How do we fix the wounds in America?

Great Debates
161

Yes, I get it. You’re going back to the same argument made by every group throughout American history. If we let in those damned (Irish, Jews, Chinese, free blacks, Italians, Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, Faroe Islanders, Lichtensteinians, three-handed Martians) they’ll complete with us for jobs and jobs must be reserved for us (Irish, Jews, Chinese, free blacks, Italians, Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, Faroe Islanders, Lichtensteinians, three-handed Martians) who were already here.

That’s an argument bitterly fought out for centuries. The exclusionary side has always lost the argument in time. The argument itself looks stupid in the rear-view mirror. (No Irish or dogs? What could they possibly have been thinking?) Admitting these others into full acceptance in society has always given far more to the total wealth of the nation than was lost by individuals. (Making only moves in which no individual ever loses is not a rational argument. No such moves, including doing nothing, exist.)

The argument that groups should not be treated equally is a selfish and fundamentally bigoted one. No married person has lost anything at all by the recent cultural shift which allowed gay marriage, despite the decades of screaming lies that doing so would destroy their traditions. You can substitute any other form of current inequality for gay marriage and the outcome will be the same.

Oh, and we’re not asking evil conservatives to grant anything. We’ll be taking control of society and forcing you to live in disgrace for your bigoted beliefs, just as has happened with gay marriage.

162

Are you implying that this is the first generation of protesters or counter protestors to act in a violent fashion?

We don’t much like it either when violence erupts on either side. I appreciate it less when it happens on mine, as it undermines the legitimacy of the ideas that we are trying to put out there.

The problem is, is that when, as you say some of them start doing stupid shit like throwing bottles of urine, or acting in ways that are even worse, you condemn all of them, even the ones who had no desire or inclination to participate in any violence.

People are going to do stupid tings,m and judging the entirety of a movement by its stupidest members is not an entirely fair way of assessment. Insisting that the small percentage of agitators on our side must be dealt with 100% before you are willing to address the white supremacists on your side simply puts you in a position where you never need to address the white supremacists on your side.

In other words, it is deflection. It is lashing out at those who were peacefully counter protesting, and lumping them all together. That way, since they were part of the counter protest, and there were some instances of violence among those counter protesting, the white supremacist terrorist attack that claimed the life of one woman, and left many others seriously wounded can be justified in your mind. You can feel that these people deserved what they got. There are many on your side who cheered at the attack, who were happy that it caused death and serious injury. Why are you not denouncing those guys?

163

And a bang-up job you’ve been doing of it lately :rolleyes:

164

k9bfriender, I try very hard to distinguish between non-violent protesters and violent ones and make my posts about each group clear, with language like “some of them”. I certainly don’t feel like the people that got run over “deserved what they got”, and <denunciation>fuck those that say they did</denunciation>. Would it be inappropriate here to observe that some fringe lefties also felt like Steve Scalise “deserved what he got”? I’m confident that you are not among them, and I don’t feel like you even need to denounce them. I assume you’re a good person who was at least as appalled by that violence as I was. Could I ask for the same courtesy?

And I don’t believe that I’m “insisting that the small percentage of agitators on [y]our side must be dealt with 100% before [I am] willing to address the white supremacists on [my] side”. But I do admit that I don’t know exactly what you expect me, an upper-middle-class white guy in Utah who avoids protests, to do to “address” them, but if you’ve got some concrete suggestions, I’m willing to listen.

165

I’m curious what you mean by “evidently quite a few of them don’t.” One guy thought it was a good idea to get in his car and drive through the crowd. The vast majority of Trump voters think that action was horrible.

I don’t believe I’m “deliberately” shutting my eyes to the size of it. I think I approach it with a pretty clear perspective, but help me out here. How many Trump voters do you think are part of the “right-wing hate movement”? If you want me to ‘open my eyes to the nature and size of it’, help me out. How big is it? Just go ahead and round it off to the closest million for me.

Yes, and I hope the full weight of the law falls on anyone who thinks it’s okay to murder people over political differences.

166

Very well said!

167

You :rolleyes:, but in fact, it seems quite plausible that a lot of the fear and resentment in conservative politics of recent decades is due to the fact that liberals have been successfully “taking control of society”.

From the point of view of an American conservative in the early 1950s, it would have seemed pretty much a given that black people would mostly stay in the servants’ quarters, women would mostly stay in the home, gay people and other “deviants” would mostly stay in the closet, foreigners would mostly stay away, and atheists, Commies, etc., would mostly stay quiet. Even if they were basically well-meaning, non-hateful people, that was what they saw as the normal condition of society in “great America”.

All of those things have changed. Self-identified conservatives fought against civil rights for blacks, against equal rights for women and gays, against civil-liberties protections for religious and political dissidents, against liberalization of laws restricting divorce, abortion and birth control, and against widespread social acceptance of all those changes. They lost. They lost on all fronts.

I’m old enough to remember when the “resentment conservatives” nearly 40 years ago first started saying that they would “take our country back” and “make it great again” after the cultural upheavals of the 60s. They’ve been saying it ever since, and ultimately losing every battle in the process.

They started out believing they were the “moral majority”, and they can’t figure out why they keep losing. Most of them redefine every battle after the fact to pretend they were, or would have been, on the winning side all along—of course conservatives are against racism and sexism! of course conservatives support freedom of speech! (They haven’t quite got to the “of course!” stage with regard to gay rights yet, but they’ll get there.)

But they still don’t want to acknowledge that the conservative positions they have long fuzzily associated with “good old days” were actually wrong, and that it’s overall a good thing that they’re inexorably headed for a world in which being white, or male, or straight, doesn’t automatically convey the same advantages that it used to. So they haven’t ever really confronted or processed their loser status in this new Cold/Culture Civil War.
I think maybe that’s partly why a lot of the “resentment conservatives” are so mindlessly and vehemently anti-liberal. On a deep level, they’re just fundamentally tired of losing, and have never really faced or reconciled with their losses. Even when they win elections and install some Republican politician who makes flattering noises to them about how great they are, they still end up losing because the politician is much more interested in profitable investments and tax cuts for the wealthy than in any policies that actually benefit ordinary voters.

168

Do you really feel that this is something new, as you claimed in your “This once-common understanding seems to not be fully understood by this new generation of counter-protesters.”

Protests have been turning violent since there have been protests. The only way to prevent violent protests is to make protests themselves illegal, and that’s not a road that I feel we are ready to go down. We can take a look at Saudi Arabi in a few years, and see if their penalties for protesting the govt have improved society at all.

So, to vilify a movement because it has violence in it is an understandable act, but it also allows you to concentrate on the messenger, and not on the message. You say that you work hard to distinguish the difference between a violent and a non-violent protester, but you certainly spend far more time proportionally talking about the violence involved than the message.

I feel that, IMHO, the reason to complain about the violence, as if it is some new thing that has suddenly appeared on the left like no other political violence ever has in the history of politics, is to avoid talking about the message that the vast majority of the peaceful protestors are trying to convey.

When you have Nazis on the other side, then both their actions in their violence and terrorism, as well as their message, are things that can be criticized. The White supremacists can be called out not only because members of its group committed murder upon the peaceful protestors of the opposite camp, but because their message is that murdering your political opponent is the right thing to do.

Even if you accept that there was violence “on both sides”, then you are left looking at the differences in the messages the two sides we calling for. By concentrating instead on the violence that some small number of agitators fomented, you avoid having to look at the two sides side by side, and compare the message being sent.

Do you recognize that the two groups had very different messages? Do you feel that you agree with one side over the other?

169

Well, starting from the biggest tent and working in, a recent poll found that 9% of Americans, or over 22 million, think it’s acceptable to hold racist or Nazi views. That, of course (I hope), has got to be vastly more than the number who actually do self-identify as holding racist or Nazi views. If official KKK membership is about 3000-6000, and actual dues-paying National Socialist Movement membership was a couple hundred back in the early 2000s and perhaps a few times that now, there might be some 10000-20000 Americans who explicitly advocate for Nazi/white supremacist views.

Somewhere in that 2000-fold interval between 10 thousand and 20 million is the number of people who could be accurately described as part of the right-wing hate movement. I doubt that every one of them is a Trump supporter, but Trump certainly seems to have the ardent support of a lot of their leaders and high-profile activists.

170

No, I don’t think political violence is new. I was responding to the line by MeanJoe that “It was commonly understood that “the right to free speech” allows them to be there …”. There’s probably something in there that can be refuted or challenged, but I wasn’t bothering to.

As do most of the Dopers in these discussions. No one really cares to discuss the peaceful white supremacists either. They want to talk about the one that ran people over, or the ones that showed up with guns, or the ones that brought sticks and hit people. Those actions are, imho, significantly worse than whatever message peaceful protesters and counter-protesters were trying to express, which is why they drew my attention, and that of much of the SDMB.

Please see above.

Yes, but I don’t think it’s quite as clean and neat as two groups, each with a unified message. I certainly don’t feel a kinship for white supremacists or their racist message. Some people were just there to express support for the ideal of free speech, which I whole-heartedly agree with. The counter-protesters message was a bit muddled. Some of it was “punch a Nazi”. Well, I don’t agree. Others were there with “#BlackLivesMatter” or “#FightFor15” signs. Eh, not really my cup of tea, but whatever. Others were there with “Racism is bad” type messages. I agree. Did I miss some major theme?

171

I addressed your question seriously. I’m assuming this response means you have no serious response in return.

172

I’ll discuss the “peaceful” white supremacists too. I have discussed them, and the message that they were bringing. Peaceful or not, what they advocate for is abhorrent to everything I believe in, and should be to everyone else as well.

Most of the white supremacists out there peacefully called for genocide and removal of lessor races, only a small number of them actually tried to carry their actions out.

That doesn’t really make the ones who were peacefully calling for violence against lesser races all that much better, IMHO.

Neither had a specific unified message, both were gatherings of individuals. But they did have common reasons to rally. The white supremacists rallied to advocate for the oppression and ultimate removal of inferior races, and the counter protestors rallied against genocide.

Yeah, they had their individual reasons, and their individual tactics, and their individual groups with their own agendas, but that, at its core is the reason the two groups of people were there, to have a public debate on whether we should begin down the path of ethnic cleansing. The people marching with the nazis were for it, and the people marching against the nazis against.

Needless to say, such discussions can become heated.

173

:confused: Dafuq? Dude, I have no problem whatsoever discussing the “peaceful” white supremacists who marched shouting slogans like “Jews will not replace us” and Nazi chants of “Blood and soil” and calling the local government “Jewish communists and criminal niggers” and wearing shirts with Hitler quotes on them and talking about their filthy “white ethno-state”.

Yes, I agree that those white supremacists who didn’t actually commit acts of violence in Charlottesville are much less culpable than the ones who did. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t still revolting and poisonous racist slugs. I don’t support depriving them of their civil liberties if they don’t break the law or try to physically menace and attack other people, but by the very nature of their ideology they are despicable assholes and advocates of despicable policies.

Do you really feel that discussing those people makes the Nazi/white supremacist cause look better, somehow?

Really? Where? Can you identify even one participant in that “Unite the Right” rally—which, remember, was planned and organized by far-right groups to bring together people who openly advocate for white supremacy, hatred of Jews and blacks, etc.—who deliberately chose to be associated with the event merely to “express support for the ideal of free speech”?

Hell, man, I’m a long-term card-carrying ACLU member, and while I defend on civil-liberties principles the right of any nonviolent marchers to peaceably assemble, no matter how revolting the ideas they choose to express, I certainly don’t think it does anything for the cause of free speech to walk with those nasty fuckers myself.

174

I understood “Admitting these others into full acceptance in society has always given far more to the total wealth of the nation than was lost by individuals. (Making only moves in which no individual ever loses is not a rational argument. No such moves, including doing nothing, exist.)” as an admission that you were wrong (that “Granting equality to others doesn’t change your own privileges”). Basically, you seemed to be saying “well, yeah, it might affect your privileges after all, but it’s for the greater good”. So I thought that portion of the discussion was settled. If I misunderstood your intention there, I apologize.

As for the “We’ll be taking control of society and forcing you to live in disgrace for your bigoted beliefs” I took that as typically Internet false bravado and responded with a sarcastic response because I didn’t think you were being serious there. Again, if I misunderstood, I apologize. Maybe you could help me understand more about your plans for ‘forcing people to live in disgrace’. What will that look like? You going to give them little yellow stars to wear? Scarlet letters? Something else?

175

Orange "T"s.

176

IAN Exapno Mapcase and cannot speak for him, but did you read my post #167? I think the point is that anti-equality conservatives have been forced to live in disgrace for their support of racist, sexist, homophobic etc. positions. And that will go on happening for as long as they keep espousing anti-equality positions.

The anti-civil-rights and anti-womens-rights and anti-civil-liberties conservative positions of a few decades ago are disgraced now. Even conservatives themselves who used to support them have had to disavow them to avoid sharing that disgrace, and conservatives who grew up after their defeat try to pretend that it was never truly a conservative principle to discriminate against blacks, women, etc.

Conservatives nowadays either have to accept the disgrace of their losing status in the egalitarian culture wars and distance themselves from their movement’s defeated anti-egalitarian positions, or else align themselves with the militant reactionaries of the Nazi/white supremacist movement who have decided to double down on those losing positions and ultimately disgrace themselves much further in the process.

The anti-egalitarian conservatives don’t need any yellow stars or scarlet letters, even if the rest of us were willing to go around handing them out. They have been “forced to live in disgrace” entirely by their own deliberate choice to embrace unethical principles of exclusion and oppression.

177

That is not quite accurate. What people are criticizing is the use of violence and intimidation to shut down or “deplatform” people they don’t want speaking. The fact that radical leftists are attacking not just Nazis but supporters of conservatism or Republicans is somehow being conveniently ignored.

Furthermore what is really problematic is the equating of defending a principle and advocating a specific expression. And it’s a problem regardless if it’s done out of ignorance or malice.

178

I disagree. I think the Native Americans have suffered as a group more. What’s left of them.

179

I said:

I didn’t mean to suggest that you or any one was actively refusing to discuss it, just that it hadn’t seemed to be a topic that drew much interest. After Charlottesville, there were lots of threads and posts about the violence and themes related to that, and, it seemed to me, relatively few about the message of the protesters. Perhaps my impression was mistaken. Perhaps people really do want to have a nuanced academic discussion on the differences between white nationalism, separatism, supremacy, etc and their pros and cons. I got the impression most wanted to offer perfunctory denunciations and move on to blaming Trump for it.

180

Well frankly I think that is balanced by the fact many companies have diversity polices REQURING them to hire a certain number of minorities.

I can tell you right now at least 3 times in my life I have been turned down for a job because I am a white male. Once the guy said it straight out that if I was black, he would hire me and I could write my own ticket at that job.

Also when one bids on government contracts often they will give the contract to a woman owned or minority owned firm over a white one.