No, because without a democracy, the wolves and the sheep already know what is for dinner.
Democracy is two sheep and one wolf voting on what’s for dinner. And the wolf keeps trying to convince the sheep that if it votes with the wolf, it’ll only eat the other sheep.
Imagine I posted a thread saying “Muslims don’t understand democracy.” This board would flip the fuck out, even if I could back it up with polling data on the attitudes of Muslims across the world. Why would they flip? Because it’s painting a group of 1.6 billion people with a broad brush, and seemingly not recognizing that there are individual differences of opinion within that group.
For the same reason, I find it offensive when people make broad generalizations about white people, like they are a monolith. We aren’t a hive mind, like the Borg in Star Trek.
Well, it’s a durn shame the OP’s candidates lost. 
Is this post indicative of a comprehension problem? Or simply a knee-jerk reactionary post, made without serious thought?
Hey look! Another one!
:rolleyes:
Perhaps you (royal you, eh) could try doing, oh, anything. Try doing anything other than what you’ve been doing for the past 10 years, which is mostly sitting around and not marching in the streets and not writing letters and not visiting your elected representatives (at any level) to talk about your needs and your desires for our society. Try doing anything other than writing a check once every four years to a couple of candidates and then mostly forgetting about them until maybe you vote. Try fighting your real opposition and not fighting with people who are on your side who are trying to get you to realize that you have to FIGHT for things that are important, not hope they come to you. Try not losing focus after you don’t get the results you want immediately. Those are few things that, IMO, the left side of the political spectrum could try, but I expect that some or all of them will be labeled “unreasonable”, thus negating your (royal you, eh) need to even try.
Good for you! You’re offended by an ally, so you ignore them, which helps your opposition! Awesome!
ETA: I bet you come back and try and argue with me about this, which only helps your opposition, which, by the way, isn’t me.
There are several reasons that your comparison falls short.
Asashi did not say white people, he said white america. So, in order for your analogy to be more apt, it would be “American Muslims”, not muslims as a whole, so your 1.6 billion is a bit overblown.
There is also the fact that Asashi is also a white american. So your “Muslims” comment would have to be coming from a muslim to be comparable in nature.
Then there is the fact that he said “White america”, not “white americans”, which is how you can tell he is referring to the culture the majority follow, not about individuals, so your complaint of a broad brush also falls flat.
“White America” is responsible for Trump and the republicans having the political power they do right now.
“White Americans” are a diverse group with many different opinions.
ETA: for instance, a white gay male is a white american, but is not (usually or necessarily) part of “white america.”
I get that you took offense to the way that you chose to interpret the post, but if you actually look at what the post actually is, rather than your knee jerk reaction to it, you may find more to agree with than you think. So, not really “for the same reason”, more, that you have chosen to be offended, and worked your way up to a very flawed analogy from there.
Speak for yourself.
Regards,
Shodan
There’s been A LOT of marching in the streets over the past two years. Some of the biggest marches ever.
(Just in case you were wondering, marches went out of style among us left-of-center types when hundreds of thousands of us marched against the Iraq War in the run-up to that, and we were barely covered in the news, so of course we made no dent at all on public opinion.)
You may have noticed that Congresscritters started getting a lot more calls in 2017. Not sure how that’s holding up, but it happened. Also, you may have heard that people have been showing up at town halls - when Congresscritters have them.
I’ve done some marching, and a lot of phone calling. No town hall opportunities.
See above.
Yeah well, I’m trying to figure out what asahi’s alternative plan of action IS. We’re doing stuff already, thanks. Like I said earlier, what’s the opportunity cost of what we’re already doing? What should we be doing that what we’re doing now is getting in the way of?
In the absence of some answers there, he isn’t on my side; he’s an underminer.
OK, here’s what’s unreasonable:
Armed resistance is unreasonable.
Magical Pony Plans are unreasonable. You know, the ones that go, “if we only did X, Americans would rise up and almost bodily eject the Trumpublicans from power,” or anything else with similar degrees of wishful thinking. I’m too old for fairy tales.
That’s it.
Democracy is the worst form of government on this planet. Except for all the rest.
This seems like an expanded ‘no true Scotsman’ defense.
I am as white an American as you are likely to find. Pigment challenged, born and bred in the midwest, straight, family in the South, homeowner…But I am Democrat and would hit Trump with a broom before I let him on my porch and so do not fall in to your definition.
You might as well say ‘There IS a white America, but it consists only of white Americas who are racist or have trouble reading’.
Loved the quote from The West Wing. In a democracy, sometimes the other guy wins.
And asahi is a braying ninny.
Do I get any understanding credit for being the wrong kind of white person? Because Hitler and his Master Race killed off lots of my ancestors, and they weren’t Jewish either, they just happened to reside east of Germany.
Maybe I halfway understand democracy?
I could probably find just as white by looking in a mirror.
It’s not in any way a “true scotsman”. Just making that declaration does not make it so. Just like if I said, “Hey, all these people that live in scotland are scotsmen.” and you said, “Well, what about these people living in canada, are you saying that they are not?” Well, no, they aren’t. They are completely different groups. You cannot make the accusation of “no true scotsman” any time someone says that groups of people are different from each other.
But, “white america” are those who have had very little adversity or discrimination on them due to who they are, and that makes it much harder to empathize with those who have. Hell, you don’t even need to by white to be a part of “white america”, but it does help.
To the post I was responding to, since you are disagreeing with mine, are you agreeing with the concept that “white america” is functionally equivalent to “muslim” as a descriptor of a group of people?
Your summation of what I “might as well have said” is entirely wrong and a complete mischaracterization of what I actually did say.
If there is any such single sentence summation, it would be “There is a white america, and it is filled mainly with people who do not believe that there is a white america.”
I don’t think most of that is a lack of understanding of democracy at all.
It’s what derives from being in a group that has historically been the overwhelming majority- as recently as 1990, white, non-hispanic people were 76% of the population.
Pretty much by definition, their experience/view is the standard one, insofar as there’s a standard experience among hundreds of millions of people. I think it is not whitewashed or sanitized either- it’s more a matter of not paying attention or caring because they don’t really have to. Tyranny of the majority.
And I think that’s the mistake- assuming that even today, 64% of the population is one giant monolithic bloc who all think and feel the same, or even hold the same opinions. That’s not even remotely feasible- the US isn’t homogeneous enough to accomplish that- at least other countries have the benefit of shared national identity/ethnicity/traditions to unite them. The US doesn’t really have too much of that really- people are still more likely to be more recognizably from their state or region, and have more in common with minorities from there, than white people elsewhere.
So in other words, you have created a construct in your head and are calling it “white America”. Got it.
Empathizing with other human beings, especially with those whose looks or culture are unfamiliar to you, is a difficult thing, no matter what your color or class. Lack of empathy is a major problem in the US, but it is not a problem that is unique to “white America”.
Unfortunately for that argument “straight white male nominally Christian Americans” are a minority of white Americans.
And if we narrow it down to the real people the left complains about its really “straight white male nominally Christian rural Americans with no more than a high school diploma.” And that is yet a smaller subset of white Americans.
But hey, paint a white transgendered urban Jewish 22 year old with a college education who at sometime in their life put up with misogynistic bullshit and harrassment with the same brush as the guy whose third generation tractor supply business is going under with the industrialization of farming in North Dakota. Because all of white America is the same.
So in other words, you have constructed a post in your head and are replying to that, rather than the one that I wrote. Got it.
