I find it interesting how we are getting distracted again. An LFR editorial

[Lady Freedom Returns]

We Democrats/Liberals/Progressives are getting played again due to getting distracted. The upper echelon is opening their play books and throwing out issues, putting new spins on them. They are throwing out as many as possible to divide and conquer. As long as we split up and go after all this things we cannot put a strong front to anything.
I have watched this division happening ever since the election. But, as we sadly remember, the Sandy Hook massacre did start bring us together. But the Spin Doctors for the other side have started to do their thing. Since they cannot win with their sides’ point of view, they need to find a way to make our voices less. How can they do that? By getting us to go multiple directions. While they use the same old tactics to control the Republican/Conservative/Old Guard, who are in lock and step and are louder for it.

Then, something I have been watching closely, is the way they have made us sound just like their rhetoric. They have done a wonderful at this. This has come in many ways, many forms. The latest I have seen trending on Yahoo, FB, Google+, even starting to see some of it here on Democratic Underground, is “White Male Privilege”. I do have to give Kudos, in the professional sense, to the Spinner that was able to start this one. This one will probably cause us to loss some on our side.

Why? Why would men be upset? Easy, there are far more Unprivileged White Males right now that cannot see any privilege in being white. They get pounded with this enough they will feel very alienated. After some time they will feel down right kicked in the gut. He will move to the side that will welcome him. Thus he start to listen to them, start to believe in what they say because of the alienation he was affected with, and we totally loss someone that once backed us.

This is same with Gun Owners. Those that have registered their guns, have them locked up, and done everything they are supposed to. Those that have argued for better gun control even. But then they get treated like criminals. They get lumped up with those that are doing it wrong and unlawful. They see those they though were of similar minds on many issues turn on them. They are being law abiding, yet they keep reading where they are all bad. That is what the groups, like NRA, jump in. What happened? We loss another voice.

These two ways of dividing us, in a professional point of view, is brilliant. I used a similar tactic when I was the PR Officer for the College Democrats back in school. I used it with the Iraq War. Many felt it was wrong on the Republican side and they were treated like dirt. We came and gave them understanding. Those students started to listen to us and slowly started to become more Democratic thinking. Even the tactic of spreading the oppositions voices thin was one of my favorite plays. I almost think they got their hands on MY playbook!

The real division is not race or gender. It is in who has money and who does not, who can afford to eat and who cannot. The “have not’s” are a mix of races and genders. It is the “have not’s” that started the Union Movement. It is that Big Business remembers. They have remembered the lessons of history well. They are now using those lessons to get their old power back. Sure they have most of the money, but it is the power they want. They want to be the ‘be all, end all’. They will use whatever they can to keep us from watching them. They will be throwing as much stuff at us as they can.

We must remember to keep our eyes on the prize. Yes, keep up the good fight as we have always done. But be vigilant on thing that may be being used to distract us and divide us. Don’t let the upper echelon get away with buying our freedoms. Don’t let them guide the issues. For the sake of our children’s children.

[The Magistrate]

1. Do You Have Any Idea How Old This Swill Is, Ma'am?

A bity of a history lesson in song....

[Lady Freedom Returns]

2. Do you know how many have forgotten? n/t

[The Magistrate]

3. You May Have Missed the Point, Ma'am

Racial privilege is real enough; some pay-off is necessary to keep up the adherence to the construct. Pretending it is not real, and resentment at the fact of it being pointed out, is one of the tools for keeping the thing in operation.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

4. You miss something.

There is no privilege when you live behind a dumpster. There is no privilege in a work house for the majority of the workers that, if Big Business get their way, will be coming again.

Fight the fight for equality is great. But watch who is bringing it up. Watch what is going on. The upper echelon has the best Spinners money can buy. They want us to spread out. They want us to stop looking at fairness for all. They want us to alienate each other, It is necessary for them to if they want to keep working at their main goal.

[The Magistrate]

7. There Is Relative Privilege At Every Level, Ma'am

Do not kid yourself. There is no station in life in this country, even behind a dumpster, where it is not a bit better to be white than otherwise. You are engaged in a bit of semantic subterfuge, taking 'privilege' to denote only being on the higher rungs of society, and then pointing to white people who are poor and saying, how is there white privilege. In doing this you blur the meaning conveyed. Compare at every social level; you will find even among high school drop-outs, whites have a better rate of employment, and lower arrest records, than do blacks or hispanics. This has nothing to do with better behavior; it has everything to do with on the spot display of more favorable attitudes towards whites by persons in authority, whether employers or police, accumulating over time.

It is not denunciation of white privilege which divides; it is the fact of, and normal operation of, white privilege, which divides.

"When a man says he loves his wife, he loves his daughter, and he loves a good hamburger, he had better mean something different in each instance."

[Lady Freedom Returns]

10. I have lived behind a dumpster….

We get ran off, spit on, and insults thrown at us equally. We need to stop nit picking and see the big picture. If not the upper echelon will win. They want use topics like this and get us started just like you have. They are wanting this to blind us. We are going to loss everything if we keep this up.

[The Magistrate]

13. You Get An 'A' For Effort, Ma'am

Content is another matter, sadly....

[Lady Freedom Returns]

15. The jest of this is we are all in the same...

pot of water. We are being cooked slowly. It does not mater if were are white, woman, black, man, red, gay,yellow, young, old, etc. If we keep up the way we are we will all end up in the same company owned work farm!!!!

[KoKo]

27. Exactly...those who divide us do it by Color/Race/Gender/Non Gender and they WIN

when they use those differences to divide us against going against "Absolute Power" that wishes to rule us by Dividing Us. We miss this every time...... One day, though, we won't and that's what scares the "Powers that Be." And those powers are pretty evenly divided these days in both Dem and Repug Parties. It's come to this after long years when Dems, particularly didn't get it.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

36. The fact is we are letting them.

They are using race, gender, they have even found a way to use guns to divide us. And we are letting them. This whole this has been to watch what and how we fight. We can/will do their dirty work for them if we keep this up.

[patrice]

12. Diversity. One doesn't have to pretend that it isn't real in order to not let it divide us.

Perhaps at the heart of it all, no matter which way you assign the races or genders involved, people are thinking something that goes kind of like this, "So what if I have benefited from ________________ , you would have done the same if our roles ((NOT the genders or races)) were reversed" and right or wrong, in that assumption, we don't see much evidence to the otherwise.

No one likes having their life's story discounted. The questions are about what to do about the differences.

[The Magistrate]

16. The Problem With That Line, Sir

Is that social advances and benefits which can be made to seem, to white people willing to be pawns in the game, to be reducing the white privilege they know they enjoy even as they deny it exists, will become the targets of their resentment and anger, which is mobilized to attack economic and social progress. This is the essence of the voting strength of the Republican party, and has been so for nearly half a century. The key to it is the simultaneous denial white privilege exists, and anger at the specter of white privilege being diminished. This kind if double-think has to be named, and called out into the open.

[patrice]

18. You know what, Magistrate? I have been on this board for a long time & so have you. I have even

defended you on an occasion or two and you have never bothered to notice that patrice is not the same thing as patrick. Now, if you're thinking Patrice Lumumba, I'll give you that, but this is the USA, where the name is most often a female name.

[The Magistrate]

20. My Apologies, Ma'am

I do forget things on occasion.

[patrice]

42. And, what, pray tell, might have prompted you to not forget that particular thing? nt

[KoKo]

46. So by "White Privilege" being acknowleged in the way you say

What is the end game? What is achieved? We can post "White Privilege Rules" here on DU and what does that achieve? Is it hoped that a Movement will begin to ban "White Privilege" from DU?

Wouldn't the issue of those who have "Privilege" in our society who use it to diminish the lives and consistently to work to unempower those without Privilege be a better Movement? For instance to keep hammering on the "Privilege of the One Percent" no matter what the color of their skin, if they actively seek to unempower others in their workplace, government, places of worship and access to education?

[patrice]

5. Jay Gould, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half". Division along ANY

dimension possible is the first step.

Look at this board, division on the DU is much more important than anything else.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

8. That is what the upper echelon wants. n/t

[Fumesucker]

9. I had a poster I did not expect K&R an OP of mine today

Someone I feel I disagree with almost all the time.

So there are things that can bring us together rather than divide

[Lady Freedom Returns]

14. As long as we remember that we are a divers group.

And don't let those that would use our differences to truly divide us for their best interest.

[patrice]

17. And isn't it interesting that division along the most widely recognized as corrupt dimension there

is, politics, is the most acceptable even as all of us proclaim vehemently to that corruption?

Priorities: I think the people's business (and, hence, processes) should be about the people's issue, first.

[KoKo]

28. Yes, Patrice...other of us have observed it also. n/t

[patrice]

43. The problem, especially with this issue, may be a matter of priorities, both sets of

priorities: those of "white male privilege" message initiators and message recipients.

I have the flu today, so I'm having some trouble thinking it through, but what motivates me to wonder about the issue of priorities is the very likely fact that BOTH sides of the question can and do claim prejudice and whether that's valid or not it must be a factor interfering with message reception.

That's the stinking elephant in the room: is what we perceive as prejudice always prejudice and is it unilateral? It's not hard to recognize that some cohorts do in fact have a higher probability of experiencing prejudice, but, since it is incividuals who have to change, what happens to individuals and how they understand whatever happens should be where we start. Trying to tell someone that s/he should respect individual persons isn't going to work if s/he feels s/he is not being respected as an individual person.

The fact of "white male privilege" should be validated, but if individuals regard it as a DOMINANT priority, that's going to be a problem, whether it should be or not.

[el_bryanto]

6. Well

I think at DU there are a number of conversations being had- there are conversations about DU participants, ther are conversations about the Democratic Party, there are conversations about general United States citizenry, and there are conversations about conservatoids and the Republican Party.

I think the more we talk about people who are definitely other - i.e. Republicans/ Conservatoids - the easier the conversation is. I think when we talk about the Democratic party and particularly at our fellow DUers the conversations get a bit more heated. Sometimes to the point of purity tests.

I don't know. You're not wrong in some senses, but at the same time, there's nothing wrong with comfortable white guys realizing how much they benefit from white male privilege.

[Fumesucker]

11. I think the point being made is about the uncomfortable white guys

Of which there are still more than a few.

Why would someone come to the side that's telling him he's even more of a loser than he thinks he is already?

[patrice]

21. Quite often, being right is not enough and it even works against you in certain situations. nt

[Fumesucker]

40. The chance of getting credit for being right...

.. Varies directly as the proportion of your peers that were also right.

[patrice]

41. If "right" is right, "credit" is nice but not necessary.

[Fumesucker]

48. Well, we certainly wouldn't want to pay any attention to those who are right when others are wrong

Like all those silly libruls who warned that going into Iraq might not turn out to be a cakewalk.

Who would want to give credit to such silly and unserious people for such an unimportant idea?

Support the troops!

[patrice]

49. Yep. That's the reality. "Might"/numbers makes "right" no matter how wrong it is.

[Rex]

19. .

[Waiting For Everyman]

22. You're right, LFR.

It's possible to lose track of the forest while looking at the trees.

[woo me with science]

23. K&R

[freshwest]

24. Yes - money and class supersede differences. Those are the hard facts. Thanks.

[1StrongBlackMan]

51. Unless one happens to be non-white ...

Oprah, when she was the CEO of one of the most influential media empires and the most wealthy African-American (female) in the U.S., was denied admission into the country club where one of her homes was located.

This book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Rage-Privileged-Class-Middle-Class/dp/0060925949 should be required reading for any person desiring to discuss the intersection of race and economic/white priviledge.

[freshwest]

53. Wow! I wish she'd just bought the place. The insanity continues.

Yes, this country has a problem there -- but on a global scale, I believe it's not as much an issue. There are billionaires of every type. Racism is mostly a trick pulled on the poor and middle classes who band together along racial instead of economic lines.

In that respect, I find the rich to be more tolerant, but only in that they see no further than their own families - as I know very wealthy people who have all races, nationalities and religions in their families, without any drama whatsoever. I'm working on the general principle of this.

Call it 'our-family-and-to-hell-with-yours' family values or tribalism or a patrican values... It's out there. As far as the white and black dynamic - the devil in our democracy - what I said on this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022155252#post31

As I said there, to be born black is to have a target on one's back... and then I went further.

[KoKo]

25. Did you ever read Joe Bageant's articles and books... You make good points and so did he.

for this post.

[bettyellen]

26. my conscience guides the issues. i am staunchly for gun control and women's reproductive rights.

i'm not going away, and i'm not faking my values to appease any triangulating strategists.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

37. Don't fake them. But remember that the other side will use you if you let them.

I know the strategy that they are using now. I used it before on Republicans.
I am for those same issues too. What I want us to remember is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[KoKo]

29. K&R....Good Post and Thread points out many of the problems that divide us. nt

[graham4anything]

30. No. It's the guns. That is the most important issue-to rid the streets of all & be secure and safe

we can change guns

as the saying goes

change what one can (social issues, guns off the streets, 10% gains forward instead of 100% of nothing)
know what you can not change(war, the rich)
and accept the difference

stereotyping the rich all together is as bad as racial stereotyping. There is good money and bad money.

Guns are WMD's and should be part of the war on terror and the NRA needs to be treated as a terror organization

after all, my right to assemble in a movie theatre, restaurant, shopping center trumps any fake reading of the second.

get 100% of guns out of the street

war will always be fought somewhere, been so since the dinasaurs, so accept that it is so,
and move past it.

and burning things down and anarchy is never the way to go.

change the system 10% of the time and not expect instant gratification when its been decades of backward, 10% forward is something major.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

33. We can change the direction the corporations are taking us.

Ever heard the song " In the Ghettos"? You want to stop gun violence? Start with the hopelessness. People need hope. When you loss hope, you start to loss feelings for your fellow man. You can loss it to the point of not caring. Fight for hope, fight to keep the same dream many keeps fighting to get into this country for. That will go a long way to help stop senseless violence.

[leftstreet]

34. Is this satire? n/t

[Fumesucker]

52. More in the performance art spectrum I think n/t

[TheKentuckian]

54. No, this is the regular shtick. Turd Way to the core. The Turd Way needs Gun Control for liberal

street credibility.

Listen to the lullaby, he sings it everyday...

Ignore wars and civil liberties abuses, in fact ramp them up. Turn the Patriot Act on the people.

Let Wall Street rule.

Forget about wages.

Cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are nothing to fret about.

The environment has been going to hell for years, don't worry about that either.

No job, homeless, no medical care? Don't whine, talk up the economy and the President.

Don't complain about the bankers, the rich, or the economic system.

Occupy is anarchy!

No accountability for the political or the capital classes!

Hillary45!!!

The more they talk, the more in favor of gun proliferation I become. Where did they find a conscience on this but in the same breath tell you that killing brown folks is fine and dandy or to eat your peas or to silently suffer as your life goes down the tubes.

The ONE issue they can fit in with some actual liberals on is of course de-democratization of power.
I think the Turd Way endgame is China, Tienanmen Square included.
I believe many of the TeaPubliKlans (see "moderate" aka corporatist) share the belief, they'd just find it difficult to find any voters if they were forthright since they can only appeal to rural folks and would have to give up a wedge.
Theocracy isn't selling and the gay bashing is out of steam, so what else do they have?

[DonCoquixote]

31. OH yes

A lot of people think that in order to keep the truth, they have to slit each others throats.

[ThatPoetGuy]

35. Sigh....

Please, take some time. Listen and learn about white male privilege. Look it up. It's not what you think it is, and there's no point to get defensive about it.

I'm white and male and piss-poor, and yet I'm privileged.

I have watched a black friend of mine, a lawyer, get treated in ways that simply don't happen to me. I have less than $5000 to my name right now and my friend owns a $2 million house, and yet I have an easier time getting a taxi to pull over than he does. We live in a society where racism affects lots of people in subtle ways.

No one has burned a cross on his lawn, but when he sets off the alarm on leaving the clothing store, they don't just wave him through. They always just wave me through. And that's white privilege.

How is that so difficult to admit? I'm not sitting here in shame and self-hate because I'm white. I have some privileges, and I acknowledge them, which gives me a better ability to understand the world around me. It's that simple.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

38. The problem is those that are and will be working for the same wage.

What is going on is use that term and the hurt that it causes to divide and conquer. The upper echelon will use that to it's fullest, as well as other things, to either win over or keep people from listening.

"I'm not sitting here in shame and self-hate because I'm white." That is good for you. But their are many white guys that are sick of hearing how privilege they are when their family has to stay in a shelter because he could no afford this months rent.

And it is those people that are the targets with all the White Male Privilege talk.The Spinners want to/ have got us using it. The objective is going well. Next move will be coming up to those people and give them a friendly ear. And they are using this tactic with more than one issue.

I know, I used this tactic before, with great results. If we are not careful we will throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Trillo]

39. A couple sentences of yours would make a great signature.

"The real division is not race or gender. It is in who has money and who does not, who can afford to eat and who cannot."

[lunatica]

44. What? We should drop important issues because we might lose some people

who can't get their heads around issues without getting personally insulted? They belong on the other side then.

[pinboy3niner]

45. Something you'll appreciate...

ALDONZA: Why do you do these things?

DON QUIXOTE
What things?

ALDONZA
These ridiculous... the things you do!

DON QUIXOTE
I hope to add some measure of grace to the world.

ALDONZA
The world's a dung heap and we are maggots that crawl on it!

DON QUIXOTE
My Lady knows better in her heart.

ALDONZA
What's in my heart will get me halfway to hell.
And you, Señor Don Quixote-you're going to take
such a beating!

DON QUIXOTE
Whether I win or lose does not matter.

ALDONZA
What does?

DON QUIXOTE
Only that I follow the quest.

ALDONZA
(spits)
That for your Quest!
(turns, marches away; stops, turns bock
and asks, awkwardly)
What does that mean... quest?

DON QUIXOTE
It is the mission of each true knight...
His duty... nay, his privilege!
To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go;
To right the unrightable wrong.

To love, pure and chaste, from afar,
To try, when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star!

This is my Quest to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far,
To fight for the right
Without question or pause,
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause!

And I know, if I'll only be true
To this glorious Quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable stars!


--From 'Man of La Mancha'

[99Forever]

47. Well put.

Thank you, I am as guilty of falling for this as anyone. Perhaps I won't be as easily distracted from here on out.

[woo me with science]

50. Kick