Why This Anger?

Great Debates
81

I’m not going to get into it with you about why economic inequities might be causing anger in America today. If you don’t believe it, no amount of evidence I offer will convince you. I’ve learned that about dealing with you. However, I did have to single out this comment for particular ridicule. Gangsta rap (not actual gangstas, just the music) is responsible for more deaths, crime, and misery than Al Capone, as the prime mover behind his organized crime syndicate. I wish you could offer some kind of cite for this. I find it ludicrous to think that Capone, along with the lasting effects of his organization, has caused less damage than a genre of music, some of whose CDs reside in my car right now. It is to laugh.

Look into the difference between cause and effect. Organized crime might be the cause for anger, while gangsta rap is an expression of pre-existing anger. A more fruitful line of thought might be to consider why so many people gravitate towards gangsta rap. What is it expressing and why are these people so angry? Hint: it’s not liberals.

82

Let’s put it in simpler terms he can understand: gangsta rap is a result of that anger, not the cause. MOST of the people I knew who listened to it were skinny white boys in the suburbs who thought they were so badass.

83

In medieval Japan, Spain, and England, there was no expectation of economic mobility. America sells a dream that anyone and everyone could succeed, and indeed should, if they work hard enough. Sadly, that is simply not the case. Most of us are no more upwardly mobile than our ancestors were, possibly less so than 100 years ago. Also, almost all of us are literate. We understand how the other half is living, and can make an informed comparison and find our own lives lacking. There’s no divine right of kings, no rigid social hierarchy propped up by religion, no blissful ignorance of how others live. That is why Americans chafe so at the economic inequities.

84

Babies have to learn that even things that aren’t currently visible still exist.

It appears that a lot of adults need to learn that, too.

85

Okay, let me play your game for a minute. How about a cite that ‘Americans’ - i.e., the majority of Americans, as your comment suggests - chafe so at economic inequities? It’s been my experience that ‘most’ Americans are happy with their lives and lifestyle and have a realistic view of how they should be living given their level of education, experience and work ethic. It’s also been my experience that most of those who whinge the loudest about ‘economic inequites’ are American liberals who are enamored of the wholely unrealistic notion of fairness and largely don’t mind if nobody has anything as long as some don’t have more than others.

And with regard to your and Guinastasia’s contentions regarding gangsta rap, I’d like to thank you for providing textbook examples of the way lefties will rationalize and defend virtually anything, no matter how negative or harmful, as long as it emanates from a former or allegedly oppressed segment of society. Assault, murder, rape and sometimes even vandalism in the white community can be the result of anger too. Does that make them okay? Does that mean white teenagers and young adults should have the perpetrators of these crimes and their mimics lauded as ‘artists’ and role models and, out of youthful impressionism and foolishness, try to emulate their mindset and behavior?

Blacks had a lot more to be angry about 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago than they do now, and yet back then they demonstrated peacefully and behaved with dignity, humanity and self-respect.

It’s a fact of life that negative things are easy and postive things are hard. It’s easier to let the house become a mess than it is to keep it sparkling clean; it’s easier to let your car go unmaintained than it is to take care of it; it’s easier to blow off homework and chase girls or play video games; it’s easy to become overweight and out of shape, and it’s hard to work out and be fit, etc., etc., etc.

It’s also a fact of life that a considerable segment of young people are drawn to the negativity of rebeliousness, lawlessness and the lure of thug life much more than they are to positive things like homework, discipline, responsibility and accomplishment. Rap musicians and rap producers know that and play to it, and saps like white liberals defend it simply because it comes from the black community, where anybodey with a shred of common sense and intellectual honesty knows perfectly well that if you glamorize and promote drugs, crime, gangs and murder, more of each will be the result.

As I said upthread, far more lives have been ruined or ended because of the proliferation of gangsta rap and the culture of it propagates, than was ever the case with Al frickin’ Capone. It utterly defies belief that anyone would seriously excuse and defend either it or the lifestyle that it portrays.

And yet American liberals - eager to claim the moral high ground and slavishly devoted to defending the oppressed (and totally lacking in either the will or ability to discriminate between right and wrong when it comes to their pet causes) do exactly that.

If I was a black parent trying to raise my kids to live good, proper and productive lives…and even more importantly, trying to keep them safe and out of trouble…I’d be furious with people like you.

86

As opposed to what? Are you saying black people are now undignified, inhuman, and disrespectful?

Evidence? Oh, I forgot, you refuse to provide any.

87

Wait a second-- aren’t you the guy who said things are so profane, violent and angry? How can you then simultaneously say that everyone’s happy and fine? Can’t have it both ways.

IT’S JUST MUSIC. Johnny Cash said he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but that was OK, I guess. It’s just music. People don’t commit violence because they listen to violent music. If you want to contend so, since this is GD, I’ll have to ask for a cite. People who listen to gangsta rap might commit crimes, but the music isn’t the reason why they do it, and it’s idiotic to think I might be.

Contrariwise, I think it utterly defies belief that you’d think the Al Capone and his organized crime syndicate, which was the starting point for lots more organizations of that type, was less harmful than a genre of music. Let me make it really simple for you: Al Capone actually killed people. He ordered other people to kill people. His organization was a criminal one that led to lots of deaths. Gangsta rap? It’s a type of music. It never killed anyone. Period. Your argument has no merit.

You’d be furious that I think that a kind of music is just that? I think black parents might find your attitude rather condescending, and very much missing the point. Black people are still angry. Rap music is often angry as an expression of that. Your dismissal of that anger and your desire to “ban” it is what’s insulting. Sure, a lot of it is pretty vile. But it’s just a symptom, not a cause.

88

Oh, really?

Note that the article goes VERY in-depth on race riots in general, not just blacks rioting, but whites rioting against blacks, whites rioting against Irish, whites rioting against Italians. Boy, they really knew how to suppress their anger and crassness back then, didn’t they?

Your basic premise depends on pretending that the absence of angry action in popular depictions of the past is evidence of the absence of angry action in the past. The reason we’re so disdainful of that premise is that it’s obviously false if you knew any actual history whatsoever, instead of indulging in nostalgic fantasies of “a better time”. There never was a better time. It’s a popular fiction.

89

Well, there *is *Suge Knight… but he only kills other gangsta rappers, so it’s not like he’s a force of evil in Starving’s world.

90

Suge Knight isn’t gangsta rap. He’s an actual gangsta. I bet if you asked him, he wouldn’t say the music made him do it, either.

91

Okay. First you said that “the economic disparity between rich and poor is so much greater now than it was 50 years ago,” and I disputed the claim. So now you’re changing it to the literacy rate and expectation of economic mobility.

Take a look at the literacy rate in Scotland a couple of hundred years ago. It was one of the most literate countries in the world and their economic disparity between rich and poor was greater than ours now.

Then let’s address expectation of economic mobility. People in this country have grown up thinking that a couple of kids in a garage could build a multi-billion dollar computer company starting with a few hundred bucks and a used van; that a dirt-poor country girl could become a fabulously wealthy country singer; that a black woman could become one of the most powerful figures in entertainment; that a black man could become President of the United States. Are these things somehow less possible today than they were a hundred years ago?

Of course not. Everyone knows it’s because of violent video games. :smiley:

Seriously, Starving Artist, listen to Rubystreak on this one. You’ve got no evidence, and you need to do a little research into cause and effect. Even if there’s a positive correlation between listening to gangsta rap and committing violent crime, you’d have a tough time proving that causation doesn’t go the other way (i.e., violent criminals like gangsta rap).

92

I offered a cite. You asked about other scenarios wherein the economic disparity was as great or greater, and I countered your question. That’s not the same as “changing it.” I changed nothing. I explained why Americans in the late 20th and early 21st century might be angry about economic disparity while people in other periods weren’t.

Offer me a cite and I’ll certainly take a look at it. Also, show me that they weren’t angry about it. I’m not particularly up on my history of Scottish anger and economics, forgive me.

They’re as wildly unlikely now as they were then. The fact is, my father never went to college and he made more than my husband and I make combined. He made more than I’ll ever make, with two Masters degrees. I think that’s the current reality for a lot of people. Personally, I’m not angry about it, but I can understand why others would be.

Exactly. Correlation does not equal causation. The vast majority of people who listen to gangsta rap are not criminals, and banning people’s expressions of anger is never a good idea, either, even if they make you furious and offend your sensibilities.

93

After you. :rolleyes:

(Wait-wasn’t it Starving Arist who insisted that society was going down the tubes because Obama took his jacket off while he was in the office?)

I think we’re trying to get blood from a turnip.

94

I am having a busy evening and don’t have time for a point by point rebuttal to Rubystreak, jayjay, etc., but I will point out that there is a considerable difference between a throw-away line in one song which explains the reason for the song’s premise, ala ‘shot a man in Reno/stuck in Folsom prison’, vs. the glamorization and promotion of an entire criminal (not to mention highly misogynistic) culture and way of life. There is no corelation at all, and it’s astounding to me that anyone would draw an equivalence between the two.

95

Oh, lighten up. The Johnny Cash reference was a joke. The fact is, music doesn’t make people violent. Correlation may exist, but you’d be hard pressed to prove causation.

96

No. It wasn’t.

I expressed disdain for Obama for having done so and recalled reading that Ronald Reagan always wore a coat and tie in the Oval Office. Then someone posted a photo showing Reagan in the Oval Office in shirtsleeves, and I retracted and apologized.

Why anyone pays the slightest attention to you is anyone’s guess.

97

You have got to be kidding me. (No pun intended.)

Just where in your declaration:

“IT’S JUST MUSIC. Johnny Cash said he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but that was OK, I guess. It’s just music. People don’t commit violence because they listen to violent music. If you want to contend so, since this is GD, I’ll have to ask for a cite. People who listen to gangsta rap might commit crimes, but the music isn’t the reason why they do it, and it’s idiotic to think I might be.”

…is the joke?

Nor will I agree that music doesn’t make people violent. Some music, under certain circumstances, most certainly does make people violent.

But that isn’t the point. The point is that gangsta rap glamorizes and promotes a culture that has drug use, violence, misogyny and even murder at its core.

You people kill me. Twenty and twenty-five years ago you were all whinging about violence in movies and television and issuing proclamtions about how giving young boys toy guns to play with would cause them to grow up to think guns and violence were the solution to life’s problems. Thanks to leftie rabble-rousing it got so bad that characters in shows like The A-Team could fire 5,000 rounds per episode and never hit a soul. But now all of a sudden, because one of your pet causes is concerned, music, movies and images promoting guns, drugs, gangs, violence, murder and misogyny are all just harmless expressions of justifyable anger.

It’s a wonder you people don’t get whiplash from reversing yourselves so violently every time the societal winds change.

98

No, the joke is thinking that the music is the cause, not the symptom. Think about it. It’s just music. Really, it is.

It wouldn’t make a person otherwise indisposed to commit violence into a violent person. If you keep insisting it’s so, you’ll have to provide a cite.

Some of it does. Some of it talks about it the same way Johnny Cash talked about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die: because that’s some people’s experience. I bet you haven’t listened to much of it. You can pull quotes from some of the worst offenders, but the biggest names in rap are not what you think they are. But thanks for derailing a perfectly good thread to ride your hobby horse about the culture wars.

20 and 25 years ago I was in high school or middle school, so you can retract directing that “you people” any me time. My mother was a dyed in the wool liberal who was against censorship of all kinds. Those are the liberal values I grew up with. But again, this is a hijack.

99

I was actually quite the fan of the A-Team, I’ll have you know. :smiley: And I pity da’fool who follows your theories. Especially as you have yet to provide any proof or evidence for them, just more, “the sky is falling!!!”

I never had a toy gun myself, but I used to play with my cousins’ all the time. Or I’d play with sticks and pretend they were swords.

(And 25 years ago, I was in kindergarten – and I used to watch a lot of those violent action movies with my mom. And I turned out to be pretty mellow.)

100

And you people kill me. Do you not realize that before you decided rap and video games were what was wrong with society, rock and D&D were supposed to be the root of all evil, and before that it was jazz and comic books, and before that it was tango and detective fiction ? And in the early middle ages it was singing half-tones that was to usher to downfall of Christian Civilization ?

Art is an expression of the times, it is not a cause of the times. It never was, it never will be.

And yeah, we get it, you didn’t have that (whatever “that” is) in your youth, so surely it must be why we are not exactly like you were or hold your old, decrepit ideals aloft. You made the society you wanted, so it must inherently be the best possible society, if it could have been done better you would have and anyone not agreeing is either a misguided idealist, an imbecile or a force of evil planning the downfall of society.
Like you were, when you were young. Like our kids will be, when we are old. The little bastards are already at it, too : don’t get me started on SMS-style spelling !

So yeah, bashing gangsta rap will get you to be accused of old fogeyism. Because it is, and old fogeys have been saying the same things ever since that first generation of hooligans started drawing on the walls of the cave. Society’s been going down the tubes since day one. Apparently, the tubes lead up.