US Politics: Presidential Harris-ment!

[Centrist Simon Steele]

11 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is it though? If you believe her and trust her on so many different things, is it not reasonable that she just believed what she was told by her parents? That's pretty common here in the interior of the United States. I was told the same thing when I was a little kid. 

Racism isn't always intentional. A lot of the time it's not.

[Maithanet]

16 minutes ago, DMC said:

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.

The Trump campaign churned through a ton of money* in the first half of the year, to very little effect.  Of course, much of that money got laundered into the pockets of Trump and friends, rather than into TV advertising.  I read a piece that described Brad Parscale as a man running a money laundering operation disguised as a Presidential campaign. 

Given that fact, if Trump and Biden are at relative funding parity now, I'd expect to see as many, and possibly more Biden ads than Trump, since Biden won't be quite so hamstrung by funneling millions of dollars towards phony political consultants.  Although I've no doubt Biden et al will waste plenty of money on their own, they're mere amateurs compared to the Trump family. 

[DanteGabriel]

38 minutes ago, Ormond said:

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

Thanks, Ormond. It's been a while since I even thought about the ADL but seeing that "don't trust the ADL" post brought me back about 20 years, when the father of a close childhood friend, who had been a longtime senior ADL official in Los Angeles, was removed from his position because he was too active in outreach to Muslim groups. The saga of that family (I pretty friendly with the parents too) made me think poorly of the ADL but I'd had no idea that they had been quite that pernicious.

@Tywin et al. if you remember me mentioning a friend who had also been a wealthy, athletic, blonde Jew, this was that family.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Racism isn't always intentional. A lot of the time it's not.

Sure, but how would that be racism? 

[TrackerNeil]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

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. 

Well, since you ask.

My complaint is not with "identity politics"--in my view, that's hardly a new phenomenon--but the way that critical thinking seems to have become quite unwelcome among the leftist/progressive/whatever set. Reparations are a good example; if you try to analyze the policy value of such a program you are immediately castigated for being unsympathetic, racist, un-woke, whatever, and other lefties scamper away, you get cancelled, which shuts down conversation and the policy thus goes without analysis. We are left only with the doctrine Reparations Are Good, which may or may not be true, but we have no idea know why they are good policy--or are not. We're just supposed to accept that they are, which sounds a lot like religion to me.

What I'm getting at is that if we on the left can't have discussions, we can't be successful. That's not to say these discussions shouldn't be suitably sensitive, but they've got to happen. We're already told, again by doctrine, that conversations about, say, white supremacy, will be uncomfortable and that's OK, but we have difficulty holding equally uncomfortable explorations about why some of our core beliefs might be wrong.

[Fury Resurrected]

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. 

The difference between that is that those are immigrant heritages of people that CHOSE to be American. Being indigenous here is not like that. This. Is. The. Homeland. If you have no connection with indigenous culture or even family members with it and you have some minuscule fraction of indigenous blood, you are not indigenous- you are the product of successful assimilation which is just the way the US government decided to exterminate indigenous people when they couldn’t outright murder them.

[Fez]

Possible tea leaves depending on how fucked things get in post-election lawsuits:

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sure, but how would that be racism? 

Fury outlined it much better than I could, but in Warren's case it is a presumption to the right of declaring yourself indigenous. This is a kind of privilege very prevalent among white people (me), where we don't fully see, understand, or contemplate what it means to claim a heritage that isn't yours. It's unintentional racism because it continues to support the structural racism that exists in so much of our society. Warren wasn't malicious in this, she's not a white supremacist, but it is illustrative of how we continually transact in racist modality.

[fionwe1987]

8 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

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

Sorry, "it" would be?

Quote

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

Ok, get specific. In what ways is this the same?

Quote

(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.

By all means hold her to a higher standard. But I don't think that's what you're doing with your Dolezal comparison. By picking a case with no factual comparison, all you're doing is muddying the standard.

Your post above about having Native American DNA just being proof of the imperialist assimilation imposed by White invaders? That is a higher standard. And all the more damning since Warren's brand is supposed to be about understanding power structures and their impact on people. 

7 hours ago, Gorn said:

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.

What generic research is this? NGS (Next generation sequencing) or microarray? 

Discussing inheritance in percentage terms is a practice I hope we move beyond, but 15% of ethnicity x in your genome distributed widely across it means a completely different thing than a a few well studied stretches of your DNA having mutations that go together in a particular ethnicity most often. The former shows broad population relationships, the latter shows ancestry. The two aren't comparable. 

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Fez said:

Possible tea leaves depending on how fucked things get in post-election lawsuits:

So it looks like Kavanaugh voted with the majority?  Interesting.  I also think this snippet from the order is important:

Quote

here the state election officials support the challenged decree, and no state official has expressed opposition.

Sounds like, if certain state officials do express opposition to such decrees, certain justices may change their minds...

[fionwe1987]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mail-voting/2020/08/13/3eb9ac62-dd70-11ea-809e-b8be57ba616e_story.html

Quote

“Now, they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”

Seriously, how is this not grounds for a new impeachment trial? I know you can say that about almost anything Trump utters these days, but this is really pushing it.

[JGP]

1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

Ok, get specific. In what ways is this the same?

You keep pressing Kay, dude. Take the L. She's lived this shit. To you it's just a thought exercise.

[Fury Resurrected]

8 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Sorry, "it" would be?

Ok, get specific. In what ways is this the same?

By all means hold her to a higher standard. But I don't think that's what you're doing with your Dolezal comparison. By picking a case with no factual comparison, all you're doing is muddying the standard.

Your post above about having Native American DNA just being proof of the imperialist assimilation imposed by White invaders? That is a higher standard. And all the more damning since Warren's brand is supposed to be about understanding power structures and their impact on people. 

What generic research is this? NGS (Next generation sequencing) or microarray? 

Discussing inheritance in percentage terms is a practice I hope we move beyond, but 15% of ethnicity x in your genome distributed widely across it means a completely different thing than a a few well studied stretches of your DNA having mutations that go together in a particular ethnicity most often. The former shows broad population relationships, the latter shows ancestry. The two aren't comparable. 

Again, I honestly don’t have the time to do the digging for you. Like I said, it takes a huge amount of effort to educate non natives on something they have no knowledge on and decline to take the word of indigenous people on how it impacts them. If you are truly interested in knowing, go ahead and read the book I suggested upthread. It’s a super complicated subject that can’t really be tackled in a message board thread by only me between my life responsibilities. 

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

You keep pressing Kay, dude. Take the L. She's lived this shit. To you it's just a thought exercise.

Personally I find the whole lived in experience thing to be misapplied. It is important to listen to other folks, especially when they bring knowledge you may not have had access to. But not every black man's views on race are homogenous, or even inoffensive. To suggest that the standard of one person's experience outweighs all other facts, data, or understandings is... let me check my notes here... dumb.

[Fez]

15 minutes ago, DMC said:

So it looks like Kavanaugh voted with the majority?  Interesting.  I also think this snippet from the order is important:

Either he or Roberts did, or both. But justices aren't required to note their dissents on these kinds of orders. It's possible one of them dissented but just didn't declare it like the other three did. At least one voted with the liberals though to make the majority.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

18 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

Well, since you ask.

My complain is not with "identity politics"--in my view, that's hardly a new phenomenon--but the way that critical thinking seems to have become quite unwelcome among the leftist/progressive/whatever set. Reparations are a good example; if you try to analyze the policy value of such a program you are immediately castigated for being unsympathetic, racist, un-woke, whatever, and other lefties scamper away, you get cancelled, which shuts down conversation and the policy thus goes without analysis. We are left only with the doctrine Reparations Are Good, which may or may not be true, but we have no idea know why they are good policy--or are not.

What I'm eventually getting at is that if we on the left can't have discussions, we can't be successful. That's not to say these discussions shouldn't be suitably sensitive, but they've got to happen. We're already told, again by doctrine, that conversations about, say, white supremacy, will be uncomfortable and that's OK, but we have difficulty holding equally uncomfortable explorations about why some of our core beliefs might be wrong.

This is exactly where I'm at. So many people cry for policies that are simply not possible, and when you confront them with reality you're either not a real liberal, you're a centrist, you don't believe in the cause etc. It's such a joke. Saying you want something while advocating for a path that will always fail kind of means you never really wanted it. You just wanted to sound more woke than other people.

Pragmatism is not a bad thing, and it needs to stop being seen as a dirty word. You have to have a reasonable plan to achieve your goals. Just saying I want it isn't enough.

16 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

The difference between that is that those are immigrant heritages of people that CHOSE to be American. Being indigenous here is not like that. This. Is. The. Homeland. If you have no connection with indigenous culture or even family members with it and you have some minuscule fraction of indigenous blood, you are not indigenous- you are the product of successful assimilation which is just the way the US government decided to exterminate indigenous people when they couldn’t outright murder them.

Sometimes there were no other choices. That's true for a lot of people. 

I understand the point you're making, but a lot of people simply lack the means and/or resources to learn more about their ancestry. Taking a bit of pride in it though is not a bad thing. Now since Warren is the example, should she identify as indigenous? No. Should she have used that to get ahead, assuming she did (I believe she said she never has, could be wrong)? No. But when asked what her heritage is, should she not include that if her parents told her she was only a few things? I don't know. I'm such a mutt so me being like 1/128th of something doesn't register for myself, but if she was only told a few things and given when and where she grew up, is it that surprising that it became a small bit of her personal identity, even if it was misguided?

19 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Fury outlined it much better than I could, but in Warren's case it is a presumption to the right of declaring yourself indigenous. This is a kind of privilege very prevalent among white people (me), where we don't fully see, understand, or contemplate what it means to claim a heritage that isn't yours. It's unintentional racism because it continues to support the structural racism that exists in so much of our society. Warren wasn't malicious in this, she's not a white supremacist, but it is illustrative of how we continually transact in racist modality.

That's not racism though. What would be racist is if she was told she had indigenous ancestry and then tried to hide it out of shame. What you're describing is more of a form of unintended cultural appropriation.

Like TN said, you can't just point at things you don't like and call it racist. Frankly the term is loosing all its meaning these days. 

[JGP]

1 hour ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Personally I find the whole lived in experience thing to be misapplied. It is important to listen to other folks, especially when they bring knowledge you may not have had access to. But not every black man's views on race are homogenous, or even inoffensive. To suggest that the standard of one person's experience outweighs all other facts, data, or understandings is... let me check my notes here... dumb.

Read her last post.

It's not misapplied to the Indigenous. You want to demand answers or education on the Indigenous experience in North America because you don't agree with what you're hearing, and if Kay [or whomever, doesn't want to do the work for you] take it up with some Indigenous academics or activists and see how well that works out for you-- especially given some of the tones I'm interpreting here, which I may be misinterpreting, but there it is.

edit: And before anyone gets bent, I'm speaking from my experience here. I've gotten schooled half a dozen times in the last few years on the subject. 

    

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Fez said:

But justices aren't required to note their dissents on these kinds of orders. It's possible one of them dissented but just didn't declare it like the other three did. At least one voted with the liberals though to make the majority.

Sure, but considering the other three publicly noted their dissent, it's significant that Kavanaugh did not.

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Read her last post.

It's not misapplied to the Indigenous. You want to demand answers or education on the Indigenous experience in North America because you don't agree with what you're hearing, and if Kay [or whomever, doesn't want to do the work for you] take it up with some Indigenous academics or activists and see how well that works out for you-- especially given some of the tones I'm interpreting here, which I may be misinterpreting, but there it is.

    

I was suggesting that I find our resident educator to be an inadequate advocate and her conduct little more than enraged lashing out at people who are too decent to lash back. If she tried to pull this shit somewhere else she'd quit the internet in tears.

[JGP]

59 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I was suggesting that I find our resident educator to be an inadequate advocate and her conduct little more than enraged lashing out at people who are too decent to lash back. If she tried to pull this shit somewhere else she'd quit the internet in tears.

lol