Who Were The MAGA Rioters?

[Forestluv]

41 minutes ago, Vrubel said:

Yeah, finally some nuance: not all rural people are the same, and most of them don't care about crazy conspiracies. 

Most rural southerners do engage in crazy conspiracies. Marjorie’s district was well aware of her crazy conspiracy beliefs. They voted for her because of her crazy conspiracy beliefs. 

90% of Republican lawmakers voted against impeachment in part because their rural base believe in crazy conspiracy theories and they don’t want to get primaried and lose to a conspiracy kook.

It’s much easier to create a conspiracy theory ecosystem in rural areas, since it is more homogeneous. Urbanites are exposed to a much more diverse set of information and experience. 

[mandyjw]

3 hours ago, aurum said:

She knows everything about narcissism, but couldn’t apparently see it in Trump.

If you knew everything about narcissism, you'd be Self Realized. Trouble comes in when you think you know a lot about it. 

[Vrubel]

47 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

Most rural southerners do engage in crazy conspiracies. Marjorie’s district was well aware of her crazy conspiracy beliefs. They voted for her because of her crazy conspiracy beliefs. 

Do you have some serious data backing this up? One district as an example is not a proper indication for boxing-in all rural people across America. I am genuinely interested in how widespread these outlandish conspiracies are amongst rural Americans. In my opinion, it's kinda overblown because this extreme group seems so loud and harbors a lot of media attention, like for example Muslim extremists. But I am open to being proven wrong. 

Edited February 13, 2021 by Vrubel

[Forestluv]

3 hours ago, Vrubel said:

Do you have some serious data backing this up? One district as an example is not a proper indication for boxing-in all rural people across America. I am genuinely interested in how widespread these outlandish conspiracies are amongst rural Americans. In my opinion, it's kinda overblown because this extreme group seems so loud and harbors a lot of media attention, like for example Muslim extremists. But I am open to being proven wrong. 

If you like data, look at polls and voting patterns in rural areas of America. About 70-80% are Trumpers and half of them are hard-core Trumpers. The author of the above video makes lots of videos about the low conscious south. It's not just his district.

You could also see for yourself. Travel through rural areas of the south, Appalachia and the mountain west. There is a lot of confederate nationalists, ethnocentrism, racism, homophobia and Stop-The-Steal. Rural areas is Trump country. Most of them believe the election was stolen. 

[Emerald]

On 2/12/2021 at 2:33 AM, Leo Gura said:

Possum-country folk

 

The little girl at 2:08 is low key terrifying.

[blackchair]

the whole world is a stage im afraid

[Vrubel]

12 hours ago, Forestluv said:

You could also see for yourself. Travel through rural areas of the south, Appalachia and the mountain west. There is a lot of confederate nationalists, ethnocentrism, racism, homophobia and Stop-The-Steal. Rural areas is Trump country. Most of them believe the election was stolen. 

I would love to go road tripping throughout the south, and see with my own eyes. Because the media will often focus in on the extreme, outrageous and sensational.

Is that fair? I don’t know. I am sure they are not lying but they also are not giving the full picture.

for example I heard that the state of Mississippi removed a confederate emblem off it’s flag. So there is also undeniable progress going on.

I see the South as America’s battered slow learning rebel kid that has historically embodied much of America’s darkest aspects. From slavery, decimation after the civil war, race relations and consistent abject poverty. All of these abuses combined with the humanity, good and musicality of the people, give the land a certain character and poetry.

 

[blackchair]

1 minute ago, Vrubel said:

All of these abuses combined with the humanity, good and musicality of the people, give the land a certain character and poetry.

 

thank you. 

[mandyjw]

People in rural America while at first glance may seem simple, are incredibly complicated and diverse. They have some of the most amazing qualities and yet can be incredibly blind about certain things. They aren't unlike any of us in that way. There's an incredible ingenuity, resilience, and connection with intuition, (and sometimes stupid pride) that comes with the hard physical labor, and the forced independence of rural living. If you really care about politics in the US, go spend a couple weeks out on a farm, etc, working with them if you want to understand it. No articles or YouTube videos are going to give you this kind of education. Until what they have to offer is seen and appreciated, we're going to have to deal with this stuff again and again. Trump saw this need for recognition and appreciation and played it to his advantage. 

 

 

 

[blackchair]

5 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

People in rural America while at first glance may seem simple, are incredibly complicated and diverse. They have some of the most amazing qualities and yet can be incredibly blind about certain things. They aren't unlike any of us in that way. There's an incredible ingenuity, resilience, and connection with intuition, (and sometimes stupid pride) that comes with the hard physical labor, and the forced independence of rural living. If you really care about politics in the US, go spend a couple weeks out on a farm, etc, working with them if you want to understand it. No articles or YouTube videos are going to give you this kind of education. Until what they have to offer is seen and appreciated, we're going to have to deal with this stuff again and again. Trump saw this need for recognition and appreciation and played it to his advantage. 

 

 

 

beautiful.

[Forestluv]

5 hours ago, Vrubel said:

I would love to go road tripping throughout the south, and see with my own eyes. Because the media will often focus in on the extreme, outrageous and sensational.

Is that fair? I don’t know. I am sure they are not lying but they also are not giving the full picture.

I have family in South Carolina and I've traveled through the south many times. There are some wonderful aspects of nature, culture and people in the south. Yet there are also ugly aspects, which you seem to be minimizing and apologizing for. 

5 hours ago, Vrubel said:

for example I heard that the state of Mississippi removed a confederate emblem off it’s flag. So there is also undeniable progress going on.

"Progress" is relative and you seem to be setting a very low bar for progress. If Germany removed a swastika emblem from their flag, would that be "progress"? I would say it's progressive in the year 1946, yet not in the year 2020. Similarly, the confederate symbol is the #1 symbol of slavery, oppression and white supremacy in America. Removing the confederate emblem from a state flag was progressive in the year 1920, yet not in 2020. 

The fact that you consider it progressive highlights that there are high levels of racism and white supremacy in southern states like Mississippi. Removing the confederate emblem is progress for a state that has a lot of racism and white supremacy. 

5 hours ago, Vrubel said:

I see the South as America’s battered slow learning rebel kid that has historically embodied much of America’s darkest aspects. From slavery, decimation after the civil war, race relations and consistent abject poverty. All of these abuses combined with the humanity, good and musicality of the people, give the land a certain character and poetry.

We can romanticize if we like, yet let's be clear what we are romanticizing. This "character" and "poetry" not only includes Spanish Moss, yummy crab legs and charming accents - it also includes lynchings, glorifying slave masters and the oppression of black people. 

"Character" and "Poetry" is comforting from one perspective, yet horrific from another perspective. We could also say Nazi Germany had "character" and was "poetic". 

[mandyjw]

1 minute ago, Forestluv said:

We can romanticize if we like, yet let's be clear what we are romanticizing. This "character" and "poetry" not only includes Spanish Moss, yummy crab legs and charming accents - it also includes lynchings and glorifying those who fought to continue slavery. 

If we're going to constantly dwell on these things, we might as ALL just live in constant misery and guilt for what we did to the Native Americans in order to form this country in the first place. But some of the Native Americans brutally killed white people because of the color of their skin too, so they also must live in horrible shame and guilt. 

No one is the hero, complete equality, so everyone is a loser. 

5 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

 

"Character" and "Poetry" is comforting from one perspective, yet horrific from another perspective. 

 

So which perspective should we choose, the one that feels terrible or the one that feels good? Which perspective is truly healing? I say we choose the one that feels good. Does avoidance feel good? No. Does appreciation feel good? Yes. is there a difference between avoidance and appreciation? You only know by how it feels. We can't judge someone else's actions for them, they know the difference by how they feel. If you want to empower and heal, then you want people to feel empowered and healed. You don't get to empowerment and healing from keeping entertaining a perspective that feels horrible. 

Healing racism doesn't come from someone looking back at his actions and words and judging them as PC and woke enough or judging them as the opposite, as shameful. It comes from the complete absence of the thought of racism, it comes from cultivating appreciation and sensitivity to feeling. We get to healing by paying attention to feeling, and choosing to focus on perspectives that feel good. If you're shaming entire sections and pockets of the country in one fell swoop, you're making the same separation that is the very root of the racism itself. The unhealed shame is the very driver of the racism. You don't fight fire with fire. 

[DocWatts]

32 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

Healing racism doesn't come from someone looking back at his actions and words and judging them as PC and woke enough or judging them as the opposite, as shameful. It comes from the complete absence of the thought of racism, it comes from cultivating appreciation and sensitivity to feeling. We get to healing by paying attention to feeling, and choosing to focus on perspectives that feel good. If you're shaming entire sections and pockets of the country in one fell swoop, you're making the same separation that is the very root of the racism itself. The unhealed shame is the very driver of the racism. You don't fight fire with fire. 

In today's world racism is more often than not Implicit, rather than Explicit. An example of explicit racism would consist of shouting racial slurs of someone on a bus. Someone who's Implicitly Racist would be far more likely to eagerly look for reasons as to why a black teenager shot and killed by the police deserved to die. If you confronted this person, they would deny that this behavior is racist; and this is because they are simply unaware (or in denial) of how things like Implicit Bias operate.

The reason for this shift from Explicit to Implicit is because cultural norms have gradually shifted so that expressing openly racist attitudes is no longer tolerated by most of society. That doesn't mean racism has gone away though, it just means that the racism exists today is more subtle than racism of the past.

And even people with quite Explicitly Racist worldviews, such as Richard Spencer, have gone out of their way to rebrand themselves as 'race realists' in an attempt to make racist rhetoric more palatable for mainstream acceptance.

Edited February 14, 2021 by DocWatts

[mandyjw]

@DocWatts I'd say that the deeper explicit and implicit action going on here, is the flip and flop between shame and pride in one's own thoughts and feelings. Some people because they are not aware of and can't deal with shame in an implicit manner, act it out and shame (judge) others for the most bizarre reasons they can come up with. They can judge someone for the color of their skin, (pre-judge) or they can't pre judge them for their political party, their location, their upbringing or any other reason. The shame/judgement movement of the felt separation of self and other and using thought and beliefs to try to resolve, explain and justify, is the very root of the entire thing. 

Our culture has made it terrifying to even speak about these issues. There are so many people more than willing to judge you as racist and jump on people for making a simple error when you're speaking or accidently say something you didn't mean. We've gotten to the point where we can't even honestly discuss the problem without being accused of being racist or avoidant.

Do you think someone raised in a poor racist family in rural West Virginia is going to say some ignorant things in a conversation about race issues with you? YUP. Are we going to make any influence on them by refusing to converse with them, shaming them and making them feel like a complete waste of space? Nope. 

Racism was born out of fear, and now we've added another layer of fear on top of that to prevent us from even discussing the first fear. Then we wonder why some people are so still so unevolved and stuck in their ways. Because that's us. We already THINK we know how things are, how people are and how they should be. 

It's US, US, WE ARE THE PROBLEM! And there's absolutely no shame whatsoever in this. Just pure potential for healing. As long as you point your finger at someone else, and call them the cause of the problem, there's no empowerment or potential to change it. 

This was supposed to be the entire value of Spiral Dynamics. To forgive people, to understand, to realize the value in conversing with them instead of demonizing them.

[Arcangelo]

A bunch of Antifa guys

 

 

 

JK

[blackchair]

28 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

@DocWatts

This was supposed to be the entire value of Spiral Dynamics. To forgive people, to understand, to realize the value in conversing with them instead of demonizing them.

you sooth me, thank you.

[DocWatts]

43 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

@DocWatts I'd say that the deeper explicit and implicit action going on here, is the flip and flop between shame and pride in one's own thoughts and feelings. Some people because they are not aware of and can't deal with shame in an implicit manner, act it out and shame (judge) others for the most bizarre reasons they can come up with. They can judge someone for the color of their skin, (pre-judge) or they can't pre judge them for their political party, their location, their upbringing or any other reason. The shame/judgement movement of the felt separation of self and other and using thought and beliefs to try to resolve, explain and justify, is the very root of the entire thing. 

Our culture has made it terrifying to even speak about these issues. There are so many people more than willing to judge you as racist and jump on people for making a simple error when you're speaking or accidently say something you didn't mean. We've gotten to the point where we can't even honestly discuss the problem without being accused of being racist or avoidant.

Do you think someone raised in a poor racist family in rural West Virginia is going to say some ignorant things in a conversation about race issues with you? YUP. Are we going to make any influence on them by refusing to converse with them, shaming them and making them feel like a complete waste of space? Nope. 

Racism was born out of fear, and now we've added another layer of fear on top of that to prevent us from even discussing the first fear. Then we wonder why some people are so still so unevolved and stuck in their ways. Because that's us. We already THINK we know how things are, how people are and how they should be. 

It's US, US, WE ARE THE PROBLEM! And there's absolutely no shame whatsoever in this. Just pure potential for healing. As long as you point your finger at someone else, and call them the cause of the problem, there's no empowerment or potential to change it. 

This was supposed to be the entire value of Spiral Dynamics. To forgive people, to understand, to realize the value in conversing with them instead of demonizing them.

All very good points. I think some of difficulty also comes from the fact that it can be difficult to separate Good Faith discussions on difficult issues like racism from Bad Faith Actors willing to use such discussions to legitimize their own internalized implicit racism. Ben Shapiro and Ken Wilber might both discuss some of the excesses that you mention, but one is doing it legitimize racist attitudes, and the other is doing it to help people ascend developmentally in order to transcend racism. This is an exaggerated and obvious comparison to demonstrate the point (at least to those who are literate in basic developmental psychology), but in most cases most of the time that distinction won't always be so easy to draw. 

I read an interesting book recently which goes in to detail about how culture at different levels of development use different emotional regimes to enforce norms and behaviors. Whereas roughly SD-Stage Red societies primarily use the emotional regime of Fear to motivate behavior, as you move up the spiral that eventually changes to Guilt (SD-Stage Blue), Shame (SD-Stage Orange). Once you reach roughly SD-Stage Green, there's not really a great English word for it, but the emotional regime is that of trying to avoid provoking the envy of others (such as avoiding ostentatious displays of wealth, and so on).

Edited February 14, 2021 by DocWatts

[Vrubel]

1 hour ago, Forestluv said:

I have family in South Carolina and I've traveled through the south many times. There are some wonderful aspects of nature, culture and people in the south. Yet there are also ugly aspects, which you seem to be minimizing and apologizing for. 

I am not minimizing or apologizing in any way, don't project this onto me. I am emphasizing other aspects of the South that often goes ignored in the media. I want people to avoid caricaturization and disdain for a whole section of the population. Like: in the political arena, you can give them hell. But people please, don't dehumanize and don't get overly frustrated.  

1 hour ago, Forestluv said:

the confederate symbol is the #1 symbol of slavery, oppression and white supremacy in America. Removing the confederate emblem from a state flag was progressive in the year 1920, yet not in 2020. 

I am not saying you are wrong here. The widespread lost cause myth which states that the civil war was because of taxes and not because of slavery is false and very problematic. Also, confederate symbols are routinely used by hate groups. Nonetheless, I will still plea for understanding of what the civil war and its direct aftermath meant for the collective-consciousness of white southerners. 

(before I get demonized and projected upon for stating the aforementioned, I want to preempt: I am talking about understanding, not agreeing-with. The same way you can understand why Germans voted for Hitler.

1 hour ago, Forestluv said:

We can romanticize if we like, yet let's be clear what we are romanticizing. This "character" and "poetry" not only includes Spanish Moss, yummy crab legs and charming accents - it also includes lynchings and glorifying those who fought to continue slavery. 

"Character" and "Poetry" is comforting from one perspective, yet horrific from another perspective. We could also say Nazi Germany had "character" and was "poetic". 

Well, pardon me for seeing beauty. You are being royally unfair here. I was not romanticizing the Antebellum South, Jim Crow, or the good old white-utopia South. Please have some nuance. It is abundantly clear that I called out all the hardships and evils.

In my view, blacks form an integral and inseparable part of the unfolding story called The South.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Vrubel

[Forestluv]

2 hours ago, mandyjw said:

If we're going to constantly dwell on these things, we might as ALL just live in constant misery and guilt for what we did to the Native Americans in order to form this country in the first place.

I didn't suggest "constantly dwelling". I don't consider it "constantly dwelling" and "living in constant guilt" to be honest about the past, acknowledging the impact it has in today's society, trying to heal and building a society that is more just and harmonious. That includes seeing things from multiple perpsectives.

We can create a framework of constant dwelling and living in constant misery and guilt. That is a framework that many people use. Yet that is not the framework I am using.

2 hours ago, mandyjw said:

But some of the Native Americans brutally killed white people because of the color of their skin too, so they also must live in horrible shame and guilt. 

The brutality was not symmetric. The brutality was asymmetric on the side of white European colonizers. As well, the effects of that asymmetric brutality linger today. Native Americans are not on the same footing as descendants of white colonizers. 

Recognizing and acknowledging racism / injustice is distinct from experiencing shame and guilt. Shame and guilt is an add-on. 

2 hours ago, mandyjw said:

So which perspective should we choose, the one that feels terrible or the one that feels good? Which perspective is truly healing? I say we choose the one that feels good.

I say we should choose multiple perspectives and see partial truths within each perspective. 

The problem with choosing the perspective that feels good is that the feeling good can come at the expense of another. If white people choose a perspective that slavery was good for black people and racism no longer exists - that may feel good to the white person, yet it comes at the expense of black people that have to carry the burden. White people have the privilege of choosing a perspective that feels good, yet minorities that carry the burden don't have that priviledge. 

2 hours ago, mandyjw said:

If you want to empower and heal, then you want people to feel empowered and healed. You don't get to empowerment and healing from keeping entertaining a perspective that feels horrible. 

Gaslighting and whitewashing the past so it feels good to white people does not empower minorities. It keeps the status quo of discrimination going. There is structural racism to be addressed.

If we want to empower minorities, how about we actually give them some power? Rather than give them platitudes about how "all people are created equal", "you can be anything you want in life" and "let's all be colorblind" - how about we give them actual power? How about we give minorities real power to make decisions and create laws and policies? How about we create inheritance tax and redistribute wealth to minorities that have been structurally suppressed from accumulating generational wealth? How about we create minority equity in government, so that they get a real say and power in regards to systemic racism issues such as policing? How about white people that have indirectly benefitted from the oppression of black people, pay reparations and redistribute wealth such that black people have an equal share and can now benefit from inter-generational wealth inheritance like most white people do?

Platitudes about equal opportunity and how we can all be anything we want if we work hard may give a sense of feeling good to the privileged, yet it does little good for those who carry the burden. 

2 hours ago, mandyjw said:

Healing racism doesn't come from someone looking back at his actions and words and judging them as PC and woke enough or judging them as the opposite, as shameful. It comes from the complete absence of the thought of racism, it comes from cultivating appreciation and sensitivity to feeling. We get to healing by paying attention to feeling, and choosing to focus on perspectives that feel good. If you're shaming entire sections and pockets of the country in one fell swoop, you're making the same separation that is the very root of the racism itself. The unhealed shame is the very driver of the racism. You don't fight fire with fire. 

I said nothing about using shame and guilt. You are adding that in. I've noticed some white people like to dictate that we should address racism in a way that doesn't make white people feel uncomfortable. I'm sorry to say that introspecting one's racism will likely be uncomfortable and white people shouldn't expect their hands to be held through the process. Introspecting my own subconscious biases that were conditioned into me was extremely uncomfortable at times. Yet I had to experience it and work through it to purify and unclog those pipes. Turning a blind eye so I can feel better would have prevented me from addressing issues and evolving. It's not about feeling shame and guilt. It's about looking honestly. 

I've lived with poc in poor areas in the U.S. and several foreign countries. I currently live in a poor town that is plurality black. At work, I'm on a committee to help bring greater equity in our community. Throughout my interactions with poc, the vast majority don't want white people to feel guilt and shame. They want the racism against them to stop. They want justice and to be treated fairly. The dynamic of shame and guilt is a creation of, and an issue for, white people. As an example, when I dated a black woman she would reveal some of my subconscious racial biases. When I went into shame and guilt mode, she would roll her eyes at my fragility. She didn't want me to feel shame and guilt. She wanted me to look at my subconscious biases and for me to stop acting that way to her and her friends. However, once I became aware of my subconsicous racial biases, they were no longer subconscious - they were conscious. I was now aware of the bias and the impact it had on others. If I continued my behavior, I was now expressing racial biases consciously and intentionally. This is a very different dynamic than expressing subconscious biases.

However, I also understand that guilt and shame is a real issue for a lot of white people and needs to be taken into account. For example, I helped co-ordinate a diversity workshop to help educate my white co-workers. The #1 resistance was fear of feeling guilt and shame. That wasn't the purpose of the workshop. It had nothing to do with guilt and shame. The purpose was to educate white people so they would better understand their poc colleagues and poc students. That way, they could become a more effective teacher and we can increase mutual understanding in our community. Yet white people can be sooo fragile about this type of thing and they were giving all sorts of excuses to avoid feeling uncomfortable. Their attitude was "can't we all just get along together without adding in racism? Let's just feel good". This was a real issue we needed to address. I actually had to go through the workshop myself, come back and have an interview with the president of the institution that it's ok and the workshop leaders won't try to make him or white employees feel guilty or shameful. The president wouldn't believe the workshop leaders or any poc. It took me, as a white male, to approach him and say "It's ok, boss". 

[Forestluv]

 

1 hour ago, Vrubel said:

It is abundantly clear that I called out all the hardships and evils.

It wasn't abundantly clear to me. My impression was that you took the position that the media exaggerates racist, homophobic, conspiracy views etc. and it's actually not that common in rural areas. My impression is that you asked me to prove you wrong. I stated that data and my direct experience indicates that these views are common in rural areas. 

If you lived in a rural southern town with your gay lover or a black girlfriend, I predict you would find such mindsets are common.