Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

https://www.apnews.com/b0fe304f1fad44e19e5ff4490ad1110c

EXCERPT: When President Donald Trump drew widespread condemnation for describing a majority-black congressional district as a “rat and rodent infested mess” and for tweets targeting four Democratic congresswomen of color, it was not the first time a U.S. president attracted such attention. Throughout American history, presidents have uttered comments, issued decisions and made public and private moves that critics said were racist, either at the time or in later generations. The presidents did so both before taking office and during their time in the White House.

[...] In 1915, Wilson sparked outrage by screening the racist film “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House. The silent movie was the retelling of Reconstruction through the eyes of the Ku Klux Klan. The movie portrayed the KKK as heroes and African Americans as uncivilized. “No explanation or apology followed” after the screening, Patty O’Toole wrote in “The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made.” Wilson appeared oblivious during the “Red Summer” of 1919 — a time when communities across the country saw white mobs attack African Americans, resulting in hundreds of deaths. He spoke out against lynching but did not use the federal government’s resources to stop the violence.

Democrat Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency in 1963 after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and sought to push a civil rights bill amid demonstrations by African Americans. Johnson famously convinced skeptical lawmakers to support the measure and gave a passionate speech about his days as a teacher in Mexican American schools to urge Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. But according to tapes of his private conversations, Johnson routinely used racist epithets to describe African Americans and some blacks he appointed to key positions.

His successor, Republican Richard Nixon, also regularly used racist epithets while in office in private conversations. (MORE - details)

RELATED: Incomplete tally of general political incidents in US

This thread looks like a "goading game" (that's all the internet seems to be any more) and here I am, stupid enough to take the bait.

(Jul 30, 2019 07:55 PM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]EXCERPT: When President Donald Trump drew widespread condemnation for describing a majority-black congressional district as a “rat and rodent infested mess”

Trump was being kind. He left off "crime ridden" which is true as well. It has a murder rate rivaling the most dangerous third-world cities. Everything Trump said was true, but apparently nobody is supposed to mention the problems festering in places like this, unless the the conditions are being used in condemnations of "white racism".  

It wasn't Trump, but rather the relentlessly "woke" Economist magazine that noted (after the death of a young black man at the hands of the police and subsequent rioting) that if this part of Baltimore was a country, there would be a State Department travel warning advising Americans not to visit. The story noted how each night after the sun goes down the gunfire starts. It noted how much of the housing stock is abandoned, burned out shells, and how very few businesses remain to serve the population. The few businesses that exist, often have their heavily armed cashiers behind bullet-proof glass.

And of course the President's reason for mentioning these conditions was that the district's congressman seems to be more interested in attacking political enemies than in doing anything substantial to improve the lives of the people that he supposedly represents. You get that in urban districts where voters vote something like 90% democratic, and where democratic nominations are controlled by political machines. All of which means that congresspeople in places like this become congresspeople-for-life and feel no need to please their voters. So the voters are ignored and forgotten, in confidence that they will once again vote democratic next time.

Quote:and for tweets targeting four Democratic congresswomen of color

"Congresswomen of color"?? God help you if you called them "colored congresswomen".

Trump is the kind of guy who returns fire and these women (I'll delete what i was going to call them) had been personally attacking him. So why is it ok for everyone to personally attack the President of the United States but out of line for him to personally attack them back?? If they don't want shit hurled in their direction, maybe they shouldn't have started throwing shit themselves. That's how it usually works in life - you get back what you give.

Except that now all the snowflakes complain about how unfair that is. They are the righteous people don't you know? Their attacks on others are just defense of everything that is good (in their eyes). Any response from those targeted (except abject groveling) is ipso-facto a defense of evil and justification for doubling down, often with violence.

The similarities to the stereotypical puritan are obvious. We once again live in an age where seemingly the first priority is the eradication of sin and sinners. Except now 'sin' has been rebranded as "racism" or "xenophobia" or whatever it happens to be today. And today it's the atheists who are most apt to be trying to cleanse society, not the religious people. But the sense of moral certainty and self-righteousness remains the same.

That's all great if you already agree with the fundamental premises.

Well, I don't. My sympathy is 100% with the President in this.

And I suspect that I'm not alone. It's a big part of why Trump unexpectedly won in 2016. Middle Americans are tired of being on the receiving end of whatever moral outrage that today's activist-du-jour is directing at them, at their country and at the history and traditions that define their community.

(Jul 30, 2019 10:42 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]. . . It wasn't Trump, but rather the relentlessly "woke" Economist magazine that noted (after the death of a young black man at the hands of the police and subsequent rioting) that if this part of Baltimore was a country, there would be a State Department travel warning advising Americans not to visit. The story noted how each night after the sun goes down the gunfire starts. It noted how much of the housing stock is abandoned, burned out shells, and how very few businesses remain to serve the population. The few businesses that exist, often have their heavily armed cashiers behind bullet-proof glass.

Anyone who saw HBO's The Wire those years ago got a mediated dose of what's wrong with applicable areas of Baltimore. The lack of political diversity results in a vacuum of competition for driving changes, and what would at least be a partial purging of the corruption. Even non-sedentary administrators have to tiptoe around various issues because of their ideological sacredness and the easily rattled sensitivities.

Although Simon was apparently narrowing general post-industrial consequences down to fictional events in a specific example city, the creative staff knew their subject well. It still disturbingly reflected aspects of Baltimore, perturbing the powers that be for being so close to the bone. The show was praised [and condemned] for its realism in more ways than one.

‘Progress is painfully uneven’: Baltimore, 15 years after The Wire (2017)
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...r-the-wire

EXCERPT: . . . But there were detractors, she [Sonja Sohn] adds. “One thing that was disappointing was the city officials. They really were not pleased with the depiction of Baltimore and some of them took the storylines personally. David [Simon] has always said the issues and stories of The Wire exist nationally.”

[...] Nevertheless, the toxic mix of drugs, firearms and joblessness chronicled by The Wire in 2002 still persists. Last month, the mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh, appealed to the FBI for extra help to combat the soaring homicide rate, explaining: “Murder is out of control. There are too many guns on the streets.”

Rafael Alvarez, an author and screenwriter who worked on the show, writes in an email: “The rich and cruel supply of American fucked-up-ness will never run dry in Baltimore, so yes, The Wire could be made 15 years after it originally aired. I suspect – give or take 50 homicides and a new wave of corruption and ignorance – it could be made again 15 years from today.”

Olesker is similarly short on optimism about the city’s future. “I think you could do the same show today. It’s still out there on the street corners: you can go to countless neighbourhoods and see street after street of abandoned houses that have sat there for years.

“You’ve got all these kids who are rootless, who don’t have families, who are joining gangs. They’re figuring out very early the game is stacked against them. They’re not going to get to college like middle-class kids do, so they have a choice: they can work in McDonald’s for $10 an hour or they can make multiples of that from the drug trade, and there’s no mother or father around to tell them otherwise.”

[...] only seem likely to fan the flames in Baltimore, a majority black, staunchly Democratic city. The Wire was sometimes accused of implying that its characters were locked in a hopeless cycle; events seem to bear out this sense of fatalism.

(Jul 30, 2019 10:42 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Except that now all the snowflakes complain about how unfair that is. They are the righteous people don't you know? Their attacks on others are just defense of everything that is good (in their eyes). Any response from those targeted (except abject groveling) is ipso-facto a defense of evil and justification for doubling down, often with violence.

The similarities to the stereotypical puritan are obvious. We once again live in an age where seemingly the first priority is the eradication of sin and sinners. Except now 'sin' has been rebranded as "racism" or "xenophobia" or whatever it happens to be today. And today it's the atheists who are most apt to be trying to cleanse society, not the religious people. But the sense of moral certainty and self-righteousness remains the same.

That’s because secularism is imprinted with what it claims to oppose. Nobody has de-Christianized anything. Pity is powerfully seductive. It allows you to escape your own problems—"can you hear the drums, Fernando"…as Ben the Donkey would have said.

Nietzsche’s last sin was our greatest sin. One that we've still yet to overcome.

If you think what Trump said is racist, you're either a moron or uninformed bubble-dweller. The mayor of Baltimore is on video saying you can smell the rats and dead animals, Bernie Sanders called it a third world country, and the Baltimore Sun had already admitted the trash and rodent infestation...long before claiming that same sentiment was suddenly racist.

i dont think hitler did ... did he ?
can you find any footage of public statements ?

(Jul 30, 2019 10:42 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Trump was being kind. He left off "crime ridden" which is true as well. It has a murder rate rivaling the most dangerous third-world cities. Everything Trump said was true, but apparently nobody is supposed to mention the problems festering in places like this, unless the the conditions are being used in condemnations of "white racism".  

Unless the person who performs such criticism is a color other than white.  Then she is told to go back to where she came from, if she hates America so much and thinks it's a rat-infested shithole.
" So why is it ok for everyone to personally attack the President of the United States but out of line for him to personally attack them back??"

You said it yourself - "you get back what you give."  After decades of racism, crime, sexual assaults and rapes, and after several years of attacks on transgender people, women, minorities, Muslims and refugees, Trump is "getting back what he gave."  (Of course, in a much nicer form.  No one has raped him or his wife, or torn his family apart and put his ten year old in a cage.  He should count his blessings.)

While I'm no fan of Trump, it's strangely hypocritical to view sentiments made by Republicans as ''racist,'' when Democratic politicians are in essence, saying the same things. If you're a Democrat, you should be willing to call out bigoted language within your own party, as well.