Trump's America

[zoogs]

We're not talking about two families. We're talking about race.

 

Your argument appears to be that Asian-Americans are more respected because they justly earned it for their race. I'm saying there is nothing just about respect disparity based on race.

 

If I'm trying too hard, you're trying not hard enough to see past a costly narrative of Asian-Americans as Tiger Moms and Confucian acolytes.

[Moiraine]

You're trying too hard.

 

If you have two families of the exact same race (no matter what that race is) and one family values education and hard work and the other one doesn't, one is going to get more respect than the other.

 

Kind of goes back to the old saying of ....respect is earned.

 

This isn't about 2 families of random race

 

What your two combined posts are saying is Asian Americans have a higher tendency of valuing education and hard work than other minorities.

 

No one has to try to get that.

 

 

I don't know if you read the full article, and I don't blame you if you didn't because I rarely read full articles someone posts, but here's a very good point from it:

 

 

In 1980, for instance, even Asian high school dropouts were earning about as much as white high school dropouts, and vastly more than black high school dropouts. This dramatic shift had nothing to do with Asians accruing more education. Instead, Hilger points to the slow dismantling of discriminatory institutions after World War II, and the softening of racist prejudices.

 

That’s the same the explanation advanced by economists Harriet Orcutt Duleep and Seth Sanders, who found that in the second half of the 20th century, Asian Americans not only started to work in more lucrative industries, but also started to get paid more for the same kind of work.

[BigRedBuster]

I used the two families example purposely to take race out of it.

 

Let me ask you this, on average as a huge generalization, do you think education is stressed more in the Asian communities or the black communities in the US?

 

And please....don't take my comments as meaning racism isn't a part of it. What I'm getting at is even if that racism wasn't there, Asian families in average stress education and the characteristics that help gain respect in society.

 

Now, we can talk all day about why those aren't stressed in other minority groups and how racism has added to those problems and we would probably agree on many things.

 

Let me turn this around another way by telling you of a conversation I had with a friend. We were talking about the Hispanic community in our area. We both commented on how we have do much more respect for them then one heck of a lot of the white people in our area.

 

The Hispanic families here stress work ethic, respect, education, family values....etc. their kids are almost always extremely respectful and very seldom ever are in trouble. Meanwhile there is one heck of a lot of white people that when you see them and are around them, you wonder how the hell they function from day to day.

 

Now, this is no different than what I'm saying about Asians in general compared to other minorities. Heck I would even say the same thing about them compared to a lot of the white people around here.

 

This topic gets blown out of proportion because everyone instantly jumps at "you're being racist against back people "

 

It's very difficult to have an honest conversation about it because of that.

[Moiraine]

Zoogs and I were responding to your words, and you're discussing the exact same thing we said you were saying. So our interpretations were not incorrect.

 

 

To the question of whether Asians work harder on education - it's not really relevant what they do currently. What is relevant is how it was before Asians began to see improvements in income and why/if that differed from other minorities. Wherever that fork was is what's important. According to the studies in the article, it was more related to how Asians were treated. . I'm no expert in this but I tend to assume things are about equal in this. I don't think there's some inherent thing wrong with Blacks or Black culture that causes them to remain n poverty in higher numbers. Not saying you do but it's related to this topic.

 

On an unrelated note, you should clear out your pm inbox.

[zoogs]

Let me just walk back to where this started: the "Asian model minority" narrative has been used historically as a cudgel against other minorities.

 

It's important to recognize what is coded into the tropes we often repeat. Yes, just as some people will say "Look at those practitioners of Confucious" while regarding Hispanics as crime-prone lowlifes, so too will people hold up "Hispanic family values" in order to say, in not as many words, "Blacks are lazy and don't care about education."

 

As for Asian families stressing education, we're talking about a wave of high-skill immigrants (i.e, postgraduate STEM work from the already top achievers) and their children. Higher education, particularly the STEM, this is path that has been open. These are also fairly narrow parameters.

 

Here's the worry. I don't think it would be entirely crazy to think that continuing to remain inside the nonthreatening, positively self-selecting box of Ancient Philosophies of the Orient who Stay Quiet and Get Science Degrees is the only thing that is keeping much more visceral anti-Asian sentiment from bubbling to the top. Racism is indiscriminate, ultimately. We get nowhere without acknowledging it head on.

[QMany]

[NM11046]

[zoogs]

Even Angela Merkel, bulwark of Western liberalism in Germany, has made a break for the hard right in proposing a burqa bans in defense of German society.

 

It's hard to believe, given her past efforts, truly means this. But she has an election to consider in 2017, and she might lose it anyway. Even if she doesn't, I view such a compromise in rhetoric with the strongest of reservations. If Merkel & the far right are indistinguishable on the Muslim question, I expect she will lose to a colorful outsider.

 

No, I think the only defense against this is an even stronger and more determined affirmation of the real Western values -- those of freedom, tolerance, and diversity. We must find the most effective messengers, as it has become plain that this is not a message easy to disseminate. But we cannot abandon it and allow ourselves to be transformed in favor of party victories. Parties, as we know, have a way of changing their nature beyond recognition.

[Danny Bateman]

Wow, that's really disappointing to hear about Merkel. She was the most powerful bastion defending civil liberties against the onslaught of far-right anti-immigrant fury in Europe right now. Disappointing to see she too has fallen.

 

Ahhh well. As you said, it's easy to see how and why other forces have forced her hand on this. A hopeful progressive would have to hope she's just doing this because the electorate demands it and she doesn't intend to follow through. Merkel would be far, far superior for civil liberties than whatever far-right populist that comes along to challenge her. Even then, people could say she just lied about her platform.

 

Politics can elicit such an apathy from people. It's easy to see how people get sucked into the "they're all the same" vortex.

[MLB 51]

Even Angela Merkel, bulwark of Western liberalism in Germany, has made a break for the hard right in proposing a burqa bans in defense of German society.

 

It's hard to believe, given her past efforts, truly means this. But she has an election to consider in 2017, and she might lose it anyway. Even if she doesn't, I view such a compromise in rhetoric with the strongest of reservations. If Merkel & the far right are indistinguishable on the Muslim question, I expect she will lose to a colorful outsider.

 

No, I think the only defense against this is an even stronger and more determined affirmation of the real Western values -- those of freedom, tolerance, and diversity. We must find the most effective messengers, as it has become plain that this is not a message easy to disseminate. But we cannot abandon it and allow ourselves to be transformed in favor of party victories. Parties, as we know, have a way of changing their nature beyond recognition.

She could be pandering for votes. Her party keeps losing seats, and the German people are pretty much turning on the Government. It's kind of reflection of what happened here.

[Making Chimichangas]

I admit I have not read every single post within this thread. However, "Trump's America":

 

The amount of outright racism, bigotry, hatred, and utter contempt most Trump supporters have for people who aren't: straight, white, christian is terrifying.

 

The fact that Trump was able to run for the Presidency, on a platform of hatred, intolerance, bigotry, and misogyny is scary enough on its own. Then, when you consider that 64% of white men and 55% of white women (if exit polling data is to be believed) heard that message, and still voted for him, it becomes even scarier.

 

In a recent tweet, Trump suggested that anyone burning the American flag should either have their citizenship revoked or be put in jail. Stop and think about that for a moment: Trump isn't even in office yet, and he already wants to violate the Constitution of this country.

 

Not only that, there are reports that he won't divest his business interests, which is also a violation of the US Constitution.

 

I am a military veteran. I have a combat tour of Iraq on my service record. I am also part of the LBGTQIA segment of the population. The type of "America" that Trump and his supporters want, is NOT my America. In my America, there is room for everyone.

 

In summary, we as Americans are entering a very tenuous time where all the freedom and liberty so many people claim to advocate for, is slowly slipping through our hands.

 

We are truly on the brink of becoming a white-only, fascist, neo-nazi dictatorship.

 

I took an oath to defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Make no mistake, Trump and the utter monsters he's assembling in his cabinet represent the clearest, and most direct threat, to our freedom we have ever seen.

 

I will stand, in open defiance, to Trump and his cabinet of neo-nazi, pseudo-christian, bigoted, extremists.

[zoogs]

New Yorker: Conservative thinkers and Trump

 

Before the election, Trump was denounced by prominent conservative voices. Where has that gone? And what does this mean?

 

Since the election, though, few, if any, blog posts or articles have appeared in the main conservative outlets straightforwardly arguing, conceding, or lamenting that the election of this unfit demagogue is a bad thing. This man they’d execrated and denounced had shocked the world—not just by being his shocking self but by winning; nobody expected him to win!—and yet from them this evoked no reaction. No articles about the Caesarist threat. No articles about a Trump-defiled common culture. No articles about how our ship of state will soon have at its helm the notorious Captain Id. With everyone else flung into various states of surprise and alarm, the conservative magazines went meta. They reacted to other people’s reactions, mainly those of “the left.” If you read National Review in the days after the election, you’d have thought that the big news of the week wasn’t the world-jolting victory of a candidate whom the magazine had itself denounced as “a menace,” a man so foul that it would not endorse him against Hillary freakin’ Clinton, but that liberals were upset enough about this outcome to do some post-election protesting.(...)

 

The communal solidarity of conservatives is felt as essential in a world where all the great cultural forces (the media, the universities, Hollywood, history itself) are arrayed against them, and so intracommunal conflict, when it happens, is elaborately ritualized. The more serious the dissent, the more it comes out as a sort of esoteric chumminess, with, when possible, reassuring gestures to the permanent terms of membership— which is to say the defining enemies, which is to say the left.

[NM11046]

Thanks for your service Chimichangas - I couldn't agree with you more - on every point.

 

I am so disappointed in my fellow americans, I seriously didn't think there was any way that the majority of people would overlook his inexcusable offenses and characteristics. I spend a portion of my day looking at the people around me and wonder who among them is aligned to the hatred and vitriol that Trump spouted. That the guy in front of me at Starbucks, or my customers may not feel that I as a woman am equal or worth respect, that my gay and lesbian and trans friends are not being looked at a people (and on and on and on).

 

I have to remind myself every day that I am surrounded by MANY people who feel the same way as you & I do. That this election has been a rallying cry for all of us to get more involved and to not just count voting once every four years as our civic obligation. We must speak out, protect each other - we are stronger together, and good will overcome bad. I think with each cabinet nomination and tweet his followers are starting to see what many of us feared all along.

[zoogs]

A majority of people didn't.

 

Not even a plurality.

[Making Chimichangas]

A majority of people didn't.

 

Not even a plurality.

That is true. However, my fear is that if people start getting carted off to jail, or they have their citizenship revoked for speaking out against Trump...

 

Those that voted for him, and his silent supporters, won't care because it'll be the people they hate: immigrants, non-whites, non-christians, gays/queers/trans/non-binary, etc.

 

Now, will anything like that happen, in reality? I hope not, but I don't know. And, given how things are progressing, with the monsters he is placing in power at the highest levels of power within our government, it wouldn't surprise me.

 

There may be a time in the very near future where America has a 2nd civil war. I am not advocating for anything like that, I hope that can be avoided, but make no mistake...I can and will fight.