The Other

[Magical Realist]

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/englis.../cs6/other

"The Other is an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way. Any stranger becomes the Other. The group sees itself as the norm and judges those who do not meet that norm (that is, who are different in any way) as the Other. Perceived as lacking essential characteristics possessed by the group, the Other is almost always seen as a lesser or inferior being and is treated accordingly. The Other in a society may have few or no legal rights, may be characterized as less intelligent or as immoral, and may even be regarded as sub-human.

Otherness takes many forms. The Other may be someone who is of...

a different race (White vs. non-White),
a different nationality (Anglo Saxon vs. Italian),
a different religion (Protestant vs. Catholic or Christian vs. Jew),
a different social class (aristocrat vs. serf),
a different political ideology (capitalism vs. communism),
a different sexual orientation (heterosexual vs. homosexual),
a different origin (native born vs. immigrant).

The Other is not necessarily a numerical minority. In a country defeated by an imperial power, the far more numerous natives become the Other, for example, the British rule in India where Indians outnumbered the British 4,000 to 1. Similarly, women are defined and judged by men, the dominant group, in relationship to themselves, so that they become the Other. Hence Aristotle says: "The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities; we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness."

The group which is defining the Other may be an entire society, a social class or a community within a society, a family, or even a high school clique or a neighborhood gang.

The Other and the Outsider

The outsider frequently overlaps with the Other, but they are not identical. The outsider has the possibility of being accepted by and incorporated into the group; offspring are very likely to be accepted into the group. The Other, however, is perceived as different in kind, as lacking in some essential trait or traits that the group has; offspring will inherit the same deficient nature and be the Other also. Therefore the Other and the offspring of the Other may be doomed forever to remain separate, never to become part of the group--in other words, to be the Other forever.

The Other in Literature

The Other is a common figure in literature. If you took Core Curriculum 1.1, you may recognize this concept in a tragedy like Medea. Medea as Other is doubly dangerous. For the Greeks, any non-Greek was the Other or a "barbarian," and Medea is a barbarian. She is also the Other in being female; woman, as Other, is often perceived as inherently dangerous. Medea justifies these views of the Other in the terrible vengeance she wreaks on Jason because he betrayed her and abandoned her and their sons.

Do you see any relevance of this concept of the Other to the works we are reading in this course?

Is Hedda Gabler the Other in any way--as a woman with unacceptable aspirations or passions for her time and class?

Is Jane Eyre the Other in any way--in social class, in her values and goals, or in her nature? Consider her in the Reed household, at the Lowood School, in her position as governess, in her relationship with Rochester or with Blanche Ingram. If she is the Other, does she remain the Other or is she able to overcome her separate or inferior status and find acceptance?

There is no question that the Blacks in The Bluest Eye are presented as the Other in society and that they perceive themselves as Other. In what ways is their Otherness manifested? How are the children taught to be the Other? What consequences do the blacks in this novel suffer because they are the Other?

Similarly the Chinese mothers in The Joy Luck Club are presented as the Other in American society; are any of them the Other in Chinese society? Otherness also functions in the family relationships. The Chinese mothers perceive themselves as Other from their daughters, and their American-born daughters perceive themselves as Other from their mothers. In what ways is their Otherness manifested? How are the children taught to be the Other? How do the mothers become the Other to their children? What consequences do the mothers and daughters suffer because they are the Other ?"

[C C]

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/englis.../cs6/other

[...] The group which is defining the Other may be an entire society, a social class or a community within a society, a family, or even a high school clique or a neighborhood gang...

With regard to to the largest scale... For contemporary Westerners, neither ethnocentrism (marginalizing the Other) nor xenocentrism (craving the Other) seem to survive in the long run when they are forced upon a population as ideology. That's because each is pirated to serve the interests of political leaders and special interests, and are only a minor part of a larger systemic agenda. (Which is to say -- depending upon which view benefits an individual's personal welfare -- one might contingently support either ethnocentrism or xenocentrism, but eventually the rest of the stuff resting on the plate exploiting either for its own ends becomes too unpalatable.)

It's tempting to compare such to religion hijacking morality, except that religion was once synonymous with a regional community or culture itself. It didn't even have a term or become cognitively distinct until the Romans introduced the abstract concept, and from there it began to differentiate into its own monster, as well as become just another commandeered tool of governmental manipulations.

OTOH, it may a different story for other parts of the world, when it comes to a people tolerating the formal, artificial pretenses (in general) foisted upon them by administrations. China, for instance, may still be a one-party communist nation steeped in nationalism a thousand years from now. Russia may likewise still have a citizenry content with being lorded over by strong men -- whether the latter are professing to be czars or socialists and whatever label subsumes Putin's future legacy. Russia has always been a Euro-Asian hybrid.

"The Other is an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way.

Trump is ironically such. I mean, part of the average population might relate to his rhetoric and enjoy his antics, but how many can relate to the narcissist himself and his habits, apart from the minority like him? He's a snowflake in terms of surrounding himself with yes-men (can't endure criticism and being disagreed with, has little receptivity to alternative advice). And certainly he's not physically capable of enduring much because of the luxurious and sheltered life he's enjoyed for decades.

To have a chance of winning the election, he needs to surround himself with cunning expertise again rather than lame, dull-minded yes-men. He's like the one-shot football coach who won a championship at the start, or Chevy Chase on SNL, but can't deliver again because he's too full of himself. Demands a revering entourage of sycophants. ["When you become famous, you've got like a year or two where you act like a real a**hole," said Bill Murray of Chase, who replaced him on the show. "You can't help yourself. It happens to everybody. You've got like two years to pull it together — or it's permanent." (Being an a**hole.)]

[Yazata]

I think that the phrase 'the Other' is an import from 'continental' philosophy, from Hegel in particular. As such, it's become something of an pseudo-intellectual shibboleth.

Of course it's been a commonplace for as long as there have been people that people tend to divide up into 'us' and 'them'. It's been true since prehistoric times with kin-groups and tribes. As cultures grew more complex, people identified with their linguistic groups, with their political states and with their religions. Even today, those who most exploit the concept of 'the Other' are doing it to condemn their perceived enemies, the "racists", the "misogynists", the Trump supporters.

With regard to to the largest scale... For contemporary Westerners, neither ethnocentrism (marginalizing the Other) nor xenocentrism (craving the Other) seem to survive in the long run when they are forced upon a population as ideology.

People everywhere tend to absorb their ethics, their sense of cultural identity, more organically than that. People pick it up from their parents, from their friends and from their wider communities. The sense of 'us', the sense of 'these are the people that I identify with' comes along with a child's adoption of his/her language, along with their acquiring the social and moral values of their group. Children learn to behave more or less as others around them behave.

It's tempting to compare such to religion hijacking morality

Religion and morality are just two sides to the same coin in my opinion.

except that religion was once synonymous with a regional community or culture itself.

And morality isn't? Both morality and religion appear to me to be social constructs and both of them pretty much unjustifiable in purely scientistic terms.

Every group has standards of conformity that define being a member of that particular group. That's as true of religions and communities of ethical agreement as it is of special interest social clubs.

People absorb opinions, values and even the things that should interest them from those around them; models of how people are supposed to behave, think and believe. And there's typically a price to be paid for ignoring these things. You conform or you define yourself as an outsider to your group.

OTOH, it may a different story for other parts of the world, when it comes to a people tolerating the formal, artificial pretenses (in general) foisted upon them by administrations. China, for instance, may still be a one-party communist nation steeped in nationalism a thousand years from now.

That's the way China's always been, from the first emperors to today. A lot of it is due to the Chinese pictographic language I think. Despite people in different parts of China having different spoken languages (typically called 'dialects', though they aren't mutually intelligible) they share the same writing and hence the same broader culture. And there's always been an ideal of unity in Chinese culture, where periods of unity under a single imperial leader are exalted as highpoints in their civilization, and periods of disunity when China was divided into multiple contending states as periods of decline.

Europe on the other hand has always been divided into different states and cultures, even when they shared many civilizational characteristics in common. That's made European culture both far more dynamic than the Chinese (it isn't an accident that the Scientific and Industrial revolutions were European) and far more violent and bloody (two world wars in 21 years).

The US is kind of the midpoint between them, though it's been drifting in the direction of a top-down Chinese-style dictatorship of the mandarins ever since the Civil War. Even Europe is belatedly scuttling like a bug in that totalitarian direction in the name of unity and stability, in the wake of the world wars that almost destroyed them. 

"The Other is an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way.

Trump is ironically such.

In the eyes of those who define themselves as a group in large part in opposition to him. Trump's different, he's not 'one of us'. He's an outsider. He and everything he stands for must be destroyed. But Trump's agenda (if not the man himself) is "us" to a large proportion of America's white middle class (including me).

Trump has the advantage of consistency. He knows that human beings can scarcely be called 'human' in the absence of culture. And culture is found in and absorbed from... cultures. So Trump is primarily concerned with protecting and preserving American culture which he loves and identifies with.

His opponents somehow imagine themselves as post-nationalists. The way to achieve world peace and eliminate divisions is to eliminate national identities. That's why they are against all the symbols of American identity (national anthem, flag, 4th of July, Mt. Rushmore, our history and our founding fathers), it's why they are for open borders, for eliminating any distinction between legal and illegal immigrants and for downplaying if not eliminating the very idea of American citizenship itself.

This, and not Covid, or the economy, or conspiracy theories about Russia, will be what the 2020 election will be about: The continued survival of the United States as a nation and a culture.

Yet despite all the efforts to "break down barriers" between "us and them", and effectively eliminate the whole idea of any distinctive American or Western culture, the American left isn't without values of its own that it grasps onto with their own white-knuckled fists. They hate racism. They love gay rights. They fight for the equality of women. And they do it in oblivious ignorance that all of those ideas exist in a cultural context and aren't universally shared. That's their fundamental contradiction.

The bottom line question that they need to address is that once they have succeeded in destroying American and Western civilization, once they have reduced people from being members of a community to being identically fungible social atoms moved around the map from place to functionally identical place to serve the needs of big business and local social change agendas, what makes them so sure that their cultural values will win out? Why not Chinese totalitarianism or Islamic Shariah, two of the leading rivals in today's world?

What they don't recognize is that erasing our countries' distinctive histories and cultures, won't somehow make their values universal. It will simply destroy the context that gave rise to their values in the first place and ensure their defeat.

[Syne]

Trump is ironically such. I mean, part of the average population might relate to his rhetoric and enjoy his antics, but how many can relate to the narcissist himself and his habits, apart from the minority like him? He's a snowflake in terms of surrounding himself with yes-men (can't endure criticism and being disagreed with,  has little receptivity to alternative advice). And certainly he's not physically capable of enduring much because of the luxurious and sheltered life he's enjoyed for decades.

To have a chance of winning the election, he needs to surround himself with cunning expertise again rather than lame, dull-minded yes-men. He's like the one-shot football coach who won a championship at the start, or Chevy Chase on SNL, but can't deliver again because he's too full of himself. Demands a revering entourage of sycophants. ["When you become famous, you've got like a year or two where you act like a real a**hole," said Bill Murray of Chase, who replaced him on the show. "You can't help yourself. It happens to everybody. You've got like two years to pull it together — or it's permanent." (Being an a**hole.)]

You seem to be out of touch with anything but the leftist caricature. Trump knows better than to admit error, or tolerate those who would, as it's clear the leftist media would only use that to justify their years long lying onslaught. Same double standard as anyone else on the right, where no apology or admission is ever enough, while hypocritically and warmly accepting much worse from self-flagellating leftists. He seems pretty savvy to quickly and frequently get rid of liabilities, which many on the left even agree are liabilities (though maybe not at the same time).

It's like asking if you want the best doctor or the nicest one. Most rational adults are more than willing to put up with an egotistical ass, so long as it benefits them, like the economy we had before the natural disaster of Covid. When it comes to competency (accomplishing things, as opposed to simply being famous), people can afford to be asses.

The bottom line question that they need to address is that once they have succeeded in destroying American and Western civilization, once they have reduced people from being members of a community to being identically fungible social atoms moved around the map from place to functionally identical place to serve the needs of big business and local social change agendas, what makes them so sure that their cultural values will win out? Why not Chinese totalitarianism or Islamic Shariah, two of the leading rivals in today's world?

What they don't recognize is that erasing our countries' distinctive histories and cultures, won't somehow make their values universal. It will simply destroy the context that gave rise to their values in the first place and ensure their defeat.

Absolutely. If we lose our own sense of "us" and some degree of cultural unity, those others with a strong sense of unity will become the dominant powers and cultures. Ultimately dictating to us what values we will respect, lest we be killed.

For me, this all comes down to the underdeveloped amygdala of leftists. Their inability to properly prioritize real threats leads them to believe that words are somehow violence and domestic political opponents the greatest existential threat. It's like children, who can't fathom the larger world, and their biggest worry is the schoolyard bully...only bullies don't even physically attack anyone nowadays...and the ones who do must be sympathized with because it's only because they're poor, and can't help it.

[Magical Realist]

You seem to be out of touch with anything but the leftist caricature.

"Republicans are not blind to Trump’s shortcomings, although blind partisan loyalty generally keeps them on message in public, reserving their honest opinions to whispered comments behind closed doors. One who went public, however, was Erick Erickson, a former CEO of the popular Redstate.com website, a Republican hangout. In a rare moment of candor, he wrote in 2017:

“The president exudes incompetence and instability. Divulging classified information to the Russians through bragging; undermining his staff’s defense of his conduct through inane tweets; even reportedly asking the FBI director to suspend an investigation of a former adviser—all these strike me not so much as malicious but as the ignorant actions of an overwhelmed man. Republicans excuse this behavior as Trump being Trump, but that will only embolden voters who seek greater accountability to choose further change over stability. The sad reality is that the greatest defense of the president available at this point is one his team could never give on the record: He is an idiot who does not know any better.”

And that’s the assessment of an ideological fellow traveler; as the polling results and unvarnished assessments of global diplomats suggest that the president is not merely “overwhelmed” and that the idiot defense for his chronic incompetence and misconduct is more than a simply rhetorical tactic. With the Trump presidency, H.L. Mencken’s 1920 prediction that one day the White House “will be adorned by a downright moron” has now come true."

https://newrepublic.com/article/158069/d...mart-polls

[Yazata]

Trump is ironically such. I mean, part of the average population might relate to his rhetoric and enjoy his antics but how many can relate to the narcissist himself and his habits, apart from the minority like him?

The reason why I support President Trump is that I agree with him on virtually all of his issues. For me, it's all about issues. And it's telling that the democrats rarely attack the President on his issues, because they know that if they do, they will lose the election. Instead, they try to make the election entirely about personality ("antics", "narcissist", "snowflake" and no end of things like this).

He's a snowflake in terms of surrounding himself with yes-men

Doesn't every President do that? What's he supposed to do, fill his administration with political opponents? Can anyone really argue with a straight face that Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch weren't tightly aligned with Barack Obama while they weaponized the Justice Department as the enforcement arm of the democratic party?? When asked about whether he was thinking about leaving the administration, Attorney General Holder is quoted as saying, "I'm still the President's wing-man, so I'm there with my boy."

But in President Trump's case it's worse than that. The Obama administration had been using the federal police agencies to try to prevent his election and then to subvert his incoming administration. Many in Washington were proudly promising sedition, pretentiously calling themselves "the resistance" in obvious allusion to Nazi occupied France. I believe that the President's very first conversation with a foreign leader, the Prime Minister of Australia as I recall who had called to congratulate him, was leaked by some unnamed somebody who was listening in. It was obviously the "deep state" spooks (who else has the ability to monitor a President's phone calls?) sending a message announcing their subversive intent.

So of course any intelligent man in those circumstances is going to surround himself with people that he believes he can trust. 

To have a chance of winning the election, he needs to surround himself with cunning expertise again rather than lame, dull-minded yes-men.

I think that at this point, he's probably already won the election. Riots, violence, looting, the attacks on the symbols of our common American identity (the only thing counteracting the centrifugal forces of all our angry differences), the attacks on our country's history and founding traditions, attacks which are implicitly attacks on the very idea of an American people themselves, isn't likely to endear Joe Biden to the traditionally democratic white working class voters whose defection won Trump most of the Midwest in 2016 and gave him his victory. Those voters felt under attack then, and they will only feel that they are under even more frantic attack now.

It's ironic in a way. One of the reasons why the DNC and the democratic party establishment favored Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders and the other occupants of the far-left clown-car was that he could run as a moderate and win those disaffected voters back. Biden could play against Trump's obvious defects and come across to voters as the reliable 'grownup in the room'. But the militants immediately challenged that strategy from the streets and Biden stupidly went all in with the radicals, effectively tearing up his 'moderate' credentials.

It couldn't go any better for Trump if it was scripted by his campaign staff. They don't have to try to portray the opposition as crazy and anti-American. The opposition are doing it to themselves every day all over every TV screen as all the left-elites (mass media, intellectuals, celebrities) cheer it on and try to enforce it with cancel-culture, sycophancy and incessant attacks on free-speech. There's no way that Trump could have bought advertising more advantageous to his campaign.

[Syne]

You seem to be out of touch with anything but the leftist caricature.

Idiots and the incompetent do not lead us to record low unemployment and historically low minority unemployment. Markets do not rally behind idiots and incompetents. Everyone agrees that Trump says dumb or ill-informed things.

Erick Erickson still supports Trump:

I support the President, but I have a hard time cheering. There is much to not like. But there is even more to not like on the left.
...
The President should stay off Twitter, but he can do so assured he is blessed with idiots for enemies.
https://theresurgent.com/2019/10/03/i-su...president/

And I'll bet you're not as eager to agree with him about the idiots on the left.

[Magical Realist]

Everyone agrees that Trump says dumb or ill-informed things.

And everyone knows if it quacks like a duck, and walks like duck, and tweets like a duck, then it's a duck.

[Syne]

It couldn't go any better for Trump if it was scripted by his campaign staff. They don't have to try to portray the opposition as crazy and anti-American. The opposition are doing it to themselves every day all over every TV screen as all the left-elites (mass media, intellectuals, celebrities) cheer it on and try to enforce it with cancel-culture, sycophancy and incessant attacks on free-speech. There's no way that Trump could have bought advertising more advantageous to his campaign.

Couldn't agree more.

The media, once again, seems to have unwittingly played right into his hands (aside from giving him all the lovely campaign fodder). They were so proud of all the virtue-signalling protests that they just couldn't help but broadcast enough for everyone to see the insanity for themselves. And even for those living under a rock, either they live in flyover country and are already sold on Trump or they live in large cities, where they've seen the worst of the insanity firsthand.

---

Everyone agrees that Trump says dumb or ill-informed things.

And everyone knows if it quacks like a duck, and walks like duck, and tweets like a duck, then it's a duck.

Nah, that's just identity thinking, where simpleminded partisans blow up any marginally valid criticism to confirm their own preexisting bias.
Ducks don't raise market confidence.

[Secular Sanity]

It's ironic in a way. One of the reasons why the DNC and the democratic party establishment favored Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders and the other occupants of the far-left clown-car was that he could run as a moderate and win those disaffected voters back. Biden could play against Trump's obvious defects and come across to voters as the reliable 'grownup in the room'. But the militants immediately challenged that strategy from the streets and Biden stupidly went all in with the radicals, effectively tearing up his 'moderate' credentials.

I agree with C C's assessment of Trump but Trump is right, Biden is a puppet. Unfortunately, though, that’s exactly what some people are hoping for…a president that can be easily manipulated.

Angela Davis on why we should vote for Biden

"I don’t see this election as being about choosing a candidate who will be able to lead us in the right direction. It will be about choosing a candidate who can be most effectively pressured into allowing more space for the evolving anti-racists movement. Fighting is very problematic in many ways. He is, not only in terms of his past, and the role that he played in pushing in mass incarceration, but he’s indicated that he is opposed to disbanding the police, and this is definitely what we need. We need to reconceptualize the very notion of public safety. But…I say 'but' Biden is far more likely to take mass demands seriously. Far more likely than the current occupant of the White House. This coming November, the election will ask us, not so much to vote for the best candidate but to vote for or against ourselves and to vote ourselves I think means that we will have to campaign and vote for Biden."—Angela Davis

She believes that capitalism and racism is interlinked. "There is no capitalism without racism," she says.

This is a perilous moment – unions are under attack, racist assaults, and anti-Semitic violence are on the rise, ultra-right candidates have won office in the U.S. , Brazil, the Philippines, Israel, and in other countries. At the same time, there is increasing opposition to white supremacy, police violence, misogyny, and capitalist accumulation of wealth in the world. With its century-old history of struggle, the Communist Party is well-positioned to offer expertise, experience and Marxist analyses that will assist the resistance movements to grow and develop. At the very least we must defeat the Trump administration in 2020! I wish you success in the deliberations of the convention.

In Solidarity,
Angela Y. Davis

Why Am I a Communist?

"Because I have a very strong love for oppressed people, for my people. I want to see them free, and I want to see all oppressed people throughout the world free. And I realize that the only way that we can do this is by moving towards a revolutionary society where the needs, and the interests, and the wishes of all people can be respected."Angela Davis

Totalitarianism is a not a mutation. It is a part of the DNA structure of communism and socialism. An economy built around a central plan, by default, eliminates individual freedom. 

The bot accounts that I mentioned before, you know, the ones that you popped off about, aim to weaken several of the essential tenants of democracy: institutions, capitalism, societal cohesion, and trust in leadership.

Do you really want the outsiders wiggling in? Do you really think that bots have a right to free speech?