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Do You Think It Would Be More Helpful If BLM Worked to Intellectually Combat White Supremacist Ideas?

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dadmonson

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I’m talking about ideas such as whites being more intelligent than blacks, blacks being more prone to violence, whites shouldn’t intermingle with blacks etc. 

Do you think that would be more helpful for some individuals if BLM came up with intellectual arguments against Richard Spencer and those like him?

Most of the time BLM are targeting people who have no evidence of being racist.  However, people like Richard Spencer are openly racist — if they can get him to do an about face like all the other people they’ve targeted, that would be a great victory. If they can get that material into colleges it’ll end racism and feeling of inferiority for sure.  


The saying, Black is beautiful doesn’t do sh** they need arguments about self responsibility and how it doesn’t matter what the next man does, it doesn’t even matter that much about what you look like, who cares what other people think , and  you do have a chance to succeed in America if you find a way to work hard.

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2 hours ago, dadmonson said:

Do you think that would be more helpful for some individuals if BLM came up with intellectual arguments against Richard Spencer and those like him?

Possibly.

I think the main problem is much deeper and complicated.  The very idea of speaking about people AS black or white is the biggest one.  It's almost paradoxical, but to actually fix the Race issues, you need to transcend race, transcend black and white... you need for individualism AS SUCH to ascend and take precedence.

BUT as Rand observed, racism is of the most primitive order... an ape-human could point and say "dark - light - different"... but only a rational mind can see the one in the many... see Man and his virtues and character being metaphysically important because they are, and see his skin color and appearance as metaphysically impotent because they are not important.

 

The problem with BLM is that many of their number see the world through the same racialized lens as those with whom they disagree. 

 

I suspect the culture at large (or at least the culture of people of colour themselves) would have to change to be INDIVIDUALIST first... and then, coming out of that culture, the organization and its strategies would reflect that.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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I think you would need a different movement.

But yes, intellectual arguments against racism are very important. I don't think racism is a secondary symptom of the failure to be individualistic philosophically speaking. It's more like a belief thing that needs to be fixed before someone can become individualistic in their philosophy. The only way I've heard that a true racist (openly declaring blacks to be inferior for example) became more rational is direct persuasion.

If you convince someone that racism is wrong, and successfully demonstrate to them that the ideas you identify as racist really are racist, then you convince them to be more individualistic. Broader philosophical arguments for individualism won't work until you can get someone to see why collectivism or racism on a perceptual level is wrong. I don't think it would work the other way, to talk about individualism on a very abstract level. Eventually you want to get there, but I don't think you can start there.

Edited by Eiuol
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A side-note observation on just the acronym, what kind of individuals would be attracted to a group that put's out as it's calling card that black lives matter?

Individuals that know their life matters aren't looking to be told that their life matters by every Tom, Dick and Harry. Those that are looking to every passer-by for that stamp of approval, add to societal ballast.

When I first read BLM, I googled for what it was supposed to stand for. The first return provided the Bureau of Land Management.

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On 6/4/2020 at 1:00 PM, StrictlyLogical said:

It's almost paradoxical, but to actually fix the Race issues, you need to transcend race, transcend black and white... you need for individualism AS SUCH to ascend and take precedence.

I agree with this.

But I have a question, or a series of questions, that I guess coalesces kind of like this: do you think it's possible to move directly from our racist past (meaning things such as slavery, Jim Crow, etc.) to individualism? Or do you think that any "staging" is necessary, like "affirmative action" (which could be undertaken without governmental intervention; a private business owner could take such things into consideration, of his own accord)?

And to be clear, I'm not asking by way of disagreeing with your or anything you've said -- this is a real question in my mind. I'm concerned that efforts to "stage," as I've described them, may actually retard the ascension of individualism... but I also am concerned that society at large cannot make the leap from point a to b without steps in between, and that we are currently bearing violent witness to that fact.

On 6/4/2020 at 1:00 PM, StrictlyLogical said:

The problem with BLM is that many of their number see the world through the same racialized lens as those with whom they disagree.

Absolutely. On the other hand, what would it take for an individual to grow up in our society, given all of its baggage (and the fact that there is so much actual racism still extant) and not see themselves and others through such a racialized lens. If you're being judged by others and treated differently on the basis of your race, handled differently in the media, read of the history of "your kind," see evidence of being profiled by law enforcement, etc., how can a person see through that, clearly to individualism -- especially since a lot of this treatment will have started early, very early in life, before anything like philosophical awareness, and when a person is forming their sense of identity... and thereafter be reinforced by the community (parents, religion, etc.).

I can imagine a hero who might do such a thing, or an unusual genius -- but over the last few years, I've grown wary of judging most individuals against the heroic efforts that I imagine they might ideally have employed. It's like, because Roger Bannister ran a four minute mile, that doesn't make everyone else "slow," if you understand my meaning.

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17 hours ago, DonAthos said:

I can imagine a hero who might do such a thing, or an unusual genius -- but over the last few years, I've grown wary of judging most individuals against the heroic efforts that I imagine they might ideally have employed.

In our society, I'm kind of concerned about this. I agree with you, I don't think we can judge people against the standard of heroism. To be sure, heroic people are important, and they exist, but that doesn't invalidate claims of being abused or claims of racism against them. The general point of BLM is the fact that many people undercut the claims of black people as exaggerated or not real. Or when many people see a black person being abused, they will demand more evidence before even hinting that the abuser might have done something heinous - despite the evidence being in front of their eyes. I've seen that happen in many contexts. 

I'm worried that a failure of the majority to be heroic (and heroism isn't something we can expect out of the majority of anything!) will lead others to think that anything associated with BLM is bad and anti-individual, or a source of chaos and hatred in the world. We can take their claims very seriously, especially avoiding any psychologizing, and show them that their grievances are valid, showing that individualism would not stand for such abuse. If someone is hurting, even if their response is not rational, they are open to be convinced because they recognize that what they are doing is not working. 

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On 6/5/2020 at 9:44 PM, DonAthos said:

But I have a question, or a series of questions, that I guess coalesces kind of like this: do you think it's possible to move directly from our racist past (meaning things such as slavery, Jim Crow, etc.) to individualism? Or do you think that any "staging" is necessary, like "affirmative action" (which could be undertaken without governmental intervention; a private business owner could take such things into consideration, of his own accord)?

I think the issue is very complex.  Rand said 

Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

So it is a little ironic that the lack of reason or choice in a person’s upbringing or past experience is invoked as a sort of “nurture” or “culture” predestination.  It is true that psychology and culture are influenced heavily by treatment by others and by widespread ideas but we cannot presume that these influences “predetermines” the moral or ideological fate of anyone.  We hear so many stories of people determining their own fates or ideas despite what they have been programmed or indoctrinated to believe.  In large part because there is freedom of speech... people are exposed to diverse ideas.

So we see people all the time thinking for themselves, choosing how to act and what to think... indeed choosing to think.  

My answer is that people DO move directly to individualism because of free will and people are free to think and discover.  People are also free to debate and discuss issues and to persuade each other, and they do all the time.  

Staging is staged... and that can only detract from authenticity and merit.  It undermines the very thing it aims to do.  And purposefully indoctrinating children with identity politics is abhorrent and rather than solving the problem it exacerbates it.

We need nothing more than people to speak the truth, about race, about the nature of man, about individualism.  To entreat, to discuss, to persuade.  Anything more is more often than not, quite wrong.

 

 

 

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

I think the issue is very complex.

Yes.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

So it is a little ironic that the lack of reason or choice in a person’s upbringing or past experience is invoked as a sort of “nurture” or “culture” predestination.  It is true that psychology and culture are influenced heavily by treatment by others and by widespread ideas but we cannot presume that these influences “predetermines” the moral or ideological fate of anyone.  We hear so many stories of people determining their own fates or ideas despite what they have been programmed or indoctrinated to believe.  In large part because there is freedom of speech... people are exposed to diverse ideas.

I agree with you that there is no "predetermination," and that many individuals have risen above their surroundings, background, environment, and so forth.

However, as you indicate, we are also "influenced" by what is around us, and sometimes heavily so. (Which is in part why it is important for us to work to reshape the culture. Culture is powerful.) It is tricky to work out the meaning and extent of this "influence," such that we are still recognizably moral actors and do not succumb to some form of predestination.

I won't pretend to have anything like a precise formula worked out for this, but I've sometimes looked at this like... there's certain limits, to a greater or lesser extent. And then, within those limits, man makes choices. And then, men fall on some range of introspective power, or power to radically reassess one's own premises, or philosophical inclination. I don't know why exactly, but I think that the vast majority of people -- in every place, at every time -- more or less go along with the current, and with what they have been told. Their range, their "limits," are relatively narrow... yet within those limits, there is still crucial distinction, and difference, and morality.

You know, if we'd had some analog to this message board hundreds of years ago -- perhaps imagining us back to the High Middle Ages, or to the Carolingian Empire -- I doubt we would all be having the same conversations, making the same arguments. To hear some Objectivists talk, it's like none of us ever needed Ayn Rand to see our way to these precise beliefs (reading her "only confirmed what we already believed"; she just "put into words what we already knew"); but no, I think she was a singular genius. I think, in a pre-Rand world, we might all be discussing something that was out of step with our time, perhaps, maybe/hopefully a bit more reasoned than the norm, a bit more nuanced, but it would not surprise me if the general context for our hypothetical Medieval conversation was still, say, soundly within the Christian tradition.

It's not that we would have been "destined" to be Christian, or anything like that, but just that the act of rejecting all of that (and especially without all of the steps carved into rational inquiry, one at a time, by the great thinkers) would have been too great, too much, for any one of us to manage. Or maybe I assume too much? Maybe here, now, there is another generational thinker? And maybe one of us can run a four minute mile, too, yet it remains a feat, and a rarity, and nothing I expect to find in my daily dealings.

And so, I don't think anyone is destined or doomed to buy into identity politics -- even when they are so powerfully ascendant in our cultural and educational systems as today. But the act of rejecting all of it in one fell swoop... I just don't know if that's a reasonable expectation to hold for the vast majority of people. And so the question I have of "staging" is whether it can help to lead more people in a positive direction, to remake culture and education over time so that, eventually, those forces can work with our individualist ideology rather than against it.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Staging is staged... and that can only detract from authenticity and merit.  It undermines the very thing it aims to do.  And purposefully indoctrinating children with identity politics is abhorrent and rather than solving the problem it exacerbates it.

Right, so here's where the rubber meets the road. And to a great extent, my instinct is to agree with you (and by that, I also include arguments that I would personally have made even up to a few months ago, or a few weeks). It's just that... I don't think our approach is winning the day; I think that the facts, the results, are such, that its time we reexamine our tactics. (And maybe we reexamine them and determine that they're fine, they're not at issue, and the real problems lay beyond our grasp. It's certainly possible. But I think we need to have the conversation, and entertain the idea that we are also making some kind of mistake, because the world appears to me to be moving quickly in the wrong direction.)

It's like, take the idea of "gay pride." Setting aside Objectivism's sometimes tricky relationship with homosexuality in itself, I would normally say that sexual attraction is not something that one should feel pride in: insofar as we regard sexual attraction to be unchosen, what in the world is there to be proud of?

Yet -- and this is my question of "staging" -- is it possible that the most of the queer population needs something like "pride" as a psychological counterbalance against the equally irrational, yet traditionally much stronger, cultural forces that insist they feel shame? That ideally this pride will function as a bridge, or as a stop gap, to lead to a future wherein the majority of people can more easily reject both such shame and pride as useless historical artifacts?

Or to address the central matter directly, I think that ongoing controversies regarding racism (including the modern "race realism" debate which has even sometimes found support here on Objectivism Online, to my chagrin) are exacerbated by continued disparities in educational attainment, wealth, and etc., between the "races" (and I think it's true that even these modern disparities by and large owe their existence to the actual crimes of slavery, Jim Crow, and such; which is to say that they are the legacy of grievous evil, some of which is in the distant past, some in the near past, and some of which is ongoing). Rather than asserting individualism at first, might it be easier to try to address those broad disparities first, and then allow people to draw the resulting, easier-to-see conclusion that discrepancies in outcome are generally attributable to individual merit?

To put it more bluntly, I think it possible that in a United States where blacks do just as well as whites, and where the sins of our past are more carefully buried, both sides of the racist coin will more easily wither away.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

We need nothing more than people to speak the truth, about race, about the nature of man, about individualism.  To entreat, to discuss, to persuade.  Anything more is more often than not, quite wrong.

And yes, I fear that I'm wrong, here, too. I'm sensitive to the idea that any of this "staging" is a tacit admission that there is any meaning, truth or importance in "race," and that it is right to treat people differently on that basis -- which is anathema to me, and utterly opposed to what I value and hope to achieve.

Yet, as I say, I see the world on fire and it forces me to "check my premises." I cannot deny that people are being treated differently according to their race, often cruelly and violently, and sometimes fatally. That this is deeply rooted in our culture, and taught to our children as a matter of course. I think that arguing for individualism directly is not making sufficient headway; that we are losing this battle. As to the best way to respond to this situation, I'm no longer quite so certain.

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7 hours ago, DonAthos said:

Yes.

I agree with you that there is no "predetermination," and that many individuals have risen above their surroundings, background, environment, and so forth.

However, as you indicate, we are also "influenced" by what is around us, and sometimes heavily so. (Which is in part why it is important for us to work to reshape the culture. Culture is powerful.) It is tricky to work out the meaning and extent of this "influence," such that we are still recognizably moral actors and do not succumb to some form of predestination.

I won't pretend to have anything like a precise formula worked out for this, but I've sometimes looked at this like... there's certain limits, to a greater or lesser extent. And then, within those limits, man makes choices. And then, men fall on some range of introspective power, or power to radically reassess one's own premises, or philosophical inclination. I don't know why exactly, but I think that the vast majority of people -- in every place, at every time -- more or less go along with the current, and with what they have been told. Their range, their "limits," are relatively narrow... yet within those limits, there is still crucial distinction, and difference, and morality.

You know, if we'd had some analog to this message board hundreds of years ago -- perhaps imagining us back to the High Middle Ages, or to the Carolingian Empire -- I doubt we would all be having the same conversations, making the same arguments. To hear some Objectivists talk, it's like none of us ever needed Ayn Rand to see our way to these precise beliefs (reading her "only confirmed what we already believed"; she just "put into words what we already knew"); but no, I think she was a singular genius. I think, in a pre-Rand world, we might all be discussing something that was out of step with our time, perhaps, maybe/hopefully a bit more reasoned than the norm, a bit more nuanced, but it would not surprise me if the general context for our hypothetical Medieval conversation was still, say, soundly within the Christian tradition.

It's not that we would have been "destined" to be Christian, or anything like that, but just that the act of rejecting all of that (and especially without all of the steps carved into rational inquiry, one at a time, by the great thinkers) would have been too great, too much, for any one of us to manage. Or maybe I assume too much? Maybe here, now, there is another generational thinker? And maybe one of us can run a four minute mile, too, yet it remains a feat, and a rarity, and nothing I expect to find in my daily dealings.

And so, I don't think anyone is destined or doomed to buy into identity politics -- even when they are so powerfully ascendant in our cultural and educational systems as today. But the act of rejecting all of it in one fell swoop... I just don't know if that's a reasonable expectation to hold for the vast majority of people. And so the question I have of "staging" is whether it can help to lead more people in a positive direction, to remake culture and education over time so that, eventually, those forces can work with our individualist ideology rather than against it.

Right, so here's where the rubber meets the road. And to a great extent, my instinct is to agree with you (and by that, I also include arguments that I would personally have made even up to a few months ago, or a few weeks). It's just that... I don't think our approach is winning the day; I think that the facts, the results, are such, that its time we reexamine our tactics. (And maybe we reexamine them and determine that they're fine, they're not at issue, and the real problems lay beyond our grasp. It's certainly possible. But I think we need to have the conversation, and entertain the idea that we are also making some kind of mistake, because the world appears to me to be moving quickly in the wrong direction.)

It's like, take the idea of "gay pride." Setting aside Objectivism's sometimes tricky relationship with homosexuality in itself, I would normally say that sexual attraction is not something that one should feel pride in: insofar as we regard sexual attraction to be unchosen, what in the world is there to be proud of?

Yet -- and this is my question of "staging" -- is it possible that the most of the queer population needs something like "pride" as a psychological counterbalance against the equally irrational, yet traditionally much stronger, cultural forces that insist they feel shame? That ideally this pride will function as a bridge, or as a stop gap, to lead to a future wherein the majority of people can more easily reject both such shame and pride as useless historical artifacts?

Or to address the central matter directly, I think that ongoing controversies regarding racism (including the modern "race realism" debate which has even sometimes found support here on Objectivism Online, to my chagrin) are exacerbated by continued disparities in educational attainment, wealth, and etc., between the "races" (and I think it's true that even these modern disparities by and large owe their existence to the actual crimes of slavery, Jim Crow, and such; which is to say that they are the legacy of grievous evil, some of which is in the distant past, some in the near past, and some of which is ongoing). Rather than asserting individualism at first, might it be easier to try to address those broad disparities first, and then allow people to draw the resulting, easier-to-see conclusion that discrepancies in outcome are generally attributable to individual merit?

To put it more bluntly, I think it possible that in a United States where blacks do just as well as whites, and where the sins of our past are more carefully buried, both sides of the racist coin will more easily wither away.

And yes, I fear that I'm wrong, here, too. I'm sensitive to the idea that any of this "staging" is a tacit admission that there is any meaning, truth or importance in "race," and that it is right to treat people differently on that basis -- which is anathema to me, and utterly opposed to what I value and hope to achieve.

Yet, as I say, I see the world on fire and it forces me to "check my premises." I cannot deny that people are being treated differently according to their race, often cruelly and violently, and sometimes fatally. That this is deeply rooted in our culture, and taught to our children as a matter of course. I think that arguing for individualism directly is not making sufficient headway; that we are losing this battle. As to the best way to respond to this situation, I'm no longer quite so certain.

Freedom of speech and a fully free market are corollaries of a fully free and proper society. That society, necessarily would have a free market of ideas.

There are not and cannot be any specific aims a single monolithic “we” which you have invoked (and which many people do ... unintentionally) can hold or pursue except for the widest and most abstract, like the protection of individual rights as such.  The multitudinous aims of the many “I”s and “we”s of a free population would properly be “their” own specific aims which, absent initiation of force, should be permitted fully.  Other aims, to the extent they involve coercion are of course immoral.


I suppose there is a battle you, I, and like minded individuals are rooting for or maybe even fighting for.  But the cultures which exist everywhere are nothing like the society we want...

why complain over a mole on a bloated puss ridden corpse?  I suppose it can serve as a philosophical exercise. 

 

If we were to speculate on what changes culture I would say it is philosophy.  Individuals generate it, students study it and those who become artists and media express it most loudly... and the populace to the extent they are influenced, live it.

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Herstory

In 2013, three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — created a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter. It was in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman.

Photo of Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi

The project is now a member-led global network of more than 40 chapters. Our members organize and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.

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We all know why identity politics is tribalism and why tribalism is wrong.

To the extent a movement is based in or encourages tribalism it is flawed... and to the extent that movement IS based on or recognizes or exalts individual rights... it is a good movement.

One must do the hard work of identification to judge whether in the balance a movement is more good than bad or vice versa.

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Returning to the initial question, I’m going to say “No, it would not be helpful”. It would be helpful to clearly articulate a real problem which in principle could be solved, but that has nothing to do with BLM. The problem is not that Richard Spencer has his ideas, and the propagation of his ideas cause some other problem.  The problem that BLM is addressing is the “rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state” (their words). As they say, “Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities”. Given these fundamentals as a raison d’être, there is no reasonable connection between their purpose, and intellectual engagement over wingnut ideas about race. You do not need to inform Blacks that Spencer is intellectually wrong: that is experientially self-evident. BLM is at its core an anti-intellectual “progressive” ideological movement, which has become the quasi-official spokesperson controlling discussion of a broader issue. Their success as a movement is, very simply, that they connected emotional reactions to poorly-understood problems in race relations in the US with an ideology that most people don’t bother to analyze, using a slogan as the glue.

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12 hours ago, DonAthos said:

Yet -- and this is my question of "staging" -- is it possible that the most of the queer population needs something like "pride" as a psychological counterbalance against the equally irrational, yet traditionally much stronger, cultural forces that insist they feel shame? That ideally this pride will function as a bridge, or as a stop gap, to lead to a future wherein the majority of people can more easily reject both such shame and pride as useless historical artifacts?

Do you mean staging as in something like taking several steps before the person reaches a completed, final concept? I'm going to explain how I understand it, and you can tell me if you mean something different, or if I have the right idea.

I don't think this lends undeserved credibility to invalid concepts, even if the transitionary stuff isn't where someone ends up. When it comes to learning, transitionary stages are to be expected. I don't mean teaching people the incorrect concepts that will be replaced, only that people are not able to reach that final concept until they work through all the other problems and confusions and questions. When it comes to "gay pride", I think most people think of it as in not being ashamed to be yourself. Having self-confidence in your identity with the aspects of yourself that are not negative and don't need to be seen as negative. I would say they have a concept of "pride-ish". If I start talking to them about how pride is about selfishness and taking ownership over your actions, I probably won't get anywhere to convince them that their view leans towards tribalism and collective identity, concepts that are antithetical to self-esteem. But I might make some progress by working with transitionary concepts, or concepts that are only secondary to pride as you and I understand it. If you don't work on their level, they might not really understand what you're getting at. You might even make them resentful. All of this is less about a psychological counterbalance than it is about a conceptual bridge.

Consider that you have to understand algebra before you can understand calculus. Or that you really need to understand Newtonian physics before you can understand quantum physics. Although everything you say about quantum physics could be 100% correct, what you say you would sound completely against common sense and violate basic ideas about how things move in the world. This is because you need a solid foundation in Newtonian physics and perhaps even mastery before you start with the nuances that quantum physics is meant to address.

This all could just as easily apply to teaching individualism, whether that is to pull someone back from the ledge of pessimistic despair about the people who wrong them, or if it is to pull someone away from the rationalism of race realism. Staging and transitionary concepts would be very important to this process.

Of course, if by staging you mean using concepts that are completely false as a sense of psychological comfort, I agree with you and I would lean towards what SL is saying.

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It is "...ideological and political intervention in a world..." which bothers me.

Where is this place in the "world"? The US? Rubbish. (Or Australia for example, among many others countries who've been holding mass protests in "solidarity" with BLM and against  (I remind everyone) "systemic racism"?

Or South Africa, where "systemic" racism IS practiced legally to keep any and all whites out of employment? (By the device of 'the quota system' - affirmative action - which severely targets the 8% minority).

Worse, where and when and who by, are Black lives being "systematically and intentionally targeted for demise"?

White Supremacists, a troublesome and small number are all they've got to point to. And few to none incidents of demise I can recall recently.

This mission statement by BLM constitutes a strawman meant, in part, to inculcate and remind every white of his 'collective past'. If one overtly or implicitly accepts his unearned guilt of the past (the Sins of our Fathers) one helps foster future racial domination.

But it's mighty heartening to me that in the US many young thinkers like Candace Owens, and intellectual elders like Sowell and Williams know all this as vividly, and reject the humiliating submission of individuals of ANY race TO any race.

Self-ab-knee-gation by a tribal group to a tribal group is appalling to view. No individualist, black or white, could do such nor demand it, nor accept it.

 

Edited by whYNOT
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On ‎6‎/‎7‎/‎2020 at 3:24 AM, DonAthos said:

As to the best way to respond to this situation, I'm no longer quite so certain.

What do you think would be right action for you to take, or right action for government to take?

By the way, I was glad to see your post.  Your contributions here, although I have sometimes disagreed with them, are almost always high caliber and civil. :smartass:

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15 hours ago, whYNOT said:

It is "...ideological and political intervention in a world..." which bothers me.

Where is this place in the "world"? The US? Rubbish. (Or Australia for example, among many others countries who've been holding mass protests in "solidarity" with BLM and against  (I remind everyone) "systemic racism"?

Or South Africa, where "systemic" racism IS practiced legally to keep any and all whites out of employment? (By the device of 'the quota system' - affirmative action - which severely targets the 8% minority).

Worse, where and when and who by, are Black lives being "systematically and intentionally targeted for demise"?

White Supremacists, a troublesome and small number are all they've got to point to. And few to none incidents of demise I can recall recently.

This mission statement by BLM constitutes a strawman meant, in part, to inculcate and remind every white of his 'collective past'. If one overtly or implicitly accepts his unearned guilt of the past (the Sins of our Fathers) one helps foster future racial domination.

But it's mighty heartening to me that in the US many young thinkers like Candace Owens, and intellectual elders like Sowell and Williams know all this as vividly, and reject the humiliating submission of individuals of ANY race TO any race.

Self-ab-knee-gation by a tribal group to a tribal group is appalling to view. No individualist, black or white, could do such nor demand it, nor accept it.

 

Do you watch TimCast?

Interesting common sense analysis of the increasing insanity from the left... his predictions are stark there is so much crazy out there...overall very entertaining stuff.

 

I kneel before no god and no man.

 

I would only ever go through the physical actions of kneeling if I felt my life were in danger and then it would be a "lie kneel", I don't mean a lie-down kneel, but an action (analogous to the creation of words), signifying the opposite of the truth... like a verbal lie, a false kneel if you will. 

Instead of "I submit"... my action, used to momentarily distract and appease my enemies, will in fact be in reflection of myself and my life, a reaffirmation of choosing to live with an internal solemn "I will never submit, I need to bide my time but I will fight back, and I will win."

 

I wish I could say that were the case for all those crazies out there literally kneeling in supplication for the new religion.

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4 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Do you watch TimCast?

Interesting common sense analysis of the increasing insanity from the left... his predictions are stark there is so much crazy out there...overall very entertaining stuff.

 

I kneel before no god and no man.

 

I would only ever go through the physical actions of kneeling if I felt my life were in danger and then it would be a "lie kneel", I don't mean a lie-down kneel, but an action (analogous to the creation of words), signifying the opposite of the truth... like a verbal lie, a false kneel if you will. 

Instead of "I submit"... my action, used to momentarily distract and appease my enemies, will in fact be in reflection of myself and my life, a reaffirmation of choosing to live with an internal solemn "I will never submit, I need to bide my time but I will fight back, and I will win."

 

I wish I could say that were the case for all those crazies out there literally kneeling in supplication for the new religion.

The insanity eclipses anything that comes from the religious nowadays. In fact, many of these conservatives make abundant sense, by comparison, are more individualist, factual and objectively valuing, self-responsible and adult. I will bet that most of us thought it was going to be the Christian altruists who would prove detrimental (in Rand's reckoning) to the US. What is most likely that she knew it would be "altruist self-sacrifice" - per se - from any quarter or both, Right or Left. Now, it is exclusively from the Left. The traditional altruists are highly amused at the Left, calling them virtue-signalers (- and pathological altruists, I saw once). Even they can't believe the depraved level of sacrifices being demanded in recent years by the non-religious.

Yes, copying Christian humility by kneeling and all the other aspects of neo-religion and neo-mysticism that go to show that sometimes one can take the person out of church but you can't take the Church out of the person, so to speak. Even their own racist version of Original Sin, alluded to here, is taken up by the Leftist secular humanists: - that one is born into inescapable condemnation and guilt by one's skin color (white). The corollary: anyone of a darker hue has automatic virtue.

Not forgetting, how leftists have monopolized the emotion of empathy or pity. They actually ~believe~ nobody else can feel compassion for others' plight - but them. I regularly see how easily their advertised  'empathy' turns to hate for any who are not signaling their part in the new Faith..

Edited by whYNOT
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/7/2020 at 11:55 AM, whYNOT said:

Herstory

A story by Bill O'Reilly adding to what you added above: It's New to Us.

Three women are behind “The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation,” which is the central organization that directs policy. Alicia Garza, 39, is the chief strategic advisor. Patrisse Cullors, 36, is also a top advisor.

Finally, Opal Tometi, 36, is the third force. She works with the BLM Foundation and is also the Executive Director of the “Black Alliance for Just Immigration.” That group is associated with the “Freedom Road Socialist Organization,” a Marxist-Leninist group that has received funding from the Tides Foundation run by George Soros.

and a little further down:

In an interview with a professor from Morgan State University, Ms. Cullors said: “Myself and Alicia [Garza] in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on ideological theories.”

 

I shuddered when I read that and connected the events out there tied to the BLM to this line in Galt's speech: "The truth is that those horrors are their ends."

 

 

 

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19 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

 

I shuddered when I read that and connected the events out there tied to the BLM to this line in Galt's speech: "The truth is that those horrors are their ends."

 

 

 

Yes, and this foul influence is sweeping all over the world now. What is dawning on many people, but nobody wants to articulate, is that some blacks are as a capable of racism as have been and are some whites. And why, in fact, should they not be? What underlies this evasion but intrinsicism, paternalism and condescension by mostly the Leftists (and the "soft bigotry of lowered expectations"). For long term damage, the Left has done the worst to societies. By viewing other races, by race, as children to be uplifted. As among any peoples there is an equal human propensity for any black here and there to compare and contrast and build up resentment, envy and anger of the 'other' on surface, racial impressions, because 'they' are seen to have more/do better/etc.. Instead of looking to oneself and one's own choices. Until this conversation can be openly held by anyone of any race, not only by the outstanding black intellectuals, the truth will be stifled. Rather an aside, and more psychological I happened to re-read some parts of Nathaniel Branden's Honoring the Self. This passage struck me anew:

"Not self, but the absence of self, is closer to being the root of all evil. ... In failing to develop an independent and strong ego, to evolve to moral sovereignty, we become capable of unspeakable atrocities..."

Broadened from personal "individuation" to entire societies this seemed apt and recalled by your line from the Galt speech.

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A GNI could be divided in such a way and retain such a ranking. A millionaire is a millionaire, regardless of which continent or within which political boundary serves as his habitat.

There is a double edged sword in the Walter Williams' piece.

Black people can be thankful that double standards and public and private policies rewarding inferiority and irresponsibility were not a part of the 1920s, '30s, '40s and '50s. If there were, then there would not have been the kind of intellectual excellence and spiritual courage that created the world's most successful civil rights movement.

Kudos to the intellectual excellence and spiritual courage that effected change. The cutting edge lie in the codification:

Consider the difference to be illustrated using the 15th amendment:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude--

vs:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State.

The right's of man, period. Most further contextual subdivisions tend only to be divisive. Women, as a general rule, were not considered part of the voting community. If it serves as an objective basis to exhaustively list race, color, sex, age of to whom "the rights of man" extends to aside from legal complexity, what might that be? Aren't the rights of man and the rights of the rational animal, essentially, one in the same?

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On 6/8/2020 at 1:06 PM, whYNOT said:

I regularly see how easily their advertised  'empathy' turns to hate for any who are not signaling their part in the new Faith..

I'm not going to go on about the errors of treating the left as a monolith. Just in case you were preparing to argue the same topics as usual again.

This is an accurate observation I think. I will say, though, that virtue signaling isn't a problem unique to any political position.

Wouldn't it be more powerful to focus less on your complaints, and place more focus on how to change minds in a positive direction? No matter what you say about BLM the organization, you still need to replace their ideas with something. Malcolm X (contrary to any smears by the media when he was alive) for example had a lot to say about racism, but focused on the betterment of his own communities and values and promoting self-defense. He had something to offer besides getting angry at white people, or demanding the government do something. So even if you disagreed on what he said about race (early on he may have been seen as a black supremacist, but he renounced those views during the last year of his life), his message was never about self-pity. Working hard, even if that meant not relying on the American government, even if you are being directly screwed over by almost everyone.

This video below is closer to what I think, he also mentions Malcolm X in the same way I am. Malcolm X is also a good person to bring up because it's a way to show that historically important black people within black culture support a libertarian-ish political philosophy.

 

Edited by Eiuol
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Politics - "socio-politics" - is moving faster than philosophy. This is where I've chosen to focus, for one example, and am appalled that many of my colleagues don't see what this conservative does and several others have, and write about and broadcast it clearly and unambivalently:

The Establishment Strikes Back
By Buck Sexton

AMC_daily_chart_070120_5efb89067b49e.jpg

Dear reader,

If you turn on the TV or open up your newspaper, you'll find practically nothing about the fiercely contested presidential race just five months away. At least at first glance...

The stories appear to be focused on an array of topics that aren't about electoral politics. And yet most of what we see is presented with a clear theme: America is doing poorly.

There's the renewed media obsession with COVID-19, for example. The few weeks of relative quiet is all over now. Predictably, the Democrat-dominated media took a brief hiatus from the "social distancing" mantra so that tens of thousands of protestors (and rioters) wouldn't be the target of public shaming.

There was a convenient absence of public health professionals on cable news networks or social media calling out protestors for their mass gatherings. Who needs social distancing when you have social justice?

Among conservatives and independent-minded voters, this partisan hypocrisy was noted – causing a tremendous loss of faith in the so-called "objective experts" who are now demanding another lockdown.

National media is also focused on the nationwide protests... which so often turn into riots. Nonetheless, they are described as "mostly peaceful" even when journalists can clearly see a burning building and violent mobs. At first, the movement was all about the killing of George Floyd and police brutality. Then it rapidly transitioned into demands for police budget cuts or even total police defunding. Now it's a Marxist movement seeking to erase and rewrite American history through toppling and destroying statues.

Nobody really knows what these protestors will be enraged about next week. It doesn't really matter. Journalists certainly don't plan to get to the bottom of any of it. The point of all this rabble rousing and street activism is not to address systemic inequality or the history of American oppression and racism. This is all about power politics and the upcoming election, plain and simple.

Call it the "Make America Miserable Again" plan.


Recommended Link:
 

3 million to lose jobs... NOT because of coronavirus?

A terrifying (for some) and new disruptive force is creating thousands of new millionaires (Barron's estimates 20,000 to 200,000 so far) while at the same time destroying the financial future for many others. Don't get left behind. Get the facts for yourself here.

20200630142109.png

These mobs have taken to the streets as part of a mass mobilization of the Democrat party.... whether shouting in cops' faces, looting stores, or burning down buildings. And they are running a widespread and well-coordinated campaign against President Donald Trump – they're just not doing it in the most traditional way. Think of it as asymmetrical political warfare.

This is not a standard presidential battle between two men...

Presidential candidate Joe Biden is effectively a ghost, refusing to leave his basement in Delaware unless he dons an ominous black face mask and dark sunglasses. He seems to forget where he is and mumbles a bizarre gaffe almost daily.

Few believe Biden is going to inspire a movement. But that's not the plan...

All Biden has to do is fog a mirror. The establishment will take care of the rest.

That's because all of 2020 is a referendum on Trump. If the mood of the country is positive and hopeful this November, he's probably going to be the president for four more years. The country doesn't have to be perfect... It just has to be moving in the right direction.

What Trump was doing before the pandemic was working. All he has to do now is convince enough voters that he has a plan to bring back the economy of January 2020.

On the other hand, Democrats and the establishment ruling class will seek to stop this "right direction" feeling at all costs. We are seeing that effort right now.

The more they can get the American people to focus on a pandemic, civil unrest, and mounting economic anxiety from the shutdowns – the tougher it will be for Trump to focus on his voters and go on the offensive against his opponent. The national news media is pulling out all the stops to make sure that there is an overwhelming narrative of national fatigue and frustration that has set in by November. All of this will play to Biden and the Democrats' advantage...

Fair or not, the American people expect the party in power to deliver.

Trump is the guy in the White House with the biggest job in the world, and voters in the swing states aren't going to respond well to anything that sounds like, "It wasn't my fault, it was the virus and the dirty-fighting Democrats" – no matter how true that may be.

Trump doesn't have to beat Biden... He has to beat the ruling class that is still in a state of shock and rage from 2016. Back then, they laughed at him and assumed they could force him out with the absurd Russia collusion hoax. Now, they're willing to tank the whole country as long as it finishes off Trump's reelection.

Remember that as you watch and read all these stories about a nation in crisis. If we simply refuse to undergo lockdown again and enforce some law and order in the streets, America will bounce back pretty quickly. The biggest obstacle to our recovery is not from a virus or an anti-cop narrative... but is the coordinated, stop at nothing effort of many powerful individuals and their interests that view America as mere collateral damage in their maniacal anti-Trump campaign.

Edited by whYNOT
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