USA Politics

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Thank you for sharing this story.

--Bruce

+1

[greg]

This is not a bad idea, but your alternative names are still problematic.  The word "olympic" recalls Ancient Greece.  That is, it recalls old, dead white people.  It must go.  Clearly, "Washington" must go, but DC is actually much, much worse.  It derives from Columbus, the most sinister genocidal maniac in all of human history.  His name cannot be expunged from history quickly enough or thoroughly enough.  Gates are meant to exclude, so that word cannot be used.  And surely, the use of the word "king" is problematic, as is reference to France, another enclave of white people.  Letters and numbers are the way to go.  Maybe something like THX 1138.

Numbers are safe since they are Arabic.

Letters are not safe because they are Roman. So we can only use numbers. Actually, it would be safe if every name were converted to something like a bar code.

So, I live on "473847329473892471" street should be non-offensive. And maybe do the same with names as well. We can just use our social security numbers in place of our names, since names have a reference to history as well.



Speaking of genocide, I feel like non-whites and non-Asians are underrepresented. Columbus and Genghis Khan could be on the list for non-dictators, maybe?

[Daverz]

     I especially like Dead French King.

Are we sure there isn't some place out West named Dead French King Gap or similar?  Those 19th Century settlers could sometimes be pretty sardonic.  Not every place needs to be named after some traitor, slaver, genocidier, or strike breaker.

EDIT: I forgot the imperialists... and the rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

[Daverz]

That's what I'm talking about... more integration is only a good thing.

I probably have a lack of understanding about heavily homogeneous communities since I grew up in a very diverse area... friends were white/black/hispanic/asian, and quite a few of each, so I didn't really care about stuff like that. It was just "whatever," I never gave much thought at all about how people looked...

Identity politics is just alien to me. I wish people would stop obsessing over it... it starts to put thoughts in my head that don't belong... from living a lifetime where race is not really that important, to going to where people saying you should obsess about it is like going from being mentally free to being trapped in a box- that box being labeled as whatever people want to label you.

I imagine that to a fish the concepts of wet and dry are pretty alien.

[milk]

That's what I'm talking about... more integration is only a good thing.

I probably have a lack of understanding about heavily homogeneous communities since I grew up in a very diverse area... friends were white/black/hispanic/asian, and quite a few of each, so I didn't really care about stuff like that. It was just "whatever," I never gave much thought at all about how people looked...

Identity politics is just alien to me. I wish people would stop obsessing over it... it starts to put thoughts in my head that don't belong... from living a lifetime where race is not really that important, to going to where people saying you should obsess about it is like going from being mentally free to being trapped in a box- that box being labeled as whatever people want to label you.

I was reading an advice column from a progressive site that popped up in my feed.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/colorblind-parenting-race-care-and-feeding.html
This is a mom's concern that her son said he doesn't care about race for filling out his college roommate request form.

"But one of our sons mentioned recently how irritated he is by the form he has to fill out regarding a college roommate. He has to specify his race, and all of the profiles of potential roommates he views also include race. He says all he cares about is if they are male or female and what their interests are—he doesn't care about race."

So, the problem here is?

"With everything going on in the U.S. now, I'm doing more reading on racism, and if I'm understanding correctly, not caring about race is almost as bad as focusing only on race."
And the advice?

"Not caring about or noticing race is a privilege reserved for people who are white."

"As the sociologist Megan R. Underhill, who studies race and family, has said, 'White people aren't 'outside' of race—they're at the top of the racial hierarchy.'"

It's not that I don't understand why they are thinking about it this way but you can probably guess what the criticism of this type of thinking is going to be. I just don't go along anymore with this. Is this patronizing white liberal guilt? Is this King's dream for America?
To me, this is at least questionable but I fear it's become a kind of ideological dogma.

[SimonNZ]

re statues:

I know its not exactly comparing apples with apples, but: when the former communist states took down statues of leaders and political figures did anyone say they were "denying their own history" or similar?

[greg]

"With everything going on in the U.S. now, I'm doing more reading on racism, and if I'm understanding correctly, not caring about race is almost as bad as focusing only on race."
And the advice?

Yeah, this is the problem. They want to drag other people into their world of conflict. I don't want any part in it, either.

I just don't go along anymore with this. Is this patronizing white liberal guilt? Is this King's dream for America?
To me, this is at least questionable but I fear it's become a kind of ideological dogma.

It's white savior complex, masked as virtue. Extremely patronizing to other races. The ideology literally says (as you mentioned in your post) that white people are on top... unacceptable.

You know what I like to see? Minority owned business, where dependence on white people (or whatever the majority race in the area happens to be) is minimized or non-existent.

[arpeggio]

Yeah, this is the problem. They want to drag other people into their world of conflict. I don't want any part in it, either.

It's white savior complex, masked as virtue. Extremely patronizing to other races. The ideology literally says (as you mentioned in your post) that white people are on top... unacceptable.

You know what I like to see? Minority owned business, where dependence on white people (or whatever the majority race in the area happens to be) is minimized or non-existent.

Not all of us are guilty of this.  As a matter of fact none of my Democratic friends think like this.

Now I do have some conservative friends who think I think this way.

[JBS]

Not all of us are guilty of this.  As a matter of fact none of my Democratic friends think like this.

Now I do have some conservative friends who think I think this way.

You have to make a distinction between the people who the media (including social media) focuses on and regular voters who media ignores. The former are ideologues, and want people to think they dominate the conversation.  For its own purposes the GOP abets them because thinking Democrats are radical helps them.

I saw a thing going round Twitter yesterday that encapsulates the idea: Biden is paying attention to real voters, and ignoring Twitter.

[Gurn Blanston]

EDIT: I forgot the imperialists... and the rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty-dollar whore...

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

re statues:

I know its not exactly comparing apples with apples, but: when the former communist states took down statues of leaders and political figures did anyone say they were "denying their own history" or similar?

The short answer is, it depends on the country. In Russia for instance, they took down a lot of Lenin statues, but left a lot of them in place (as well as Lenin's embalmed corpse in Red Square). Why? Probably because there's still a rather large "Leninist" constituency in modern Russia, and the authorities think it's best not to aggravate them. So Lenin's not going anywhere anytime soon.

In Ukraine, taking down Lenin statues is often seen by local Russian-Ukrainians and Eastern Ukrainians as an attack specifically on them, as a nationality/ethnicity. Even people who don't like Lenin perceive it that way. It's an issue which is independent of communist ideology.

Me, I don't like Lenin, but seeing him here and there in Moscow didn't bother me too much - simply because he was a major part of Russian history, and it wouldn't make sense for Moscow to pretend he never existed.

[drogulus]

Are we sure there isn't some place out West named Dead French King Gap or similar?  Those 19th Century settlers could sometimes be pretty sardonic.  Not every place needs to be named after some traitor, slaver, genocidier, or strike breaker.

EDIT: I forgot the imperialists... and the rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

     It's not up to me. I'd put up statues of animals and philosophers, and maybe gods or animal gods.

[greg]

Not all of us are guilty of this.  As a matter of fact none of my Democratic friends think like this.

That's true, it depends on the person. Not everyone thinks this way. It's just a way of thinking that I've seen, and I've also seen at least one non-white comedian joke about the type of liberal who is a little too nice to them where it makes them feel uncomfortable. Liberals don't all think this way, some are definitely opposed to it, it's just the ones heavily into identity politics that act like that.

[steve ridgway]

Why not get rid of all names of places named after people to be on the safe side? Just use a number instead or a combination of a number and an innocuous name. (Or should "Orange County" be problematic because Orange man bad?)

e.g. Washington State -> Olympic state; Washington, D.C. -> Capital, D.C.; San Francisco -> Golden Gate City, Louisiana -> Dead French King state... and so on.

Ask the Native Americans what these places are called.

[Todd]

LBJ said the N word privately.

Not just privately, not when he was younger.

FDR dedicated statues of evil men.  He even called Robert E Lee "one of the greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen".  Plus FDR committed a racist war crime - ethnic cleansing under current international law - an action literally as reprehensible as Andrew Jackson signing the Indian Removal Act.  Simply unacceptable.  Statues of the tyrant must go.

Locally, a couple weeks ago, we got to see this story: Pioneer statues toppled amid protests at University of Oregon.  It only makes sense.

More recently, a statue of Hans Christian Heg was torn down in Wisconsin.  He was an abolitionist who died in battle.  He was not pure enough for modern leftist thugs.  Statues of Thaddeus Stevens will not be safe.  Modern leftist thugs are the new conscience of the Democrat Party and non-American fellow travelers.  We are witnessing justice in action.

It does make one wonder what type of (justified) price Emmanuel Macron will pay for his racism and state sponsored terrorism: Macron says France won't remove statues, erase history.  Outrageous!  The French have a precedent for dealing with out of touch monarchs.

[drogulus]

     We can reassess history with or without statues. I see them as epiphenomenal. When the fever subsides we'll find that it's not so controversial that the history of racism and other isms are represented more widely. Then it will be less of a shock to people to find out why the police act like an occupying army in some neighborhoods and not others.

     

Like the person in this video?

https://twitter.com/taggartrearden/status/1276936203745492992?s=21

     It was love at first sight. Seriously, this kind of theater is for your eyes, not mine.

[JBS]

Wake up and smell the wokeness or suffer the violent consequences. I know in your neighborhood everyone is dreamy, peacefully protesting them baaaaaad cops but in most of America it's not so peaceful and just muttering the simple truth that "All Lives Matter" is tantamount to heresy. I could link more videos but you'll just call it theater, a kind of horror that you want to ignore at all costs because no one on your side is like that.

Maybe if more people knew how radical some of BLM and Antifa are they wouldn't support their terrorism.

"All lives matter" has become a euphemism whose real meaning is "Black lives don't matter".

About the only people who support Antifa already belong to Antifa. And while BLM may have a hard Left element in its organizations,  it's a radical movement only if you.think "Black lives don't matter".

[Gurn Blanston]

Wake up and smell the wokeness or suffer the violent consequences. I know in your neighborhood everyone is dreamy, peacefully protesting them baaaaaad cops but in most of America it's not so peaceful and just muttering the simple truth that "All Lives Matter" is tantamount to heresy. I could link more videos but you'll just call it theater, a kind of horror that you want to ignore at all costs because no one on your side is like that.

Maybe if more people knew how radical some of BLM and Antifa are they wouldn't support their terrorism.

Just a couple of points before moving on:

'All lives matter' is nothing more than a meaningless statement meant to take attention from the fact that it is black people in general who are getting their asses shot for being black. It means nothing, which is exactly what it is intended to mean. Polish Lives Matter, or Italian Lives Matter: certainly they do, and as soon as the power of the state is directed towards killing Polish and Italian immigrants (unlikely for now, since they are mostly white), then statements like that could come into general use.

'Antifa' doesn't exist, OK?  It is a construct of groups like QAnon, who have created it as the bogeyman of the Deep State, something else which doesn't exist. You will never see 'antifa' captured or defeated, because it doesn't exist. There is no organization, no manifesto, no leader, nothing. I would explain it more clearly but since it doesn't exist, that's rather difficult.

Are there people who believe that the extreme Right needs to be fought against? Hell yes!  Have they formed together into a group which could only be described as a Left Wing militia, the equivalent of the 3 Percenters, Arizona Border Recon, Hutaree, Idaho Light Foot Militia, Michigan Militia, Militia of Montana, Missouri Citizens Militia, Missouri Militia, New York Light Foot Militia, Oath Keepers, Ohio Defense Force, Texas Light Foot Militia or any of the other hundreds of Right Wing paramilitary groups in this country? Sadly, no. You will have to find/invent some other bogeyman.

That is all.


   

[Jo498]

Ask the Native Americans what these places are called.

I gather that many rivers, mountains etc. in the US do still have Native American (derived) names. To my knowledge, names for landscape features (like rivers, mountains and the like) are very often conserved in original languages even if the language or the people who spoke it were exterminated long ago. But cities were very rare in pre-Columbian America as they were rare to nonexistent in pre-Roman Germania. All the oldest cities in Germany have Roman(derived) names, even the second oldest batch from post-Roman times usually has Latin-derived names.

[drogulus]

.

Maybe if more people knew how radical some of BLM and Antifa are they wouldn't support their terrorism.

     They probably do know. Most people were less born yesterday than you think. I've never felt obligated to align myself with the most far out people that support a cause I support. So, I don't live in fear that people will think I support internet clowns on either side. But then, I don't live in fear.