thett3

I predict the Dems hold the Senate. The republican candidates in the crucial races are complete whack jobs and polling shows this.

Is this what they're saying on right wing media?

There was never a more politically agreeable statement than "We shouldn't be drugging little kids because they won't sit still."

I disagree to an extent. In a workplace setting, you have a job to do. And you must do that job to the specifications that the boss wants while cooperating with your peers regardless of their ages. Imparting this trait is an outsized function of post-industrial pedagogy.

Definitely disagree. School is "structured time", in that you must do X because there's somebody breathing down your neck and making you do X. But it doesn't teach you how to manage "unstructured time" when there's nobody around to make you do stuff. It doesn't teach you self-control when nobody's watching. But homework does.

Of course, there's plenty of room to argue that students receive too much homework, but homework in principle is a good thing.

This is what schools nowadays are designed to do: prepare students for college. Standardized curriculum and exams are in place to prepare students for passing SAT/ACT and having a uniform baseline of knowledge upon admission to a college. Nobody would argue that it's designed to adequately prepare you for the real world.

Religious private schools should be afforded the same taxpayer benefits as their public school counterparts. 

In fact, given that public schools regularly teach material harmful to religious communities, the only way to avoid violating the Establishment Clause is to eliminate the public-private school distinction, with all schools being private but supported by key public infrastructure and quality controls. The sectarian/nonsectarian nature of a school will reflect what the parents of that local area want; if most want a nonsectarian school then that's fine. If a sizable minority wants, say, a Catholic school, then one would be erected with funding proportionate to the size of its student body. If there are too few parents to justify their own school, then they could homeschool/outsource the homeschooling job to an instructor, and it wouldn't cost them substantially more than for the school option.

I believe that cancel culture can only ever be countered by further cancel culture.

I thusly understand and surrender to the idea of censorship on any platform and hope to wage war against one side of cancel culture by pressuring it to censor itself and be weary of the other side's wrath.

I see it as a balanced tug of war, not a pendulum, in its optimal state.

I think you'll find that if you stick to what I am writing and try less hard to shift my intent to what you suppose I must be secretly "very obviously implying" that little problem of yours will clear right up

We need better public management of critical resources like arable land and fresh water.  I'm not trying to be extreme:  we will always need people to work and manage rural resources.  We will always want to be be able to visit places of natural beauty or escape to oases of solitude but we can manage all that with far fewer people than are living rural now.  Have you ever read Omnivore's Dilemma and Pollan's description of the State of Iowa as one vast factory floor devoted to corn production, overusing the land so aggressively that it becomes increasingly less regenerable to its natural prairie state with each passing year?  How there used to vast stretches without any deer or squirrels because so much land was just an endless carpet of corn (I think Iowa has done much to improve this state in recent years).  That's the kind of unsustainable living I'm thinking of.  

As you say, some factories like slaughterhouses are unpleasant places to live near but that's usually because they are incredibly toxic- we need to protect vital resources from the inevitable pollution and accidents that comes with such places- that means large scale re-zoning and planning and little of that is possible at the current level or rural residency.  Certainly, we need to re-think the amount of land devoted to hyper-inefficient calorie production like cows and pigs.

I don't like the idea of building some house out in the woods that has to be protected from wildfires every few years at greater public expense than than the value of the house.  I don't like throwing public money at rebuilding beachfronts and swamp towns after every hurricane comes through.  With greater population density, we can protect smaller areas more effectively from disaster and let the natural, even necessary processes of fires and hurricanes do their thing without ruining so many lives.

It's likely intellectuals view support to rural areas as foreign aid with strings attached.

Never said that.  Read it again.

The 80/20 split is urban/rural not Biden/Trump.

Biden won only 509 counties in the 2020 election compared to Trump's 2,547 counties but those 1 out of every 6 counties are home to 67 million more Americans than those 5 out of 6 and generate 71 cents of every dollar in American GDP.  American cities are the engine that drives the American economy, rural counties produce a power net drag on the economy.…The fact is that if America were just a little more democratic in its institutions that 80% of America wouldn't have much reason to care what the more backwards 20% think at all.  

 Country life is far less efficient, safe, or healthy than life in the city and given that the infrastructure and tax dollars required to sustain,  country life is far, far more expensive to taxpayers than life in the city.   America needs stop overfunding this less sustainable lifestyle.  I'm not saying that we need to drag anybody in from the countryside, but certainly rural residents need to pay more of their proportional share of the greater expense it takes to deliver water, electricity, internet, etc to those homes.  Insurance rates for hurricanes, flooding, forest fires, etc need to reflect the wildly disproportionate expense to Americans rural inhabitants represents.  When  rural counties are required to pay their fair share for infrastructure, rural lifestyles will become a luxury most can't afford and American prosperity will be all the more improved by that change.

Look at quality of life indexes, education rates, public safety, health outcomes, civic engagement, unemployment, labor force participation- that 80% of America living in cities run by overwhelmingly democratic governments is living far far better than the 20% Pie calls the real American and improving all the time while life in Republican run rural counties are in long-term generally sustained decline.

Anyway he's clearly pandering to a certain group of people and those people seem to think that they are the "true America," that they are REAL Americans. But people born and bred in New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC et. al. are also REAL Americans, Jimbo. Doctors are true Americans. Lawyers are true Americans. Stock brokers are true Americans. These cities that rural folks hate account for where the vast majority of Americans live, where the majority of American wealth is generated and where the top 10 tourist destinations for international travelers are because they're exciting and interesting places. But middle America HATES these places and HATES the majority of their fellow Americans, constantly putting them down the same way they accuse liberal elites of snubbing their nose down on them

we will see after a few assassinations.

Now you have escaped into the territory of whataboutism and totally irrelevant comparisons.

Conservatives want black people to "do better" in some moralistic sense, but do you really think they want the balance of cultural influence to shift in any significant way? Conservatives want black people to "do better" in the sense of toiling anonymously, of becoming invisible and making their place in society less ambiguous and more legible according to existing norms and standards. They want blackness and its associated problems to disappear. In that sense, there is no true conservative sense of black culture - as TWS said, they believe that there is no validity to black culture.

The "institutional change" would need to be something that precisely, gives those communities back their locus of control. It is a question of what they own, what they control materially in terms of land, property, influence, and so on. Not whatever psychological theorizing that conservatives are trying to use, to basically muddy the water and distract from the social stratification that exists in reality.

Funny thing is none of this would have happened if Trump won the election in 2020. Trump losing in 2020 made the forecasted civil war inevitable.

I can very much imagine a theoretical 2028. 4 years of desantis unpopular Republican policies; replacing the deep state and military with loyal republicans. Replacing the judiciary with ultra loyal republicans. Suppressing votes, supporting citizen militia intimidating the vote, machinery of various states still Republican. Loses the election - declares victory, states won’t certify democrat wins, mass unrest put down by loyal police and loyal military, martial law, political opponents harried - and eventually openly suppressed, non sympathetic media shut down - and is able to maintain grip on power, suppression and law changes continue to be harsher, less transparent and better suppress any non-Republican from winning elections, Republican supporters cheering every one of them.

Out of all the barriers that would prevent the above happening, almost of them have been removed over the last 12 years, and accelerated under Trump; with many of others being felt out. If Desantis were to get into power he would be much more effective at removing the remainder than Trump would be.

The fact that you would disagree with such a letter implies, that you either think that whites were genetically predisposed to the cruel behaviours of slave owners, or otherwise that the institution of slavery and the crimes of slave owners could only be addressed by individual slaveowners "taking responsibility" for their behaviour and not through institutional or legal change. In fact, these behaviours of slave owners were remediated by abolishing the institution as a whole, not by some medicalized beuraucratic management of the psychology of perpetrators as individuals. 

I got an Italian girlfriend atm and she might honestly be the one. I am eating like a king. 

We all rub off on each other, but our traditions are strong, thett. Honestly Americans are just a little bit obnoxious lol. 

Actually - if you re-read my post; broadly speaking - I cover that no one materially objects to the specific crime rates, but object to presentation of the whys.

I give two options that cover the broad explanations - innate factors, and external factors; and explained that attempts to tie murder rates to innate factors is thinly veiled white supremacy - which I stand by. If you look at my post I explain exactly why that is.

Now, I don’t actually state or make accusations that he believes one or the other: I am merely justifying and advocating for the intellectual position he’s complaining about the OP

I could throw in the main difference that I have unequivocally stated that I am not in anyway morally condoning murders or violence; and nothing I said was intended to or written to morally absolve any individuals of crime - I went into great detail to explain that understanding root causes is critical to understanding why things happen - not to excuse what happened.

If white southerner in the 1950s added that clarification to the letter - that his intent was to attribute cause of why segregation and lynching happen, not to justify it, that those engaging in it are morally for the horrors  - then you would absolutely not believe that letter was sympathetic.

When the innate proprieties of racial groups are asserted as causal factors for group trends, this is often not something based in fact or data - but cherry picked narrow interpretation used to justify one’s own biases - and if used to make value judgements on the basis of race,  that whites are better than blacks because blacks have innate criminality, and should be treated accordingly  - it is thinly veiled white supremacy.

Perhaps, like many others on the right - you are implicitly conflating attempts to understand underlying factors that drive human behaviour, with some demand that individuals engage in particular behaviour not be accountable for it, or that suggesting that external factors play a part in the trends of choices people make mean that when someone makes a choice, that choice is somehow okay, or justified, I’ve seen this constantly for the last 25 years - and it still gets me how silly this line of thought is.

 I kind of like the idea of a psychology of geography. America, further over and bigger, produces egomaniacs. 

I mean further to that thett, we have recently established that Irish travellers are actually Irish people just diverged from the main bulk about 400 years ago. You're not going to make the argument that genetic differences account for disparities in outcome there and the parallels between the black Americans and Irish travellers are blatant. Yours are needless, dangerous ideas. 

Random sidebar but I was just thinking about when I came out to a friend as gay in HS, and she assured me that she was totally cool with it by letting me know that she had kissed a black guy before. At the time I was like wow, you ARE taboo you little rebel you! It was definitely understood by all of our peers that a white girl kissing a black guy was still something "shocking" or inappropriate -- in other words something our parents would raise their eyebrows over and not be happy about. And this is in New York City. So it seems really obvious that racism still exists beneath the surface of inclusivity, and that's what I think people are speaking about today. A lot of grievances or references to white supremacy these days aren't about some sort of absolute or obvious oppression like we saw under slavery or Jim Crow. It's more about the underlying racism that still permeates society outside of plain sight, which in some ways are even worse. Someone might benefit from affirmative action insofar as it helps them get into Harvard let's say. But if that black Harvard grad still gets called a n!gger, still has presumptions made about them or people feel weird around them etc. then there is still a place to talk about racism and "oppression" in society today regardless of affirmative action. 

I think a lot of people dismiss the idea of affirmative action for Asians because this country doesn't have a history of oppressing them (outside of not being allowed to immigrate here). We don't have generational wealth today that can be traced back to work being done here by Asian slaves. But there certainly is a good amount of racism against Asians and I agree they would dominate if given the kind of benefits that other minorities get.  My teacher friend always feels so bad that all her Chinese students still go to voluntary summer school. Culturally they're on another level. But we can look at reasons their culture is the way it is the same way we can for low income blacks in America. 

I agree completely. I don't think it's an excuse so much as an explanation. But if you think legitimate genetic differences exist that predispose black people to violence, then how can they be expected to change? 

Someone's read Guns, Germs and Steel 😉  I agree with this too, but I think the impact is pretty limited. Nurture just seems way more important than nature when it comes to crime. I'd be interested to look up stats on middle or upper class minorities and their propensity for crime. A black athlete who was impoverished their entire lives until age 22  wouldn't count.  

All of us, white, black, Asian, descend from  the victors of those conflicts. European people just happen to be the most recent victors in a lot of cases

As to a full and honest account of racial and genetic differences, the white man is the greatest bastard in all of history. No denying it. Really don't see where you're going with that. Show me what part of the white man's brain has facilitated these immense cruelties we're responsible for. 

And I'm curious what "extreme" affirmative action benefits you think they are privy to. I'm more of a merit-based kinda person myself, but there's no way that AA has been more problematic than general nepotism. 

When you say "black culture" promotes crime, what kind of culture are you talking about: rap music that highlights living in the ghetto? What is the origin of ghettos?  How and why did poor black people all wind up congregated in the same public housing? Why did so many wind up in jail in the 80s and 90s and how did those parent or fatherless homes impact black youth? Exploring questions like these isn't giving a pass to black criminals, nor is it vilifying white people and suggesting they should pipe down and accept being victims of black crime today. It's simply taking an honest deep dive into history and sociology for a better understanding so we can address it, the same way people want to analyze white supremacists or trumpkins and see why they are the way are. Simply writing off black people as morally inferior (as these conversations always seem to do!) isn't helpful and isn't honest, that's all I'm saying. 

That's EXACTLY what someone suffering from the victimhood mentality would say, not to mention a denialist of truth.

You need to read less Howard Zinn and a lot more Thomas Sowell. 

Who says crimes against white people are "meaningless" and have no adverse effect though? I've never heard that. But the reason the situations are not remotely analogous is because black people were specifically discriminated against and the victims of racism from society at large. White people aren't being oppressed by black people, and the idea that black people are wantonly attacking white people in some sort of quiet race war is an untruthful and damaging narrative. 

Based on victims’ perceptions, about 1.7 million violent incidents in 2019 were committed against white persons by offenders who were white, 346,260 violent incidents were committed against black persons by offenders who were black, and 334,600 violent incidents were committed against Hispanic persons by offenders who were Hispanic. There were 5.3 times as many violent incidents committed by black offenders against white victims (472,570) as were committed by white offenders against black victims (89,980).

But your estimate is 10 times the Dept of Justice's estimate.  Where is you stat coming from?

And just proving that differences in crime rates exist also dispels other media-driven myths such as the instances of police shootings being racially motivated because more than 12% of those shot by cops are black.