I certainly would have liked to have done all these things, but I’ve been too busy going to work every day for the past thirty years. Maybe I can get to some serious society destruction once I retire. We’ll see.
So, what then? Meet up around 6 PM Central time for your next performance? Looking forward to it.
Yes, you’re a jerk and a liar afflicted with stupidity. And you have other negative traits too, I’m sure.
Aren’t you and iiiandyiii both saying that things were worse for black people in the past?
no.
Things were better for black people during the crack epidemic of the 1980s?
Oh are you saying things got worse in the 80s than they had been in the 70s?
Because it’s an accurate reflection of your views.
Firstly
a) No, this was not the real 50’s anywhere outside Mayberry; and
b) Irrelevant to the racism of what you said
Suuuure you are. There is no fallacy here - politeness, which you value as a 50s cultural marker, is no signifier of a nice place to live.
I never said anything about Sharia Law. That is a complete non sequitur.
There’s something wrong with you.
Huh… well, not that I’m speaking from experience mind you, but Sandusky probably used the boy’s weight to properly anchor himself. But I guess this has already been discussed thoroughly before, and I feel myself becoming slimier for even thinking about it…
I’ve talked to plenty of black people, younger and older. From what I remember of the conversations with those that were older, they still consider the 80s a better time for black folks than the 50s and 60s.
Well, obviosly we have been talking to different black people.
Oh cool, now it’s totally fair game to claim Conservatives hate the poor, women, and minorities because IMO their policies aren’t good for those groups. I mean I won’t pretend some liberals didn’t already do that, but I always thought it was a fallacy.
Yes, it appears that i might have missed the actual point of Shodan’s post. I guess i figured that, as we were having a polite exchange, he was being polite, but i was probably wrong.
Anyway, it doesn’t change my overall point. Shodan often acts like an asshole. His whole “Regards” schtick is little more than trolling. But i still believe he makes some valuable contributions to this board, and that he is open to reason and logic (on some issues, at least) in ways that the subject of this thread is not.
Okay, there is a lot there I disagree with, of course, and perhaps we can unpack some of it later, but I appreciate your willingness to try to explain yourself. Unlike many liberals, I don’t believe that conservative thought is fundamentally rooted in selfishness. I used to suspect that, but I developed a very close friendship with someone who is my polar opposite politically and that relationship has radically altered my view of conservatives. I don’t know if you have ever watched Parks and Rec but I recently told him he will forever be the Ron Swanson to my Lesile Knope. He humbles me. I suspect I have also changed his view of liberals. For sure we all have our pet issues, but that should not be interpreted as apathy toward other kinds of suffering.
It sounds like your view of liberals has not been so radicalized. I think if you took some time to think about it, you would recognize that there are patterns in the kinds of issues that liberals appear to care the most about. They stem from perceived systemic injustice, suffering may be a part of life but it doesn’t follow that we shouldn’t try to prevent harm when we can, particularly if that harm is disproportionally heaped on one subset of the human population or another. Many issues that you ‘‘don’t hear a peep about’’ are actually issues I hear about all the time from my colleagues. I went to social work school and thus half the people I know are deeply involved in some kind of liberal cause or another. The things liberals care about are quite varied, I assure you, and the well-being of children is toward the top of the list. I have fought that particular fight myself by raising money for programs that provide educational services and resources for kids that wouldn’t otherwise have them. When I think about the inequality in our educational system, and the things that these kids have to live with on a daily basis, which I have seen by nature of working in those communities, it makes me spitting mad.
But maybe you need to know liberal people and not caricatures of liberals to truly understand our motives for defending our own pet issues. I wish for you an equally enlightening personal experience as the one I have had.
There’s a lot of truth to what you write but it’s not as simple as that. How much symphathy a person has to a group depends in large part on how they view the situation of that group.
For example, to the extent that a given person thinks that white men are leading the privileged life on easy street, sailing along with the wind at their backs, then they will lack symphathy for the struggles that a person with that melanin level and chromosone makeup goes through.
Now of course, part of the conservative mindset is to refrain from whining about how no one has enough symphathy for you. 
But symphathies are translated into policy, in weighing the competing interests of various groups, and the relative lack of symphathy that a liberal would typically have for some groups has a real impact.
I think it’s not as simple as having less empathy, more in viewing problems of the ‘‘privileged’’ demographics to be less a result of systemic problems and therefore less likely to be preventable. Of course, liberals are sometimes wrong about this - bias in the court systems against men who seek child custody is very much a systemic problem, for example. And you are correct that is not a pet cause of many liberals.
I’m sharing this incredibly thought-provoking article that explores the reasons one political side might highlight some issues while ignoring others. I think the article is fair to both sides, and the issues it raises are probably worthy of their own thread. I know that for me, personally, it was a difficult lesson to process.
It’s not about “liberal” vs. “conservative”. That’s one of your biggest flaws – it’s like you see everything as a matter of political views. And life just isn’t like that.
Spoken like a true sociopath.
No. I am saying what I wrote. I am making no other inferences or exptrapolaions. I am saying that life is not universally better for all black people. Anecdotally, I know of areas that really were hit hard by the crack epidemic, and have met people who have told me about it. There is also the sociological phenomenon of white flight which as far as I know is accepted as a factual thing that does indeed exist. Inner city black people were effected by these things; some neighborhoods deteriorated tremendously. Those who could not get out of them were not in better shape before these event occurred; those who were able to move and adapt probably do have a better life now. It depends upon who you talk to. The loss of factory and union jobs of course is another thing to effect black people. The restructuring of welfare benefits under Clinton also had a polarizing effect:
*But while welfare reform may have initially reduced poverty, it left those still living at that income level worse off than they were before, reaching fewer of them and giving those it did reach less. And our poverty rates didn’t stay low. When they began to rise again, the program couldn’t offer them the support it used to. The recession has been a crystal clear, and incredibly painful, demonstration of this fact.
Dylan Matthews has already taken a look at the claim that millions moved off of welfare’s rolls and poverty was reduced. As he writes, the program’s numbers have steadily fallen since 1996: “Since reform, the rolls have shrunk from 12.6 million to 4.6 million.” The number of people in poverty “fell by 6.4 million people under Clinton, whereas the number of people in poverty increased by 7.4 million between 1981 and 1993 (and the rate went from 14 percent to 15.1 percent).” There is a catch, though. “But it’s worth noting that welfare reform led to a huge spike in extreme poverty, as defined as the number of households making under $2 a day,” Matthews adds.*
So, to me, someone saying that every black person they have talked to thinks life is better just makes me think they have an isolated view. To use that isolated view as a basis for “fighting ignorance” seems silly to me. It’s just my opinion.
Surely there are studies on this sort of thing, detailed statistical analyses stating with high degrees of confidence whether or not Americans blacks feel they are better off and to precisely what extent Starving Artist’s brain was damaged during the extended solvent-huffing phase he went through between 1987 and 2003.
I’m sure there are; it’s all on the interwebs.