Random Politics Thread

[Lark]

I don’t think any have overtly stated big government as a cornerstone of their platforms, but I might be wrong

Given the use of the term by that site, I have to wonder about any bias on the parts of those who write and design the test and labels there

I think there are very few parties or politicians who would support big bloated government for the sake of having big bloated government.

It is interesting some view big/small government as an ends rather than a means.

Yup, I only know of it as an unintended consequence for some politicians who believe in an expansive sphere of government, also sometimes small government, ie limited scope and sphere, is not necessarily cheap or inexpensive government either, like the US has small government in contrast to other states but massive military expenses.

 

[Mind Maverick]

frankly, I have a preference attraction wise for people who aren't white

Welp, apparently Greeks are considered Caucasian even though many are dark, and this is news to me, so I guess I was wrong here - I just prefer people who are foreign and non-English speaking, particularly those from South America or Europe.



Just a vent - I fucking hate the term "white privilege." No, I do not have white privilege. No, just bc people are racist against blacks and not treating them as they should be treated, does not mean I am PRIVILEGED as a white person. I'm not getting special snowflake treatment, you're just getting treated shitter than you should. Nobody is going "you're white sooooo congratulations, you get prizes!" Nobody's rolling out a fucking red carpet for me, I work my ass off in society like anyone else to get what I get. It's not fucking handed over, I don't have some silver spoon. Nobody's going "here's a nice fancy house in the suburbs because you have pale skin." Nobody's going "you're white so you'll get help with your mental illness issues that hold you back in your job and leave you homeless, living out of your car" like fuck off with that shit. Don't minimize the fucking work I do just because people treat you poorly.

EDIT:
Btw, for those who think I'm always emotional, etc.
No, THIS is me being emotional.

 

[Schrödinger's Name]

Just a vent - I fucking hate the term "white privilege." No, I do not have white privilege. No, just bc people are racist against blacks and not treating them as they should be treated, does not mean I am PRIVILEGED as a white person. I'm not getting special snowflake treatment, you're just getting treated shitter than you should. Nobody is going "you're white sooooo congratulations, you get prizes!" Nobody's rolling out a fucking red carpet for me, I work my ass off in society like anyone else to get what I get. It's not fucking handed over, I don't have some silver spoon. Nobody's going "here's a nice fancy house in the suburbs because you have pale skin." Nobody's going "you're white so you'll get help with your mental illness issues that hold you back in your job and leave you homeless, living out of your car" like fuck off with that shit. Don't minimize the fucking work I do just because people treat you poorly.

I believe I've discussed this with you before... How you describe 'white privilege' is not what white privilege is at all. It'd explain but I honestly question your willingness and openness to learn and receive new information about this subject. Especially since this has already been discussed so many times before.

But if you want to critique something- at least get its definition right.

 

[Mind Maverick]

I believe I've discussed this with you before... How you describe 'white privilege' is not what white privilege is at all. It'd explain but I honestly question your willingness and openness to learn and receive new information about this subject. Especially since this has already been discussed so many times before.

But if you want to critique something- at least get its definition right.

First time I'm seeing this, actually. If you discussed it with someone it definitely was not me.

 

[Schrödinger's Name]

First time I'm seeing this, actually. If you discussed it with someone it definitely was not me.

There have been multiple threads and it most certainly was with you. Though it most likely was about 'reverse racism'. Though I don't remember whether or not we directly discussed white privilege. It's kinda tied together though.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Just a food for thought.

 

[Mind Maverick]

There have been multiple threads and it most certainly was with you. Though it most likely was about 'reverse racism'. Though I don't remember whether or not we directly discussed white privilege. It's kinda tied together though.

Yeah, reverse racism is something I mentioned, but I also explained that I was using the term incorrectly bc I didn't know it was a real term. I thought it was something I'd made up or something like that, in order to explain a concept I myself was trying to say. Basically, that term sidetracked the entire discussion and people were missing the argument I was trying to make.

BTW, I still don't know wtf "reverse racism" is supposed to mean, bc it isn't what I was even talking about when everyone took it as such back then.

 

[ceecee]

Welp, apparently Greeks are considered Caucasian even though many are dark, and this is news to me, so I guess I was wrong here - I just prefer people who are foreign and non-English speaking, particularly those from South America or Europe.



Just a vent - I fucking hate the term "white privilege." No, I do not have white privilege. No, just bc people are racist against blacks and not treating them as they should be treated, does not mean I am PRIVILEGED as a white person. I'm not getting special snowflake treatment, you're just getting treated shitter than you should. Nobody is going "you're white sooooo congratulations, you get prizes!" Nobody's rolling out a fucking red carpet for me, I work my ass off in society like anyone else to get what I get. It's not fucking handed over, I don't have some silver spoon. Nobody's going "here's a nice fancy house in the suburbs because you have pale skin." Nobody's going "you're white so you'll get help with your mental illness issues that hold you back in your job and leave you homeless, living out of your car" like fuck off with that shit. Don't minimize the fucking work I do just because people treat you poorly.

EDIT:
Btw, for those who think I'm always emotional, etc.
No, THIS is me being emotional.

I've posted this here before. In fact, I'm almost certain you responded. But I will again because it's pretty clear none of this ^^ is what anyone is saying when they say "white privilege". You can be just as poor, downtrodden and lack opportunities as a black person. You simply do not have the to deal with being black or brown IN ADDITION TO being poor. It doesn't make your suffering any less - stop acting like it does.

https://medschool.duke.edu/sites/me...g_white_privilege_to_a_broke_white_person.pdf

 

[Coriolis]

First time I'm seeing this, actually. If you discussed it with someone it definitely was not me.

The notion of white privilege has been discussed several times, in several threads. Yes, everyone who is white has it, and no, it doesn't mean our lives are trouble free or that we get what we need and want while non-whites don't. It means that, in a given situation, all other things being equal, a white person will generally fare better than a person of color. We are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt, be treated with respect, etc. It is hard for whites who are having alot of trouble to see this. It would be quite plain, however, to a black person in their situation, who would have it even worse.

 

[Mind Maverick]

I don't think I'm myself right now - I will try to fix this when I'm no longer manic. Sorry for any damage caused. I genuinely mean no harm to anyone.

 

[Merced]

@<a href="https://www.typologycentral.com/forums/members/27952.html" target="_blank">Merced</a> I am actually inclined to ask more about the ACAB mentality, because that mentality appears TO often actually treat all individual officers as bad people and minority officers even discuss feeling completely disowned by their communities for trying to join the police force to make a difference. You are honestly the first one I heard who seems to want to keep it to the actually organization itself and not the individuals alone. You can PM me about it if you like but I'm interested.

I feel bad because I thought of all day how to articulate it but then I just ended up linking a Youtube video.

ACAB and Defund the Police (or even better, Abolish the Police) are movements that I feel like all encompass the same feelings and ideas. What is the job of the police? If you say it is to protect people, they are god awful at it. Most calls to police aren't for violent issues, yet that's all the cops are trained to do. Calling the police is almost always an escalation of an issue as opposed to a de-escalation. In fact, as someone who has tried to kill themself, I can say that calling the police is very much so a last resort as they do not understand how to delicately handle situations involving mental health. When people say defund/abolish the police, they are arguing for a replacement in services. Don't get me wrong, crime and stuff will still happen, but for all of these other nonviolent issues, we should send in social workers or literally anyone else trained to handle it.

Another reason why I support ACAB is because I do not believe in the idea that we should give cops this huge amount of respect. Firstly, no one is holding a gun up to people's head and saying "become a police officer". You absolutely don't have to be a cop. Look, I'm not being a cop right now! It's very, very easy to not be a cop. Don't like it when people say fuck the police? Stop being police and you won't have a reason to feel targeted. Secondly, you are a civil servant. There's no reason I should treat a cop better than say, an employee at McDonald's. That's not me endorsing being shitty to fast food workers, that's me saying that the fast food worker is doing more to go out of their way than a police officer. being a cop makes you a level above a working class citizen. They're practically their own class! "Yeah but the death rate"--- Police aren't even the Top 20 of most deadly jobs.

It's literally Power Trip the Occupation.

I know Ceecee sent me some stuff discussing intersectionality which kind of helped me understand privilege better than I did before. But often a lot of people don't realize this fact, that when you say "white privilege" you suggest to them that we are white so we never face suffering, we never had to worry about certain things, we don't feel anxiety toward the police ever, etc. and without that reading honestly I always felt white privilege was pretty racist in nature, to assume my life is somehow automatically good because I am a white person. It did make me feel kind of hostile and like I couldn't even speak of it. I had an african american person tell me he didn't like my area because there was too many white people. So I am also kind of glad you acknowledge that sometimes, the african american community can be racist. I sometimes feel though that "white privilege" is a divisive term and it is separating a lot of people from actual understanding. I am not sure where to change it...but I think we need to use terms that aren't so...dividing. Because we need to work together without people having to feel sorry for who they are. I think we all just want equal opportunities, equal respect, and equal justice. And I am definitely always going to fight for that, for women, for minorities, everyone deserves that opportunity.

I feel like trying to make safe spaces for everyone is just trying to reintroduce segregation with pretty words which ALSO angers me. I love culture, learning different things, etc. I was raised not to think of people as colors but as people. So sometimes I feel really annoyed with the obsession with who is "black" and who is white because it seems to take us back so far because in the end I think we all just want to be viewed as people regardless of skin or religion or etc. and it is so stupid to judge someone for it. Racists suck and they're usually assholes. And I don't care if you have a PHD, if you still judge people by the color of their skin, you are an uneducated bigot.

I think you're on the right track with this line of thinking but here is my philosophy on that. Being colorblind is the same as saying you treat everyone like white people.

My race isn't the problem. Yes, it's a social construct, it has no biological pros or cons. But just because it's a social construct, that doesn't make it not real. My race is a part of who I am, it's my culture. We are different. We have different experiences and different backgrounds and our race has a lot to do with it. Ignoring that would be would be ignoring who we are. The problem isn't my race, but how people treat my race.

This is why I advocate for 'safe spaces' or minority only communities. The US has a keen goal to homogenize everything and everyone and that requires dialing back the best parts of my culture so that it's consumable for a wider audience. I don't want that. Individuality is very, very important and if what makes me me has to be closer to what makes you you, then it doesn't make anyone anyone.

This would then transition into a conversation about cultural appropriation and how it can be both a good and bad thing, but that's another rant for another day, lol.

"race is a social construct" hell yes high five.

 

[ceecee]

It's literally Power Trip the Occupation.

I can't even begin to tell you how true this is. I grew up on that side of the cop mentality - the power trips, the god complex, the absolutely warped and twisted view of respect. They are public fucking servants. The only people most of them protect and serve are themselves and their unions keep murders, sadists, psychopaths and criminals working.

Oh and you are right. It's certainly not one of the most deadly jobs. It's entirely kookoo that anyone believes that it is. Small town cops are fundraisers with very little in the way of risk to themselves and because there are usually so many of them and they have very little to do with little supervision, they often make life hell for anyone they deem deserving of it.

 

[Jaguar]

I'm interested in Georgia, too. Along with the senate races.

 

[Mind Maverick]

Trump signs order to push ‘patriotic education’ on eve of election

What does he mean by "patriotic education" even? As someone who thinks US is too US-centric and needs to be educated in a more global way, I don't like the sounds of it.

 

[Jaguar]

Be careful, someone might shout "jagoff" if you keep bringing up his name on that stage.

 

[ceecee]

Trump signs order to push ‘patriotic education’ on eve of election

What does he mean by "patriotic education" even? As someone who thinks US is too US-centric and needs to be educated in a more global way, I don't like the sounds of it.

Nationalism.

 

[The Cat]

he's really laying down the implications of threats in this ralley

 

[Jaguar]

he's really laying down the implications of threats in this ralley

Fuck him.

 

[dunce]

Really hoping that the brigades and state militia laid out in all the states right now to stop rioting aren't necessarily an admission that the election will go red. I'd like to believe that they just don't know and the democratic process is at work, and that the republic elects its officials on the basis of a sound minority wise enough to lead the group.

 

[Mind Maverick]

I believe I've discussed this with you before... How you describe 'white privilege' is not what white privilege is at all. It'd explain but I honestly question your willingness and openness to learn and receive new information about this subject. Especially since this has already been discussed so many times before.

But if you want to critique something- at least get its definition right.

I don't like the way you responded here at all, but yes, I was in a way wrong about the definition - I say in a way because see the last part I said to Coriolis. However, I reject the implication that I may have issues with admitting it when I'm wrong about this, and you really don't know me well enough to be saying these kinds of things. There were a number of possible reasons I could've been saying what I said, including things as simple as memory, but you jumped to what was basically the worst possibility and I don't appreciate that. If you knew me at all you'd know how I persevere after truth regardless of what it might be or how much it might hurt to do so. Something like not being open to whether I was mistaken about the definition of "white privilege" would be stupidly minor and that kind of thing is against everything I stand for. I've never in my life been like that.

In response to the statement about how this has been discussed often here (@Coriolis too for this part) I don't go around reading political posts regularly so that I would know it's been discussed so many times before. Usually I avoid politics and only visit this forum when I have something political to post myself. Politics are exhausting to me and I face a decline in my own personal mental health when I spend too much time on it. Until Trump came along I despised politics altogether and refused to invest any time into them, but I've since come to see it as a responsibility, so I instead made the personal decision to simply try not to expose myself to more than what my own mental health can handle. So yes, many others have had this conversation many times before, I'm sure...but that doesn't mean I should be expected to know something just because others here have discussed it. I'm not sure if it's that people feel tired out from the subject or not, and I can completely empathize with and understand that if it is the case, but my point remains.

No one pointed "white privilege" out to me here before regardless of whether you think it's interconnected to reverse-racism, or whether it really is interconnected with it. That entire post I made about reverse-racism was a miscommunication on my part that quickly got out of hand. When I made those statements and used the term "reverse-racism" what I was actually talking about there was the concept that I was talking about. I'm struggling to articulate this in a way I know will clarify, but I'm trying to say that my problem in that post was not that I was talking about "reverse-racism" in a way that wasn't aligned with its definition, but that I was talking about other things that "reverse-racism" wasn't the right word to explain. Several individuals honed in on that one single term and then completely both missed and misconstrued everything I was actually wanting to say back then in that post. You didn't talk to me about reverse-racism, you just entirely misunderstood what I was talking about and thought you talked to me about reverse-racism, except really I was never talking about reverse-racism to begin with back in that post. I've said that several times, including back then...so of course I'm not going to take much from input about reverse-racism from that conversation when I never intended to refer to the real term of "reverse-racism" to begin with. At the time of using it I didn't know it was a real term at all.

I've posted this here before. In fact, I'm almost certain you responded. But I will again because it's pretty clear none of this ^^ is what anyone is saying when they say "white privilege". You can be just as poor, downtrodden and lack opportunities as a black person. You simply do not have the to deal with being black or brown IN ADDITION TO being poor. It doesn't make your suffering any less - stop acting like it does.

https://medschool.duke.edu/sites/me...g_white_privilege_to_a_broke_white_person.pdf

^/v Same as the above and below responses, basically, minus the obvious stuff that responds to things only they said.

The notion of white privilege has been discussed several times, in several threads. Yes, everyone who is white has it, and no, it doesn't mean our lives are trouble free or that we get what we need and want while non-whites don't. It means that, in a given situation, all other things being equal, a white person will generally fare better than a person of color. We are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt, be treated with respect, etc. It is hard for whites who are having a lot of trouble to see this. It would be quite plain, however, to a black person in their situation, who would have it even worse.

I would honestly argue that this is relative to where exactly you are in society. As you well know, I've consistently held the belief that it is a two-way street and many black people are very racist as well. I know you believe in addressing one at a time being the best approach. I respect that, and perhaps you may be right, but I open-mindedly disagree, I guess you could say, for a number of reasons. Anyway, as for the quoted statement, thanks for the clarification. The angle I was coming from was simply that 'privileged' implies there's some sort of above-standard level benefit when there's not, it's just simply a normal, standard, basic human rights level of treatment. I've never disagreed with the fact that white people will, for the most part, have it easier in otherwise equal circumstances. I disagree with using the term that means "a special advantage, immunity, or right possessed by an individual or group" to describe something everyone should have. Standard isn't special, standard isn't advantaged - it's just simply how things ought to be for everyone. Most people are comparing two things: treatment of white people VS treatment of black people. In comparison to black people, yes, white people can seem privileged - but in comparison to how people should be treated, white people are not privileged. Everything is relative to comparisons. Make sense?


Basically, I'm thinking outside of the box.


EDIT:
Sorry for seeming to go multiple directions with this - wrote in one solid direction the entire time and then became conflicted when doing final edits. I refuse to spend yet more time on this post though.