The Glade 4.0

So was it the guy with the phone or the officer that sighed at the end?

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Raell Kromwell

And I'm getting tired of left-wing conservatives pretending that they're morally superior to everybody else.

The KKK was invented by Democratics to stop blacks from voting for Republicans, because it was the first Republican President who freed the slaves and they knew that the blacks would vote Republican. I notice you didn't mention that in your little history lecture. It was not the Republicans who implemented segregation, it was Democrats. It was Democrats who relied on identity politics to pander to the scared and panicked masses fear of the other, and they're still doing it. The only thing that is different today is the group the Democratic Party has chosen to single out as the cause of everyone else's suffering. It was wrong when your party targeted blacks for discrimination, just like it's wrong to target a different group today.

The Democratic Party has also spent the past several decades exploiting poor minorities with social welfare programs designed to keep them poor so that they continue to vote Democrats into office. No left-wing social program ever begins to attempt to help the poor rise to a higher socioeconomic level, because if they ever stopped being poor they would stop voting Democrat, those programs would stop, and you wouldn't be able to grow fat off of all the tax money spent on administration.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Did I mention party anywhere in my comment? And my whole point was that identity politics isn't some invention of or reaction to the modern left (or the modern right, for that matter). It's been a feature of American politics from day one, and it's been exploited by Dems, Reps, left and right to varying degrees and in varying ways throughout our history. We've always had a mix of economic and identity based hierarchy in this country, and white males, at each economic stratum, have been the dominant position within that stratum. That has been challenged at various points in history (including today), and each time, there's been a backlash. Do you deny that?

The USA isn't unique in having economic stratum, and in all of history, in any nation I'm aware of, a challenge to the folks in dominant positions resulted in a backlash.

I don't understand the requirement to go all racial divide to explain that. Water is wet, gravity's a *****, and vacuum sucks. That's not the result of skin color. To be perfectly clear, if you look for snipes and you let yourself define what a snipe is, you'll find one... even when everyone else knows there's no such animal. The bear hates being poked, grizzly and polar alike. Their color is irrelevant. (don't you love it when I'm perfectly clear? )

My point is this. Your statement isn't made any more or less correct by included words "and white males". You're looking at this through a lens and it's not adding factually to your argument. So, why? Honestly, it seems to be an attempt to use identity to emphasize something and you seem to be using it for some sort of argumentative advantage, probably unconsciously, but still.

People in the catbird seat don't want to be kicked out. That fact isn't morally right or wrong. Spinning that it is is just that - spinning.

Since we're talking history, you know what I think? I think that, had the civil war not been forced, the US would have abolished slavery just like all the other first world nations did. I think that all those people that died, died for nothing, and I think race relations today in this country would have been pretty much the same as it is in Canada today had the war not been forced. The US isn't unique and there's nothing to suggest otherwise. I think social justice warriors back then caused more problems than they solved, and I think that the leaders that encouraged the SJWs had an agenda of self promotion.

And I don't think much has changed. You can't change someone's heart by force or coercion. People have to change their own hearts, and they can, but it takes opportunity and self reflection. Ain't nothing else going to do it.

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In time, this too shall pass.

So you don't think racial hierarchy or gender hierarchy have been relevant factors in US history, Taskiss? Seriously?

Take out the words "racial" and "gender" and it doesn't change the truth of that statement you just wrote. That's how relevant I think it is to include them. It doesn't change the truth.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I guess I don't really understand what you're getting at, then. Are you saying that the more general form of the point is true - i.e., anytime a group with power/status begins to lose that power/status to another group, they resist? If so...well, sure, but that doesn't mean there's no point in understanding who those groups are in a particular instance. Quite the contrary, in fact. And so, in the particular instance of the US, I'm pointing out that race and gender have long been fundamental sources of group identity and hierarchy.

How do you figure that? The Koran says nothing about Genital mutilation. Yes people bring things from their homeland, and yes some of those practices are horrific. But you are making an assertion with no evidence, just your intuition.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0413000258 indicates a number a Jewish immigrants had this
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ember%C3%A1_people are a people native to the western hemisphere who have the practice





But they do exist:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... istan.html
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2016 ... g-emerges/
http://www.islamawareness.net/HonourKil ... tside.html

And in fact they're actually commanded in the Bible.

Lev: 21:9, Exodus 21:17, Lev: 20:9, Num 26:6-8

That they're 'less common' between Christianity and Islam does not change the fact that they do still happen but lets not forget such killings in countries like India where Hindu's and Sikhs also do it for violating the caste system.




Should I say "Christians in General?" Since Constantine Christianity has spread through the power of the state and pushed religious laws on the people based on the religious beliefs. Rules on everything from divorce to commandments that individuals must attend church, to the burning/stoning/hanging/beheading/etc of heretics have come at the hands of another Middle Eastern religion that purports to have the Truth.





Ah yes. The religion in the US that sanctioned slavery as recently as 150 years ago. The religion that saw the castration or imprisonment of homosexuals (and of which some sects STILL advocate stoning or the like for homosexuals) Religions that forbid commerce on certain days of the week or the sale of alcohol in some counties to this day because of their beliefs.



I'm not pretending. It IS about the evils of one religion. Dragging up the practices of Christians centuries ago NOW to excuse Muslims doing it today is simply a double standard intended to give Muslims a free pass. Western Christian nations have been moving farther and farther away from this, to the degree that for the last 30 years its been victory after victory for secularism, to the point that the secularists are among those (such as civil rights advocates and feminists) who have largely run out of battles to fight and decided to invent problems to solve.

Islam is not, and they don't have the excuse of living in a world where science doesn't even exist



Really? How many terrorist attacks have occurred on US soil perpetrated in the name of Christianity?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence to give a few.... but lets not forget the Klan claims to carry out their crimes in the name of Christianity too.


Yes I do. And yes I do.



There is a difference between violating the civil rights of individuals and addressing the issues that a group of people may have because of a common characteristic.

One involves the violation of fundamental tenants of our democracy, the other is a way to help the most number of people the most efficiently. One Harms. The other helps. This false equivalence you're trying to draw is beyond stupid.


Sing me a new song. This is a silly argument. While I will agree there are SOME within the DNC who probably do try to 'exploit identity politics' to get votes, the vast majority simply see an actual wrong that needs to be righted.

You're asking for the right to violate a population's civil rights provided it could be proven that group was prone to commit a crime? So if Embezzlement is a crime primarily done by white male Christians, it would be okay to target them as a group for registration and having their bank accounts opened to scrutiny without warrant? Is that really the argument you want to make?

Race and gender just fits your narrative. Without it, folks have to wear different color uniforms to tell who they have to persecute is all. Still going to happen. Still sucks. Doesn't suck more, doesn't suck less. Your ***** is with human nature and what I'm telling you is, that ***** is color and gender blind. Don't mean you can't fight it, means you gotta look beyond your nose to really see it. And if you don't, you're actually part of the problem.

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In time, this too shall pass.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Nate Silver develops alcoholism in a single night:

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

While it is true that race and gender are convenient tools for deciding whom to persecute, and that in the absence of skin color differences or sexual dimorphism, humans probably would have found other reasons to persecute people, that's really pretty irrelevant. The fact that humans would have found a different arbitrary reason to discriminate if they could not discriminate on race doesn't change the fact that discrimination based on race happens and is wrong.

No non-US citizen has the right to enter the country or immigrate to the country. Nobody's rights are being violated.

The vast majority of Muslims on Earth right now have extremely backwards values systems by Western standards and letting them immigrate en masse would be an utter catastrophe. Even amongst the Toronto and Dearborn Muslims, something like >95% of them believe that we should implement Sharia law, the only main point of difference is that they tend to disagree with the harsh punishments prescribed there. They still absolutely think being gay is evil and that women are very inferior.

I absolutely don't believe in Trump's proposal that we should blanket ban all Muslims outright, but that's because I view it the same was as a store owner saying, "Well, black people are much less educated and more likely to be criminals on average, and I have more than enough applicants, so I'm not going to hire any of them." What he's saying is 100% true, but it's still horribly racist and unacceptable, because it's fundamentally wrong to just blanket discriminate against entire groups in this way. It lumps the Muslims in Toronto together with ISIS and says they're equally as bad. However, not scrutinizing people from the Middle East or Africa at all and giving them the same bar to entry as people from Western Europe is just utter stupidity.

Xeq- I was referring to Trumps plans to force Muslim registration

I wasn't addressing discrimination, I was addressing politics. People (the really really smart ones that take a stage and express how they feel their understanding of events bears any resemblance at all to reality) should have learned by now that their insistence on over-simplifying what defines the expression of the word of "the people" is totally flawed. That's what politics is, and they apply group think filters to understand it, and group speak labels to attack it.

Those "super smart folks" are presently framing the results of the election as "us vs them" because they can't imagine the fact that people think for themselves. The media (where the "super smart" folks have their soapbox) are stoking fear and uncertainty in the nation, and telling folks that "uneducated whites" are the problem. I truly believe they feel it's the truth. It's not truth, it's a promise of an easy out so folks don't actually have to think, they can let a talking head do it for them.

It's not the truth. Every person on the face of this earth is unique. You can't take what makes up a person... the millions of concerns each of us have ... and boil it down to "white" vs "black", "male" vs "female". It's lazy thinking to the extreme, and while they're perfectly welcome to do so, they were proven so totally wrong in doing so. It's doing this nation a disservice to continue doing so, and starting another civil war (which is where this is going if idiots don't STFU) to address imagined wrongs that will be committed sometime in the future will not result in this perfect progressive world where everybody is special and "everything is AWESOME! Everything is cool when you're part of a team".


If the media and political pundits... the folks that have just proven that they're totally freaking clueless... don't stop thinking in terms of group think, "black" and "white", "progressive vs conservative" and don't stop framing every analysis in that same flawed world view, there will be more people hurt. It's not about that, it's all about jobs. It's all about the challenge everyone faces, every day they walk out their door to do what they have to, to put food on their table.


RD thinks polarizing the analysis of communicating the challenges people face is valuable. I think it's lazy, and I don't see value in lazy. Pundits need to work harder to get the real picture, and don't pass off their half baked ideas 140 characters at a time. If you don't, someone will come along and "trump" your 140 characters, and THEN where will you be?

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In time, this too shall pass.

Right. "It's the economy, stupid" isn't the lazy answer, even though it ignores history, studies of how people identify, exit polls, correlations between how people vote and how much strongly they identify by race, and actual statements by the candidate, his staff and his supporters. Sorry, Taskiss, but reality isn't a slogan, and pretending it is is what's lazy (not to mention comforting, since it allows you to avoid unpleasant truths about your fellow Trump voters). Now, do I think it would be a useful strategy for the Dems to spend the next 4 years telling Trump voters they're racists and/or sharing a candidate with racists? No, of course not. But here, between us - yeah, white racial identity and anxiety over changing gender roles was absolutely at play, just as it has been every other time those issues have been on the table in the past. Pretending otherwise is lazy and self-deluding.

It was the girl yelling at the passersby for no apparent reason.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

"It's the economy, stupid" isn't a polarizing position. RD, it was ignoring what the regular person thought that made this historic election what it was.

The most important issues facing the people of this nation transcend race and gender. Defining those issues using race and gender is lazy and, given the freaking overwhelming evidence you just had slapped up side your head, delusional. Your truths aren't. It's not the candidate that spends the most, it's not the candidate that has the support of the strongest party, and every vote counts.

You know, you have to resolve the vast differences between your understanding of reality and the reality that's been thrust upon you. It's no skin off my nose (no matter the color of that skin) if you don't agree with me. The last I'll speak of this is : Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Please tell me more about the refugees we are letting in from these populations, because that's where the concern is. We expect people from any culture to cease practices like genital mutilation and should not allow people to enter that won't abandon these practices and assimilate. Muslims just happen to be the ones with the refugee problem - and the source of the terrorist problem.



The existence of 2 anecdotes indicate that the general rule - "Christians are not practicing honor killings" - holds



There's a relevant section in the New Testament where Jesus puts a stop to this. Notably, however, Jews (who have the OT but not the NT) do not permit honor killings in the state that they run. You know, the prosperous democracy people like shitting on for being the best country in the Middle East.



Hindus and Sikhs are not coming here committing terrorist attacks, and when they do come here they have a highly favorable record of not doing this sort of thing any more - and for that matter, not creating "no go zones" where they can get away with it.



This is a red herring. Modern western secular democracies and republics are what occupy what were explicitly and implicitly Christian nations. Christianity has, over time, given way to secularism, not the other way around - something other religions have done only after seeing it work, or obstinately refusing to. In point of fact, we've done such a good job of this that we're down to picking on nuns, bakeries, and Hobby Lobby. The merits of those examples notwithstanding, Muslims coming here need to demonstrate willingness to buy into that before they're allowed in.

The fact that we had various degrees of religious rule and influence 150 or 1500 years ago in no way obligates us to pretend Islam has evolved as far as Christianity has in that regard. The sole example of a legitimate Muslim democracy - Turkey - is sliding backwards, not forwards.



Do you have any idea how retarded it sounds to put "against sale of alcohol one day a week" on the same level as "castrating homosexuals"? OH GAWD MAH BOOZE!!

The fact is that rejection of these practices is overwhelming among Christians. Muslims, on the other hand, regularly engage in tacit support and approval of terrorism - as in entire governments do it. Saudi Arabia has been quietly funding ISIS. The existence of ISIS alone makes your comparison silly. Christians got done with Crusader states over 600 years ago - and, by the way, Christianity was also the major source of advocacy against slavery, so lets avoid the selective historical memory along with the red herring.



Really? How many terrorist attacks have occurred on US soil perpetrated in the name of Christianity?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence to give a few.... but lets not forget the Klan claims to carry out their crimes in the name of Christianity too. [/quote]

I hate to break this to you, but just because a person commits an anti-abortion attack that does not automatically make it an example of religious terrorism. As for the Klan, I don't even know when the last actual violent act they committed was, and since the 1960s

The same applies to Muslims, of course - there are Muslims who are run-of-the-mill criminals, and the mentally disturbed, like the Orlando nightclub guy who appears to have been a nutcase, and ISIS trying to whore on the credit afterwards, but the fact of the matter is that Muslims have an entire terrorist proto-state, funding from other nation-states that are explicitly theocratic, and have gunned down hundreds of people in single attacks, blown up dozens or hundreds, nearly sunk a U.S. Navy destroyer... and killed 3,000 people in a single attack. Going out and finding some whackaloon shooting a doctor doesn't even start to compare.

Christian "terrorism" incidents are vanishingly rare by comparison and are not receiving the tacit support of "moderates" that are moderate only because they aren't actually wearing the suicide vest themselves.



Good - then you'll be fine with carefully screening all the refugees and letting in those INDIVIDUALS that pass muster.



There isn't any civil right to enter this country. As for "issues people have because of a common characteristic" those issues almost universally do not exist with respect to identity groups. There is no issue that affects all women. There is no issue that affects all blacks. There is no issue that affects all men.



There isn't any such thing as a "false equivalence". That's just leftist for "I don't like that you've pointed this out, so I'll just proclaim it false". Furthermore, identity group politics are not about "helping efficiently"; they're about making massive generalizations for vote harvesting - which is why there's so much screaming if it's done by the Right.

There is no tenet of our democracy that demands letting people in under any circumstances we don't deem to our own advantage.



What do you think the DNC exists for? To get votes. Don't be ridiculous. "My politicians are more righteous than your politicians!" is comical.

It's especially hilarious that you think the Left actually sees any wrongs, either. You've been "solving" the same wrongs for 50 years, and either are making no progress, or won't admit it's been solved already, depending which imaginary issue you're talking about.

In fact, you've done such an awesome job of this that minorities went for the guy you think they're supposed to be scared of in larger numbers than his 2 predecessors. I encourage you to keep repeating this in the next election - I'd really like to have a supermajority in 2018.



Since people have no civil right to come into this country... no. I'm pretty clearly not making this argument.



LOL, that? He hasn't mentioned that in about a year now, and (like his other unworkable ideas such as mass deportations regardless of criminal status and blowing up families of terrorists) he's abandoned it since being brought face to face with the facts. Trump's entire campaign was that he talked like a disgruntled working guy at a bar. He's already moderating and softening on all kinds of things (which he has no choice to if he wants to get anything at all done).

However - if you're talking about immigrants and refugees - all of them are already required to register anyhow. You have to maintain your documents and status. You're panicing over nothing.

Oh, and if you want to claim "no no really he still wants a muslim registry!" - well, if we're not acknowledging change on positions, Hillary Clinton at one time was against same-sex marriage and called black men superpredators.

I guess we really dodged the bullet not electing that racist homophobe, eh?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I've been telling you this for ages and now you (sort of) figure it out. Why am I not surprised?

"White racial identity" and "anxiety over gender roles" have been in play to the degree that the Left has been telling whites and males that everything is their fault, any concerns they have are sexism or racism, utterly refused to address issues such as the DOE's circumvention of due process or child support, and then expected them to vote Democrat anyhow because of unions in industries that are disappearing or already gone, while calling them "deplorables" and "clingers".

Clinton lost counties in the Blue Wall states that Obama carried by 20% or more. People there figured it out. A conventional Republican would, indeed, have had a hard time capturing the Rust Belt states that Trump took. The Democrats have done literally nothing for these people while either calling them racists or sexists, or winking at the everyday leftist doing so, and they went for a guy that is a gigantic middle finger.

You ARE a coastal elite. You're part of the problem. And you STILL don't want to learn. "Gee, we obviously didn't call these people racists and sexists ENOUGH; maybe if we just keep at it, it will work next time!" Yes, I'm sure doubling down will get people to vote for you. Those racists. That's totally why they didn't vote for the woman after voting for a black man twice.

Oh wait, I know! More stars! Yes, get incredibly wealthy Hollywood and sports figures to parade in front of them, stumping for your candidate. Then tell people with meth addictions and no jobs about their "privilege". I bet if Amy Schumer just makes more idiotic jokes, that will bring people in. Bill Maher too. An uninformed comedian with a condescending attitude pretending to be a social commentator is just what you need.

BTW, how do you like my new avatar? I'm quite proud of it!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I like how those folks are going rabid essentiality claiming their vote matters more to the future of this nation than that of the "older white male". Check your privilege indeed!

Who's the real deplorable here?

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In time, this too shall pass.

DE - I don't think I've ever argued that pointing out white identity politics or calling people racist/sexist is good politics. I'm talking here about what the actual reality is, not what the best strategy would be. Of course flattering and manipulating people by telling them what they want to hear is going to generate more support than criticizing them. So yeah, Dems should absolutely go back to telling white men in the Rust Belt how awesome they are if they want to win next time, but that doesn't change the fact that those men went for Trump in part because of a classic pushback against changes in the racial/gender hierarchy.

Dems going back to telling them that isn't going to work very well, because that's what the Republicans that lost to Trump were doing. That didn't work out very well either - these people went to Reagan in the 1980s but Republicans after him were a disappointment. Furthermore, you can't have it both ways - you can't tell white men how awesome they are while continuing to frame everyone else's issues as an adversarial matter - and adversarial is exactly how the left presents these. Even if you (personally) or the more disciplined parts of the left don't intend to do that, at the very least you need to think about the perception and either do something about - or at least understand - the loudmouthed and hostile portion of the left that keeps shouldering its way into the limelight. These people get a ton of attention because they ARE so obnoxious and the press loves it. It generate controversy, viewership, and it allows the reporters to look reasonable by sort of rolling their eyes at the most absurd people, while doing things like letting white people masquerading as blacks have the spotlight.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if they went that way because of pushback (and it wasn't like it was only men in those areas going that way). You (as in the left) has created that pushback by constantly bemoaning the state of minorities and women - and then when those men say "hey, we're in that boat too. how about some help?" the answer is "oh, you just fear the loss of white privilege!" They don't have any. They've got disappearing jobs, meth and opioide-ridden communities, and terrible education. And yet, when one of them gets shot by the police they aren't out there burning down a CVS. They're sitting at the bar, watching BLM do it, and hear some reporter try to convince them that's really ok, and knowing perfectly well that the late-night comedian coming on after them will be making jokes at their expense.

This isn't just for the right - this **** over Bernie Sanders too. A man who got arrested protesting for civil rights was "too white" and represented "the whitest state in the nation." Minorities are wising up to it too. Trump outperformed Romney and McCain with blacks and Hispanics and Asians, and he didn't lose nearly as many white female voters as anyone thought. Imagine if Trump had been polite, concilatory, and without any talk of pussy-grabbing, but taken the same campaign tack?

You'd have been lucky to hold Vermont, Minnesota, New Hampshire and the rest of Maine if that was the case. Vermont elected a Republican governor. This is after the Democrat losses of 2014. The left has been **** told.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Exactly! Doing the same old thing over and over is recognizably insane now. Just like framing this reality in terms that have just been proven to lead to unanticipated results.

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In time, this too shall pass.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the ... y-facebook


Now mean income would be heavily skewed if the ultra rich are averaged with the middle class and I've not verified the source so read with a grain of salt