Gohmert Says Street Violence Is only Recourse
FORBES
GOP Rep. Gohmert Says Violence Is Only Recourse After Election Lawsuit Dismissal
Andrew Solender Forbes Staff
“After a federal judge dismissed his lawsuit Friday seeking to empower Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election in President Donald Trump’s favor, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) suggested the ruling means street violence is the only option for Trump supporters who believe the president’s baseless voter fraud claims.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/01/02/gop-rep-gohmert-says-violence-is-only-recourse-after-election-lawsuit-dismissal/
WTF!!!
A typical white male, “law & order”, Republican is now suggesting that street violence is a legitimate response to failure at the polls and in the courts….
If this isn’t the epitome of white privilege hypocrisy, there’s no such animal…
Trump wants and needs a sudden outbreak of confrontational violence in the streets in order to justify a declaration of martial law and calling on the military to restore order and provide a rationale for ignoring the Constitutional transfer of power on January 20th….
Trump rose to political prominence and power on the false challenge to the legitimacy of the first black president.
Today, he is attempting to cling to power on the false challenge to the legitimacy of black and brown votes.
So here’s my question:
When, oh when, will you white people put and end to this shit?
Oh, Wait a minute, I almost forgot!
74 million of you would rather put an end to democracy….
The message that is repeatedly transmitted is that the ‘inherent superiority of white people’ is an element of a ‘divine plan’ or scheme of creation….
This ‘message’ has been, and is, encoded and embedded in virtually every aspect of mass communication, not as a ‘dog whistle’, but the underlying assumption upon which human interaction in Western Civilization is predicated…
From genesis to the nightly news, and all the commercials in between, the message that white people are superior and entitled is repeated incessantly….
This ‘fraud’ has been continuously and incessantly perpetrated and perpetuated by white people against the remainder of humanity for nearly 1000 years.
01/03/2021 @ 10:45 am
Race is a fools game…played towards a planet’s peril…as all living things are sucked into the shared delusional vortex. All life matters or the ignorant will nail whatever it can to whatever it has left. Me? I feed the birds, grow lettuce, and let nature do her thing.
01/03/2021 @ 10:52 am
Your comment suggests that you have a head of lettuce sitting on your shoulders…
“Race is a fools game…played towards a planet’s peril…”
It would be great if you white folks would absorb the sentiment you’ve expressed here and put an end to the bullshit racist game you’ve been playing for nearly 1000 years…
01/03/2021 @ 2:04 pm
When the arsonist is standing there, beholding a blaze that he set, holding oily rags and a lighter, and he says, all buildings matter, does he really think all buildings matter? Why did he set the fire that he is looking at?
“All lives matter” would not need to be said if it were true. The easiest way to spot someone for whom all lives do not matter is to find the ones asserting it.
01/17/2021 @ 2:18 am
Never played a day of it, never will. Divided we fall, and should.
01/03/2021 @ 10:45 am
Tweeted your bit
01/03/2021 @ 11:01 am
I don’t have a Twitter account and won’t sign up for one any time soon…
I’m sure you’ve annotated your placement of my ‘bit’ on Twitter with a lie of some kind…
Take care Pannier, you may have made yourself susceptible to civil liability…
I hope you can get a commitment from Trump re paying legal fees and civil damages….
01/04/2021 @ 12:18 am
Bitey’s right. The problem with All Lives Matter is that if they did, Black Lives Matter wouldn’t be necessary. But it obviously is.
Ron, do you really think most Whites are going to follow Gohmert? In order to do that, they’d not only have to be racist, they’d have to be virulently anti democratic. There are enough White Republicans like Ben Raffensperger in Georgia (remember that name) who may not like the way the election went but understand which way it went and that it is their job to support the result because votes are votes. Gohmert and Trump are both living fantasies right now.
As to whether race is a fool’s game, not if you’re on the wrong side of the game. George Floyd, like a lot of others, didn’t have a choice as to whether he played. The problem is that his skin played for him.
This is my problem with colorblindness: Racial colorblindness is blind to injustice but not to reaction to it. That tells Blacks to simply accept their disadvantages, to accept that they run the risk of being strangled for no reason by a cop who won’t be charged for it. Why? This attacks the problem at the wrong place. The problem isn’t Black reactions, it’s what those reactions are to.
Have any of you seen this yet?
This is a folk singer from Kentucky essentially explaining why Black Lives Matter is reasonable, but in a song. He didn’t make a fuss about releasing it; he simply put it at the end of an album of fiddle music. His name is Tyler Childers. It’s called Long Violent History and you should know stuff like this exists.
01/04/2021 @ 1:45 am
Kosh,
I didn’t say ‘most whites’…
I said 74 million whites…
Most whites are dangerously indifferent, silent, and noncommittal…
The song won’t make the Billboard charts….
Most whites won’t bother to listen to it much less buy it…
“It’s called Long Violent History and you should know stuff like this exists.”
This remark is about as callous, condescending, disrespectful, and insulting as it comes…
You’re a white person trying to tell me to listen to a hillbilly tune about the long violent history of the relationship between white people and black people in this country….
Did you forget that I’m a black man?
Or
Do you think there’s something missing in my knowledge and appreciation of my heritage?
What I do know is that a significant number of Jews in this country are apt to self identify as white despite the attendant ambivalence…
“Today, many American Jews retain an ambivalence about whiteness, despite the fact that the vast majority have benefited and continue to benefit from white privilege.”
https://jwa.org/teach/livingthelegacy/american-jews-race-identity-and-civil-rights-movement
Perhaps you are unaware of that golden nugget of cultural fact..
It’s white folks, including contemporary Jews, who need to know that “stuff like this exists”…
It’s white folks, including contemporary Jews, who need to learn that the history is real and not some kind of grotesque fairytale black people espouse in protest of oppression…
Perhaps you should spread the word
that “stuff like this exists” the next time you’re at synagogue…
01/04/2021 @ 9:07 pm
Ron,
You don’t know what I mean by “stuff,” do you? I never in a million years figured you were dense enough to assume that I was trying to educate you about your heritage. Exactly how fucking stupid do you think I am? I thought why I posted this was obvious given context but, being as it apparently wasn’t, here goes:
You have written over and over and over “When will White people………..” In response to this, I sent you an example of a supportive viewpoint, a public viewpoint, coming from an unexpected White source: Appalachian music. There’s a mountain musician and singer from rural Kentucky, apparently a well known one, ending his album with a song in support of BLM in a way that makes sense to at least some of his traditional audience by translating the issue into terms they can relate to. This is an example of precisely what you’ve been asking White people for. I thought it might interest you. I thought you might find it encouraging. I did not think you’d insult me for showing it to you.
Perhaps I should have.
01/04/2021 @ 9:50 pm
“You don’t know what I mean by “stuff”, do you?”
There’s no particular reason why I should know what YOU mean by anything as open ended as ‘stuff’
Very poor choice of words…
‘Stuff’, to me, implies a rather light heartedness and lack of depth…
Tim Wise set to music it isn’t…
Where’s the call to action and activism?
“This is an example of precisely what you’ve been asking White people for.”
No it isn’t…
This song might seem appealing to the likes of Terry McKenna.
How would you suppose white folks like Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller might be persuaded to listen and learn from this song?
Re condescension, disrespect, and insult, toward me…
That’s my call not yours…
01/04/2021 @ 10:19 pm
Ron, you have known Kosher for years. If there is, as you just said, no reason for you to know what he means by anything he says, then it stands to reason that you could not possibly understand what anyone else means by what they said. As such, you could neither comprehend an appeal to a common principle, nor a call to action. So, to that I say, you missed it. How could you possibly I understand that it was delivered to you? You can’t even understand Kosher…and you have known him for years.
01/04/2021 @ 10:27 pm
@Bitey;
My bad, the sentence was incomplete and should have read as follows:
‘There’s no particular reason why I should know what YOU mean by anything as open ended as ‘stuff’.’
Re missing the point…
Discussing the merits of a song that relatively few white folks will listen to is a rabbit hole…
As I said, Tim Wise set to music it isn’t….
01/05/2021 @ 12:32 am
The question isn’t whether it’s Tim Wise set to music, though I dare say he’d appreciate it a good deal more than you do. The question is who it reaches. A guy writes a song to his Appalachian audience saying BLM is right and this is why and you give him shit for not outlining an agenda? His name is Tyler Childers, he’s well known enough to have a Grammy nomination under his belt, and you haven’t read the comment streams on YouTube videos about this song, including comments like that this song was a kick in the gut, meaning it changed a mind. I can just about guarantee you that Childers accomplished more in fighting racism with that song than you have in your lifetime. He reaches that many people, and he reaches people who are not anti-racist.
You really don’t know jack shit about reaching White people. You’re not even curious about reaching White people, which is distinctly odd given your ostensible priorities. I wouldn’t call your reaching White people a moral imperative on your part but I sure would call it a logistical imperative. More than that, I’d say that reaching White people is the difference between complaining about racism and doing something about it.
What kind of lawyer were you? Just don’t tell me you were a litigator, because I can’t imagine your trying to read a jury.
Tim Wise is great, but unfortunately he’s not remotely the norm. How abnormal is he? Try this on: You and I have probably been blogging for about the same amount of time – in my case just under eleven years, we’ve blogged on the same three sites at the same time, and all three sites had huge liberal majorities. The perfect places to find White anti racists – liberal sites with articulate, often political writers. In your experience on these sites, how many White people have you read who posted more frequently or more effectively about racism than I did? You might have known someone. I didn’t. I’m not proud of this; I’m embarrassed by it. Blog sites are easy places to express opinions and yet even on easy places full of articulate and often activist liberals more content came from me than from anyone White that I saw. And probably that you saw. That’s the state of Whites.
Childers did something very smart. He understood who he was talking to, and so he made his point relatable to them. He stayed the Hell away from PC language and went straight to principle. That’s how you do it, because a whole lot of White people hate politically correct language but don’t want to be hypocrites about principles they think they support.
Childers is an ally. He had no business or musical reason to stick his neck out, only a moral reason. It stood to hurt his career more than help it, though the jury’s still out about that.
You don’t have to worry about me. It doesn’t matter how much you insult me or write posts accusing me of being racist because I disagreed with you about tanning or assume, God knows why, that I’d suddenly take it in my head to try to educate you about your history, or even tell me my opinion of Jews is too high (which you did in this thread). I won’t stop advocating what I advocate, because you’re not why I advocate it, any more than I’d stop opposing homophobia because of issues with SBA. No matter what you do, I won’t hold the Black population of America responsible for you.
01/05/2021 @ 1:55 am
The comments were shut down on the video.
No comments were available to me to read or review…
You’re right, I didn’t do juries.
The civil rights cases I dealt with were before presiding judges only…
Re reaching white folks:
I know more about getting to white people than you or any other white person will ever give me credit for….
Frankly, unlike Trump, I’d most likely be in jail for what I know and have gotten away with re getting to white folks…
“If social justice is to be achieved it won’t be because black and brown people persuaded or convinced conflicted and ambivalent white people of anything at all.
It will be because white people make the case to reluctant and recalcitrant white folks that a just society and more perfect union isn’t about bestowing the benefits of freedom on black and brown people at the expense of white people, it’s about “liberty and justice for all”.”
If Childers reaches millions more white people than I can with his song, he’s doing what he’s supposed to do…
The best I’ve ever done is reach a career full of classrooms and, thanks in no small measure to you, Lezlie, and Myriad, a book full of articulated grievances re the black experience and condition…
01/05/2021 @ 6:56 am
There is a recording on Voyager 1. It is a recording of human sounds in various forms. Voyager 1 is now in interstellar space, beyond our solar system. The recording was neither made by a majority of humans, nor was it heard by a majority of humans. It is representative of human life on Earth. The information gleaned from it is not about political action. It is about what exists in a particular place, Earth, and at a particular time, 1977 to now.
You are missing the point regarding the recording that KS suggested. Whether or not a single other White person hears it is entirely irrelevant. It is documentary evidence of a value among the people which is shared across cultures. If you can’t understand that, what do you hope to accomplish by accusing “74 million” people of anything? What reason would any of them have to listen to you?
Here is what such a complaint actually does. It validates people like Pannier. Someone like Pannier thinks everything contained in your complaint is the result of a demented mind. It’s weak, and illogical. It shows him nothing upon which to grow, and it demonstrates no capacity to succeed without his approval or permission. You have empowered him with a particularly off kilter accusation.
So, what’s your next step? Have you given that any thought? I don’t think the guilt trip thing is working.
01/05/2021 @ 10:26 am
‘I know more about getting to white people than you or any other white person will ever give me credit for….”
When exactly do you intend to demonstrate this? I’ve been waiting for years. So far I’ve seen you be successful with one White person, GH, though in reality she was already anti racist when you got to her. Then you proceeded, at least in part, to blow that one by refusing to let her take the lead when the issue turned to feminism, demanding deference you didn’t give. I warned you as soon as I saw you do it, only to see her come back and say pretty much what I was saying without initially noticing that I’d already said it because of the odd comment flow of Replies.
You want to bring up Terry McKenna? Fine. He’s your biggest online failure. You were willing to devote a ton of time and effort to Catnlion while Terry was a more viable target. As Bitey pointed out, the most important thing is common ground, some sort of shared idea of morality. That’s what you build on. That’s what makes racism inconsistent with the ostensible morality of people who aren’t anti racist. It’s what turned a lot of the country after they could no longer run from the fact of common police racism in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. Terry wrote a post complaining that local minority kids were getting the short end of the stick. He was not sensitive about his use of language but he showed you that the shared idea of morality was there, that you had something to work with, that you had something to build on. That’s exactly what you look for. That’s how you know you have a shot. Catnlion indicated that he didn’t believe there was a real difference based on race but Terry indicated that he did. Your response was to drive him off OurSalon.
Our task is to build an anti racist electorate. You don’t do that by blowing opportunities and you sure as Hell don’t do it by belittling allies like Childers – by saying he’s no Tim Wise??
who (Wise), incidentally, is Jewish. Given what he does, which is to say concentrating a whole lot on bigotry that doesn’t target him, that isn’t remotely surprising.
01/05/2021 @ 12:20 pm
BTW
I wasn’t taking Childers to task for his song. I was taking you to task for hinting that I didn’t know that stuff like that exists…
Try this on for size and get back to me…
I’m certain that you’re unaware of this because if you were, you would have attempted to throw this at me as well as the Childers recording…
He calls himself ‘The Liberal Redneck’ in this video he directly addresses the BLM movement:
This is at least as good as the song maybe even better…
It doesn’t matter because I’ve been aware of the fact that this stuff exists for quite a few years…
01/05/2021 @ 12:39 pm
“It doesn’t matter because I’ve been aware of the fact that this stuff exists for quite a few years…“
If this statement is true, and I assume that it is, then your question has no purpose. Your question implies that “74 million…” are ethically flawed. If you are already aware of “stuff like this”, then your question is just a provocation.
This doesn’t add up, Ron.
“A typical white male, “law & order”, Republican is now suggesting that street violence is a legitimate response to failure at the polls and in the courts…”
Is Gohmert a typical white male? If he is, you have one point. If he isn’t, you have none. Does the prospect of violence of street violence as a response to failure at the polls shock you? It should. It does for me because it rarely happens. Gohmert is saying it now because it is not what normally happens. It is designed to shock…at least. This is not typical. We are discussing it because it is unusual. Gohmert may share quite a lot with many White men, but if he were typical, this would not need to be said. It would be expected.
Gohmert is a lunatic with a platform. He can grab attention in the press and derive benefit from causing unrest. That is not typical. The Childers recording delivers an argument that is more typical. It may not be as much fun to say it, but it is far more accurate.
01/05/2021 @ 3:54 pm
Read the entire descriptive phrase as a unitary expression:
“typical white male law & order Republican”
Removing the punctuation should help you get my meaning here…
You’re right!
Gohmert is a typical white male law and order Republican lunatic with a platform who is engaged in sedition by inciting violence in the streets by people who don’t like the outcome of the election….
BTW:
No guilt trip, but an urgent request that white people own their shit and do something about cleaning it up…
01/05/2021 @ 5:08 pm
Ah, punctuation. So, many have misread you. That explains it. One wonders how a rhetorical gun blast aimed in that direction could singe Kosher. It sure looked to me to be aimed at him…in part. Did not realize your marksmanship was expert.
I’m curious though. Have you bagged any racists yet?
01/05/2021 @ 5:11 pm
I know who Liberal Redneck is and there was no point in introducing him to you because he’s just another guy with a YouTube channel, not a Grammy-nominated singer with serious reach among a population that would not normally be any kind of liberal’s audience, including Liberal Redneck’s.
I hinted that you didn’t know what existed? Country/Appalachian music backing BLM? I didn’t know it existed either. I found it because a few days ago I happened to trip over a Satellite radio station in the car where some guy was talking about his favorite songs from 2020, none of which I figured I’d know, and he started talking about this and I went “I’ve got to look this guy up.” So I turned you onto him and got one of the stranger reactions I’ve ever seen. Would you know about this stuff? Probably not, for the same reason I didn’t – neither of us travel in those circles.
Did you really think it was feasible that I’d assume you didn’t know Black history? Why? How could you assume that? As Bitey points out, you’ve known me for a while. Does that add? If you run across something that makes that little sense, do you bother to take a second look at it to figure out what’s actually going on?
You don’t have the capacity to lose me, which is a good thing because I’d be a more expensive loss than Terry McKenna.
01/06/2021 @ 9:36 am
@Bitey;
“Have you bagged any racists yet?
If preventing a 13 year old black girl who was mentally and emotionally challenged from being tried as an adult for murder is “bagging racists” ;
If preventing black and brown people from being evicted from substandard housing by unscrupulous white landlords is “bagging racists”;
If preventing a black woman from being forced out of her job or a black student from being forced out of school in situations or circumstances where white people would not have been subjected to such treatment can be characterized as “bagging racists”;
Then the answer to your rather disrespectfully inane question is, YES…”
01/06/2021 @ 10:11 am
@Koshersalaami;
Childers is a
“Grammy-nominated singer with serious reach among a population that would not normally be any kind of liberal’s audience…”
According to Bitey, Childers’ popularity or sales performance is of no consequence:
“Whether or not a single other White person hears it is entirely irrelevant…”
That was Bitey.
If you accept what Bitey says as true, then Childers and The Liberal Redneck are on equal footing and coming from the same place rhetorically…
Their messages carry the same weight and, in my view, equally impactful and important.
01/06/2021 @ 1:05 pm
Ron, my question was not disrespectful. My question was, considering your disrespectful broad use of accusation, have you actually accomplished more than just being disrespectful. My question was quite gentle. I granted your “punctuation” dodge and said, your shot was rather disrespectful to Kosher, who did not deserve it. You seem to be blind to that.
“ Ron, do you really think most Whites are going to follow Gohmert?”
Above is just one question that Kosher asked you. He asked you because your statement was so broad that it is…disrespectful. It doesn’t matter what has happened to you in the past, there are still people innocent of whatever your injury is. You can’t reasonably accuse all of them. Racism works in exactly that way. That is why I said, your manner lends Pannier credence. Your manner can’t be defended ethically. You behave as if you have the right to be so. You don’t. You are wrong. And no, telling you straight is respectful, Ron. It comes with the assumption that you morally and intellectually comprehend the message. That is a measure of respect. There are others who I don’t address for whom I have no expectation of honesty, decency, or having a clue.
You and I operate on different types of respect. Your requires deference and avoidance. Mine requires openness, honesty, and the example of facing a challenge. The respect you demand, in my view, is appropriate within families and organizations. You are not my teacher, or father, or commanding officer. You are I are citizens to one another, and that is it. We owe each other, truth, reason, and adherence to the law.
01/07/2021 @ 9:35 am
@Bitey;
My understanding is that my description of Gohmert was taken as a shot against Koshersalaami. No such thing happened. No such thing was intended.
Both of you have a tendency to misread, misinterpret, misunderstand, and often as a result misrepresent what someone else writes in order to fit the contours of what may be characterized as misguided commentary….
“I granted your “punctuation” dodge and said, your shot was rather disrespectful to Kosher, who did not deserve it. You seem to be blind to that.”
I’m blind to it because the description was not aimed at Koshersalaami.
It was a description of Gohmert, period.
The fact that both you and he jumped at the notion that it was an intended slight against him is proof my assessment of the impact of your failure to read and comprehend material accurately…
Your characterization of my clarification of the matter re the punctuation as a “dodge” is as insulting and disrespectful as your inquiry re “bagging racists”…
Granted, it was within the context of your ‘shooting’ analogy.
However, the problem is that your analogy is misplaced and misguided because the description of Gohmert wasn’t aimed at Kosh at all and, frankly speaking, he should have known that…
01/07/2021 @ 12:15 pm
Ron, I give you credit for being smarter than your answers indicate. My response was about bad aim, and not about being aimed at Kosher. To put it less colorfully, if your aim were a bit more accurate, you would not “singe” someone who does not deserve to be hit.
Your statement, whether it is “74 million”, or “typical white male law and order…etc” has a reasonable inference. That is a rather wide swath of white people. Lumping those characteristics together amounts to a rather broad implication. Now, I said twice that you were misread. Twice. You have not once said, maybe my statement was a bit broad. And you wont. Ultimately, you know what was in your head better than anyone. That is where my question comes from. How effective is that approach? You are not good with questions that require introspection. You think your statement was perfect. (Reminds me of someone). So, good luck with ending racism with that approach.
01/07/2021 @ 5:05 pm
@Bitey;
You might win a debate or two with questions that may cause introspection…
I’ve been there and done that.
However, my approach has won court cases and boardroom policy arguments…
Not as a matter of luck, but as a matter of being right…
01/07/2021 @ 5:31 pm
Ron, even I could list off a number of your laurels. I have seen to claim them before. That’s great. I’m sure those people you helped…were helped. The thing is, that doesn’t have fuckall to do with what I am asking. I’m saddened that you can’t even see that. Doing good…is great. It is necessary. But, in the very next instant, you can fuck up. The fuck up does not absolve you.
Adding to the great things you did…whenever you did them, your statement is pure garbage. This conversation about your statement relates to…your statement. The fact that you did a good turn once, twice, or 9,000 times does mean a thing. If Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and then accused all white people of being racists, I would say, hey, Jesus, don’t be a dick. The two things are not connected just because one dude did them. And honestly, I tired talking about it long ago. I can’t stand your endless willingness to justify everything you ever say against anyone else. Ok,…remove a comma…or add one. Whatever.
“ Perhaps you should spread the word
that “stuff like this exists” the next time you’re at synagogue…”
By the way…this comment above was gentle, and not nasty or gratuitous at all. Proof of that is probably the fact that you helped someone in some unrelated situation. I get it.
01/08/2021 @ 6:43 am
@Bitey;
“So, good luck with ending racism with that approach.”
You bring up my ‘approach’ and then scream that what I’ve been able to accomplish with my ‘approach’ is irrelevant.
If this is what makes you a paragon of social media and blogging I’m thankful that I can’t achieve your status or share your fate…
01/08/2021 @ 8:10 am
Ron,
The simple fact is that there was absolutely no reason to assume that my giving you the link to Childers’ song amounted to an assumption that there was something you didn’t know about Black history. None. Such an assumption wouldn’t be inevitable if you didn’t know the person who posted it, but with the link coming from me such an assumption is indefensible. You are at fault for making it. And dragging my Judaism into it was, if anything, worse, because it entailed your making a generalization about Jews. To say you should know better is an understatement. Talking about commas and Gohmert is a tangent.
There is no way around either point. Please don’t insult yourself by pretending there is.
01/08/2021 @ 10:19 am
@Koshersalaami;
“…You have a tendency to misread, misinterpret, misunderstand, and often as a result misrepresent what someone else writes in order to fit the contours of what may be characterized as misguided commentary….”
My comment re American Jews has nothing to do with your faith as a Jew or Judaism in general…
I provided a link to a piece that should have sharply clarified that…
Re your comment,
“You should know that stuff like this exists.”:
This is an extremely poor way of offering novel or unique information to someone who you know has an extensive background and store of knowledge and information in the contextual subject area.
“Ron, have you heard any of this stuff?”
Would have been a much more cordial or conciliatory way of positing your inquiry.
However, you’re so adept at social media snark and one-upmanship, I ‘mistakenly’ went for the bait…
If this is the source and essence of the consternation here, you have my apologies…
If it isn’t, if this is what makes you, like Mr. Bitey, a paragon of social media and blogging, I’m thankful that I can’t achieve your status or share your fate…
01/08/2021 @ 10:49 pm
Maybe you misunderstood me. I said, whatever it was that you accomplished, and I am sure it was helpful to those you helped, it does not justify painting all white people with a broad brush. I also said, whatever your intent or “aim”, the fact that your shot hit Kosher shows that you need to reconsider your approach.
Now, let’s not keep slicing your bullshit into ever thinner slices. I never said what you did was “irrelevant” entirely.
But, whatever. Have whatever interpretation suits you. Continue to say that “74 million white people” are racists, and then expect them to see your point of view. Keep saying that because you helped somebody once, that will justify whatever you say afterwards.
You know, reading those cockeyed whines about “while people” brings a reaction that could be summed up with one word. Really? Your answer is simple enough. Really. There is no point in repeating this process. You will do exactly the same thing.
01/04/2021 @ 12:52 pm
There is an old saying that goes, “all you need to write a song are three chords and the truth.” It is not clear where this originated, but you get the idea. That said, the song Kosher posted is worth listening to. It may not be your genre of choice. It isn’t mine either, but that is part of the point. The singer is stating certain sociological principles…which obviously cross cultures. Hearing them, and discovering certain common principles across cultures is a step in a peaceful solution to the question that you asked.
The question that you asked is essentially an ethical one. My question to you is, why should ‘they’? Why should any group holding you down simply stop holding you down? I see two choices for the oppressed. Make an ethical argument which would require asking the oppressor to hew to ethical principles held in common, or overcome the violence with violence. This singer and his song appear to be evidence that there exists a commonly held principle to which you can appeal. Hearing it is your first step. The difficult part is that it requires that you face that it is not just “white people.” If you reject that, “jump up, buckle up, shuffle to the door”…and make sure you have enough ammunition.
01/04/2021 @ 2:17 pm
Bitey,
I didn’t say that the song isn’t worth a listen.
This is what I said:
“The song won’t make the Billboard charts….
Most whites won’t bother to listen to it much less buy it…”
Regardless of genre, I’ll listen to just about anything at least once…
01/04/2021 @ 3:35 pm
I stand corrected. I misread you.
While we’re on it, I saw an interesting thing on Cosmos recently. Neil Degrasse Tyson was talking about when humanity made the transition from hunter/gatherer civilization to agriculture. He estimates that this was around 12,000 years ago. They showed a model of the first city, which was populated with about 10,000 people. The grouping of dwellings had no roads, and no palaces. It was essentially a hive of dwellings, all connected, and entered from the top. One had to walk along the top of the dwellings and enter down a ladder into one’s individual dwelling. Interestingly, an analysis of the human remains showed that the diet of these individuals was essentially the same among all of the inhabitants. There were no wealthy and no poor. Cooperation and shared protection was the basis of this civilization.
To me, that means that justice precedes power. The pursuit of wealth and power did not develop until after the the practice of shared responsibility to the greater good.
Fast forward 9,000 or 10,000 years. In our attempts to regulate civilization, from Magna Carta to the US Constitution, we are now immersed in a philosophical trade-off between power and justice. It is not even necessary to distinguish between social justice and justice because the dynamic is exactly the same as they apply to power. My personal view is that the concept of “social justice” was invented by entrenched power for the purpose of disparaging the pursuit of justice. In my view, the pursuit of justice, by necessity, requires limitations on power.
So, if that is true, was Marx right? Without taking a position on the full extent of his theory, dialectical materialism…or the end of history, etc, but limited to are power and justice necessarily opposed? My answer is yes.
So, from there, how does one tackle the question of Louis Gohmert’s suggestion of force to maintain power? How does one tackle the issue of increasing justice denied people of color in Western civilization? Is a movement toward justice, by necessity a movement toward Marx? Is support of the US Constitution moving the needle toward the power of the status quo, or toward justice?
White people, generally, make a choice between justice and power (privilege) by taking a position on this question. (Individuals may choose for themselves how much headwind they want in their lives). Generally, going along to get along is what people do to reduce their daily challenges. This is pragmatism over ethics. Assuming that ethical values are shared, how does one get white Westerners to choose the uphill path over the level path? Gohmert is clear about his choice. Gohmert’s argument is persuasive to many. Justice as a value seems to have lost out to power and wealth in civilization long ago. White people in the Western world obviously value power. Racism is part of how they maintain leverage. To remove racism as one of their valued things, they will need to be offered something in return, or have the level taken from them. A moral appeal will never, ever work as long as wealth and power still comes with that immoral/unethical position.
01/04/2021 @ 10:37 pm
It might mean justice preceded power or it might mean that the concept of wealth hadn’t evolved yet. In a sense I guess that would still add up to justice preceding power if justice is defined as overwhelming communal concern. I don’t know if I’d call that justice given that we can find the phenomenon in ant colonies or beehives, though presumably neither of those are driven at all by empathy. Sadness at loss of community members I don’t think is experienced by insects though it is unquestionably experienced by mammals.
Whether Marx was right depends on among other things right about what and in his case right in which role. How good he was as an economist and an historian is different from how good he was as a 19th century romantic utopian. As a utopian I find him more moral than practical. We need an incentive for productivity and when an organization gets large enough to become impersonal then we see limits to the acceptance of communal responsibility. As an historian and an economist I find him beyond brilliant. He really introduced the concept of wealth driving history and certainly the extent to which it does. I think there is a mistake in his model of how the dialectic works but an understandable one given that he didn’t live long enough to see it in action. He thought that exploitation and alienation would lead to revolution. I think he was wrong. He thought that exploitation and alienation would result in worker control of the means of production and, until Reagan, that’s the direction we were moving in, though not at all how he thought. I think he misread both what workers wanted and how alienation would lead to change. What workers wanted was no exploitation, in other words better jobs, not to own the businesses. This is what Leninists and their Soviet and Maoist successors called Tradeunionism.
So where does Alienation fit in? Exploitation involves provider issues: wages, hours (taken from family time), vacations, job security, child labor (do my kids have to work?), worker safety (can I continue to provide for my family?). Alienation doesn’t. I feel alienated from what I produce. Poor Baby. It doesn’t work like exploitation.
But it does work, just differently. What does alienation in the workplace lead to? Apathy. What does apathy lead to? Reduced productivity. Who cares about productivity?
Owners do. And so it was owners who worked on reducing alienation in order to improve function and the bottom line. This became more important as the workplace became more sophisticated technically, resulting in a monopoly of knowledge at lower levels in the hierarchy. There are things the boss doesn’t know how to do.
If you look at a business, who’s the most productive person there? In my experience, and I deal with businesses for a living, and here I’m talking about privately held businesses, the answer is the owner, particularly if the owner is the founder. Founders build businesses in their own images, so no alienation. Who makes sure the business opens on time, is locked up when it closes, the floors are clean, the customers are treated right, the right supplies are in stock? Owners. Why? Because it’s theirs. They have the most vested interest and the most involvement. As Stephen Covey pointed out in “The Seven Habits of Highly Productive People”: No involvement, no commitment. No involvement is the functional equivalent of alienation in the workplace.
The Soviets tried to go with equality but they used Marx’s model to replace owners with workers. In dialectical terms, this isn’t synthesis, it’s antithesis killing thesis and replacing it. Instead of all owners they got no owners. What happened? People showed up late, left early, didn’t care about the business (if you want to call it that), absenteeism, treated the customers terribly, ordered the wrong stuff and not enough of it. In short, the Soviets managed to alienate an entire population by following what Marx thought would work. The way they sort of bounced back was by privatizing agriculture.
But the Soviets are a tangent. Until Reagan, how were workers being given more control over the means of production? In Japan it was worker councils – any guy on the line could stop the production line. In the US it was entrepreneurial units in colleges and even inside businesses, it was profit sharing, and ultimately it was the most complete adjustment of all: the employee owned corporation.
Though actually a lot of this happened in the military first, just like integration did. When the draft ended after Vietnam, the military had become more technical – again, before a lot of the civilian sector – and they needed to keep their people, who could now leave. The result in the late seventies was a period where Sergeants outnumbered Privates because the Army needed to promote their people to keep them.
Strange way to look at Marx. One of these days I’ll tell you what led to my figuring that out. It was a single trivial business event.
01/05/2021 @ 10:52 am
Interesting to read, but not a place to just drop in and say much.
I decide that when I read “When oh when…”.
Were I capable of the clarity exhibited by K/S or Bitey I might try but I know that it won’t make a difference of any kind.
I worked as a mediator in a city office for more than a year, where tempers were high, where neutrality was the key to bringing people together, sometimes only agreeing to not cause harm to or use duress on the other party.
I closed 125 of the department’s 625 cases. Seventeen people closed the other 500.
I’ve been the only unarmed person in a room full of scofflaws intent on mayhem, and emerged with an agreement.
I knew what I was doing.
Some of the most ridiculous defenses and assertions I’ve ever heard were uttered in those meetings.
The element that always failed was attempting to make someone feel stupid for their means of expression.
This caught my eye: “I don’t think the guilt trip thing is working.”
01/06/2021 @ 9:53 am
Interesting background and interesting observation. My primary concern has always been what works. It’s what drove me crazy on OS when dealing with Markinjapan, LibbyliberalNY, and SBA, though because of my much longer exposure to SBA I learned from her how that mindset worked, and that’s where I came to understand that the Greens are not Democratic allies specifically because what works is not their primary concern at all – what you stand for is.
In Ron’s case his approach is bifurcated, not universal. It depends what the topic is. In electoral politics he is ruthlessly focused on what works, but in race he isn’t. I’ve never understood how he could separate his approach like that. It might just be that one area is so much more emotionally charged than the other, but he’s also pretty charged about politics so I’m not sure that’s it. It might be the sheer irrationality of racism but we see sheer irrationality in politics aside from race. It might be the intrinsic stupefying lack of compassion of racism but we see a political stupefying lack of compassion in other areas. I don’t know.
01/06/2021 @ 1:21 pm
It is about principle. An unprincipled person goes outside of the lines to accomplish the goal. Rosie Ruiz, if you will. A principled person respects the process and the result.
Now, an un-clever argument might be, the process is not fair. That sort of objection has limited appeal. But to just stomp all over all decency under some banner of authority is just bullshit. It is simply a lack or principle.
01/17/2021 @ 11:10 am
Artwstone: I apologize for not being here much. I am too damaged to wade through the complex posting process. Otherwise I would not have moved over to Facebook and now Twitter. I hope you do not mind me agreeing with your comment. 🖍
01/07/2021 @ 12:17 pm
Aftermath rebounds: as though evil-doers have machinated meme driven treasonous-heinous behaviors wherein the mob reacts enthralled to be dangerous to themselves as well a others [:::] OR’s IT dangerous to others and/all themselves. Please allow that our bifurcated reality sure sure the Market has a mind of its own at the moment S&P ^57 […] as the Shop Vacs hose up smithereens within the People’s House. Dark force plausibly has melded perceptions of faux REVENGE-riffed narcissisms into robotic swarms hellishly plummeting nihilistic atrophy into a death-wish-like usurpation of domestic tranquility and that now foggy profound humanism of PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.
Perhaps
comes a time when the white arrow and white glove of cyberpsychosis ought be curtailed or minimally KNOWN and CENSORED to slow down (inhibit) the cruel and sundry goose-striding zombies hell-bent on terrorism. Dark farce assuredly has molded paranoia into contrived insouciant FALT-RIGHT PANDAMANIA. TRUTH ampersand CONSEQUENCES!!
Cruel and unusual bullies is what you’ve become. FLACKJACKETS! My legendary uncle was a turret gunner on the USS Arizona and you’ve reignited his PTSD jarhead nightmare($).
And I am compelled to second guess our snowbird sabbatical to DIAMOND HEAD.
01/17/2021 @ 2:39 am
Whipsawed. Feeling the anger, delusion…high as hell above the filthy fox holes, too tiny to dwell upon, I fly on. Wow. Poor little planet, besieged by delusional hate mongering ego maniacs divided by themselves into stackable bales. The combine rules fools.
01/17/2021 @ 7:31 am
Fall yourself. Leave everyone else out of it.
01/17/2021 @ 10:58 am
Bitey: Sharing space with angry, deluded, egomaniacal, haters is not my idea a good time, but have not found a beach town yet that is free of the ignorant. See you there. 🔥
01/17/2021 @ 11:36 am
Pannier, I neither know, nor care what you are talking about. I just can’t figure out why you are saying it to me. You ride up with a fake name just to say…what exactly? Wait, wait…I don’t care. It’s not that I hate you Robert, it is just that I have never seen you say anything worth caring about. You’re like an escaped mannequin from a museum for the uninteresting.
04/29/2022 @ 1:06 pm
Against the wind here at Rock ‘n Roll Heaven — optimism launches imagination.
12/28/2022 @ 9:57 am
”’And when facts don’t matter, ethics don’t matter.”’ Bitey -Bindlesnitch 07/08/2022 @ 1:59 PM –
Perhaps a perfect synopsis of oft dubious gerrymandering and simply usurious OK insouciant soundbite flash modus operandi. Who’s it Governor Grinch Abbott? Costello? Herding-greyhounding men, women and frostbite prone children from our Tejas border to Vice President Harris’ neighborhood. Really?! Cruel and unusual ‘news-video-photo-op’ kicking the innocent no less no shame to really hurt, disrupt and be bad arse mean, aggressively inhumane as he attempts to divide intimidate and conquer loot and plunder. Reckless cynical dictates to delay-misdirect frightened emigre families to satiate his political machinations,
Gimme Shelter indeed … incredible … maga’s perception of power has backfired, it is heartbreaking and bitter butt high in subterfuge — crazily prone to the opposite effect.
12/28/2022 @ 2:48 pm
12/29/2022 @ 2:47 pm
Muhammad Ali! Amazing speed amazing grace!
Right now I learned he first began to walk (born January 17, 1942, Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.—died June 3, 2016, Scottsdale, AZ) whilst the dire pathos of WWII flamed. “…floats like a butterfly stings like a bee….” He’ll forevermore define athleticism and charisma. Post retirement a good buddy of mine got to be on a ‘first name’ familiar hidey-hi basis with him at one of those way-cool palatial Las Vegas casinos ….” Wow what a legend! Something about the 3rd of June, no? Unclear if it is a good process to begin the day Googlin’ ‘Russia Ukraine War’ NYT {…} So how’s go? While the storm clouds glisten or as the storm clouds gather? Far across the sea?
I can be such a ropa dope. Ontheotherhand: got the MOJO RIzEN
04/29/2023 @ 7:37 pm
‘”Trump rose to political prominence and power on the false challenge to the legitimacy of the first black president ….Today, he is attempting to cling to power on the false challenge to the legitimacy of black and brown votes …'” When to stop talking or stop writing ought be elementary with essay. Show me tomorrow without carnage. Turning out all wrong. Innit? Reader might garner continued inspiration for our POSSIBLE DREAM with par excellent, stellar, tranquil listening: HARRY BELAFONTE npr 1993 interview … Godspeed! U genius humanist U! May your astute profound inspiration eternally protect us💜[sic] ‘…the daylightcome…’