Resolving the differences between blacks and whites

[gib]

Listen to this interview between Rush Limbaugh and The Breakfast Club (DJ Envy, Angela Yee, and Charlamagne 'tha' God). It was uploaded to youtube on June 1 2020, shortly after the George Floyd death.



What impresses me about it is that you have two parties, both on the extreme ends of the left/right spectrum, able to hold down a civilized and rational conversation without it breaking down into hostility and accusations of racism or white supremacy or whatever (though it came close a few times). It gave me hope that the left and the right, if they're both willing, can sit down and have a rational conversation about their differences, a conversation that makes it easier for one side to understand the other side's point of view, and possibly come to agreements on certain topics.

One of the main gist I got out of this interview was that the black community, or BLM members at least, feel that the American system does not work for them, that when it promises opportunity and a chance for a good life for anyone, blacks (and other races I guess) are the exception. So they feel they have to overthrow the system entirely and build a new one--presumably not a replica of the American system as they say it just doesn't work for blacks.

I just don't see how this makes sense. How can the color of your skin make you so different, that a particular design for a social/legal/political system just doesn't work for you? How is it that in a free market, a white man can setup a business but a black man, solely on account of the color of his skin, cannot? How is it that a white man can be accepted into a prestigious university but a black man, solely on account of the color of his skin, cannot?

Now, I understand that the first response I'm going to get from this is: racism!!! A black man will find it orders of magnitude harder to get into a university because he will be judged, partially if not totally, on the color of his skin. They won't even look at his academic records, his achievements, his aptitudes--as soon as they find out he's black, they'll deem him unqualified.

Well, as much as I doubt this for the vast majority of people (I honestly believe real racism is marginally slim among the population), if its happening is as widespread as most woke and BLM people say, I'd still argue that this isn't an artifact of the American system. I'd chock it up to culture and values, which is usually regional and not everywhere there are white people. The American system is built to allow a whole gamut of cultural trends and values--they come and go throughout America's history, and a whole diversity of them coexist across your nation--the American System isn't itself just a cultural trend or set of values. It is a legal structure and a set of political procedures for how business is done at the federal and state levels. It does not see race or sex or sexual orientation--this was ensured by the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (plus the 19th amendment if you're considering sex)--so long as you are a human being over the age of 18 (or 21 in some states I guess), you are legally owed treatment by the system equal to any other human being over the age of 18 (or 21). What more can the system do? What other laws are needed? I mean, I'm sure BLM and woke people will have a whole list of laws that they'd love to implement, but none that keep the system working in the way most Americans want (i.e. maximizing freedom for all--indiscriminately--as much as reasonably possible).

If there's any reason the American system doesn't work for black people, it isn't because of how the system is designed, it's simply because they're in a shitty situation and some cops (apparently) are racist (I do believe this is a real problem though I have no idea how widespread it is). It's true that the system doesn't have a quick and easy remedy for getting black people out of poverty, crime cycles, low levels of education, or being victims of police brutality (not that this represent all black people, but it's the ones in this situation who are the squeaky wheels), but what system ever did? Any other system the world over and throughout history would most likely make their situation worse (or if they're lucky enough to come out on top with a wholly different system--communism maybe?--it would just be some other group who end up in that kind of sticky situation--and most likely their newly acquired status of luxury and privilege would be short lived... just until the politicians and strong men in power begin their universal suppression of everybody).

This, I say again, is a problem, not with the American System, but with culture, values, and attitudes (most likely regional), which should be changeable with the right messages and information coming from the media. Or... by publicizing interviews like that of Rush and The Breakfast Club. I think if more conservatives and woky leftists were willing to sit down with each other and explain, in rational, reasonable, civilized, peaceful terms what their experiences are, what the world is like from their point of view, and if the other side would agree to acknowledge their experience (which is not the same as acknowledging the truth of their experiences, but an appreciation of them nonetheless), I think we could make miles of headway in this aggression between whites and blacks.

One thing I would like to say on the topic of the American System (not) working for the black community--and this is the crux of this post--is that I don't think it's quite accurate to say that the American System just doesn't work for those who have different amounts of pigment in their skin than whites. Rather, I'd say the American System just wasn't design to handle setting slaves free. The founding fathers never wanted slavery from the beginning but had to compromise with the slave states in order to have a large enough union to fight off the British and establish themselves as a new nation. In fact, they could have fought along side with the slave states under the agreement that they would form separate nations once the British were defeated, but they didn't do that. Why? Because the founding fathers really wanted to abolish slavery all together. Their plan was to incorporate the slave states into the union with the hope that the principles upon which the union stood would slowly chip away at slavery and eventually see it's eradication through. They didn't anticipate how much the slave states depended on slavery to maintain their economy (or at least, nurture the perception that it did). So it took almost a hundred years and a civil war to abolish slavery. But even then, the black community had no reassurance that they would be treated as equals and their race would be respected. The abolition of slavery did not get rid of racism, and the black community had to wait another 100 years before discrimination itself, at least in the job market, was outlawed. The American System, in other words, had no plan for how to handle this. It definitely wasn't designed to deal with situations like this. History tells a story more like a bunch of baffoons trying to come up with patchwork solutions to these problems that work for the day, but not much foresight being invested in how to resolve these problems in the long run.

To put this another way, the history of white Americans and black Americans has always taken disparate routes. They have never been quite aligned in terms of the cultures and values they live under. Black people have their own music, their own art, even (to an extent) their own language. Everyone speaks English of course, but black people have slang and dialects different from whites, some of which most white people don't even understand. Words can even mean different things to black people vs. white people. The N word, for example, compels me (a white dude) to not dare utter it--I have to literally call it the N word--because for a white boy, the N word is an offense--but to a black boy, spoken to another black boy, it means something like "fellow black person" or even "buddy"--a term of endearment. Totally different cultures evolving and reflecting off each other side by side. And the reason is that they didn't start from the same place--at all--whites started out in the Americas as freemen--blacks started as slaves, kidnapped from their homes in Africa.

This is what the American System was not design for--despite it was right there in the beginning--it was not design to deal with two vastly different cultures, with vastly different experiences, living under the same roof--and then suddenly one culture being freed to join, even being welcomed by some, into the other culture. It doesn't quite work that way. Especially without the Civil Rights act being there to protect the former group from the abuses--which will still come--of the latter. It's not nearly as simple as that. (I'm reminded of an analogy told to me by someone--imagine a household in which on member is severely abusing another--and then one day declaring that he's going to stop the abuse and expecting to be great friends from here on in--that's not gonna be possible without working through a looot of animosity and resentment.) It's not a matter of the American System not working for black people, it's a matter of their trajectory through history along side white people. If we (or they) could only manage to control their trajectory enough to steer it in a direction that aligns them more with whites (or *maybe* visa-versa, depending on where that goes), then the prospect of black people working with the system such that it actually improves their lives would not seem like such a desperate pipe dream.

But I fully agree with Rush Limbaugh when he said, when questioned about whether the American System works for blacks or not, "It can." I repeat that it just doesn't make sense to me that the American System, as I understand it, would fail to work for someone just because of the color of their skin. Because of racism, sure. Because of poverty, sure. Because of police brutality, sure. But I've never considered these aspects of "the system". These are cultural trends. Cultural trends, values, and attitudes, which can be changed by those, in large enough numbers, who are devoted to bringing the oppressed and victimized into a state where they can make the system work for them. I would love to convince woke people and the BLM movement that the system can still work for them--we just need discussions like that between The Breakfast Club and Limbaugh, discussions which are heated and emotions flare, but discussions serious enough to maintain civility and reason, enough to make little bits of progress each time. I think if that were to happen--on enough of a widespread level--then we white people could work with black people to make the system work for both of us--maybe with a few modification, or maybe not--but enough to get black people to a state where the experience of working with the system is no different for them than it is for white people. I think this requires white people following in the foot steps of Limbaugh--reaching out to the black community to have discussions, seeing if we can work out something that helps the black community work themselves out of their predicament such that they can start getting the system to work for them.

So that's what we need--more honest and hands-on discussions between whites and blacks--no holding back for PC purposes, no slight of hand attacks because it works to silence your opponent--just brutal, but civilized, honesty, and a commitment to reason and resolution of differences--then, I think, we can make slow, and sometimes painful (let's not sugar coat it), progress towards getting along and fulfilling the American promise. I think blacks and whites are at a point in history where this can happen. As much as the world is filled with racism and division between political factions, I believe that we're at a point where if we're going to resolve our differences at all, it's going to have to be through discussion. We've done everything we can to change the law, the remaining work required to be done being that of discussion between grown men and women. If the problem is really one of regional cultures and sub-cultures, then rational and civilized discussion is all we have. For this, we need more courage and respect, the kind Limbaugh and The Breakfast Club displayed in the interview--courage to have the discussions, respect enough to avoid deterioration into blatant aggression, accusations, and aspersions--and the more we bring these virtues into discussions with blacks and whites, or between any number of races, the more I think we can make progress towards a truly unracist world.

[gib]

Wow, no one wants to touch this one, huh?

[Sculptor]

Wow, no one wants to touch this one, huh?

Probably because you are so full of shit.

[Dan~]

Wow, no one wants to touch this one, huh?

Probably because you are so full of shit.

I consider gib respectable.
And your one like insult has nothing to do with philosophical discourse.

[Sculptor]

Wow, no one wants to touch this one, huh?

Probably because you are so full of shit.

I consider gib respectable.
And your one like insult has nothing to do with philosophical discourse.

There is no philosphy on this thread.

[gib]

I don't expect much from you, sculptor

[MagsJ]

gib said: Wow, no one wants to touch this one, huh?

Probably because you are so full of shit.

I consider gib respectable.
And your one like insult has nothing to do with philosophical discourse.

There is no philosphy on this thread.

Agree!

He never does philosophise much, at all.

He only comes here to sojourn, when he wants to create new content for his blog..

[Mr Reasonable]

gib if im being honest it's just too long.

can you sum it up a bit?

[gib]

gib if im being honest it's just too long.

can you sum it up a bit?

Let's see if I can sum it up in 3 points:

1) We need more discussions like that between Limbaugh and The Breakfast Club, discussions between polar opposites who are committed to reason and civility and finding common ground.

2) It's not that the American system doesn't work for black people (how can the color of your skin make you sooo different that the social, legal, and political systems of America don't work for you?), it's that the system wasn't built to handle a whole population of slaves suddenly set free with no plan on how to integrate them.

3) To put 2) another way, it's not the type of person you are that determines how well you work with the system, but the trajectory your people have taken in the history of the system. From the beginning, whites and blacks have formed not only two different groups with different histories (though obviously enmeshed) but different cultures with different values, and these two cultures have never been fully integrated, often on purpose. The struggles between whites and blacks, which is fraught with racism on both sides, has way more to do with culture and values than it does politics and law. The "system" which supposedly does not work for black people was never designed to regulate and dictate culture and values--in fact, it was designed to allow culture and values to diversify and evolve more than any other nation. For this reason, I think the battle for equality and respect between blacks and whites has to be fought, not in politics or law, but in social relations and media--the only tools that can truly integrate people who differ in terms of their culture and values--and what better way to do this than to have more discussions like that between Limbaugh and The Breakfast Club and to broadcast it for as many people as possible to see.

[Mr Reasonable]

i dont think that rush limbaugh is someone who is acting in good faith to bring society together

[gib]

i dont think that rush limbaugh is someone who is acting in good faith to bring society together

Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I just think televised discussions like this will themselves bring society together.

(And note: no one said this was orchestrated by Limbaugh; you might as well have said "I don't think that The Breakfast Club is acting in good faith to bring society together.")

[Sculptor]

Identity politics is the enemy.
Integration is the key to the future.

[obsrvr524]

If there was a social system that required a mathematical mind, some races would not do as well as others.

It seems that in the US everything that doesn't favor the black genome is cast as "racist" because the blacks don't do as well as the whites in those fields. And to take over the country requires that they do better than whites in all essential fields - so they just insist on a system with only black-favorable requirements (else there will be white supremacy).

Maths, Science, Logic, technology, literature, language, art,... these are all things that whites do better than blacks on average. So all of those things must be removed from society else blacks cannot show competence and authority.

By that reasoning the US is "systemically racist" - because the system requires skills that whites do better than blacks.

[gib]

Identity politics is the enemy.
Integration is the key to the future.

On that, we can agree.

If there was a social system that required a mathematical mind, some races would not do as well as others.

It seems that in the US everything that doesn't favor the black genome is cast as "racist" because the blacks don't do as well as the whites in those fields. And to take over the country requires that they do better than whites in all essential fields - so they just insist on a system with only black-favorable requirements (else there will be white supremacy).

Maths, Science, Logic, technology, literature, language, art,... these are all things that whites do better than blacks on average. So all of those things must be removed from society else blacks cannot show competence and authority.

By that reasoning the US is "systemically racist" - because the system requires skills that whites do better than blacks.

Is this inherent to black people, or is it a result of their up bringing, environment, culture, etc.?

And though I'd agree that the system does require a modicum of basic skills, I wouldn't say much. How to vote, for example, requires some skill at looking up your voting station, being able to drive there if you can't walk, read who's on the ballot, etc. but these are skills a 5 year old can perform (well, maybe not driving). I think what you're talking about applies to the job market or making it through the education system, which I'm not including in the "American system". What I mean by the "American system" is the design the founding father laid down in the Constitution--basically, the laws of the land, the structure of government, and the division of powers--I don't think that discriminates among the races, not to any significant degree anyway.

Of course, in order to enforce diversity and inclusivity, and this term "equity" they're throwing around, in the job market and the education system, you might actually have to overthrow the "American system" (or at least the system at the state level) and implant another that enforces these policies. However, I can't imagine an alternative to the American system that would actually improve the situation of black people. If the left is thinking of communism, it's a lose/lose situation for everybody. Everybody becomes far worse off than they are now. Minor tweaks to the system--for example, specialized social programs providing grants to black people to start businesses or pay for college--wouldn't count as wholescale overhauls of the system, but rather modifications that fall well within the purview of what the system allows--IOW, you can only have programs like these with the system as it stands. So even if genetic differences between the races that hold certain races back from achieving what other races can achieve makes it harder for some races to work with the system than other races, it's still the best system we have.

And I'm not even sure distinguishing between the races in terms of intelligence, competency, drive, etc., makes sense--at least, not if the goal is to show that the system favors certain races over others--I mean, a more relevant point would be to distinguish between people based on intelligence, competency drive, etc. directly, not on race, and then to say the system favors those with higher intelligence, competency, drive, etc., and worry about how to make the system more fair for the less advantaged on those measures; but that leads to a slippery slope of trying to make us all equal on every possible measure that could effect our success in the system.

[obsrvr524]

Is this inherent to black people, or is it a result of their up bringing, environment, culture, etc.?

Every breed of every animal has a different set of talents.

And though I'd agree that the system does require a modicum of basic skills, I wouldn't say much. How to vote, for example, requires some skill at looking up your voting station, being able to drive there if you can't walk, read who's on the ballot, etc. but these are skills a 5 year old can perform (well, maybe not driving). I think what you're talking about applies to the job market or making it through the education system, which I'm not including in the "American system". What I mean by the "American system" is the design the founding father laid down in the Constitution--basically, the laws of the land, the structure of government, and the division of powers--I don't think that discriminates among the races, not to any significant degree anyway.

I think we have to separate what is really going on from the argument. The argument is about what the US system really is. But what is really going on is strictly about how to usurp authority over the system. Racism is merely a tool.

If we want to talk about how the US could resolve its racial issues the discussion would have to be about how to stabilize the US government such that instigating racial division would not work at all to destabilize it. Otherwise racial division will remain instigated until there is only one race and one ruling party left.

Everything else is merely a distraction to maintain the racial division with strawman proposed situations.

As far as how any government can handle a diverse breed is pretty simple. Most nations don't have that as a serious problem. And the US wouldn't either if it wasn't the target of global communism.

• Educate people to their individual need - how hard is that to understand?
• If the welfare state is involved - give as to the individual need.
• Enforce the same laws for all citizens.
• Teach pride in your nation and its efforts.

As they say - "it ain't rocket science" - it's racket science.

[Mad Man P]

Every breed of every animal has a different set of talents.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no sufficiently significant differences between humans, so as to justify classifying them as "breeds"
Most differences between humans that have implications on talent are within the parameters of what random mutation regularly would produce in individuals.
If we start treating such insignificant differences as different "breeds" then parents would often give birth to a different "breed" of child...

If we want to talk about how the US could resolve its racial issues the discussion would have to be about how to stabilize the US government such that instigating racial division would not work at all to destabilize it.

This seems like the wrong level of analysis to me. Any fix that only address one instantiation of tribalism is doomed to face another, soon after.
Tribalism can take many shapes, in your country it just happens to be racial and sexual minorities, in ireland it was religion, in soviet russia it was class, in rwanda it was your ancestry and heritage, etc.
This behavior is older than our species by billions of years... that we be programmed by evolution to engage in this behavior, seems intellectually and scientifically unassailable given what we know currently.
No society has yet been able to guard against this occurrence, merely reduce the frequency of those occurrences and even that success tends to be temporary.

It seems to me the only known remedy is generating a mono-culture... a shared set of values and subsequent behavior in the populace, to reduce the tendency to segregate into subcultures or tribes.
Which in the context of "what can the government do" has frightening implications... governments dictating values to its population is the death of democracy.
But if we're not suggesting we want a government that enforces values, but a culture that produces the government's values... where then is this culture produced?
Religion? how would that be different to government? Should we trust flawed humans with the authority to dictate values to their kin?

How about a procedure?
Everyone be forced to move and integrate into a new environment with new people every so often.. or maybe a few times in their lives.
Something like that might naturally produce a mono-culture... as there would be a real need on an individual level, to adopt and integrate the disparate cultures you come into contact with into one mono-culture.
And since everyone is doing it, the cultures will all eventually integrate and align.
Might something like this work to generate and maintain a mono-culture over time? I suspect it would, but I can't be certain.
Either way this seems like a nightmare to actually perform, as jobs and opportunities quite often would be lost or businesses crippled as a consequence...

I can't easily see a fix, that is both practical and permanent, that addresses the root of the problem, as I understand it.

[Sculptor]

If there was a social system that required a mathematical mind, some races would not do as well as others.

It seems that in the US everything that doesn't favor the black genome is cast as "racist" because the blacks don't do as well as the whites in those fields.

That is not a racial characteristic but a social problem.
When given adequate opportunities blacks can do as well as whites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Aderin-Pocock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson
Here are just two that are much smarter than you.

And to take over the country requires that they do better than whites in all essential fields - so they just insist on a system with only black-favorable requirements (else there will be white supremacy).

Maths, Science, Logic, technology, literature, language, art,... these are all things that whites do better than blacks on average. So all of those things must be removed from society else blacks cannot show competence and authority.

By that reasoning the US is "systemically racist" - because the system requires skills that whites do better than blacks.

[Sculptor]

Most nations don't have that as a serious problem. And the US wouldn't either if it wasn't the target of global communism.

• Educate people to their individual need - how hard is that to understand?
• If the welfare state is involved - give as to the individual need.
• Enforce the same laws for all citizens.
• Teach pride in your nation and its efforts.

As they say - "it ain't rocket science" - it's racket science.

SImply put most people in the US would characterise your points as socialism.
The last on your list national socialism. The last on your list should come automatically were the state to be the provider it could be. Making that a condition of recieving the former in the list is fascism.
THe pride should not be in the "nation", but in its values and what they provide the community.

One of the chiefs horrors of the last few years is national pride in nations that suck. When all you have left when basic respect for citizen rights is thrown away is pig headed nationalism of the Trump kind.

[MagsJ]

_
Differences (of all and any kinds, so not only racial ones) only get resolved if we/they/them/us/you/me/I want them to be.. resolved.

Efficient machines.. how do they operate..?

..and, I thank you.

Salut!

[obsrvr524]

The issue is only that governments and public manipulators have to stop treating individuals as group members - forbid Identity Politics.

Opportunism has been allowed to run rampant in the name of capitalism, socialism, and communism. I imagine if they merely barred opportunism all of the current problems would go away and racism wouldn't be effective against governments. But because that would prevent the opportunity of global authoritarian communism, it isn't going to happen.

Most nations don't have that as a serious problem. And the US wouldn't either if it wasn't the target of global communism.

• Educate people to their individual need - how hard is that to understand?
  
• If the welfare state is involved - give as to the individual need.
  
• Enforce the same laws for all citizens.
  
• Teach pride in your nation and its efforts.

As they say - "it ain't rocket science" - it's racket science.

SImply put most people in the US would characterise your points as socialism.

• Public education has been common for a couple of centuries. But paying attention to the needs of individuals has been sparse and haphazard. Before the communist takeover individual teachers actually cared enough about students to try to meet their individual needs. Now they are merely propaganda agents.
  
• The welfare state is only resisted by capitalist nations because it wasn't being offered to the public with actual individual assessment and needs being addressed - rather it was just a sign-up -- give-away program. The real needs of the individuals - the proper hope, proper education, proper incentives, and proper opportunities - were never addressed. Capitalists rightly disagree with simple-minded give-away programs. Such programs are intentional and used to establish authoritarian communism through the defeat of the populations ability to care for themselves (Protectionism).
  
• Enforcing laws equally across a nation is anti-socialist. Only the USA ever attempted it but didn't manage to keep a cap on socialist-opportunist corruption. The Trump Presidency and the recent US Presidential election exposed the extreme degree of hypocrisy that has saturated the US government. Now their entire Politbureau stands above US laws - now made only for the proletariat.
  
• Teaching pride in the nation is essential to every nation of every type. The US public has been tricked into hating their own nation merely to weaken it so that the recent communist coup could be successful and global communism could have a clear path - forbidding any nation from having national pride (or family pride, self-pride, community pride, or any kind of pride except to the global authority).

[iambiguous]

If there was a social system that required a mathematical mind, some races would not do as well as others.

It seems that in the US everything that doesn't favor the black genome is cast as "racist" because the blacks don't do as well as the whites in those fields. And to take over the country requires that they do better than whites in all essential fields - so they just insist on a system with only black-favorable requirements (else there will be white supremacy).

Maths, Science, Logic, technology, literature, language, art,... these are all things that whites do better than blacks on average. So all of those things must be removed from society else blacks cannot show competence and authority.

By that reasoning the US is "systemically racist" - because the system requires skills that whites do better than blacks.

Then this:

The issue is only that governments and public manipulators have to stop treating individuals as group members - forbid Identity Politics.

Google "are some races superior to others" and you get this:
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp ... gle+Search

Sure, I might be misunderstanding obsrvr524's point, but he seems to be embracing "identity politics" by suggesting that blacks "on average" are as a race inherently inferior to whites. That this is why they do not "on average" acquire the skills necessary to compete with whites in all these fields.

Me? My own political prejudices revolve around the liberal/left wing assumptions about racism. Rooted in dasein. And that the persistence of racism may well be embedded in the biological evolution of a human brain in which the closer you get to the more primitive components of the brain -- the limbic system -- the closer you get to a predisposition to treat those perceived as different from you in a more hostile manner.

But: something that the less primitive components of the brain can change through nurture.

Still, how is it determined once and for all beyond all doubt? It's not like experiments on human beings can be conducted. Taking babies at birth from around the globe of different races and creating two communities where, in one, race is played up while, in the other, it is played down. And then see how the two races fare in accumulating various accomplishments and achievements.

[Sculptor]

The issue is only that governments and public manipulators have to stop treating individuals as group members - forbid Identity Politics.

Opportunism has been allowed to run rampant in the name of capitalism, socialism, and communism. I imagine if they merely barred opportunism all of the current problems would go away and racism wouldn't be effective against governments. But because that would prevent the opportunity of global authoritarian communism, it isn't going to happen.

Most nations don't have that as a serious problem. And the US wouldn't either if it wasn't the target of global communism.

• Educate people to their individual need - how hard is that to understand?
  
• If the welfare state is involved - give as to the individual need.
  
• Enforce the same laws for all citizens.
  
• Teach pride in your nation and its efforts.

As they say - "it ain't rocket science" - it's racket science.

SImply put most people in the US would characterise your points as socialism.

• Public education has been common for a couple of centuries.
  

No. Not as we know it.
Public school were always for the rich until very recently.

But paying attention to the needs of individuals has been sparse and haphazard. Before the communist takeover individual teachers actually cared enough about students to try to meet their individual needs. Now they are merely propaganda agents.

Really - what the fuck are you talking about. Do yourself a favour and get the fuckk off Fox News. You just sound like a moron. You are not stupid, so why poison your mind with bullshit.

The welfare state is only resisted by capitalist nations because it wasn't being offered to the public with actual individual assessment and needs being addressed - rather it was just a sign-up -- give-away program.

The biggest problem with the Welfare system is that it has been deliveried by the rich with little idea about needs. Corrupt business practices have always been hot on the heels of social programs. In effect the rich are just awarding themselves big conracts for housing "projects" in which they fleece the government, and try to make the poor gradful for the rich soending the country's money.
The politician anounces with grime seriousness the aid they are giving the poor, wagging their fingers - and behind closed doors they are laughing all the way to the bank. The poor get the increase in taxes, whilst the rich get the brakes.
Free market for the poor; socialism for the rich. That is the American way.

The real needs of the individuals - the proper hope, proper education, proper incentives, and proper opportunities - were never addressed. Capitalists rightly disagree with simple-minded give-away programs. Such programs are intentional and used to establish authoritarian communism through the defeat of the populations ability to care for themselves (Protectionism).

This has fuck all to do with communism.
Stop making a fool of yourself.

Enforcing laws equally across a nation is anti-socialist. Only the USA ever attempted it but didn't manage to keep a cap on socialist-opportunist corruption. The Trump Presidency and the recent US Presidential election exposed the extreme degree of hypocrisy that has saturated the US government. Now their entire Politbureau stands above US laws - now made only for the proletariat.

Trump exposes the stupidity of the American people. Then he pissed in their faces.

Teaching pride in the nation is essential to every nation of every type. The US public has been tricked into hating their own nation merely to weaken it so that the recent communist coup could be successful and global communism could have a clear path - forbidding any nation from having national pride (or family pride, self-pride, community pride, or any kind of pride except to the global authority).

There is no communist coup, idiot

[gib]

Every breed of every animal has a different set of talents.

There's probably some truth to this, but I'm of the opinion that there are more difference within each race than there are between the races themselves.

I think we have to separate what is really going on from the argument. The argument is about what the US system really is. But what is really going on is strictly about how to usurp authority over the system. Racism is merely a tool.

No doubt, but a tool for whom? I think for those who have experienced real racism, it is real. I think for those who are naive enough to believe the narratives coming out of left wing media, it's a cause worth fighting for, not a tool. But for those who know better, those who are educated and know the statistics--i.e. politicians, instigators, BLM ring leaders, left wing reporters, etc.--it is, to a large extent, a tool.

If we want to talk about how the US could resolve its racial issues the discussion would have to be about how to stabilize the US government such that instigating racial division would not work at all to destabilize it. Otherwise racial division will remain instigated until there is only one race and one ruling party left.

By stabilize, you mean not effected by the issues, the riots, the factionalism, etc.--a government that sticks to what government is supposed to stick to (according to the Constitution) rather than making social and cultural issues into policy. <-- Is that right?

Everything else is merely a distraction to maintain the racial division with strawman proposed situations.

To a large extent, I think that's true.

As far as how any government can handle a diverse breed is pretty simple. Most nations don't have that as a serious problem. Really??? And the US wouldn't either if it wasn't the target of global communism.

I agree with this, but I would add that it is a combination of global communism (China in particular) and the left's willingness to sell out its own country for whatever the Chinese are promising them.

• Educate people to their individual need - how hard is that to understand? <-- yes
• If the welfare state is involved - give as to the individual need. <-- Maybe... welfare works in tricky ways
• Enforce the same laws for all citizens. <-- Absolutely!
• Teach pride in your nation and its efforts. <-- Absolutely!... while at the same time addressing each group's different experiences

As they say - "it ain't rocket science" - it's racket science.

Ah, if it were only that simple.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no sufficiently significant differences between humans, so as to justify classifying them as "breeds"
Most differences between humans that have implications on talent are within the parameters of what random mutation regularly would produce in individuals.
If we start treating such insignificant differences as different "breeds" then parents would often give birth to a different "breed" of child..

IOW, there are more difference within each race than between the races.

This seems like the wrong level of analysis to me. Any fix that only address one instantiation of tribalism is doomed to face another, soon after.
Tribalism can take many shapes, in your country it just happens to be racial and sexual minorities, in ireland it was religion, in soviet russia it was class, in rwanda it was your ancestry and heritage, etc.
This behavior is older than our species by billions of years... that we be programmed by evolution to engage in this behavior, seems intellectually and scientifically unassailable given what we know currently.
No society has yet been able to guard against this occurrence, merely reduce the frequency of those occurrences and even that success tends to be temporary.

From a nationalist perspective, if a nation could manage to get its tribalism to the national level--we are all American, we are all Canadian, whatever--much of the internal strife and conflict between the races would dissolve--but then you inherit the problem of war with other countries. That's when the globalist steps in and tries to raise tribalism even higher--to the global level. The problem with this is that if raising tribalism to the level of the nation is hard enough, how can one manage raising it to the global level--the sheer amount of media effort and propaganda and brainwashing, the geographic and demographic challenges of establishing a unified and consistent message across the entire global, throughout every nation, is staggeringly difficult. Not to mention the human need to find a common enemy. If we're all one happy global village, where is that pent up aggression going to be released. It's times like these when we need an alien invasion.

It seems to me the only known remedy is generating a mono-culture... a shared set of values and subsequent behavior in the populace, to reduce the tendency to segregate into subcultures or tribes.
Which in the context of "what can the government do" has frightening implications... governments dictating values to its population is the death of democracy.
But if we're not suggesting we want a government that enforces values, but a culture that produces the government's values... where then is this culture produced?
Religion? how would that be different to government? Should we trust flawed humans with the authority to dictate values to their kin?

Yes, the problem here is that we need a consistent, uniform movement throughout the population without the drive coming from a centralized source. A centralized source means the movement is serving the values of only that source and its adherents--the rest are merely being pressured or coerced into following. Most of the movements we've seen in history which we would consider "good" or "healthy", those that swept up the vast majority of the population (as opposed to having factions in which one merely overpowered the other--like the civil war), are typically driven by an inspirational idea or event, one that the vast majority of people find easy and tempting to hop on board with.

How about a procedure?
Everyone be forced to move and integrate into a new environment with new people every so often.. or maybe a few times in their lives.
Something like that might naturally produce a mono-culture... as there would be a real need on an individual level, to adopt and integrate the disparate cultures you come into contact with into one mono-culture.
And since everyone is doing it, the cultures will all eventually integrate and align.
Might something like this work to generate and maintain a mono-culture over time? I suspect it would, but I can't be certain.
Either way this seems like a nightmare to actually perform, as jobs and opportunities quite often would be lost or businesses crippled as a consequence...

It would *probably* have the consequences you expect--greater pressure to integrate--but you're talking about population reallocation--which is just another exercise in authoritarian power. It works against individual freedom and, as far as America goes, is unconstitutional.

I can't easily see a fix, that is both practical and permanent, that addresses the root of the problem, as I understand it.

Join the club. The solution I'm proposing--more open and publicly accessible discussions committed to civility, reason, and problem solving--certainly isn't an algorithm for producing peace and harmony between the races (or any group of people), but historically speak, it has proven to be a very effective way of making progress towards this end. So maybe a glorified heuristic if not an algorithm.

That is not a racial characteristic but a social problem.
When given adequate opportunities blacks can do as well as whites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Aderin-Pocock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson
Here are just two that are much smarter than you.

Hate to play Devil's Advocate, Sculptor, but your sample size is two. You're gonna need a lot more than that to prove that it's all about opportunities and social problems. Statistically, if blacks were inferior to whites on intelligence (or some other measure essential to success in the American system), you'd still have to expect a handful of success cases. Though I really do hope that you're right.

SImply put most people in the US would characterise your points as socialism. Only if it were the government enforcing it. Though I agree it sounds like Marxism (if that's what you meant)--from each according to his ability, to each according to his need
The last on your list national socialism. The last on your list should come automatically were the state to be the provider it could be. Making that a condition of recieving the former in the list is fascism. I'm still a bit fuzzy on what "fascism" means. I guess nationalism *could* be a form of fascism but it would have to come with a view that other nations are inferior or of lesser importance or morally beneath one's own. Fascism in general, from what I understand, is the view that your group (however you define "group") is superior, or better, than other groups, which can come with dangerous prejudices and abuses. But I do agree that you can't enforce national pride... it must come naturally.
THe pride should not be in the "nation", but in its values and what they provide the community.

In most cases, that condition is met. In the American case, pride in being American is, to most people at least, pride in being a citizen of the greatest country the world has ever seen because of what it has accomplished in trying to live up to its values (at least in its glory days... today, it is crumbling like Rome).

One of the chiefs horrors of the last few years is national pride in nations that suck. When all you have left when basic respect for citizen rights is thrown away is pig headed nationalism of the Trump kind.

I wouldn't be too quick to judge what instances of nationalism are pig headed and which are not. It all depends on if the nationalist understands why his nation is so great--back to the point about appreciating the values rather than nationalism for its own sake. I don't know Trump, but I think he understands the principles on which the US was founded, and is a nationalism for that reason. Yes, the US sucks in its current condition, and I'll agree that anyone at this point boasting that American is (today) the greatest country there is is living in a bubble, and is holding onto a catch phrase of a sound bite. Even "Make American Great Again" at least admits that at some point it ceased to be great.

I really do think America was once great, and in principle can be great again. My hope is on the side of resurrecting that greatness (without the racism).

Differences (of all and any kinds, so not only racial ones) only get resolved if we/they/them/us/you/me/I want them to be.. resolved.

And that's what makes the situation in the US so bleak. It seems no one wants to resolve the difference, but to go to war--especially the left. In fact, I'm pretty sure they already see themselves as at war, and so the time for civility, reason, and problem solving is passed. This is an extremely difficult mindset to reverse but I'm not convinced it can't happen. The podcast above would suggest some can still be open to it.

The issue is only that governments and public manipulators have to stop treating individuals as group members - forbid Identity Politics.

Agreed big time!

Opportunism has been allowed to run rampant in the name of capitalism, socialism, and communism. I imagine if they merely barred opportunism all of the current problems would go away and racism wouldn't be effective against governments. But because that would prevent the opportunity of global authoritarian communism, it isn't going to happen.

First, what does opportunism mean to you? Second, how would opportunism be effectively barred?

• Public education has been common for a couple of centuries. But paying attention to the needs of individuals has been sparse and haphazard. Before the communist takeover individual teachers actually cared enough about students to try to meet their individual needs. Now they are merely propaganda agents.
  
  This would require more teachers and smaller class room sizes. Also, there was a stage before the usurping of the education system by critical race theory, and that was the absolutely destructive mismanagement of the education system from the feds. I don't know when it started but it was definitely in full swing by the 90s. Education absolutely deteriorated, and now we are seeing the results.
  
• The welfare state is only resisted by capitalist nations because it wasn't being offered to the public with actual individual assessment and needs being addressed - rather it was just a sign-up -- give-away program Which is what happens when it's administered at the federal level. The real needs of the individuals - the proper hope, proper education, proper incentives, and proper opportunities - were never addressed. Capitalists rightly disagree with simple-minded give-away programs. Such programs are intentional and used to establish authoritarian communism through the defeat of the populations ability to care for themselves (Protectionism).
  
  Like I said above, it depends on a person's experience and education level--but given that there's no way in hell those orchestrating the welfare state at the federal level aren't educated in the terrible track record and futility of welfare states to alleviate the need for welfare, I'd say you're probably right at the level of those orchestrating the whole thing.
  
• Enforcing laws equally across a nation is anti-socialist. I agree, but I think Sculptor was addressing your first two points only. Only the USA ever attempted it but didn't manage to keep a cap on socialist-opportunist corruption. The Trump Presidency and the recent US Presidential election exposed the extreme degree of hypocrisy that has saturated the US government. Now their entire Politbureau stands above US laws - now made only for the proletariat.
  
  Seems like it.
  
  The assumption is that if you have a left leaning government pitted against a right leaning government, they will play a game of tug-a-war through the years--sometimes pulling the nation to the left, sometimes to the right, but overall will stay, on average, relatively centered. But the past century has proven that the left has surreptitious ways of slowly chipping away at the system and making small incremental steps towards the left despite the right's attempt to pull back. I believe this comes from American spies, during the Cold War, not only learning Soviet secrets, but learning Soviet methods of governing and controlling the masses.
  
• Teaching pride in the nation is essential to every nation of every type. The US public has been tricked into hating their own nation merely to weaken it so that the recent communist coup could be successful and global communism could have a clear path - forbidding any nation from having national pride (or family pride, self-pride, community pride, or any kind of pride except to the global authority).

Agreed. Agreed. Agreed.

It is sooo orchestrated it's not funny.

Sculptor's point seemed to be you cannot implement national pride without first serving and meeting values worth having pride over, and then national pride should just come naturally. This doesn't mean it cannot be taught in school, but it must be backed by the reasons we should be proud... and going forward, I think we're going to have to learn to not gloss over the experience of those who have yet to benefit from the realization of these values.

Sure, I might be misunderstanding obsrvr524's point, but he seems to be embracing "identity politics" by suggesting that blacks "on average" are as a race inherently inferior to whites. That this is why they do not "on average" acquire the skills necessary to compete with whites in all these fields.

Me? My own political prejudices revolve around the liberal/left wing assumptions about racism. Rooted in dasein. And that the persistence of racism may well be embedded in the biological evolution of a human brain in which the closer you get to the more primitive components of the brain -- the limbic system -- the closer you get to a predisposition to treat those perceived as different from you in a more hostile manner.

But: something that the less primitive components of the brain can change through nurture.

Still, how is it determined once and for all beyond all doubt? It's not like experiments on human beings can be conducted. Taking babies at birth from around the globe of different races and creating two communities where, in one, race is played up while, in the other, it is played down. And then see how the two races fare in accumulating various accomplishments and achievements.

But if we live in a wholly deterministic universe, we could not have not refrained from conducting such experiments!

Public school were always for the rich until very recently.

Huh? Where did poor people go for school?

But paying attention to the needs of individuals has been sparse and haphazard. Before the communist takeover individual teachers actually cared enough about students to try to meet their individual needs. Now they are merely propaganda agents.

Really - what the fuck are you talking about. Critical Race Theory Do yourself a favour and get the fuckk off Fox News. You just sound like a moron. You are not stupid, so why poison your mind with bullshit.

I agree. NTD News is where it's at (unfortunately, they report the same thing).

The biggest problem with the Welfare system is that it has been deliveried by the rich with little idea about needs. Corrupt business practices have always been hot on the heels of social programs. In effect the rich are just awarding themselves big conracts for housing "projects" in which they fleece the government, and try to make the poor gradful for the rich soending the country's money.
The politician anounces with grime seriousness the aid they are giving the poor, wagging their fingers - and behind closed doors they are laughing all the way to the bank. The poor get the increase in taxes, whilst the rich get the brakes.
Free market for the poor; socialism for the rich. That is the American way.

The biggest problem with the welfare system is that it usually blocks any incentive to get out of welfare at a financial level. What I mean is that, suppose you had a family who was receiving $2,000/month from welfare. To have any incentive to go out and get a job and raise one's self and one's family above the poverty line, one need to be ensured that doing so would earn one and one's family more than $2,000. But in many cases, that's not what happens. Suppose the father of this family who receives welfare checks of $2,000 every month goes out and gets a job. Suppose this job earns him $1,500 a month. This can often mean no more welfare checks. Doesn't matter if it's less than the $2,000 welfare checks. He has a job. Therefore, the welfare ends. So he loses $500. <-- No incentive. No reason to get one's self out of welfare. <-- That's, at least, one condition that I've heard of that some on welfare find themselves in.

But at least you're aware that the government and big business aren't your friend. Like I said to obsrvr, there's no way in hell the Democrats aren't aware of the futility of the welfare system to get people out of poverty--sustain their existence so they don't die, maybe, but definitely has not solved the problem of poverty at any point in the past. So I'm convinced it's a strategy to convince their voter base that they need them, to keep them dangling on Kamala's rope in fear of falling to their death.

The real needs of the individuals - the proper hope, proper education, proper incentives, and proper opportunities - were never addressed. Capitalists rightly disagree with simple-minded give-away programs. Such programs are intentional and used to establish authoritarian communism through the defeat of the populations ability to care for themselves (Protectionism).

This has fuck all to do with communism.

Oh? It would seem to be aligned with the communist objective. I'll grant that obsrvr is a bit hyperbolic and speaking more from disdain than reason (if you're making that argument), but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he were right.

Trump exposes the stupidity of the American people. Then he pissed in their faces.

Care to substantiate that with examples?

There is no communist coup, idiot

Care to substantiate that with examples?

[gib]

Throughout this discussion, I've come to realize that the glorification of America is matched by an equal demonization. Everyone is aware of America's closet skeletons (which aren't really in the closet but are glossed over according to many)--racism and slavery; America began as a bell tole of freedom and the promise of prosperity. But I wonder if the slaves, who were there at the beginning just as much as Madison, Jefferson, etc., would have given it just as lofty and glorious description. In fact, I would think they would have given America exactly the opposite description: a bell tole of despair and misery.

Now, I'm not certain how many slaves there were compared to freedmen, but I'm sure their numbers were significant enough to say a huge swath of Americans (if we can call them that) did NOT see America as such a great and wonderful nation, the product of enlightenment thought. They saw it as eternal hell.

For this reason, I challenge the view that America is numero uno in the world--at least at it's inception. I get that it marks the beginning of something great--at least in potential--but I challenge the view that it started that way. Sure, millions of white British subjects celebrated the day the US declared its independence, and more so when it won the war, but we are often focused only on the point of view of the (ex-)British subjects. From the slaves' point of view, it must have seemed like the death tole of their freedom, the final nail in their coffin of slavery. What else could represent the exact opposite of freedom?

So based on this, I find it hard to see the birth of America as the lighting of the torch of freedom, but as its extinguishing at the same time (mind you, if the British had won, the slaves wouldn't have been any more free). Isn't that something? It's lighting and extinguishing at the same time. The truth is, America has always been a yin-and-yang nation--good and evil in a perpetual battles--(not that blacks represent evil but enslavement); the birth of America was not a signal of freedom finally come to reign, but a battleground on which the fight for freedom would be waged--each contender--good and evil--equally fierce and voracious--without any certitude about who would win.

I have come to think of America as the world's stage upon which good and evil are fighting their final battle, and in today's world, that fight seems to be embodied by the conflict between whites and black (again, not that these races themselves represent good and evil, but the principles of freedom and slavery)--not surprisingly because these represent the greatest division the US began with, the greatest rivalry between any two groups the nation ever possessed. In short, I don't see America as something great, but a yin-and-yang of greatness and evil that has yet to be resolved.

There is almost a religious connotation to this view, a harkening to a kind of Armageddon or Apocalypses--in the sense that it is the final stage on which good and evil will be fought--and I wonder if the founding fathers saw it this way.

Jesus and the constitution.jpg (52.03 KiB) Viewed 1963 times

They were, after all, children of the enlightenment, a period named after the process of living in a dream and suddenly waking up to reality. Did they see themselves as performing the work of God? As the agents through which Heaven would finally be established on Earth? The battle against the British being a kind of Armageddon or Apocalypses they had to fight through?

If so, then the slave community must have experienced it as precisely the opposite--as hell on Earth--and the signing of the declaration of independence and the subsequent victory ending the American Revolution the death knell of hope.

In other words, the birth of America does not represent the birth of freedom, but a balance of freedom and slavery, the setting of the stage for the battle between the two, and is to this day fought.

America faces a terrible and most fierce demon, the existence of which the black community is deafeningly pointing out. This battle isn't over. America is not yet established. The demon must be slain. America must fulfill its promise, to resolve this yin-and-yang once and for all. Is it in God's hands or man's?

[Mad Man P]

From a nationalist perspective, if a nation could manage to get its tribalism to the national level--we are all American, we are all Canadian, whatever--much of the internal strife and conflict between the races would dissolve--but then you inherit the problem of war with other countries. That's when the globalist steps in and tries to raise tribalism even higher--to the global level. The problem with this is that if raising tribalism to the level of the nation is hard enough, how can one manage raising it to the global level--the sheer amount of media effort and propaganda and brainwashing, the geographic and demographic challenges of establishing a unified and consistent message across the entire global, throughout every nation, is staggeringly difficult. Not to mention the human need to find a common enemy. If we're all one happy global village, where is that pent up aggression going to be released. It's times like these when we need an alien invasion.

I don't have the answers... another compounding problem is that in times of peace and prosperity we seek meaning and challenges in ever more trivial matters
As the hard problems get solved we get invested to the point of madness in the smaller more trivial problems and with no less emotional fervor...
When someone mispronouncing your name can be given the same emotional weight and significance as when someone punches you in the face it tempts the thought that some hardships needs to be endured to generate any kind of lasting peace between flawed human beings... if not to give us a common enemy, than at least to grant an appreciation for the peace we might yet have.

It would *probably* have the consequences you expect--greater pressure to integrate--but you're talking about population reallocation--which is just another exercise in authoritarian power. It works against individual freedom and, as far as America goes, is unconstitutional.

I was thinking incentives rather than force being applied to generate this process but It hardly matters anyway...
I suspect the cost of doing so, by whatever means, would be ruinous all the same... can't have a cure that is as bad if not worse than the disease.

The solution I'm proposing--more open and publicly accessible discussions committed to civility, reason, and problem solving.

That sounds very reasonable to me, but it isn't a solution. This presupposes there exists some solidarity between the people sitting down to discuss.
It doesn't work when people choose to segregate into tribes... if they don't want to sit down with you... how will you make them?
That's what needs solving... and the question itself demands the answer be manipulative of people's free choice as free choice is what landed us here in the first place.

So if it has to be manipulation... I rather it be by a process or circumstance rather than by anyone's design.
Alternatively we keep talking to people who do not want to talk to us, hoping they choose to do so eventually...
But often it takes a war to make people long for peace... I'd rather it not come to that.
Perhaps another process where we engineer a period of controlled hardship, might generate a populace capable of appreciating peace and cooperation.

We are far removed from the environment our species was born to... I worry that our problems are made intractable because we don't want many of the things we need.