like this:


See? You have a stereotype of a Latin American and an Anglo, and you can make that separation in your own mind straight away without ever having met me. Is it race or ethnic based? Absolutely. Do I take offense to it? Not in the slightest, nor did you intend it that way. Yet, we can see that straight away.


No. Quite the contrary. I think he's a solid guy.


Well, first and foremost, you wanted an explanation of why I think it is harder for different races to assimilate. In political debates, the only reason I would avoid a term like "racist" is because it stifles conversation into very fixed rubrics. My friend is an interesting case study, because he fits the Charles Murray discussion. He's high IQ. He does well in the IT world. In terms of "cultural capital", he was way out of his depth, but we helped him remedy that, because the bank was underpaying him significantly. However, he assimilated in the US to a significant degree and decided to pursue citizenship, whereas he did not feel accepted in France. Part of that was race and part religion, as he was a Muslim.


I've already stated that it was a mistake to abolish an economy for people with lower IQ and lower skills, because it simply rendered them unemployed. The 17th through the 19th Centuries saw gross exploitation of labor. Much of the 20th Century attenuated the effects of that exploitation and living standards soared. However, part of the Cold War effort to destroy the Soviet Union was to put foreign nations and their economies before our own. That was bad enough in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, from the 1990s forward, both parties abandoned blue collar and working class people and basically destroyed their ability to live without government handouts. I think that needs to stop. I think the vote buying needs to stop--e.g., "you don't have to 'find' a job if you just vote for me. I'll give you welfare and benefits." I don't think we should be propping up the communist government and economy of China. It makes absolutely no fucking sense to have sanctions on Cuba or Venezuela and then have a free trade agreement with China. So I'm frankly done with the establishment. I'm not listening to them anymore, and I'm enjoying watching them come apart at the seams.


We pretty much already have one.


The Flynn effect shows that you can eliminate a lot of IQ differences when you address the socio-economic deficits. However, there are still differences that persist.


That kind of change you are talking about is political, and mostly anything that requires universal agreement is tenuous at best. New technologies have been far and away the biggest drivers of changes. People will adopt new technology far faster than they will new cultures. ISIS will learn Twitters and radicalize people over social networks before they realize that once you have such technologies, the backward world they are looking for is disappealing to the overwhelming majority of people. In America, one of the few real fundamentalists types are the Amish.


I'm talking about people who are advocating hedonism, drug addiction, casual relationships, etc. That is an appeal to the reptilian brain. That is an appeal to live without the frontal cortex playing a significant role in ones life. Math is racist, and all that nonsense. Or those MS-13 thugs who kill savagely with impunity, and Nancy Pelosi talks about their "spark of divinity" but nothing for the people they kill. I frankly do not see myself as their equals at all. Yes, I do think they are inferior and barbaric.


Yes, I've heard the "think globally, act locally" stuff since I was a kid. The reality is that all humans have a prejudicial relationship to their own point of view, and I'm not different in that way. I have nothing in common with somebody shooting up heroin on mass transit and shitting on the sidewalk. It's a stretch to say I don't see them as human, but I do see them as not having any agency or capacity to contract. I think incarceration in prison environments is too harsh, but I do think we need to re-open mental facilities and simply find better ways of dealing with mental illness, etc.



Relampaguito, you talked a lot about why you think the way you think. And I thought you were exactly what you wrote you are in this piece. It confirmed it for me. I am not surprised.

This needs a lot more depth of exchanges. I think you and I need to abandon the propaganda works thread and start another one about the nature of culture in human life, the nature of human learning, the nature of what influences language and a whole lot more.

My father was a linguist BJ. His many years was about analyzing language and why people think the way they do about their speech, their ways of communicating and breaking down what language is?

Unfortunately you never had to live in another country with a totally different language you had to acquire at school versus home. You never had to navigate totally different cultural matrix and because of that you think in ways that are never going to be able to really understand why human beings and their languages and cultures are so incredibly strong and why asking people to assimilate is incredibly offensive. I don't think you will get it BJ.

I could be wrong. But who knows?

I think the best we can do is start a thread on identity, culture and language and go at it for a while.

My child is never going to automatically speak Spanish. Even though his father and I are both Spanish speakers. No. All that is learned in very specific ways. Get that out of your head. That language is genetic. Acquisition of a human language is embedded in genes. Which human language you wind up speaking fluently is entirely socially learned. Not passed down through genes. Get that straight in your head.

You have some deficits. I think those need to be cleared up.

Most of this stuff is self explanatory with the exception of other things that need serious discussion.

BTW, BJ, I have never met you that is true in real life. The reason why I think you are not a caudillo and don't have Latin American ways at all? Because culturally you are not that. It is obvious by the things you say, how you think, and the way you write and your personality. It is all not how a Latin American would be or think.

It doesn't mean that if you lived among Latin Americans into your 70's and beyond? You would be acculturated. You would be. As all social beings adapt to their majority host society in order to be socially relevant.

Good night. Buenas noches. I got a little son to read to tonight!
User avatar
By jimjam
#15070386
On a scale of 1 to 10 how scared are you? If you say any number more than 5, then the demoralization propaganda campaign the corporate media is pursuing is working on you. In fact, the very well known psych-ops tactic of "information overload" is effective as long as the target audience is unaware they are being manipulated.
By Patrickov
#15070399
jimjam wrote:On a scale of 1 to 10 how scared are you? If you say any number more than 5, then the demoralization propaganda campaign the corporate media is pursuing is working on you. In fact, the very well known psych-ops tactic of "information overload" is effective as long as the target audience is unaware they are being manipulated.


To be precise, scared of what?
User avatar
By jimjam
#15070403
Patrickov wrote:To be precise, scared of what?


anything and everything. a general atmosphere of fear and doom that can be manipulated by the ruling class to their ends. Suddenly a father figure politician appears on the scene who is going to protect us from a whole litany of fears ranging from various foreign "enemies" to socialism, liberals, Nazis or conservatives. While our new found father bellows hot air and false promises day after day, the ruling class uses their purchased politicians to push thru a wide range of rule changes designed to improve/increase their wealth (usually) at the expense of the conned peons. Been going on for centuries.
#15070453
jimjam wrote:
anything and everything. a general atmosphere of fear and doom that can be manipulated by the ruling class to their ends. Suddenly a father figure politician appears on the scene who is going to protect us from a whole litany of fears ranging from various foreign "enemies" to socialism, liberals, Nazis or conservatives. While our new found father bellows hot air and false promises day after day, the ruling class uses their purchased politicians to push thru a wide range of rule changes designed to improve/increase their wealth (usually) at the expense of the conned peons. Been going on for centuries.
To be fair, regardless of ideology there are always people who are out there to con or even coerce people. Some of these schemes do need to be feared.

A society is probably well advanced if fear is widely considered as merely a tool of manipulation rather than something real, but I do not think many enjoy this luxury.

In some cases, successful manipulations might actually deserve credit. For example, if anti-China politicians in Taiwan and Hong Kong are little more than manipulators then I think they deserve whatever money they have "scammed" because their alternatives give much worse prospects.

The previous councillor of my locality had been a fairly successful conman -- he only broke down because a real SJW stepped in.

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