Alternative Goose, on 16 August 2017 - 05:59 PM, said:
I can already see I am walking in to a lake full of hot water and poo here but why not just dive in!
The flags and the statues are more than symbols of slavery or racism. They also have cultural, historical significance. Erasing your history does not unmake it. While I'm not sure Trump actually thought that far, he had a point when he began to ask "What about Lincoln? What about Jefferson?" etc. What happens when all those Southern figures have been erased and suppressed? Who's next? There is a risk of eroding your own history and your own culture if you go down that path.
I prefer the idea of owning that imagery and telling the full story, rather than tearing down statues that have stood for a century.
Do you heal the divide by stigmatizing the notion of southern heritage? I don't know if it would help but I think it's misplaced that this divide is only about black and white people.
Better shape? in terms of PR, sure. But I've read plenty of stories about the anti fascist type of groups to know that these people are just as likely to be as fanatical and violent as the people they fight.
I think there's a simpler reason why Trump might have said there are bad people on both sides. Most likely either Bannon was in his ear or he just had a briefing on violent groups in America and the security adviser mentioned bad things that Antifa did.
Not really understanding what he was saying, because it he got documents with bullet points and pictures in crayon, he just tried to cover his ass by condemning both sides.
Yeah. The only thing I think is easy about these statements is the black and white imagery of political ideology. The Nazis were a political party. If you wanted to have a future in Germany, if you wanted to protect yourself or ever have a chance of promotion. Then you'd be a Nazi too.
Like some clever person mentioned last week. There are no Nazis in America. There are white supremacists. They are not the same as their European namesakes.
We know Trump by now. The guy doesn't understand diplomacy and he doesn't care about political correctness. The fact that he doesn't go out there and say what we want to hear and doesn't do what you'd like, is frustrating. It's infuriating. But it's what he does.
Being suspicious of people just because they're not "American" enough, and saying down with Nazis, is a bit too similar to the red fear of the 50s.
Sure. He had to go out and try to fix his mess yesterday. But I don't think there is a difference between the two speeches.
He either doesn't understand or doesn't care about what he is saying. He just says words. He has the best words. Sometimes he calls things great. Some times he calls things bad. That's all.
If you want to make this an argument for him not being fit to lead his country, I am all there with you. He's a disgrace. But what he did was not a rubber stamp for the Nazis. That was the narrative the media ran with.
Ignorance comes in many forms. It's often married to arrogance.
If you looked at Trump during the second conference, I think he looked angry and frustrated. I think Trump was mad that people did not understand his great words. I think he kept saying the same things because he thought they were the right things to say, not understanding that he was saying the opposite of what people wanted to hear. I think he perceived the questions and the accussations as an unfair attack on him by the leftist media.
Again, I don't think he supports Nazis (except for when it might help him win votes or what ever). I think he's just too full of himself.
The problem with explaining away Donald's words and actions as arrogance + stupidity is that his father probably was in the Klan.
https://www.vice.com...nt-with-the-kkk
Fred Trump was arrested in Klan garb in Queens, NY for "refusing to disperse" in 1927.
Fred and Donald later settled with the Justice Department in 1973 over a lawsuit for refusing to rent housing to black people. There's been continued discrimination against black people by the Trumps directly and the Trump properties:
https://www.nytimes....using-race.html
Trump's on record as admitting to sexual assault, has most likely abused his ex-wife Ivana, and has done all kinds of crazy shit. Why is being racist beyond him?
For clarification, there absolutely are Nazis in America. They're wingnuts, but they're real. It's that the white supremacists vastly outnumber them, although the white supremacists tend to borrow certain elements of the German and American Nazi cultures because they're catchy as fuck among that crowd. Furthermore, the Nazis took much from the Americans, which is one hell of an ourobouros of bigotry.
Evil isn't necessarily "take a gun out and shoot people". Evil is also banal, as Hannah Arendt said (and is now forever misapplied by stupid people). People sitting in our Congress can sign pieces of paper that strip healthcare primarily from poor brown people, which hurts and kills them as surely as a gun, but a hell of a lot slower.
Trump, with his mixture of opinions and non-opinions, is in my eyes undoubtedly a racist raised by a Klansman and his advisors, Bannon and Miller in particular, are similar. Bannon and Miller don't even hide it.
The problem with saying that Nazism was "the state" and that everyone had to play by the Nazi rules is that the German people enthusiastically welcomed the Nazis among many other fascist groups at that time. The majority of the pre-Nazi governments were heavily populated by fascists of various stripes and the Nazis eventually gained the most power over about 8 years, before being in real power for about 12 years. It was less like the Ba'ath party of Saddam Hussein, which ran Iraq from 1968 to 2003 (35 years), than you're making it out to be. For most of the 35 years of the Ba'ath dominance, pretty much all people absolutely had to be Ba'ath to do anything or continue to live under Saddam's rule. The Nazis only had about 10% of the population enrolled at their peak of popularity. That's a different historical situation.
Last thing: statues set up in a town are there to "show" people that this person or concept is important. It is a statement more than it is history. So a town with a bunch of Confederate monuments is saying "We think these people and associated concepts are important enough to have statues about". And when those statues are about white supremacists who fought to keep slavery as an institution, that's an endorsement of racism. There's no correct historical context to be had about a black kid seeing a Confederate statue from 30 yards away. That kid is seeing a slaveowner being feted right there. There's no museum-like presentation of how these people may have been noble or whatever, yet they still fought to keep slavery as an institution. It's reprehensible and these statutes should be torn down or moved into museums where they can be placed into the right context.
Robert Lee's family living today has said the statues of him should be brought down and/or stuck into museums for the right context rather than being statues in public places. If they are willing to admit his racism and wrongness, why aren't you?
It's not erasure of history or culture to take down a statue feting of a slaver or a wannabe slaver. It's removing a celebration/endorsement of that person and associated concepts. They should all go down. So too should the Confederate flag iconography.
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