All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[babyblob]

This is damn crazy. Another attack on the capital. They are doing the press conference right now. It is really upsetting that one of the police officers has died. What the hell is wrong with this country right now!

[Hellion]

To not minimize how horrific this was. Or to lessen any compensation. The deaths were in near 100,000. What then to do with the Belgian Congo were 15 million people died?

What to do about the colonizers of America, whose victim count is likely in the hundreds of millions? These questions interest me. Without a doubt, the colonizing and genocide are wrongful, evil acts. But since we cannot hop in a time machine and undo decades and centuries of trauma, to what extent does it remain realistic and to what extent does it become kind of ridiculous to keep paying for the mistakes of the past? I'm relatively new to the term "multi-generational trauma" and find it fascinating. But I also find out sort of unfair to hold generations accountable for offenses they weren't alive at the time to participate in/perpetuate.

[OopsIdiditagain]

What to do about the colonizers of America, whose victim count is likely in the hundreds of millions? These questions interest me. Without a doubt, the colonizing and genocide are wrongful, evil acts. But since we cannot hop in a time machine and undo decades and centuries of trauma, to what extent does it remain realistic and to what extent does it become kind of ridiculous to keep paying for the mistakes of the past? I'm relatively new to the term "multi-generational trauma" and find it fascinating. But I also find out sort of unfair to hold generations accountable for offenses they weren't alive at the time to participate in/perpetuate.

But it's not holding individuals accountable, it's their country paying back the loss it made.

[PwrdOn]

What to do about the colonizers of America, whose victim count is likely in the hundreds of millions? These questions interest me. Without a doubt, the colonizing and genocide are wrongful, evil acts. But since we cannot hop in a time machine and undo decades and centuries of trauma, to what extent does it remain realistic and to what extent does it become kind of ridiculous to keep paying for the mistakes of the past? I'm relatively new to the term "multi-generational trauma" and find it fascinating. But I also find out sort of unfair to hold generations accountable for offenses they weren't alive at the time to participate in/perpetuate.

Most people living in the global south would probably pass on the cash payments and just settle for Western governments abstaining from bombing them, overthrowing their governments, or forcing them to sign one-sided trade deals. But of course that will never happen, the developed world depends on the resources and cheap labor in those countries to keep our economies running, and so has an interest in keeping them destitute and unstable.

[Adam Allen]

What to do about the colonizers of America, whose victim count is likely in the hundreds of millions? These questions interest me. Without a doubt, the colonizing and genocide are wrongful, evil acts. But since we cannot hop in a time machine and undo decades and centuries of trauma, to what extent does it remain realistic and to what extent does it become kind of ridiculous to keep paying for the mistakes of the past? I'm relatively new to the term "multi-generational trauma" and find it fascinating. But I also find out sort of unfair to hold generations accountable for offenses they weren't alive at the time to participate in/perpetuate.

Well ... "mistakes"? I think that is one issue, as far as the generational trauma goes -- calling intentional acts "mistakes" kind of undermines any attempt at correcting the wrongs done.

Besides that, saying subsequent generations shouldn't be held accountable for things they didn't participate in ignores whether those generations benefitted from what previous generations did.

So, if my ancestors killed, raped, and pillaged your ancestors, and subsequent generations of my family prospered because of it, while generations of your family suffered, it is not unfair to say those scales still need to be set aright.

[AnakinFlair]

Looks like the suspect was also killed, along with an officer in today's Capitol attack.

[Hellion]

But it's not holding individuals accountable, it's their country paying back the loss it made.

It's kind of the same intention at the heart of the issue, though. I think Germany deserves credit for attempting something like this. Could you see the U.S. trying to do the same thing for African Americans and Native Americans? I know the city of Asheville (in a rare good turn from my birth state) recently decided to grant reparations to those citizens whose ancestors were slaves. I'm not against reparations, I just think it's odd for us living in the present to be so beholden to the distant past.

Most people living in the global south would probably pass on the cash payments and just settle for Western governments abstaining from bombing them, overthrowing their governments, or forcing them to sign one-sided trade deals. But of course that will never happen, the developed world depends on the resources and cheap labor in those countries to keep our economies running, and so has an interest in keeping them destitute and unstable.

This is the sad truth. It boggles the mind how we've kept Africa a shambles for pretty much all of modern history.

Well ... "mistakes"? I think that is one issue, as far as the generational trauma goes -- calling intentional acts "mistakes" kind of undermines any attempt at correcting the wrongs done.

Besides that, saying subsequent generations shouldn't be held accountable for things they didn't participate in ignores whether those generations benefitted from what previous generations did.

So, if my ancestors killed, raped, and pillaged your ancestors, and subsequent generations of my family prospered because of it, while generations of your family suffered, it is not unfair to say those scales still need to be set aright.

I'm not really seeing an issue with my word choice of "mistakes," as mistakes implies something that can/should be corrected. You do raise a good point though about whether or not the current generation has benefited from the negative actions of their ancestors. My family history presents an interesting case. We've lived in North Carolina pretty much since the 1800s and back in the day owned/ran plantations with slaves. Most of my father's side fought for the Confederacy. But between General Sherman and General Stoneman, both plantations were destroyed and the family became impoverished, all the way up to my brother and I growing up maybe one ladder rung away from dirt poor. So while I abhor slavery and do not whatsoever glorify the Confederate soldiers in my bloodline, I would not say that I (or the more recent generations of my family) have prospered because of the fact that at one point my family owned slaves. I don't like that aspect of my family history, but at the same time I'm so far removed from that particular era that I don't feel guilty about it either.

[Adam Allen]

It's kind of the same intention at the heart of the issue, though. I think Germany deserves credit for attempting something like this. Could you see the U.S. trying to do the same thing for African Americans and Native Americans? I know the city of Asheville (in a rare good turn from my birth state) recently decided to grant reparations to those citizens whose ancestors were slaves. I'm not against reparations, I just think it's odd for us living in the present to be so beholden to the distant past.



This is the sad truth. It boggles the mind how we've kept Africa a shambles for pretty much all of modern history.



I'm not really seeing an issue with my word choice of "mistakes," as mistakes implies something that can/should be corrected. You do raise a good point though about whether or not the current generation has benefited from the negative actions of their ancestors. My family history presents an interesting case. We've lived in North Carolina pretty much since the 1800s and back in the day owned/ran plantations with slaves. Most of my father's side fought for the Confederacy. But between General Sherman and General Stoneman, both plantations were destroyed and the family became impoverished, all the way up to my brother and I growing up maybe one ladder rung away from dirt poor. So while I abhor slavery and do not whatsoever glorify the Confederate soldiers in my bloodline, I would not say that I (or the more recent generations of my family) have prospered because of the fact that at one point my family owned slaves. I don't like that aspect of my family history, but at the same time I'm so far removed from that particular era that I don't feel guilty about it either.

Well sure, your feeling guilty wouldn't pay anybody's bills or anything, so I wouldn't say that's an issue. But a focus on individual levels of wealth ignores that the US was structured from its start until about one generation back, to explicitly disadvantage black people, with the express purpose to benefit white people.

The rather difficult, and rather ironic, thing about it is that acknowledging that reality and its inherent injustice would be the way to absolve yourself any responsibility for the continuing system of white supremacy and institutional racism in the country. Saying that it all has nothing to do with you or your family ... I mean, that's easier, but we all live in this world. We are all a part of the systems we inherited, like it or not.

[PwrdOn]

Well sure, your feeling guilty wouldn't pay anybody's bills or anything, so I wouldn't say that's an issue. But a focus on individual levels of wealth ignores that the US was structured from its start until about one generation back, to explicitly disadvantage black people, with the express purpose to benefit white people.

The rather difficult, and rather ironic, thing about it is that acknowledging that reality and its inherent injustice would be the way to absolve yourself any responsibility for the continuing system of white supremacy and institutional racism in the country. Saying that it all has nothing to do with you or your family ... I mean, that's easier, but we all live in this world. We are all a part of the systems we inherited, like it or not.

I think it's right for people to express remorse and perhaps offer a token payment just as an admission of past wrongdoing, but the way that the economy is currently structured, reparations aren't really going to have much of a benefit, because that money is just going to end up right back in the hands of white-owned corporations. Any serious reparations plan must involve the large scale transfer of ownership of the means of production, along with some enforcement mechanism to ensure that dispossessed whites don't try to poison the well like they did in some African countries that expropriated land from white farmers. And of course it goes without saying that a policy like that is WAY beyond the pale for even the most radical of left wing politicians we have in this country, but if you want to get serious about economic justice, this is what needs to be done.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

To not minimize how horrific this was. Or to lessen any compensation. The deaths were in near 100,000. What then to do with the Belgian Congo were 15 million people died?

Germany's attempt to reach out with Namibia sets a precedent rather than deters one, in my view.

Leopold II's atrocities in Congo of course are vastly worse and infamous, by far exceeding most crimes committed in Africa by Europeans (note: "in Africa" i.e. Europeans in Africa, not including the transatlantic slave trade which was a notorious crime carried out on a grander scale across three continents), and certainly did kill vastly more people than the Rwandan Genocide (which in itself is a consequence of Belgian-era colonialism). Obviously what happened in Rwanda qualifies as genocide but then so does what Leopold did.

[Hellion]

Well sure, your feeling guilty wouldn't pay anybody's bills or anything, so I wouldn't say that's an issue. But a focus on individual levels of wealth ignores that the US was structured from its start until about one generation back, to explicitly disadvantage black people, with the express purpose to benefit white people.

The rather difficult, and rather ironic, thing about it is that acknowledging that reality and its inherent injustice would be the way to absolve yourself any responsibility for the continuing system of white supremacy and institutional racism in the country. Saying that it all has nothing to do with you or your family ... I mean, that's easier, but we all live in this world. We are all a part of the systems we inherited, like it or not.

I get ya. I do know and acknowledge the systemic injustice in our society. I do my part to try and make things better. I'll probably never be out on the streets protesting for social justice (I'm just not a fan of crowds or noise), but I do vote for progressive candidates in the hopes that they can change things for the better. I guess what I'm trying to point out is that there seems to be a line between acknowledging a bad thing and beating someone over the head with knowledge of the bad thing. Like, what is an acceptable level or frequency of acknowledgement, at the individual or national level? Should I take a moment every day for the rest of my life to reflect on history and how terrible white people are and were? That question sounds completely ridiculous and yet sometimes it feels like the social justice movement needs to settle on a way to quantify the proper amount of acknowledgement/atonement, etc.

For example, I just got through roughly two weeks worth of various professional development webinars for my job and just about every single presentation began with us needing to acknowledge that the land we live and work on originally belonged to several Native American tribes. Now, I think it's worth knowing that information, it's certainly interesting, but what is the point of continuing to hammer it home? My work does not involve the Native American community in any way. I'm not a landowner or homeowner either, so it's not like I've taken land from these tribes. Really all this repetition does is just ruin whatever good mood I was in, because then I start thinking about all the wrongs done to Native Americans by the white man and it simultaneously bums me out and pisses me off because yes, it's true, whites are and were horrible to other races and cultures. I've never been oblivious to that fact. I just don't want to spend every day of my life hating white people (and by extension, myself) because that mindset and mood benefits nobody.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Most of my father's side fought for the Confederacy. But between General Sherman and General Stoneman, both plantations were destroyed and the family became impoverished, all the way up to my brother and I growing up maybe one ladder rung away from dirt poor. So while I abhor slavery and do not whatsoever glorify the Confederate soldiers in my bloodline, I would not say that I (or the more recent generations of my family) have prospered because of the fact that at one point my family owned slaves. I don't like that aspect of my family history, but at the same time I'm so far removed from that particular era that I don't feel guilty about it either.

The issue of reparations in America isn't just about the Civil War. Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed that out in "The Case for Reparations".

The fact is that over a century after the Civil War, white America has periodically doled out benefits that have always excluded African-Americans from properly making use of them. After Civil War, you had Reconstruction and then 1876 which led to Jim Crow, as a result of that segregation African-Americans in the South were excluded from the polls, from voting and so on (which as witness recent events in Georgia, is by no means ancient history). What that means is that post-war policies in the south catered to helping homes, neighborhoods, careers and businesses in the South excluded African-Americans from having a voice in that and often, demonstrably so, at their expense. African-American kids didn't get access to the same education whites did, their libraries and infrastructure (yeah African-Americans didn't get to use the same libraries that white people did either) were worse, their drinking water wasn't up to snuff and so on, healthcare wasn't the same. Then later policies in American history, like the New Deal was deliberately implemented in the South in a manner to benefit whites over African-Americans. The GI Bill, second verse same as the first.

So essentially in your own individual case, your family may not have come out of the Civil War as one of the Confederates who kept pre-war privileges or consolidated the same, but at the same time, more or less your family was able to recover and advance and benefit the way African-American families weren't able to. Your Jim Crow era ancestors had better utilities than the first generation descendants of freedmen, they could vote with safety and stability and have their voices counted in a way African-Americans can't, they got a bigger share of the New Deal than others did, better access to schools, libraries, healthcare.

Even if that's not the case, even if you can demonstrate historical consistent poverty in your family, which can happen and is definitely true, I don't see why you are getting huffed about reparations, because it's not your money or wealth that's being siphoned away or doled away in any case. The US Government or State governments pay reparations using state funds and taxes...if your family has historically been very poor or below the tax line, then your money isn't going towards this. In fact considering that African-Americans pay more propety taxes than white families (https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...-property-tax/) this is a case of them getting their money returned rather than anyone else' being taken from them.

[Hellion]

The issue of reparations in America isn't just about the Civil War. Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed that out in "The Case for Reparations".

The fact is that over a century after the Civil War, white America has periodically doled out benefits that have always excluded African-Americans from properly making use of them. After Civil War, you had Reconstruction and then 1876 which led to Jim Crow, as a result of that segregation African-Americans in the South were excluded from the polls, from voting and so on (which as witness recent events in Georgia, is by no means ancient history). What that means is that post-war policies in the south catered to helping homes, neighborhoods, careers and businesses in the South excluded African-Americans from having a voice in that and often, demonstrably so, at their expense. African-American kids didn't get access to the same education whites did, their libraries and infrastructure (yeah African-Americans didn't get to use the same libraries that white people did either) were worse, their drinking water wasn't up to snuff and so on, healthcare wasn't the same. Then later policies in American history, like the New Deal was deliberately implemented in the South in a manner to benefit whites over African-Americans. The GI Bill, second verse same as the first.

So essentially in your own individual case, your family may not have come out of the Civil War as one of the Confederates who kept pre-war privileges or consolidated the same, but at the same time, more or less your family was able to recover and advance and benefit the way African-American families weren't able to. Your Jim Crow era ancestors had better utilities than the first generation descendants of freedmen, they could vote with safety and stability and have their voices counted in a way African-Americans can't, they got a bigger share of the New Deal than others did, better access to schools, libraries, healthcare.

Even if that's not the case, even if you can demonstrate historical consistent poverty in your family, which can happen and is definitely true, I don't see why you are getting huffed about reparations, because it's not your money or wealth that's being siphoned away or doled away in any case. The US Government or State governments pay reparations using state funds and taxes...if your family has historically been very poor or below the tax line, then your money isn't going towards this. In fact considering that African-Americans pay more propety taxes than white families (https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...-property-tax/) this is a case of them getting their money returned rather than anyone else' being taken from them.

I'm in agreement with everything you've said above. And to clarify in case there's been confusion, I am NOT against reparations or anything like that. If something like that came down to a vote, I'd gladly vote in favor of them. I'm aware of our long, fraught history of social injustices. I acknowledge it. It just seems that today, there's a continuous push to keep acknowledging these things to the point that it feels like a white man like myself is obligated to feel something, whether it be guilt, shame, sadness or anger. And maybe that's the point, I dunno. Our society is still very much a white patriarchy and there are a lot of continuing problems that stem from that. I'm fighting to change our world for the better like any other like-minded progressive. I just feel like these days the conversation is such that I should feel complicit just for existing.

I am aware that I'm generalizing white people here. Not all of us are bigots. And I get that racism is still a major issue today. I'm just saying I can understand how some white people get defensive when it seems like they're being told repeatedly that they themselves are the root of all societal ills or at least complicit in such. Hell I even feel the same way when boys/young men have to be taught about sexual consent. Yes rape/sexual assault is a major issue that occurs all too frequently. It boggles my mind that we have to be taught about it, because it just seems like a common sense thing. And then I feel angry/insecure because I think: are most of my gender really such pathetic assholes? I fear the answer is probably "yes," judging from statistics.

[worstblogever]

New Matt Gaetz Bombshell Report Alleges Drugs, Sex, Money... And Receipts

The New York Times said Gaetz and his friend used Apple Pay and Cash App for drug-fueled sexual encounters in Florida hotels. That hole is progressively getting deeper for Matty Perv.

Perhaps a big sign Matt Gaetz is f***ed?

His communications director bailed on him today, too.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I'm in agreement with everything you've said above. And to clarify in case there's been confusion, I am NOT against reparations or anything like that. If something like that came down to a vote, I'd gladly vote in favor of them. I'm aware of our long, fraught history of social injustices. I acknowledge it. It just seems that today, there's a continuous push to keep acknowledging these things to the point that it feels like a white man like myself is obligated to feel something, whether it be guilt, shame, sadness or anger. And maybe that's the point, I dunno. Our society is still very much a white patriarchy and there are a lot of continuing problems that stem from that. I'm fighting to change our world for the better like any other like-minded progressive. I just feel like these days the conversation is such that I should feel complicit just for existing.

Well the issue of white guilt can either be burdensome or it can be liberating. For one thing anytime your family or your relatives or your grandparents say "When I was your age" or they talk about how hard they worked or so on, you can simply point to the fact that their hard work depended greatly on a set of historical privileges and exclusions.

So that means you can liberate yourself from a set of generational narratives that would otherwise be a burden to you. There's that line in that novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where Stephen Dedalus says, "You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets." You can set upon the task for yourself and your descendants to live without the moral burdens you do and you can be a pioneer in your own right.

It can be a little liberating to think that your family is full of bad guys or that you yourself are probably on the side of those a section of society thinks are bad guys. It can, properly concerned, be a form of humility, insight, and genuine happiness.