Things that make you go.......WTF?

[Pies4shaw]

The slight difference in the US between girls selling cupcakes with differential pricing and people thinking bad thoughts about Jews.

Or, "Why girls making cupcakes may not actually be the true enemies of humanity":

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... nazi-march

[Mugwump]

The slight difference in the US between girls selling cupcakes with differential pricing and people thinking bad thoughts about Jews.

Or, "Why girls making cupcakes may not actually be the true enemies of humanity":

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... nazi-march

You're far too sophisticated to confuse an example used to illustrate a point with posited equivalence, and also sophisticated enough to know full well that the point has little to do with it being a cup-cake stall. The cry of bullies down the ages has been "can't you take a joke ?" , and discrimination and public insult / abuse of groups of humans is often most effective when it takes the pettiest forms, and can plead proportion. But go on defending it if you wish. Who knows whom the soft bigots will come for one day ? It might not be you or your male children, but one never knows.

[Pies4shaw]

I think it's reasonably important to identify where the actual dangers lie, rather than the imagined ones.

The world is full of irrational people with stupid beliefs. It's only the ones that are, or have been, routinely acted upon that need concern us.

[Mugwump]

^ The impulse inside any community to ridicule and punish individuals for what they are, rather than what they choose, is a wicked one, wherever it is found - but especially when it is found in public space. It's not that hard. To assert that a certain group is privileged (eg working class white males, who are falling behind in just about every indicator of education and economic opportunity), is implicitly to licence compensatory discrimination against them, and that is what this picture is advocating. It is grossly unjust. If it were a fringe right wing group's stall, it would be viewed as wicked. And that would be correct, too.

[David]

There are probably a few skater leftists who thought the stall was pretty wicked.

[Pies4shaw]

Falling behind whom? Behind black people living in Detroit? I think not.

They are falling behind rich east-coast billionaires - but that's partly because they don't seem to appreciate that there is some slight difference of interest between them and the other group.

This is, of course, what we used to be allowed to call "false consciousness".

To the extent that such folk want to vote against an improved social security system, a broader set of health-insurance protections and a strengthening of the rights of the dispossessed generally, they are going to find themselves progressively even more - wait for it - dispossessed.

To the extent that, individually, they are disadvantaged and dispossessed, they are certainly deserving of a better deal. However, to the extent that their perception is limited to bringing others back to their level, rather than demanding an improvement of their own collective lot, they are the enemy and their stupidity is to be pitied, derided, ridiculed and - yes - an object of humour.

Well, at least until their prejudices enable the planet to be blown up, at which point I will, I suppose (unless I am completely wrong about religion), cease laughing, too.

[HAL]

Does that mean "no"?

[Pies4shaw]

Well, HAL, it's at least a heavily-qualified "maybe".

[HAL]

How about that. That's good information.

[Mountains Magpie]

Falling behind whom? Behind black people living in Detroit? I think not.

They are falling behind rich east-coast billionaires - but that's partly because they don't seem to appreciate that there is some slight difference of interest between them and the other group.

This is, of course, what we used to be allowed to call "false consciousness".

To the extent that such folk want to vote against an improved social security system, a broader set of health-insurance protections and a strengthening of the rights of the dispossessed generally, they are going to find themselves progressively even more - wait for it - dispossessed.

To the extent that, individually, they are disadvantaged and dispossessed, they are certainly deserving of a better deal. However, to the extent that their perception is limited to bringing others back to their level, rather than demanding an improvement of their own collective lot, they are the enemy and their stupidity is to be pitied, derided, ridiculed and - yes - an object of humour.

Well, at least until their prejudices enable the planet to be blown up, at which point I will, I suppose (unless I am completely wrong about religion), cease laughing, too.

And there's the rub. What on earth is going on in the West? So much hate and divisiveness. It MUST be being perpetrated by SOMEONE? If so, what is the end agenda to this? Classic divide and conquer? FIIK.

MM

[HAL]

Something we cannot know.

[Pies4shaw]

Falling behind whom? Behind black people living in Detroit? I think not.

They are falling behind rich east-coast billionaires - but that's partly because they don't seem to appreciate that there is some slight difference of interest between them and the other group.

This is, of course, what we used to be allowed to call "false consciousness".

To the extent that such folk want to vote against an improved social security system, a broader set of health-insurance protections and a strengthening of the rights of the dispossessed generally, they are going to find themselves progressively even more - wait for it - dispossessed.

To the extent that, individually, they are disadvantaged and dispossessed, they are certainly deserving of a better deal. However, to the extent that their perception is limited to bringing others back to their level, rather than demanding an improvement of their own collective lot, they are the enemy and their stupidity is to be pitied, derided, ridiculed and - yes - an object of humour.

Well, at least until their prejudices enable the planet to be blown up, at which point I will, I suppose (unless I am completely wrong about religion), cease laughing, too.

And there's the rub. What on earth is going on in the West? So much hate and divisiveness. It MUST be being perpetrated by SOMEONE? If so, what is the end agenda to this? Classic divide and conquer? FIIK.

MM

I think the answer is that the politics of the American right is the politics of hate, used as a cloak to keep the economic subjugation of the disadvantaged hidden. The way it seems to work (as it did in Australia under Menzies and in the UK under Thatcher) is that if you can find enough parts of the population to vilify actively and strip them of their "entitlements", the rest of the people the government is crushing tend to accept that "hey, I don't have much - but at least [insert hated group here] doesn't, either." Thus, punishing some disadvantaged people seems to be a means of satisfying other disadvantaged people, without necessarily having to improve their collective lot. Consequently, the rich are able just to get on with privatising things, reducing welfare (such as it is in the US) and selling things (eg, to the Saudis) to their mates, so that there is a general redistribution of wealth from the poor to the already wealthy.

As one of the wealthy, this doesn't affect me adversely, in a personal sense - to the contrary, the more international business there is, the more international commercial legal work there is, too (and, yes, it does "trickle down" to all the other rich lawyers who aren't involved in transnational work) but it isn't helpful to the long-term plight of the many people in the world who don't have their fingers in a transnational corporation pie and can't hang off the coat-tails of those who do.

This is, of course, not a strategy confined to the right - it has, from time to time, been perfected by leftist dictatorships, too - but, in the present context, it seems to me to be a fair description of what's happening in the US.

[think positive]

Where the **** is summer, I'm bloody freezing

[swoop42]

Where the **** is summer, I'm bloody freezing

Don't worry.

Stui is on his way with his sunshine filled bum.

[think positive]

Okeydokee I get that