August 26, 2015

People who teach others to nurse grievances

have a big share in the blame for an incident like this, whether they admit it (of course not!) or not.

We see it here every day: black vs. white, male vs. female, straight vs. gay, and on and on with the niche politics mindset. It's not only here, it's everywhere around us all the time. It's the mass fad psychology that pollutes every interaction today, micro to macro. It's what lets a person like this shooter believe that he's justified in doing something like this.

Enough already. Quit deepening the damn divides, and harping on the damn words. Enough with the you-offended-me tirades and the end-justifies-the-means mentality, and the rules don't apply to any who can run up a victim flag of some kind.

If DU didn't create that guy's mindset, it certainly could have. Are we going to look at that, for even half a millisecond, much less admit it? Oh, hell no! <Carry on, nothing to see here. Who me? I didn't do anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because GUNS!>

August 20, 2015

Fight for what is right, not what is self-serving.

Otherwise, you'll end up being the same as the sharks you're struggling against.

Don't neglect to question the motives of compatriots as much as the opposition because some among those at your side (in any group) do not have the common goals in mind, but their own. Your own side is just as corrupt as the one you're fighting because humans are humans, remember that. Keep an eye on those who start climbing the ladder of influence. Don't get cynical but be observant and become a good judge of character. Be objective, and think for yourself, always. Find all the programming in your head that you can, no matter where it comes from (including the pc variety), and get rid of it. Don't tell everything you know, especially about yourself.

Figure that you have roughly 20% for-real people, 20% judases, and about 60% bandwagon riders -- they're in it for as long as it's the cool thing to do.

As someone upthread said, don't damage your whole future life on an immediate objective. It isn't a bad idea to create an alternate identify before you start out on activities like this, but it may already be too late as I gather your own side already knows you as yourself.

Have very good lawyers. Study OWS, they learned a lot, and it's recent. If you haven't already, read the Church Committee report, and you'll know the kinds of things that go on, and what you're up against. It's much bigger than you think, and different that you think. Always follow the money.

If you are effective, first the powers that be will try to bribe you. Usually that works, but if it doesn't the ptb wants you one of 3 ways: either dead, institutionalized, or discredited. Yes, they will flat out set you up, to do that.

I am 65, class of 1968. Look at what happened to my age-group, and you'll avoid a lot of potholes (MLK riots, Chicago Convention riots, Kent State, marches on D.C., etc.). A lot of clips of these things exist right on youtube. There were the public protests, like those, which everybody knew about and then there was the at least equally effective underground which never had its story told to this day. Believe it or not, it wasn't violent, it was economic. (Few people remember that an entire counter-economy was created then, and it was massive.) It grew steadily up until 1972 or so, when Nixon suddenly started using heavily armed black ops mercs. But enough was already done and the war did end anyway -- later than it would have. The public never knew the names of the figures behind the underground. Those remaining chose to live to fight another day, so to speak. There's no gain in being an unknown martyr.

I'll leave you with this. The music of that time wasn't just catchy tunes on the radio as people today think of it, it was about our current reality, and our music overall told our story "between the lines" because it couldn't safely be written. We were hunted in our own streets (even being white), and that's an eye-opening education in itself, maybe something we have in common more than you think... which continued more sneakily well into the next decade.

************



We were fighting to reverse a coup d'etat -- a coup that happened in broad daylight, right on tv, and nothing was done about it (similar to 9/11).

Many wouldn't call it reversing a coup, but other commonly stated causes boil down to that, including ending the war. It still hasn't been reversed, though we did seem to get close in the 70's with the Nixon/Agnew impeachments and the Watergate and Church investigations etc. But they didn't go far enough fast enough, and the culprits remained and got a second wind with Reagan/Bush and the creation of the RW church movement to elect them. (That's another story though.)

Without drawing any conclusions, I'll simply state this: did you know what Hillary's career got started as a staff lawyer on the Watergate Committee? Did you also know that Bush Sr. headed up the CIA during the Watergate aftermath? And who's running for president now? And that's AFTER 3 terms of a Bush, and 2 terms of a Clinton. And if we count the office of VP, it's 5 terms of a Bush and 2 of a Clinton -- 7 terms, close to 3 decades at the top of this government, almost all of the time since the investigations, except for Obama's 2 terms. One last name on each side of the fence, and what do people say, "both parties are alike"? I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

I believe in your cause, although I have very deep misgivings about BLM. But I will be watching how it develops, with interest. I want to see what happens with the Farrakhan march, for one thing.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027079137#post17

August 16, 2015

You're an asset to DU, Cordell.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. In response, let me just say that I don't know if anyone is alert-stalking black DUers -- maybe so, maybe not. I very rarely alert on anybody.

Not that anybody cares what I'd prefer, as it isn't up to me, but the only people I'd like to see the back of on DU are those who are consistently and deliberately abusive to others, via a number of commonly seen tactics around here. Just as one pertinent example, one of those who I have found to be so, from my interactions in the past and observations of the exact same thing with others, is someone who is highly revered in the AA group.

As Skinner always says about posting and juries "you take your chances"... meaning one jury may hide what another doesn't; it may be ok to say a given thing today but not tomorrow. I will say that there are more hides now since we went to a 7-person jury. Many of the 4-3 hides would have been a tie before, and ties were not hidden. Many of us were opposed to that change, but so be it.

But returning to the case in hand, that poster in the AA group that I was referring to chose to be nasty to others, and now if some are following them around and alerting on posts that aren't actually objectionable in themselves because of past interactions, well the choice was made to be that way and chickens come home to roost. It may well be that poster has simply pissed a lot of people off, and they are individually alerting on those posts -- it doesn't necessarily need to be a coordinated effort.

There is a prevalent mindset these days (case in point the BLM Sanders event) that being a member of a minority group (the same thing occurs in some others here too) entitles someone to be as nasty as they please to others, and it's A-ok. Sorry, I don't buy that. We have had lots of discussions here over the years going round and round the tree, trying to get these people to clean up their act, but they always insist that they are entitled to act that way. Yes, they state that outright.

I don't interact with any of that type of person anymore. I prefer to remove the oxygen from the fire so to speak. Others may react differently, I don't know about that.

But the point is, being nasty to people will not make them like you or support you. Some here just can't get that through their heads, and insist on continuing that behavior, simply SHIFTING the blame for not being liked or supported onto those they are being abusive to. That makes it 10 times worse. It's a sneaky type of slander blackmail and it's bullshit. A bad reaction to that is not very surprising. It has nothing to do with race or misogyny or homophobia or any other group identity (not that those things don't exist too), it has to do with people feeling entitled to bully others.

I don't care what color bullies are, I don't like them. I just wanted you to know what may be going on here, since you took the trouble to write your thoughts about it.

I wish you the best, Cordell, and enjoy your writing.

August 15, 2015

They shouted slanderous lies at the crowd.

Lies, is that how to build a successful movement? What reaction did they expect?

They called a crowd of white progressives / liberals, "white supremacist liberals". That is not accurate, that is a lie -- an ugly, nasty, slanderous lie at that.

I was 13 when MLK gave his "I have a dream" speech, and I followed all the events in the years afterward. I don't remember him ever shouting lies at a crowd. If you look at film of the 1963 March on Washington crowd, there are a LOT of whites there (roughly 20%). He didn't tell them to shut up and they're part of the problem.

What he did do, is describe a better society, and lead concrete steps toward achieving it. That inspired people, and they followed of all colors. It's the "vision thing", that's what is entirely lacking here. People are motivated by that, not by being berated, and having their past efforts for equality whatever they may be, counted for absolutely nothing.

Wouldn't the natural impulse be to say to themselves after that, fine do it yourself then. What is so surprising about that? If that's the end BLM is trying to achieve, the Seattle Two are doing a good job of it.

They aren't demonstrating to me that Black Lives Matter to them, because they're doing everything they can to strip away the only white allies they have. That tells me they don't really care about effecting any change, regardless of their words. People encouraging this are encouraging that same failure, so how much do they really care as well?

I see it as an attempted psychological manipulation game, and not much more. I don't see it preventing one police shooting. Not now, not ever.


ABC footage without commentary (Burt Lancaster's words about 11 min. in are interesting)...

Narrated, with background on the event...


See the difference?


Extended cell footage showing how patient this crowd tried to be...


Still think the Seattle Two's protest was very much like MLK's? I sure don't.