Man, I miss working for smart Black people.

As a white woman in a liberal profession (librarianship), let me just tell you, it ain't just the white Reich wingers that are the problem. It's white culture. I don't doubt my library's leadership sees itself as liberal and supporting diversity, but somehow they can't seem to hire Black or Latino librarians and staff in our 35% Black/40% Latino city. No one on the front lines speaks Spanish. Attempts to change the culture into something resembling DEIB are met with suspicion and resistance, and trying to push for it will lead to being shut out of promotions. (I know this from personal experience.) Any kind of lliberatory work to change the culture from helping poor people to helping our neighbors is shut down immediately

Meanwhile, when I worked for a Black-run non-profit, we worked on very heavy subjects and we also had fun, thoughtful discussions, the workplace was a community in and of itself, and was also a vital part of the larger community we served. Our service to the community was based on community needs and feedback, not what passes for "service" in my library (book clubs reading white authors, computer classes to teach the poor masses of the 21st Century, etc.). My boss and coworkers took the time to get to know me and allowed me to get to know them. It was a cooperative, thoughtful, and focused organization, and I really, really miss it.

Exactly. Capitalism worships violence.

Capitalism gave us slavery. In the US, cotton was king, in Africa it’s diamond mines. Big Oil is violence against the Earth. And so on.

Heads-up: "out of your cotton-picking mind" is a racial slur.

Who picked cotton in the US? It’s a subtle way of suggesting someone is “as dumb as a n****r.”

I said it for years without realizing its meaning, but now that I know, I try to do better and educate others about this slur embedded in our language. I hope you’ll join me in this effort going forward.

Another meme along these same lines:

When the poster compares prison rape to "plenty of romantic opportunities",

it's a rape joke. Most men who rape and get raped in prisons are not homosexuals, and rape is NEVER a "romantic opportunity", regardless of the genders of those involved. Rape is ALWAYS an act of violence, and the OP's comment was both homophobic and misogynistic.

Bernie wasn't a member of the Silent Generation.

Despite the fact that he was born 5 years before when Wikipedia says the Boomers started, the truth is that the "silent generation" is so named because they ignored a lot of inequality and injustice in the name of upward mobility. (White flight to the 'burbs is one manifestation of this, the beginning of the Great Migration is another.) I always think of the SG as the generation of the nuclear family, being adults in the 1950s.

That was not Bernie's experience. He was among of the first wave of white activists who acted in solidarity for civil rights. He protested Vietnam. Those movements (in white people) are Boomer actions, which to my mind, makes Bernie a Boomer.

Disclosure: I am a Boomer according to Wikipedia, but due to family circumstances, I was unable to enter the workforce until the mid-1980s, giving me a very Gen X worldview. I do not consider myself a Boomer in any way, shape or form except for the loosely accepted age brackets that have been interpreted as absolute generational markers.

I appreciate this thread, Hekate, and also...

I was 40 when I joined in 2004, so I get this. And also, I think the reason there is pushback against Boomers is that when younger folks offer their worldview opinions, there are plenty of "old guard" here who push back unto discouraging them. Although born at the tail end of the Boomer generation, my life experience has been Gen X all the way. I delight especially, as a white woman, in listening to and learning from diverse perspectives. I cannot tell you how often I've posted contemporary scholarship on white culture seen though Black eyes only to be attacked as being divisive, naive, and stupid. This ALWAYS happens when I post about how To Kill A Mockingbird is a white savior trope. Talk about white fragility!! NEVER come between a white Boomer and their antiquated ways of thinking about institutional racism, as well as their admiration for a fictional character. Now I'll usually just ignore the "kids today..." rants by the Boomers here, because I would just post in response, "Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!"

But I have known you on these boards for almost 20 years now, and know you to be a kind soul who works and longs for liberation across age/class/gender/religion. Let me offer you (and others reading this) a couple ways to influence younger people into movement work (including DU).

First: volunteer at your local social justice organization. Volunteer work at these places can be anythings from organizing marches to hand-addressing envelopes. Even if you're just the person making coffee and hanging out, you will get to know younger people, and more importantly, they will get to know you, your activism, and your dreams for the future beyond your time on Earth, including where you get your news from - DU.

Second: Table for DU at political events. Work with EarlG to get some bumperstickers (or some other bling) and make up little cards with the logo and site address. Evangelize about DU.

Third: I heartily suggest reading Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement by Dr. Vincent Harding, a Black historian, scholar, and the man who wrote MLK's "Beyond Vietnam" speech. He lays out the power of sharing our stories in liberation work to sustain each other and build successive generations of activists. Then story-tell every younger person you know about our (mostly) wonderful DU community.

Intelligence isn't the problem, Western hubris is.

I'm reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi professor of botany in the SUNY system. Native Americans are intelligent, and their intelligence led them to understand the world around them in literal relative terms; that is, they understand themselves in relationship with the natural world around us, in kinship with it. With that, they lived happy and productive lives in harmony with nature for centuries before Europeans arrived.

It's not our intelligence but Western hubris that placed humans apart from nature, and nature as a means only to enrich oneself, that has put us in this spot. And, yes, I mean Western hubris because Western nations were the first to industrialize while almost completely gaslighting indigenous intelligence as ignorant.

BTW, I highly recommend Braiding Sweetgrass, which is not a rant against Western civilization, but a thoughtful blend of scientific and indigenous knowledge about the interconnected nature of the world. Indeed, from the author's POV, contemporary western science is coming to understand Earth's natural world as much more "intelligent" than humans have given it credit for, such as trees being able to "speak" with one another through chemicals and mycelia. It's an enlightening book and should be required reading for every high school and college science student.

Look, I love Star Trek as much as the next person,

but could we at least restore our own planet socially, economically, and environmentally before we start talking talking about destroying our atmosphere even more with jet fuel so a select few may someday be able to escape the hellhole we made Earth to some other "Super Earth"? I mean, people are seriously talking now about limiting personal jet use because they're so environmentally toxic. Rocket fuel is even moreso.

To be clear: I think it's fascinating (to quote Spock) to know the possibility exists, but when people like Musk jump on this info, it's just another manifestation of small dick energy.

Christmas in the US is, by and large, a secular holiday.

I know Jews and Muslim families that get trees and give gifts because secular Christmas is fun and they don’t want their kids to feel deprived. And as a former minister, let me assure you that I’d see a bump in attendance for Christmas services, but not nearly enough to make the claim that Christmas is only a religious holiday for practicing Christians.

Or, you could think of it this way: by your logic, because Christmas started out meaning CHRIST’s MASS, it’s a religious holiday, so the 4th of July or MLK Day are also religious because they’re HOLY DAYS.

Language morphs over time. Try to keep up.