The BlueSwan Basement of Absurd & Ignorant Posts VIII

[AtorBoltox]

I really hate Donald Trump.

However, I can't even describe my anger towards the people that still support him.

I was thinking of voting for Gillum today.  Reading this, and I actually thought about Rick Scott for the first time.

Keep that message up; see how effective it is.

[AtorBoltox]

What's wrong with quoting Hitler if you agree with the quote? I quote Malcolm X, LBJ, and Woodrow Wilson all the time but have vehement political disagreements with them. Honestly the fact that you guys are being such p*ssies over a quote is astonishing. If words hurt you that much, God help you when you actually go through hard times in your life.

[AtorBoltox]

If anything I'd dislike him even more, but obviously I disapprove either way.

[AtorBoltox]

I've expressed my random desire to bang Kirsten Gillibrand on here before. Seriously, if she wants to torpedo her presidential aspirations by having an affair with a younger man, I'm waiting and ready.

[AtorBoltox]

Here is my guess, narrow Clinton win.

[AtorBoltox]

But Atlas told me that Alabama whites vote Republican because of fiscal responsibility and tax brackets, not racism.

Alabama whites under the age of 65 are not racist.

[AtorBoltox]

No, I would support a Constitutional Amendment banning free trade.

[AtorBoltox]

The better option would've been not having an embargo around a country we weren't at war with, in a war we were officially neutral in...

[AtorBoltox]

Trump might be right on this.  If he is, I will say that it's another case of his being right without knowing that he's right.

I don't think he's right on this, but much of what he's talking about is ground not yet trod.

[AtorBoltox]

I vote for impeachment, on all four counts. This was perhaps our greatest embarrassment on the world stage. An impeachable offense is subject, not necessarily to law or morality, but rather the conscience of the legislator. A vote against any count is a vote for a despicable man.

[AtorBoltox]

Let's roll!!!

The people of Iran have been suffering under theocracy far too long, and the government has continuously opposed American interests in the Persian Gulf since 9/11, meaning they have a common agenda with al-Qaeda and those who attacked our homeland on 9/11. The Ayatollah must pay.

[AtorBoltox]

If being pro-choice = "anti-Catholic", then Sinn Fein are more anti-Catholic than the DUP.

The idea that being opposed to a particular doctrine of a faith automatically makes you prejudiced against that faith is ridiculous. If true that would make e.g. devout Catholics anti-semites by definition, or, hell, make the majority of US Catholics who disagree with making divorce illegal anti-Catholic too.

For all practical purposes Sinn Fein are more anti-Catholic than the DUP.  They are active participants in the Quiet Revolution to diminish the role of the Catholic church in Irish society.

[AtorBoltox]

I don't know what Stonewall was. I'd have to google it. I would probably dislike both events. I always found the right to protest just, but quite idiotic. Best case, nothing happens. Worse case, you're hurt or arrested.

It's like a child having a picket sign to protest their parents feeding them vegetables for dinner.

[AtorBoltox]

"Race" and "Discrimination" are manufactured issues that mean nothing to people trying to put food on their f**king table.

There is no "discrimination" in this country.

Give me an example of discrimination in America. You can’t.

Racism isn’t an issue.

Whatever, racism isn’t an issue.

But racism still isn’t an issue.

It isn’t.

No, but racism isn’t an issue.

Epicly roasting me by placing my response here doesn’t change that it’s not a real issue.

It isn’t an issue.

Cmon buddy give me some evidence that it’s an issue.

You clearly can’t.

It’s not an issue.

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=racism+statistics&s=

And this proves your point... how? It’s a google search, you get opinions and polls. I don’t care about either of those. The reality is simple. Of course racism is bad, but it’s not an issue that affects anyone’s daily lives, let alone affecting anyones lives at all. People in this country are struggling to get employed, to make ends meet, to support their children’s future, to have good healthcare, and you seriously think racism is a big issue that is facing us all? What a joke.

You know, it's funny. I used to think like you. I was a naive white suburban pre-teen who thought we had solved racism and that people discussing racism were just being oversensitive. After all, we had a black President! We did away with legal segregation and Jim Crow decades ago! I hadn't experienced the cruel lash of racism myself, so I assumed it wasn't an issue for anybody in this day and age.

Then I matured a little bit. I got into high school and started to develop more of an interest in politics and the world around me. I befriended more people with backgrounds, races, ethnicities, appearances, cultures, and stories different than my own. I started to read more and pay attention to the news. And I started to realize that my thoughts on racism were foolish and underdeveloped. I didn't think racism was still a problem in this country because I was fortunate enough not to have experienced it personally.

My ignorance was regrettable, but in my own defense, I had yet to be truly exposed to other perspectives. You, on the other hand, have almost certainly been confronted with piles of evidence in your time trolling political communities like this one. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt one more time. Let's review some of the most poignant realities. Let's review racism in this country today.

You talk about race being a distraction from bread and butter issues. People trying to put food on their table. So let's start there. Food insecurity disproportionately impacts racial minorities. While only 9% of white households in the US struggle with food insecurity, it’s a problem for 22% of black households and 18% of Hispanic households. In fact, according to Drexel’s Dr. Mariana Chilton, “you cannot take on poverty and hunger without taking on historical and contemporary discrimination.”

Let’s talk about poverty. According to the Census Bureau, for every $100 earned by white families in the US, black families earn an average of $57.30. That’s just income. In terms of actual wealth, for every $100 held by white families, black families hold $5.04. While only 10.1% of non-Hispanic whites live in poverty, 23.6% of Hispanic Americans do, alongside 26.2% of Black Americans and a shocking 28.3% of Native Americans.

How about jobs? According to Pew, for six or seven straight decades, the black unemployment rate has consistently been twice as high as the white unemployment rate. This affects black college graduates as well. Back in 2014, the unemployment rate for black college graduates was 12.4%. Overall, the unemployment rate for college graduates was 5.6%. Even higher education can’t outpace the scourge of racism. That’s not even getting into the well-attributed phenomenon of people with white sounding names receiving as high as 50% more callbacks for employment than those with stereotypically black names.

Let’s get back to education for a second. Black children are put to a disadvantage as early as preschool, where they make up half of all suspensions per the Department of Education. Across the nation, minority children make up disproportionate percentages of schools that underachieve, largely due to poor funding. According to a paper from the Civil Rights Project, schools with high proportions of minority enrollment are often characterized by "less experienced and less qualified teachers, high levels of teacher turnover, less successful peer groups and inadequate facilities and learning materials." And their problems don’t end in high school. According to the Hechinger Report, 42% of college age white Americans are actually enrolled in college, while only 34% of black and Hispanic Americans the same age are. These students are less likely to go to selective institutions and are less likely to graduate.

Black people make up around 40% of the prison population despite making up 13% of the total population of the country. This is due entirely to institutional racism, sentencing disparities, and racial profiling. Black drivers are 30% more likely to be pulled over by the police and black convicts are 20% more likely to be sentenced to jail time for the same crime (oh, and by the way, their sentences are 20% longer as well.)

Only 42% of black Americans own homes, as compared to 72% of white Americans.

When an implicit bias survey was conducted in 2012, 56% of Americans expressed anti-black attitudes. 57% of Americans expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes.

76% of black and Asian Americans, alongside 58% of Hispanics, said that they had experienced discrimination or unfair treatment at some point in their lives, something that can affect one’s psyche for years.

Let’s not forget about the President of the United States denigrating members of Congress, telling them to go back to their countries and implying their citizenship wasn’t equal to a native-born white American’s. Do you think that promotes a good image of American values in the mind’s eye of children of color?

I could go on for pages and pages, but since I assume you gave up reading a while back, I’ll wrap up with an anecdote. The other day, I attended a roundtable talk put on by some friends of mine. It was intended to discuss race, culture, and disparities here in my home county. Not that someone like you would see the value in this, but I found the perspectives of those who had differences than my own illuminating. Racial disparities exist everywhere, and if you’re not aware of that, you need to look harder. A Latino guy made the salient point that something as simple as trash collection was done with much more care in the whiter portion of my county where he used to live than the less white portion of the county where he lives now. Several Muslim students brought up the difficulties they had experienced attempting to practice their faith in school.

I find it quite telling that you don’t find racism to be a big problem in the US, Grasr00ts. It goes to show that you’re lucky. You’re living in a fantasy land where you haven’t been the victim of these vicious behaviors and, since you’re the kind of person who’s seemingly incapable of understanding other people’s perspectives, you assume that all of this bigotry has vanished. It hasn’t and it’s stunningly naive for you to assume that is has. I encourage you to try and learn from people who don’t think like you and don’t have the same background as you in the future. Like I said, I was once like you. I hadn’t experienced all of this crap so I assumed there was no way it could exist. I was wrong then, and you’re wrong now. Grow up, open your eyes, and listen to others. It might just serve you well.

Nice try, but i'm not falling for it. So many things are wrong with this post I don't even know where to start.

Don't accuse me of trolling, i'm simply expressing my actual opinion on this issue, and I feel unsatisfied because no one has given me actual evidence against it, at least until now. But I feel that a lot of your evidence is unsubstantiated. And you haven't given me any sources, so I don't know if you are skewing results or just flat out making stuff up. But here I go.

First of all, it's common knowledge that in many cases, minorities are at a worse state than whites. And while a lot of this is because of lasting effects of historical discrimination, most of it has gotten worse in recent days. Home ownership, funding to schools, and poverty statistics, all put minorities on the losing end. The reason? Historical discrimination. Recently, city, state, and the federal government, have implemented and tried to reduce these effects, but nothing changes. Why? Because the actions of the past are a domino effect. The poor state of these areas has generally decayed the societal values of these areas. When given a large sum of money, people are more likely to buy shoes and "drip", as opposed to investing that money into their futures or setting themselves up economically. This means that while these communities are no longer being treated disproportionately by the government, they are still continuing to get worse because of the societal "life is short" values that people live by, plus the overall situation getting worse for lesser income people in this country of all races.

White Americans generally hold better jobs by chance and lasting effect. Minorities have less paying jobs overall, and we can't really change that without the government being a d*ck. The reason for the disparity is lasting effects of location and job experience from a historical age of white advantage. We need to encourage and give easier job training in poorer areas, and make it easier to start a business in poorer areas, rather than use affirmative action.

The prison population inequality, is, and i'm sad to say it, due to minorities generally committing more crimes. I'm quite sure everyone knows this. While whites commit more crimes overall, latinos and african americans generally commit more crimes from a proportional perspective. This is do to societal values which in these poorer areas is more degraded, not race. There is no "institutional racism", its a lie. There is no proof to suggest blacks and hispanics are disproportionately jailed without causing disproportionate cimes.

The poll of racist attitudes sounds baloney. I would like to see where that survey was taken and how many people were polled. In reality, less than 15% of people in this country see any race as lower than their own, and most of that is probably actually minorities towards whites.

Yes, Trump is pandering to the far right and being too rhetorical for comfort, but he condemned the chants at his rallies and has went out of his way to condemn racists. I think he's a bad president, but racism is a buzzword.

I can see where you get your perspective from, but I have got a lot of perspective as well. I live in a pretty high minority area. I see these people, talk to them, and friends with them, and have learned their stories as well. The roots of the problem are poverty and bad areas where these people disproportionately live in, not because of fictional racism.

I've spent my time going through a school system which has plenty of minorities in higher occupations, getting good grades (often better than whites), etc. I live in a generic suburb, which I believe shows that it really depends on where someone lives, rather than their race, when it comes to opportunities. I think you need to look at the bigger picture.

[AtorBoltox]

I do not believe the people of 1940 Poland considered themselves under Nazi domination.

[AtorBoltox]

I agree, but only if you say by 1938. Although i think it was clear what would happen than, so still in doubt. With hindsight, it's unjustified to make a clear judge, they're were the three most evil powerful men in the world together with the Red Khmer.

I believe however that Hitler was so blinded by his own ideals, that he never truly believed that he was doing something evil. The guy was so disturbed and distortioned in his views that he never ever realized what he was doing. Stalin had pleasure in killing people and was way smarter or should i say careful and therefore more dangerous. Although Hitler was so deranged that he had no control over what he was doing, and that he would nuke the entire Earth if he could. For him, it was all about him, his ideals and the German people. Ultranationalism at it's worst.

[AtorBoltox]

I agree, but only if you say by 1938. Although i think it was clear what would happen than, so still in doubt. With hindsight, it's unjustified to make a clear judge, they're were the three most evil powerful men in the world together with the Red Khmer.

I believe however that Hitler was so blinded by his own ideals, that he never truly believed that he was doing something evil. The guy was so disturbed and distortioned in his views that he never ever realized what he was doing. Stalin had pleasure in killing people and was way smarter or should i say careful and therefore more dangerous. Although Hitler was so deranged that he had no control over what he was doing, and that he would nuke the entire Earth if he could. For him, it was all about him, his ideals and the German people. Ultranationalism at it's worst.

Dude there is nothing wrong with this post. I still stand by it.

The idea that Hitler is just simply a 'deranged' aberration and doesn't represent the ultimate culmination of extremist nationalist, anti Semitic thought that had been prevalent in Germany post was is terrible historical analysis.

[AtorBoltox]

The fact that Bevin is only down by 4,000 votes is a fail for dems. They should have walked away with this easily.

[AtorBoltox]

1917: 10/10
Ford v Ferrari: 9/10
The Irishman: 3/10
Jojo Rabbit: 10/10
Joker: 7/10
Little Women: 4/10
Marriage Story: 10/10
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 6/10
Parasite: 6/10

[AtorBoltox]

While I believe the accusers and hope Weinstein gets the maximum, I still find it concerning that nowadays you can get a conviction on such a serious charge without any physical/DNA evidence. The case was simply one person's word against the other's and I don't see how that proves the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

[AtorBoltox]

While I believe the accusers and hope Weinstein gets the maximum, I still find it concerning that nowadays you can get a conviction on such a serious charge without any physical/DNA evidence. The case was simply one person's word against the other's and I don't see how that proves the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

CC: The Cave of Common Sense.