Forestluv

My sense is that Trump wants the power, notoriety, admiration and respect that comes with the presidency - yet he doesn’t want to actually do the job of being president. He loves photo OPs in which people are praising him. He’s had official meetings in which attendees needed to tell him how honored they are to work for him. It’s like he wants to play his reality TV role of being the boss on The Apprentice. He has retweeted many white nationalist messages in the past. He took this one down after republicans started condemning him for it. Last week, he was using Nazi symbols in his ads. If Trump is not a white nationalist, he can easily show this by condemning white nationalism. But he never does. And that silence is very telling. If Trump accidentally retweeted a white supremacists supporting me. Simply deleting the tweet after republican backlash is not enough. He should also condemn white supremacy and put up a new tweet showing an example of his supporters that are good. For example, his supporters speaking against white supremacy. . . Oh, wait a minute. . .

Below is an ad from the Lincoln Project that includes Trumps’ “white power” tweet. The Lincoln Project was founded by a group of republicans against Trump. As they have grown, conservative Democrats are joining in - creating an influential centrist coalition. In terms of winning the election, an advantage Biden has over Bernie is that Biden is Orange-centered which is the center of the U.S. these days. I find the LP ads to be an interesting mix of U.S. history and tradition and what it means to be American. As well, they sprinkle in some stuff about moving forward.

Uncle Tom was kicked out of Sally’s wedding. The people there were so intolerant!!! Poor Uncle Tom complained for weeks about how intolerant the people at the wedding were. Well, it turns out Uncle Tom came to the wedding drunk, pissed in the punch bowl, shouted racist slurs and started a fist fight. . . All issues of intolerance are not equal. Be mindful of creating false equivalencies with blanket statements.

Of course Trump isn’t the first evil doer in history. He is an evil doer currently traumatizing children by separating them from their parents and putting them in cages. From the article you yourself linked: "We’ve noted that Obama did not have a policy to separate families arriving illegally at the border, and that separations under Trump happened systematically as a result of his administration’s policy to prosecute all adults crossing the border illegally." Do not spread misinformation on the forum.

Trump is caging children and he is separating them from their parents to add further cruelty and trauma. Wether children were put in cages previously in history, no way reduces the trauma of those children. Imagine visiting those traumatized suffering children and telling them “Back in the 12th century, the Chinese put children in cages. They had it just as bad as you”. That would do zero to reduce their trauma.

Yes, some Trump voters have that view. I am not talking about those Trump voters. I know Trump voters that told me “Oh, he’s just acting like a clown because he isn’t a politician. Once he becomes president he will be a serious business man”. Many of these Trump voters are like “omg, he actually kept being a clown as president!!”. I’m referring to those Trump voters. They have no excuse now. Imagine you have a friend that is running for class president. In the locker room at school, he loves to tell fart jokes and smell his own farts. Obviously, once he becomes class president he won’t act like this in public. Yet he becomes class president and there he is onstage giving a speech about fart jokes and enjoying the smell of his own farts. We now know that this behavior won’t change.

It’s not a random red line. It’s a grey area. For example, the confederate monuments are clear-cut. They were built decades after the Civil War to honor those that fought for slavery and to send a white supremecy message to the public. I say take them all down. Put them in museums and battlefields. Yet there is also a grey area like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. These monuments are not honoring them for the slaves they owned. These monuments are honoring them for contributions they made to the country like writing the Bill of Rights. That is a very different situation. It’s not a random line.

Of course his critics are very harsh. I’m referring to people that voted for Trump. Some of the people who voted for Trump thought his buffoonery was an act from his Reality TV show days. They thought that once he was actually president he would realize the seriousness of the job and take it seriously. No one can make that excuse anymore. I also think people underestimate Trump. Over and over he doesn’t things that shock people and then it becomes normal. Those shocks will continue in a 2nd term. He would have no accountability. He doesn’t have to worry about and election. He would do things that we would find shocking today.

Economic systems is different. The theme of the thread is about confederate statues coming down. Those confederate statues honor the fight for slavery. That is a very different dynamic than things like wether organic food coops are sustainable in a city.

It’s hard to imagine a new form of conservatism to arise, because conservatism by definition is the past. They want to use old systems that they think worked well. They want to “Make American Great Again”, the way America was in the “Good old days”. . . There is no imagination about how conservatives would run a city. We already know. They would want to run it based on conservative principles from the past. They don’t want change. Yet progressives are all about change and imagining new policies in the future. They want to re-imagine society. Things like M4A and the Green New Deal. This is one reason conservatives have a hard time imagining a new system that integrates a new form of democratic socialism. They think of Stalin Socialism from the 1920s. They are always looking in the rear-view mirror. They can’t imagine what a new socialist-capitalist society would look like.

We could say both. However, keep in mind that a lot of people who voted for Trump thought that his clown act was just an act. They thought that once President, Trump would take the job seriously and shape up. That idea has been smashed. If the U.S. re-elects Trump there are no excuses. They know exactly what they are getting.

That would make it even harder for Blue republicans to run.

To me, this is misplaced sympathy. This is one of the arguments the confederates used. “If we free the slaves, whites will feel discouraged and lose their drive. And we won’t have any more free labor. How can we compete with other countries without free slave labor?”. . . This is a weak argument on ethics. As well, this puts the welfare of whites on top. It uses the frame “If white people can’t oppress others, they may lose their drive”. This is not a good justification. It’s like saying “If Daddy can’t smoke meth and beat his kids anymore, then he could lose his drive”. We shouldn’t be putting the welfare of white people higher than the welfare of brown and black people. All Lives Matter. . . Remember?

This sounds like delay tactics and concern trolling to me. There were a lot of slave owners that said “Slow down this freeing the slaves thing. If we move too fast, the freed slaves will be worse off!” The U.S. can be an example to many countries by rejecting racism and white supremacy. And how has Trump served as a leader of ethics and human dignity to the world? I’d say he’s done a crappy job. Authoritarianism and racial tensions have increased.

Yes, that is how it started. And then began the experiment of the United States. From my POV, that experiment will fail if we don’t get right with minorities. The U.S. is getting internally torn apart. In the next generation, white people will be the majority minority. We need to adapt to that reality or we tare ourselves apart. The recent ruling on LGBTQ helps. The removal of many confederate monuments helps. Yet much more work needs to be done.

How did you cope when you found out Santa Claus isn’t real?

You’ve got it backwards. The confederacy lost the war. They are the losers. Yes, the country was originally built on slavery. Yet to maintain a “pillar” of slavery is absolutely absurd. The stronger pillars of America are democracy, unity, equality, The Bill of Rights and Civil Rights. Slavery and white supremacy are toxins eat away at those pillars. Here are some pillars. Slavery and white supremacy are not listed. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights/what-does-it-say

Big U.S. cities are very diverse: New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles etc. Socially and economically diverse. Blue level republicans won’t be able to run them. The solution is not to return to the 1960s. That isn’t going to work. That train has left the station.

I don’t think that’s the way to frame it. Republicans can do well running a big homogeneous city. Yet not very well with a big diverse city. Blue level politics don’t work well in a big diverse city.

From the perspective of the ego, it’s not such a great deal. From this perspective there is a price to pay. I’m not saying that it’s better to do either. Imagine playing a character in a movie. You are so immersed into the character, that you are actually the character and the “movie” is real life. There is a price to pay in transcending that character. In a sense the character dies. You can try to pretend “I’m the character”. There may be flashes of “I’m the character”, yet it’s never the same. You can never completely fool yourself of being the character, like you once did. There are aspects of being the character that are lost. Yes, forms of suffering are lost. Yet so is a lot of fun being the character. It’s like being at a magic show and knowing how all the magic tricks work. It’s just not the same. Yet, there is also some new stuff that opens up.

Open your mind and learn. You have a pre-conceived ideology and are not willing to see nuances. I do not agree 100% with Hawk or his strategy. Yet, you are mischaracterizing his position. You are so close-minded that you will not even consider what he is actually trying to accomplish. You literally say "I don't care what he claims to protest" and refuse to learn about what he is actually describing. You’ve already made up your mind without hearing him out and you want to spread your pre-conceived ideology about him. That's not going to cut it. Be here to learn, grow and expand. Watch Leo’s video on open-mindedness.

Don’t be lazy and expect to be spoon fed. Take responsibility for your learning. There are many videos of Anand online discussing plutocracy. It’s pretty much the only thing he talks about. Be here to learn rather than spread pre-conceived ideology.

Spreading ideology is against forum guidelines. Be here to learn. You’ve been given multiple chances to open your mind and start learning and expanding, yet refuse to do so. You are now pushing the limit. Hawk’s position is more nuanced than your framing. A full interview of his position was posted in the thread, yet you obviously didn’t watch it and would rather hold on to your pre-conceived ideology. You can choose to hold onto your ideology and remain contracted, yet don’t pull others on the forum down with you.

Spreading ideology is against forum guidelines - including religious, political, scientific ideology. You were shown in that thread the Hawk Newsome’s position is more nuanced than your ideology. There is a link in that thread in which Hawk explains his position. Be here to learn and expand, not to spread your pre-conceived ideology.

Developed societies have limits to Free Speech. For example, I’m not allowed to scream “Terrorists” in a crowded movie theatre. That can incite a panic and cause harm. Similarly, there are limits of Free Speech in private spaces. Someone cannot enter a wedding and start screaming profanities. Many online forums are not anything goes forums. If I start a forum for Yoga and a user insists on posting about pornography, I can ban that individual. Similarly, hate speech is against forum guidelines on Actualized and a few users have been banned for hate speech. Reddit is a privately owned and run website. They are allowed to ban hate speech if they desire. Banning hate speech on online forums is a very different dynamic than the government entering and arresting people for hate speech. Firstly, it is irrelevant wether it shuts them down. Reddit has a right to create a forum as they see fit. If there is a user on this forum that gets banned for hate speech, we are maintaining the integrity of the forum. It doesn’t matter if the person goes off to another forum to spew their hate speech. That’s not the point. Secondly, banning hate speech groups does reduce hate speech because it strips it of it’s normalcy. If all mainstream online forums ban white supremicist hate speech, those groups become marginalized and stigmatized. They become fringe groups. This absolutely sucks the energy out of it. For example, before Trump took office, white supremicists were fringe groups and there weren’t many of them. There were a few online sites that had to hide in the shadows. Yet with Trump, white supremecists have become normalized to an extent. Trump retweets white supremecists, has a white supremecist advisor and white supremecist groups have proliferated. The numbers have significantly grown. By stripping white supremecist of mainstream platforms, it marginalizes and stigmatizes them, thereby reducing their toxic impact.