US Politics: Presidential Harris-ment!

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Conservatives love being white so at least they don’t fake being something else. And at least with conservatives they don’t keep using indigenous people for woke points and then not actually doing anything to help indigenous people. I vote for Democrats most races for other reasons, but as an indigenous person I do not find them at all interested in solving issues surrounding indigenous poverty, indigenous sovereignty, MMIW, police brutality against indigenous people, treaty violations. They expect our support and that we will allow them photo ops with tribal members in traditional regalia, but they are not helping when they get power.

Oh, you mean indigenous issues weren't solved by assigning proportionally negligible tracts of American land as self-governing reservations and letting casinos be built on them? How strange that these measures didn't fix every bad thing that happened after Columbus showed up.

[Fury Resurrected]

Also those DNA tests are absolute trash for Indigenous North American ancestry because indigenous people do not want to take them to give a reliable baseline because blood quantum has been a whole miserable thing for us. It also is something that isn’t really in line with how indigenous people view how being indigenous works culturally and brings up the whole rape during colonization issue. So it is not very accurate anyway, even if a DNA test as license to say you are indigenous was a legitimate idea.

[Fury Resurrected]

1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Oh, you mean indigenous issues weren't solved by assigning proportionally negligible tracts of American land as self-governing reservations and letting casinos be built on them? How strange that these measures didn't fix every bad thing that happened after Columbus showed up.

You forgot the air quotes around self governing. Tribal police can only prosecute white offenders for misdemeanors. Felonies that are not perpetrated by tribal members have to be taken up by the state or feds and they just.....don’t do it.

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Also those DNA tests are absolute trash for Indigenous North American ancestry because indigenous people do not want to take them to give a reliable baseline because blood quantum has been a whole miserable thing for us. It also is something that isn’t really in line with how indigenous people view how being indigenous works culturally and brings up the whole rape during colonization issue. So it is not very accurate anyway, even if a DNA test as license to say you are indigenous was a legitimate idea.

That isn't fully true. The datasets they used for Warren's test, and commonly used for other ancestry tests, is indeed devoid of many American Native people's genetic markers. However, those sets so include South and Central American Native people's markers because they're publicly available datasets. 

I don't think the validity of the DNA test needs to be questioned to question her decision to take it, to release it, to check Native American in any form in the 80s and 90s. The validity of the rest doesn't in any way alter the invalidity of those actions. 

All the rest showed is her family stories have some truth. That really doesn't change the rest. 

[Lollygag]

The Tea Party was created by the Koch brothers, tobacco and the fossil fuel industries.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/study-confirms-tea-party-_b_2663125

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A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

It's actually a similar method that the Saudis used with Wahhabism and unfortunately it's looking to be headed to a similar result.

https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-wahhabism-in-saudi-arabia-36693

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What is Wahhabism?

Wahhabism is an Arabian form of Salafism, the movement within Islam aimed at its “purification” and the return to the Islam of the Prophet Mohammed and the three successive generations of followers.

...

From roughly the 1950s on, the Wahhabi ulama (Islamic scholars) were increasingly co-opted by the house of al-Saud to provide religious legitimacy as it tightened its grip on power against tribal rivals and consolidated Saudi Arabian nationalism (as opposed to Nasserite pan-Arabism).

The process of legitimisation included Wahhabi policing of the Sharia-based legal system and education in schools and universities (a quarter of Saudi degrees are in Islamic theology). Wahabbism also dictated everyday moral behaviour, including dress codes, segregation and subordination for women. The severity of the rules helped establish the image of Saudi Arabia as the citadel of Islamic purity. This was reinforced by the existence of the Islamic sacred cities of Mecca and Medina on its territory.

...

The Saudi paradox

At the same time, Islamic social puritanism existed alongside the increasingly corrupt behaviour of the ruling Sudairi clan and extended royal family (who number, according to some estimates, up to 20,000 people). This was made possible by the burgeoning oil trade with the West from the 1970s onwards.

The corruption engendered resentment toward the regime among some Saudi Salafis (neo-Wahabbis), particularly wealthy and educated younger people – including Osama bin Laden. A government decision to allow a large American military presence in the country in pursuit of the Gulf War in 1991 only aggravated the tension.

The basic idea is that a very emotional and radical population is easier to control than a cool-headed, objective and rational one, especially when you've planted some of their triggers. The problem is, it often eventually grows its own agenda and crosses over into something that's uncontrollable and ends up threatening its creators. Frankenstein basically. We're seeing this now with Trumpism and QAnon taking over the Republicans and they've trapped themselves into the position of having to spread the radicalization in the attempt to hold onto power. The far left shouldn't think they'll be the exception if they decide to try it.

On the radicalization/Frankensteining of the population, it's explained in this article that Saudi Arabia's use of Wahhabism for government control eventually spawned not just Bin Laden, but was the "fountainhead" of the terrorist movement. We now have Boogaloo bois.

The purification, one way mentality and return to the past method seen in Wahhabism is easy to see in the article below. There's little in the Jesus parts of the Bible to support their positions, but it completely dominates their lives all the same which raises the question as to just where this all came from.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/us/evangelicals-trump-christianity.html

 

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, Fury Resurrected said:

And the Rachel Dolezal comparison is important because EVERYONE understands its fucked up when a white person pretends to be black and almost nobody understands it is fucked up when white people pretend to be indigenous even though this is a pervasive problem and has been used historically to rob indigenous people of culture, of wealth, and even to straight up murder them (you can read Killers of the Flower Moon for more info on this).

No. I think that it weakens the point substantially when you compare her to Dolezal because what she did was substantially different. Warren did not claim immediate parentage she knowingly did not have. She didn't alter her skin color and make fake claims of facing racially motivated violence. 

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And that they can check it on college applications to up their chances of acceptance and scholarship money. That they can be a member of Congress and a presidential candidate and use that as part of their story to gain votes. 

She didn't do any of this, though. She didn't bring up her Native ancestry during the 2012 election at all. That was oppo research, and as far as I'm aware, she's never used the claim in a political situation except as a defensive. Correct me if I'm wrong on that last part, but I've never heard her say her ancestry made her more qualified to get anyone's votes or a better representative of anyone's interests in Congress or for the Presidency. 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Fury Resurrected said:

You forgot the air quotes around self governing. Tribal police can only prosecute white offenders for misdemeanors. Felonies that are not perpetrated by tribal members have to be taken up by the state or feds and they just.....don’t do it.

I didn't know this, but I am neither shocked nor surprised, just depressingly disappointed.

[Fury Resurrected]

27 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

No. I think that it weakens the point substantially when you compare her to Dolezal because what she did was substantially different. Warren did not claim immediate parentage she knowingly did not have. She didn't alter her skin color and make fake claims of facing racially motivated violence. 

She didn't do any of this, though. She didn't bring up her Native ancestry during the 2012 election at all. That was oppo research, and as far as I'm aware, she's never used the claim in a political situation except as a defensive. Correct me if I'm wrong on that last part, but I've never heard her say her ancestry made her more qualified to get anyone's votes or a better representative of anyone's interests in Congress or for the Presidency. 

It’s 2am here so I do t have time to dig it up but she’s definitely said it.

And if you can’t see why using a case of the same type of thing that everyone understands is bad to demonstrate a thing that so few people understand is bad that every single actual native I know has to hear a white person do it *to their face* on a regular basis- helps people get that it is indeed wrong (if they are willing to listen to actual indigenous people at all and take their word for their own experiences and issues-which again, people aren’t). And to insinuate I am asking for harassment for using a less mild case of the same wrong behavior is again, part of the problem. Too few indigenous people are around to speak at all and those who do just get tired of having these conversations constantly of yes, I exist, and yes most of America is 100% cool with casual racism toward us and will argue forever if we point any of it out. Getting tone policed about how we need to treat Elizabeth Warren with kid gloves is tiresome as fuck. The standard for someone with her amount of power needs to be higher. The power amplifies the wrongdoing, that’s the trade off.

[Gorn]

Based on genetic research, my people, which are normally counted as "Slavic" based on language, are actually 40% Illyrian, 30% Germanic, 15% Celtic, and only 10% Slavic. So I probably have waaaaay more genetic connection with Germans and French than Warren does with Native Americans.

Would I claim to be German or French based on that? Hell no. If anyone I know locally actually did that, I would be the first to laugh at them.

[TrackerNeil]

9 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

ETA: I know moderates are ascendant right now, but apparently no one is noticing that the left is adopting, and has had success adopting, a Tea Party strategy, with several big names being knocked off by upstart lefties. The Democratic party can either facilitate a peaceful transfer of power, or the left will keep racking up more wins in safe districts, and then we can deal with the left's version of Tea Party craziness.

I'm not sure I'd agree that moderates are ascendant in the party; in fact, you seem to make make the opposite argument in the following sentence. If lefties are winning, then perhaps it is they who are ascendant. Hell, the word "centrist" is something flung about as the direst of insults; I've been called that myself, for the dread crime of saying I thought a public option in the ACA was a good idea. 

[DMC]

23 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I'm not sure I'd agree that moderates are ascendant in the party

Agreed.  Just because Joe Biden won the nomination does not mean "moderates" are the one's shifting the party right now.  The left has plainly pushed Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, et al. far more left than they were even 5-10 years ago.  I hardly think that's a bad thing, for the most part, but the party from leadership on down is certainly responding to leftward pressure right now, not the other way around.

I also agree that "centrist" and "moderate" have now become bad words - almost like how the right weaponized "liberal."  I wasn't "moderate" nor "centrist" until Trump got elected.

[TrackerNeil]

13 minutes ago, DMC said:

I also agree that "centrist" and "moderate" have now become bad words - almost like how the right weaponized "liberal."  I wasn't "moderate" nor "centrist" until Trump got elected.

I've been called centrist so many times since 2016, which staggers me. I support abortion on demand and without apology, a UBI, Medicare for all, giant taxes on the wealthy, and yet someone I have moved to "the center." I could grumble about the new dogmatism of the left, but that would be thread-hijacking.

[Rippounet]

You're always someone's centrist  (yep, me too). Doesn't mean anything. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

That’s the thing though- it does not matter if you were told this by your parents. If you have no connection to indigenous culture and you enjoy the full measure of white privilege and you check the Native American box on any official form, you are faking an ethnicity. It wouldn’t even matter if it were **true** she was 1/64th Cherokee or something (the Cherokee Nation has much less strict enrollment guidelines than other tribes so this is the one white people always fake are), because it’s still misleading and disingenuous and trying to capitalize over something she’s not.

I have no connection to most of my ancestry nor the culture of said countries, but can't I still take pride in them? Agreed though that someone shouldn't check a box as you say if it's marginal, especially if it's seen as gaining an unfair advantage. I've often wrestled with identifying as Jewish on those kind of admission forms, both because it's true, but a bit of a push, and because a lot of people wouldn't even understand why being Jewish is to be a minority.

Side note, I tried to find it and failed, but NPR had a great program that in part addressed the guidelines to join various Indigenous Nations and the differences between them was pretty surprising. It was very interesting.

 

Quote

And the Rachel Dolezal comparison is important because EVERYONE understands its fucked up when a white person pretends to be black and almost nobody understands it is fucked up when white people pretend to be indigenous even though this is a pervasive problem and has been used historically to rob indigenous people of culture, of wealth, and even to straight up murder them (you can read Killers of the Flower Moon for more info on this).

The fact that a very left leaning member of this board (and others here have done the same, I’m not trying to pick on Tywin here) would suggest this as acceptable is proof it’s a huge problem, even on the left.

White people think they can claim indigenous identity without having any family members they have ever even spoken to with indigenous experience. And that they can and should repeat this as an example of why they can understand the struggles of POC. And that they can check it on college applications to up their chances of acceptance and scholarship money. That they can be a member of Congress and a presidential candidate and use that as part of their story to gain votes. And that all of this can be an honest mistake. That it can be brushed off by repeating a racist trope of “well I have high cheekbones!”

If you are BIPOC in a way that is appropriate and not pure grift to bring up- YOU WOULD KNOW FOR SURE

I understand and agree with the points you're making, except for the last one. Many people have little to no connection with their heritage. I'm half "Eastern European" and that can mean anything and I have no connection to those cultures at all. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

40 minutes ago, DMC said:

Agreed.  Just because Joe Biden won the nomination does not mean "moderates" are the one's shifting the party right now.  The left has plainly pushed Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, et al. far more left than they were even 5-10 years ago.  I hardly think that's a bad thing, for the most part, but the party from leadership on down is certainly responding to leftward pressure right now, not the other way around.

It still boggles my mind that Sanders supporters don't understand THAT THEY FUCKING WON. JFC!!! So what if Sanders isn't ever going to be president, he shifted the party in significant ways. It's also a perfect example of why third parties are silly. Infiltrate the party that best matches your views and then fight to shift them further towards what you want. Bernie did that perfectly.

27 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I've been called centrist so many times since 2016, which staggers me. I support abortion on demand and without apology, a UBI, Medicare for all, giant taxes on the wealthy, and yet someone I have moved to "the center." I could grumble about the new dogmatism of the left, but that would be thread-hijacking.

By all means, hijack it. I hate being called a centrist by people I'm actually to the left of, especially when they're new to politics and don't know shit about anything. There's a huge difference between being a centrists and being pragmatic, and if you lack the latter you'll rarely ever get things done. 

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Agreed though that someone shouldn't check a box as you say if it's marginal, especially if it's seen as gaining an unfair advantage. I've often wrestled with identifying as Jewish on those kind of admission forms

Can we be clear on the facts on how Warren lied about her Native American heritage?  There is absolutely no evidence she used it on any application forms and certainly not to gain scholarship money.  She used it by claiming such heritage AFTER she was already hired by law schools:

Quote

At a time when law schools faced public pressure to show greater ethnic diversity within their faculty, the university’s Crimson newspaper quoted a law school spokesman in 1996 saying Warren was Native American.

The Boston Globe followed the Herald with a report that the Association of American Law Schools listed Warren as a minority law teacher each year from 1986 to 1994. In that time, Warren went from being a law professor at the University of Texas, to the University of Pennsylvania, and finally in 1995 to Harvard University.

That association received faculty lists from law schools and sent personal profile forms to new faculty members. The group first asked about minority status in 1986.

That is still obviously horrible and worthy of outrage, but it bothers me that this discussion always seems to veer into the "abusing affirmative action" underlying assumption, which is used by the right as a cudgel.  Her lie was used more so by her employers to taut diversity rather than her gaining advancement from it.  She got into and completed law school, passed the bar, and then at least got hired by UT completely on her own, as far as anybody can tell.

[Ormond]

9 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

That’s the thing though- it does not matter if you were told this by your parents. If you have no connection to indigenous culture and you enjoy the full measure of white privilege and you check the Native American box on any official form, you are faking an ethnicity. It wouldn’t even matter if it were **true** she was 1/64th Cherokee or something (the Cherokee Nation has much less strict enrollment guidelines than other tribes so this is the one white people always fake are), because it’s still misleading and disingenuous and trying to capitalize over something she’s not.
 

And the Rachel Dolezal comparison is important because EVERYONE understands its fucked up when a white person pretends to be black and almost nobody understands it is fucked up when white people pretend to be indigenous even though this is a pervasive problem and has been used historically to rob indigenous people of culture, of wealth, and even to straight up murder them (you can read Killers of the Flower Moon for more info on this).

The fact that a very left leaning member of this board (and others here have done the same, I’m not trying to pick on Tywin here) would suggest this as acceptable is proof it’s a huge problem, even on the left.

White people think they can claim indigenous identity without having any family members they have ever even spoken to with indigenous experience. And that they can and should repeat this as an example of why they can understand the struggles of POC. And that they can check it on college applications to up their chances of acceptance and scholarship money. That they can be a member of Congress and a presidential candidate and use that as part of their story to gain votes. And that all of this can be an honest mistake. That it can be brushed off by repeating a racist trope of “well I have high cheekbones!”

If you are BIPOC in a way that is appropriate and not pure grift to bring up- YOU WOULD KNOW FOR SURE

I agree with most of the above except for your interpretation of why when White people claim Native American ancestry it is almost always Cherokee. That's been the case for about two centuries and doesn't have much to do with Cherokee rules on tribal membership. It's because the Cherokee were the premier example of the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes of the South", who were thought of as the "admirable Indians" because their culture and lifestyle were closer to that of European-Americans. The only Native American who it was better to claim descent from than a Cherokee was Pocahontas. (And of course that perception of the Cherokees as the most noble Indians became stronger the further in time and space one was removed from interacting with actual members of the Cherokee culture.)

I sympathize with Elizabeth Warren since as someone with predominantly rural Southern ancestry I ran across a family legend where many of my maternal grandfather's cousins believed they had Native American roots. This is highly unlikely. Then when I had my own DNA analyzed I was completely shocked to discover that my mitochondrial DNA was Native American -- that is the DNA that one inherits through the all-female line and so is from my maternal grandmother, where there was absolutely no story about Indian ancestry. 

But I would never claim that I am Native American on the basis of my mitochondria. My original "full Native American" ancestor probably lived in the early 18th century, far enough back that if she wasn't the origin of my all-female line all of the DNA from her would have disappeared by now. The reason no one in the family knew about it was probably because it was deliberately hidden at a time when being part-indigenous would have led to bad consequences. I fault Warren because as a highly educated person she should have been more critical of her own cultural context sooner and realized that a small amount of Amerindian genetic ancestry does not make one "Native American". I am certainly not going to start checking "Native American" on official forms, even those that are only used for "ethnic %" analysis of a group I belong to, just because of my mitochondria. 

 

[Ormond]

13 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Kind of out of left field, but is there something wrong with the Anti Defamation League? One of the more passionate progressives in my circle (he's been badmouthing the Harris pick) shared some item about how a bunch of PoC groups are calling for people to stop working with the ADL.

I am sure this has something to do with the belief that the ADL has been instrumental in getting many to interpret any criticism of actions of the Israeli government as being "anti-Semitic". I haven't read widely enough on this to know if I consider this a fair criticism or not, but here is a link to an article making that argument:

http://bostonreview.net/politics/emmaia-gelman-anti-defamation-league-not-what-it-seems

[TheMightyKC]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I have no connection to most of my ancestry nor the culture of said countries, but can't I still take pride in them? Agreed though that someone shouldn't check a box as you say if it's marginal, especially if it's seen as gaining an unfair advantage. I've often wrestled with identifying as Jewish on those kind of admission forms, both because it's true, but a bit of a push, and because a lot of people wouldn't even understand why being Jewish is to be a minority.

Side note, I tried to find it and failed, but NPR had a great program that in part addressed the guidelines to join various Indigenous Nations and the differences between them was pretty surprising. It was very interesting.

 

I understand and agree with the points you're making, except for the last one. Many people have little to no connection with their heritage. I'm half "Eastern European" and that can mean anything and I have no connection to those cultures at all. 

I think my family is British but I'm not sure.  

[DMC]

So ad-buys are ramping up.  Living in Pittsburgh - and the fact I usually have my TV on these days and I'm one of the few people my age or younger that still has cable - I see a lot of them.  Just saw an anti-Trump ad immediately followed with an anti-Biden ad (both were funded by outside SuperPACs).  Gotta say, I'm noticing significantly more Biden ads than Trump ads.  Maybe that could just be due to the channels/programming I watch, but I think it's encouraging.  Only a couple months ago the only thing I saw was Trump ads and that was concerning me.