Who will take on Obama in 2012?

which was more important, and thus worthy of an exhaustive investigation and the funds associated in carryen it out, in your personal view?

whether a sitting president lied under oath about getting a hummer by an intern,

or

The most devestating attack on a civilian target (s) in the history of the Country.


things to consider when making a judgement, how long was the gap between an Intern claiming funny business until Ken Star got on the case of finden out whats what.

and same in regards to the time gap between 9/11 and the commission that was formed to look into it.

I'd have to look it up, but i don't think the Government dragged its feet that long in forming the Warren Commission to look into JFK.

Ruf could probably quote it from memory.

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

We're dropping the NORAD thing, then?

That's like asking whether one law is more important than another. The correct answer is: both. You investigate both massive civilian attacks and whether public officials are lying under oath. Nobody had to choose between the two in reality, because we don't enforce laws that way, thank goodness. Nobody allocated more or less dollars in some massive legal budget based on importance.

This also ignores the difficulty in establishing one truth over another. The fact that a crime or investigation is more serious than another does not mean it will not also be cheaper to establish. A murder can be easier to solve than a theft, depending on the availability of the evidence.

>mfw fire can't melt steel

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Kid, I wish to hell I could walk you through the East Texas woods where I grew up in the 1940-1950s or arid West Texas of the 1950s-1960s so you could see what real racism is. There is nothing in this country today that even faintly resembles the prevalent racial hatred of those days. Having seen both, I think what you call racism today is like a breath of fresh air compared to the real thing that was around when I was growing up.

I've seen racism in about every form imaginable and directed at a vast range of victims, and I've yet to encounter a strain that is "justified." It may be accepted, even embraced by some, but it is not justified. The explanations you give for racism against blacks and Hispanics are offensive to me, but I'll allow you the benefit of the doubt and hope you didn't mean them the way they sound.

If blacks are subject to racism because they're below the poverty line, why is it that some of the most racist whites out there are also below the poverty level? The fact that many poor blacks have racist attitudes toward whites? That can't be explained by poverty alone, especially when middle class blacks are subjected to the same sort of racism. People of Asian descent in this country are generally among the brightest and most successful of our citizens, yet there are those who hate them for being Asian. Same with Jews--they have an extremely long history of persecution because of their religion.

For all your smarts in some matters, planet, I suspect you've never encountered a bad-to-the-bone cross-burning robe-wearing racist. I'm not talking about someone who uses the N-word and thinks some creeds and colors are inferior to him. I'm talking hate-from-the-gut racism without cause or reason. Racists of that type are scary and dangerous, no matter their race or religion. They're also a lot more rare today than 60 years ago.

Bottom line: I don't give a damn if racists think they're "justified" or not; I'd just like to see them stomped out like the moral cockroaches they are.

Well, I'm not liberal, and probably not normal, and I'll be damned if I'll silently tolerate anyone spouting racial hate. I have zero interest in their attitude and opinions or whether they have a "right" express themselves in a way that terrorizes or harms strangers because of their color or the way they pray. Klansmen, neo-Nazis and those idiots playing soldier in citizen militias have no rights at all as far as I'm concerned. I've never been the "turn the other cheek" type to vermin.

You're kidding!!!! I figured because his daddy wasn't a US citizen might have had something to do with it, but "his mother hadn't lived in the United Staes long enough!" There's a time-limit on becoming a citizen????

So if a kid is born of US parents in a US town and dies an hour, day, week, month later, he's not a real citizen because he hasn't "lived" in the United States long enough????? You're chitting me--people really made that argument out loud and in public??????

That's not a "technicality"--it's as stupid as looking for birdchit in a coo-coo clock.

A person born in the US or born abroad of an US parent, regardless of the parent's age and marital status, is a US citizen at the moment of birth. Period. End of story. We delivered dozens of babies at the dispensary I worked in Germany. US father, German mother, US infant the moment the doctor slapped its butt and made it wail.

Winston Churchill qualified as a US citizen and could have run for president had he wanted because his mother was a US citizen who married his British father and went to the UK to live.

Look, PN, I think you are confusing criticism of some things that affect some people of a certain ethnicity with racism. Being opposed to welfare does not make you a racist. Being opposed to illegal immigration is not racism. If you oppose welfare because you think everyone getting it are lazy Ns, you're a racist. If you oppose illegal immigrants because your real focus is your dislike for Mexicans you're a racist.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

That was fundamentally a non sequitur post seeing as how it doesn't address at all the point of my post of which racism was only a particular example. It's similar to your "objections" to my example in the Atheist thread about rapists. I'm not pushing certain sociological theories about rape or racism. I'm just taking a look at certain factors of either in order to make other, more global points. In that thread I was talking about immanence/transcendence, and in this thread I'm talking about relegating certain opinions to the unnameable. Interestingly enough, you actually ended up doing just what I was "railing against" in your post there.

Let's walk through your logic.

"Son, maybe if you had been born just half a century earlier back before Lincoln came along, you'd have better things to say about your time, eh? I mean, back in my day, blacks weren't even considered people. I wish you could see what real racial hatred---no, not even that: the denial of humanity---was those days."

Essentially what you're saying is that, because things today are much better than the past, it is (actually, it'd kind of difficult to tell what you're going for with this) obscene, ungrateful, narrow minded or "wrong" from someone like me to say that racism still exists and is everywhere? Even if it is true that racism is still everywhere (oh, but as a breath of fresh air, I see)? I suppose I should just be happy that I live in a better world than the past and not even feel bothered about the continuing problems that affect our society today (as in this very moment)? Or should I, at the end of every claim about racism today, make an addendum that "of course, things were much worse in the past than today, so let's be thankful : )". A strange logic indeed, though it is not entirely inconsistent with your general avuncular project.

Or should I take your statements even more directly? Does racism not in fact exist anymore? Should no one today even bother to address racism today? What exactly is your point here?

Now this is my main point. Openly and clearly disregarding the plainness of my claims because of your "offense". I think I was quite clear in speaking of justification. That it is quite easy to sit where you are and take offense at these kinds of social phenomenon, relegate these people into the unnameable category of "crazy" or unmentionably "racist".

Racism is an ideology. Ideologies are pure, true beliefs. One doesn't every truly believe anything without an ideology, I claim. No matter how much reasoning is involved, no matter how much experience or observation you make on your own, there is always that fundamental gap between practical reason and true belief. That gap is filled by an ideology---a leap to a belief.

What happens when racism occurs against blacks in a country where they are not in power? An inequality is created, that is in actuality. Blacks are in actuality forced to become the object of their generalization and they actually become this fantasmic, inferior object. Similarly, Jews were in actuality forced to become the excremental object of their generalization and they became this object. The Nazi's realized their fantasy of the Jew. They made it true.

Jews were also "among the brightest and most successful" of Europe and yet we see what happens when a generalization is made when a group is made unnameable by typical human standards. I also see affirmative action and "preferential stereotype" these days against Asians, which is again perpetuated by something which occurs in actuality.

In other words, racism is always an application of prejudice. Prejudice alone does nothing. It changes nothing. It is only a potential for racism. Racism is a lynching. A court ruling. A police beating. The physical things that realize, that make actual the fantasy of a prejudice.

So to say that black racism is TODAY caused by the physical remnants of this making actual from hundreds of years ago is to speak of the facts alone. Racism "back in your day" was again caused by the physical remnants a previous time. Of course you are correct when you say that racism is different today, but that's precisely why WE MUST address it. It does not make it less pertinent to address racism with all the passion we did "back in your day" as long as it still exists.

The main problem I confronted Yoda about was in trying to dismiss racism as a viable worldview. Racism is not only a viable, rational worldview for MANY people, it's claims are FACT in that they are always based on a minimum level of observational evidence (several distorted and overblown but still evidence). What adds to this is how institutionalized racism like in the U.S. actually created a true inequality adhering to the expectation of certain facts based on stereotypes. Nevertheless, facts remain as facts. Blacks ARE the poorest minority. Mexicans ARE invading communities. It just depends how you interpret these. Interpretation largely occurs in the space of ideology.

I'm not saying "give respect" or "give voice" to these racists. It is not so simple. But disaster happens when you refuse to acknowledge their NAMEABILITY, which is what you are doing when you say stuff like this:

This, ironically enough, is the base language of racism. This is the fantasy object that maketh racism, if you will. Racists are humans. They reason just like you and me. They suffer from severely fallacious overgeneralizations, myopia, and a premature leap to ideology. But really, I do love your "bad-to-the-bone" characterization. PURE EVIL, I'm sure. It is wonderful, I feel, how the greatest crusaders against racism take up the very language of the racists themselves in order to "defeat them". But is progress then being made in an inclusive, democratic society? No: you only continue to render certain humans as unnameable. You only continue to dismiss their existence as humans---characterizing them instead as inhuman monsters---and propose their annihilation.

And back in the Atheist thread you were such a subjectivist---i.e. "you can't know what's in someone's head"---but here you claim to know these racists as the "bad-to-the-bone", "hate-from-the-gut", "without-cause-or-reason" monsters. Whenever you make a group of people into monsters, you are perpetuating your fantasy object, you are perpetuating your prejudice, your are opening up the space of racism (the exclusion of the unnameable).

Lovely. Comparing humans to insects. Talking about "stomping out" humans. Lovely formal/structural anti-semitism there. Please, let us just find more excremental objects to eject from our society.

I pretty much agree with planet here, but I can't add anything except for the most basic summary that racism today is insidious because it's usually seen (when it is) as underground rather than out in the open. That makes it just that much more scary when the time will come for it to make its move more openly into the light of day. Some think it already has but I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. Then I see my daughter and her and planet's generation and I think that maybe we'll be OK, eventually. Unfortunately, I also see an unhealthy percentage of students at my continuation school who are blatant racists and proud of it.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I'd have to agree, as well, that it's not entirely consistent to speak even of racists in such stark terms. As ugly as racism is, we can't fall into the trap of dehumanizing people. At its core, all the worst crimes against humanity seem to be about failing to recognize people as people. And yeah, that includes bigots. It's not a very popular thing to say -- who wants to stand up for a bigot? -- but I do think it's important. Start talking like bigots aren't even people, and pretty soon you've lost the moral high ground.

That said, I'd stop short of claiming total equivalence between racists judging people based on superficial things, and people judging racists. At least in judging racists, we're condemning something real and substantial that they can control. For that reason alone the condemnation is inherently more just than the racists' condemnation of a group of people (or a specific person in that group) based on things outside of their control. This doesn't mean any form of condemnation is justified, but it's worth pointing out.

From PN:
Racism is an ideology. Ideologies are pure, true beliefs. One doesn't every truly believe anything without an ideology, I claim. No matter how much reasoning is involved, no matter how much experience or observation you make on your own, there is always that fundamental gap between practical reason and true belief. That gap is filled by an ideology---a leap to a belief.

What happens when racism occurs against blacks in a country where they are not in power? An inequality is created, that is in actuality. Blacks are in actuality forced to become the object of their generalization and they actually become this fantasmic, inferior object. Similarly, Jews were in actuality forced to become the excremental object of their generalization and they became this object. The Nazi's realized their fantasy of the Jew. They made it true.

Jews were also "among the brightest and most successful" of Europe and yet we see what happens when a generalization is made when a group is made unnameable by typical human standards. I also see affirmative action and "preferential stereotype" these days against Asians, which is again perpetuated by something which occurs in actuality.

In other words, racism is always an application of prejudice. Prejudice alone does nothing. It changes nothing. It is only a potential for racism. Racism is a lynching. A court ruling. A police beating. The physical things that realize, that make actual the fantasy of a prejudice.



I have hard this lame argument before, Blacks can't be racists because they have been discriminated against, prejudice is not racism, blah, blah, blah, blah. The militant Muslim black ideology that equates whites with red devils and advocates separatism from whites is racism. To try to make distinctions between prejudice and racism is a slippery slope that I suppose would mean Archie Bunker was a bigot but not a racist. I don't know if Mel Gibson's father, the Holocaust denier, and probably Gibson himself based on some ambiguous comments he made challenging how many Jews died in the ovens, in PN's world view is a racist or not, but it just so happens there are Blacks who also believe that. To say you can't be a racist because of your skin color sounds like a kind of racism to me, it is olay to believe everything a racist believes and won't be branded racist if you are not white

>mfw show me where I said or even implied this
>mfw you never use the quote tag

That is your argument. Minorities can't be racists.

He never says that people of color aren't racists. In fact, much of his argument seems to hang on the concept that everyone is a racist whether unconsciously or not.

Great stuff, all of you - but take a moment to think about the word racism. Think about the Jews and the Muslims - is this about relgion or race?

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

Considering that Jews and Arabs are half-"brothers" (they're both Semites), you tell me. I think it's more to do with religion.

He is using the Blacks can't be racists because they have been oppressed argument, he is just expressing the argument more elegantly than the usual bumbleheads, if you are not in a position of power you can't be racist. He specifically makes a distinction between prejudice and racism and lists lynching as a component of racism, the obvious inference being black prejudice towards whites and other minorities can't be racism because because they never had the legal clout whites had to oppress, discriminate, and harm those they hate.

Wait a sec. First you need to read everything he says. Also, you don't think that Blacks have ever "lynched" anyone? Blacks, Mexicans and/or other minorities have never killed anyone of another race without a good reason and for some kind of racial motivation? History and the prison systems of several countries will prove that wrong.

I didn't say I believed it, but that is an argument that has often been stated by some liberals (I'm a liberal) and blacks. It never made sense to me so I am not trying to defend it. I know he is trying to apply it more broadly but his rhetoric of prejuduce versus racism is specifically that argument..

I'm sure that planet will come on here and explain whatever you seem to question. Just because he uses words which have us scrambling for the Dictionary doesn't mean that his arguments are invalid.

The thing that makes racism so complicated is that it's tied really closely to identity politics which are completely pervasive, and often harmless or even beneficial to society. It also has an unpredictable and contradictory mixture of properties. The end goal is usually group-solidifying, but the means are fluid, open to negotiation, and based on all sorts of factors such as communications infrastructure, economic competition, ostensible differences (like skin color or language), the popularity of given archetypes or myths, everyday tactical politics, and armed conflict. Factors that are particularly relevant to the cases of racism and nationalism are authenticity narratives appealing to (usually) crank theories of biological determinism or selective history.

The problem is it's very difficult to understand - let alone predict - how a given political narrative gains enough traction to mobilize a group to some end, so how can we say that racism's eradicated or that we're safe? How many people still buy into a very narrow, selective understanding of history or authoritative-sounding pseudoscience, both of which have been used to justify many a genocide?

Ironically a lot of stuff that strengthens racism also weakens it, so for example proselytizing religions (another kind of communal narrative) often cut both ways, by both justifying a sense of exclusivity that overlaps with biological or ethnic identity, and at the same time calling for enfolding the other into the chosen flock and preaching the essential brotherhood of man. Identity politics are never fully stable; communities and beliefs are always at least potentially dynamic. But they never really go away either, so I doubt that racism has (or will any time soon).

I guess the main thing I question is the belief that as a society we understand ourselves much better than our ancestors did. Maybe in some pockets we do, but in others it may be more complicated now than it ever was before, due to technological or demographic growth and just the sheer volume of information available. America has seemed pretty stable for a while now (to the extent that a huge mass of people can ever be considered "stable"); but if some unforseen (real or imagined) pressure is introduced who's to say how the boundaries of identity might be redrawn or solidified to protect the chosen few and exclude others?

EDIT: lots of posts happened while I was writing this one. In response to 7th Son, obviously I just argued that racism and religion are both closely linked with identity politics so to that extent I think while the differences (some of which I tried to articulate) are striking, there's also often a lot of overlap. For example both racial and religious identity are often built upon origin stories, tracing lineages and so forth, aren't they? Not saying that the core moral or spiritual beliefs are necessarily the same at all, just that they may have some structural similarities, and that at times one may be leveraged by the other.