General Discussion

Zalatix

(8,994 posts) Thu Apr 5, 2012, 03:00 PM Apr 2012

Yes, white men are being oppressed.

Last edited Fri Apr 6, 2012, 04:46 AM - Edit history (2)

So are black men, gays, white women, straight people, black women, religious folks, Hispanic men and women, atheists... in fact, all of America's working class, 99% of our population, is being oppressed.

How? We're all being turned against each other. We fight amongst ourselves while the Plutocrats laugh at us and tell us "get a job!!!" even though the jobs don't even exist. They breathe a sigh of relief when a Greek man shoots himself instead of a Plutocrat. They even go so far as to rip off police pensions while they send them out to fight protesters who represent the 99%. The Plutocracy has got Hispanics killing blacks in Los Angeles, black voters turning on Hispanics in Georgia, Christians obsessing over atheists and gays, they've got women threatening to withhold sex from men over what a handful of rich fucks did to women, men calling women sluts for using birth control, low paid overworked Americans hating on union workers, straight people freaking out over gay marriages that don't affect their lives at all...

Think of all the battles that are being fought between all these different groups. If they all win their crusades, they STILL LOSE, because the Plutocrats have succeeded in keeping them divided against each other. The worn out victors will find themselves without health care, livable wage jobs, social safety nets or even, finally once all the jobs have been automated or shipped out of America, access to the bare necessities for survival. You'll win your little factional conflict only to find yourself starving and when you finally decide to fight back they'll send in the drones and finish you off for good.

Or you could ditch all this bullshit and realize it's the Plutocrats who started this shit and unite against them.

That means stop caring about gays and lesbians because their lifestyle will never infect you. Stop hating on Mormons. Atheism is not contagious. And like the aforementioned groups, Christianity is not the problem - duped fools who serve the Plutocracy's policy of division, however, are. Different racial groups need to recognize their common ground in their pursuit of economic justice for all. Christians need to remember what Jesus said about greed and poverty. Men and women need to stop knocking heads over who is the most oppressed and realize that the logic behind unequal pay for equal work is a two-edged sword that can be used to impoverish either gender. Women get the lower-paying jobs one day because of sexism, but the next day men are swept out of employment in droves because of mass redundancy. Then the next day Government cuts throw women out of work, too. See how that goes? Both sides lost out because you didn't see the big picture... the Plutocrats have you at war with each other and in the end they screwed you both. Non-union workers strive to destroy unions and union workers harass people who cross picket lines to their favorite store... in the end the unions get destroyed and the non-union workers get to work overtime for free, or they get unpaid internships instead of paid work. American citizens battle illegal aliens and fight to get them out of farm work, so the illegals leave - but the farm corporations refuse to make farm work safer, so what few Americans who do take those jobs, face a greater risk of dying; when what should have happened is American workers joined with the migrant farm workers and haul the farmers out and whip their asses in court and in Congress over their shit wages and deadly working conditions.

So we get back to the age-oldest question: how in the world do we get all these different groups to realize that working together is better than waging war against each other?

I had to post this because I JUST learned... this is the ultimate lesson of the Hunger Games. Why fight each other for the Plutocracy's benefit when we could be fighting them?

Edited to add: No, the oppression is not equally shared between the races and genders, etc. White Christian men are not as discriminated upon as other groups. But that's the whole point - when you are dividing and conquering a populace favoring one group over another is inherent in your strategy. Plutocrats in the West are mainly White Christian Men so that's who they favor. But when they decide to cash out, 99% of White Christian Men will get flushed down the toilet along with everyone else. We're all in the same boat.

President Obama hinted as much in his speech on race: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.