Getting Back to "Traditional American Values".

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Fnord
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22 Jan 2019, 1:49 pm

"We need to go Back To Traditional American Values"
(Note: This is a typical "Dog-Whistle" phrase uses by the Maga Hat crowd.)

What are these "Traditional American Values" anyway?

• The Founding Fathers' slave-owning ethics?
• The belief that only wealthy, white, male landowners should be allowed to vote?
• Separate but (un)equal access to education, employment, housing, and education?
• Mobs beating and lynching blacks, homosexuals, and protesters?

As for "Make America Great Again", what exactly does "again" mean?

• Was that during the time of Jim Crow, segregated schools, segregated neighborhoods (1864-1964), or during the era of mass incarcerations (1964-Present) for crimes that whites were routinely acquitted of?

• Reaganomics, when corporations ran with reckless trickle-down abandon, unemployment ravaged poor communities and the answer to the drug war was cracking down on non-whites minding their own business?

• A past that looks like old episodes of "Father Knows Best", "Leave it To Beaver", and "The Andy Griffith Show"? Note that each of these shows rarely (if ever) featured a non-white person in a speaking role. Those that did stuck to the racist stereotypes of the time.

The "again" that the MAGA Hat People seem to aspire to is sometime around 1957, before the Civil Rights Act, before widespread us of "The Pill", and before the "Great Awakening" of the Woodstock Generation.



LoveNotHate
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22 Jan 2019, 3:05 pm

There are real people hurting.

Hear their voices: LOW WAGES, UNDER-EMPLOYMENT, RISING MEDICAL INSURANCE, BLEAK FUTURE ....

They voted for Obama twice and are still hurting.

A well-tanned, rich, successful business man stepped up and SPOKE TO THEM ...

"I will fix these problems. I will am listening to you. I will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN".

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Minder
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23 Jan 2019, 12:04 pm

It's not possible to return to "traditional" values, because the context in which those values arose have been lost.

As an example, suppose that I decided that Babylon under Nebuchadnezzer II was the best time ever, and I tried to live by those standards as best I could. I grow out a long beard and curl it into rings, make sacrifices to Marduk, and so forth. Most people would think it was ridiculous because the world as a whole has moved on. It doesn't mean that Babylon under Nebuchadnezzer II was bad, necessarily. Just that the world in which it arose—a world of city-states and polytheism and limited literacy—is gone.

Trying to recreate the American 1950s is only slightly less absurd. The 1950s in the US were the result of many things—post-war euphoria, a strong manufacturing economy, a high tax rate, the Cold War. All of those are gone. We have media left over from the time, but media always creates its own narrative. It's naive to assume that Father Knows Best was an accurate portrayal of how people in the '50s actually lived. It may have been an accurate portrayal of how they wanted to live, but aspirations never match reality.

I'm not someone who thinks that history is progress. Things aren't always getting better or more liberal, nor is there any reason to assume that they will. However, history is change. Trying to recreate the past in the present should be kept to the realm of historical cosplay. The US of today would be unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers. Some might say this is bad. Some might say this is good. I say that this is inevitable, because everything changes.



TW1ZTY
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23 Jan 2019, 12:39 pm

Don't forget genocide and oppression of the native people.

And another funny thing people don't seem to acknowledge is how in this country rich white people really look down on poor white people (calling us "white trash" etc). A white person living in poverty probably has less of a chance of getting out of prison (and staying out) than a rich or middle class white person. I think our puritan mindset pretty much blames the poor and the homeless for their situation and thinks they all deserve to live that way no matter what their race is.

And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.



LoveNotHate
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23 Jan 2019, 1:06 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
Don't forget genocide and oppression of the native people.
And another funny thing people don't seem to acknowledge is how in this country rich white people really look down on poor white people (calling us "white trash" etc).

Most topics here seem to "look down" on poor white people (Trump's base).


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TW1ZTY
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23 Jan 2019, 1:15 pm

LoveNotHate wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
Don't forget genocide and oppression of the native people.
And another funny thing people don't seem to acknowledge is how in this country rich white people really look down on poor white people (calling us "white trash" etc).

Most topics here seem to "look down" on poor white people (Trump's base).


Are you sure you don't mean white people in general?

lol whoops I did it again

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Fnord
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23 Jan 2019, 1:53 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
... the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.
This is the essence of "White Privilege".
Anonymous White Supremacist wrote:
"We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all white men are created equally superior to everyone else."
Have you ever read a more obvious pile of steaming excrement in your life?

:roll:



Magna
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23 Jan 2019, 2:04 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.


How do you know this? Conjecture.



CockneyRebel
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23 Jan 2019, 2:15 pm

I think it would be impossible for the Western world of the 1950s to be recreated. Blacks and whites enjoy being integrated as they should be. People with disabilities enjoy being part of their communities working at regular job sites. Most women enjoy their careers and long-haired hippies don't want to work.


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Fnord
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23 Jan 2019, 2:28 pm

CockneyRebel wrote:
I think it would be impossible for the Western world of the 1950s to be recreated. Blacks and whites enjoy being integrated as they should be. People with disabilities enjoy being part of their communities working at regular job sites. Most women enjoy their careers and long-haired hippies don't want to work.
MOST people can get along in the same communities ... MANY people with disabilities enjoy being employed ...

Gotta have those qualifiers in there, or you;'re making a sweeping generalization about ALL of the people you described.

Otherwise, we're in agreement!

:D



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23 Jan 2019, 2:57 pm

Magna wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.


How do you know this? Conjecture.

o_O Are you kidding me with this? I come from a poor white family in the Deep South so of course I would know this about white people in this US!

I can't count how many times I've heard white men and women living in trailer parks like I did make racist jokes about black people, hispanics, asians, and native americans or complain about being poor and saying crap like "Well maybe if my skin was a little darker I could apply for government assistance!"

My own father was called an Island n****r by my racist uncle because he was Hawaiian (and I have been referred to as a "White Island n****r").

So yeah, do NOT even get me started on that because I do know from personal experience how racist white people living in poverty can be. :roll:

And yeah Fnord I completely agree with you! What a stinky pile of dung. :lol:



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23 Jan 2019, 3:02 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
Magna wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.


How do you know this? Conjecture.

o_O Are you kidding me with this? I come from a poor white family in the Deep South so of course I would know this about white people in this US!

I can't count how many times I've heard white men and women living in trailer parks like I did make racist jokes about black people, hispanics, asians, and native americans or complain about being poor and saying crap like "Well maybe if my skin was a little darker I could apply for government assistance!"

My own father was called an Island n****r by my racist uncle because he was Hawaiian (and I have been referred to as a "White Island n****r").

So yeah, do NOT even get me started on that because I do know from personal experience how racist white people living in poverty can be. :roll:

And yeah Fnord I completely agree with you! What a stinky pile of dung. :lol:


I understand that you had the first hand experiences that you describe. When you say: "And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.", you're making a sweeping (not all encompassing, but sweeping) generalization. Unless you're getting that info from some study that was conducted on that specific subject, I don't see how you can make such a statement without it being conjecture.



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23 Jan 2019, 3:08 pm

Magna wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
Magna wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.


How do you know this? Conjecture.

o_O Are you kidding me with this? I come from a poor white family in the Deep South so of course I would know this about white people in this US!

I can't count how many times I've heard white men and women living in trailer parks like I did make racist jokes about black people, hispanics, asians, and native americans or complain about being poor and saying crap like "Well maybe if my skin was a little darker I could apply for government assistance!"

My own father was called an Island n****r by my racist uncle because he was Hawaiian (and I have been referred to as a "White Island n****r").

So yeah, do NOT even get me started on that because I do know from personal experience how racist white people living in poverty can be. :roll:

And yeah Fnord I completely agree with you! What a stinky pile of dung. :lol:


I understand that you had the first hand experiences that you describe. When you say: "And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.", you're making a sweeping (not all encompassing, but sweeping) generalization. Unless you're getting that info from some study that was conducted on that specific subject, I don't see how you can make such a statement without it being conjecture.



I think when you grow up in a specific culture (I grew up around impoverished white Americans in both Georgia and in Florida) you tend to be your own expert about how your own people tend to behave or do things. You don't even have to be a statistician to know these things about your own culture.



TW1ZTY
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23 Jan 2019, 3:21 pm

I mean it's like when you're an African American who has grown up around black people in black neighborhoods and your family is black. You tend to be very aware of the issues and problems within your own culture.



Fnord
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23 Jan 2019, 3:22 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
I think when you grow up in a specific culture (I grew up around impoverished white Americans in both Georgia and in Florida) you tend to be your own expert about how your own people tend to behave or do things. You don't even have to be a statistician to know these things about your own culture.
I grew up around working-class white Americans in central lower Michigan from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. My experiences were similar to yours.



Magna
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23 Jan 2019, 3:24 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
Magna wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
Magna wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.


How do you know this? Conjecture.

o_O Are you kidding me with this? I come from a poor white family in the Deep South so of course I would know this about white people in this US!

I can't count how many times I've heard white men and women living in trailer parks like I did make racist jokes about black people, hispanics, asians, and native americans or complain about being poor and saying crap like "Well maybe if my skin was a little darker I could apply for government assistance!"

My own father was called an Island n****r by my racist uncle because he was Hawaiian (and I have been referred to as a "White Island n****r").

So yeah, do NOT even get me started on that because I do know from personal experience how racist white people living in poverty can be. :roll:

And yeah Fnord I completely agree with you! What a stinky pile of dung. :lol:


I understand that you had the first hand experiences that you describe. When you say: "And yet ironically the poorest white man still tends to think he's above the richest black man.", you're making a sweeping (not all encompassing, but sweeping) generalization. Unless you're getting that info from some study that was conducted on that specific subject, I don't see how you can make such a statement without it being conjecture.



I think when you grow up in a specific culture (I grew up around impoverished white Americans in both Georgia and in Florida) you tend to be your own expert about how your own people tend to behave or do things. You don't even have to be a statistician to know these things about your own culture.


I don't want to belabor the point past this and I'm not picking on you, to be clear.

And yet the [ adjective ] Christian still tends to think [ ].
And yet the [ adjective ] Muslim still tends to think [ ].
And yet the [ adjective ] Autistic still tends to think [ ].
And yet the [ adjective ] heterosexual still tends to think [ ].
And yet the [ adjective ] homosexual still tends to think [ ].
And yet the [ adjective ] man still tends to think [ ].
And yet the [ adjective ] woman still tends to think [ ].

My point simply is that even though any of us may have experience with a relatively small group of a certain category of people doesn't mean all people in that category think a certain way. It's impossible to know that.

For the record, if you would have made an entirely unrelated generalization about black people, men, women or children, I would have said the same thing.