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Forum Post: White Might = White (R)ight = White Fright = White Flight

Posted 11 years ago on Oct. 10, 2012, 11:37 a.m. EST by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqh6Ap9ldTs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Why are the white (R)ight so afraid?

PS, I am white, and I am not afraid.

30 Comments

30 Comments


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[-] 1 points by LeoYo (5909) 11 years ago

Why wouldn't religious and/or racist people be afraid? Is the modern world becoming more favorable to religious minded people? Is the population demographic becoming more favorable to racists?

Remove the religion and racism from the Republican party and what do you have?

[-] 0 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

Yeah, you're right. But I think the point of the humorous video is that certain types of whites have always had a lot of fear. The facts of how today's world views religion/racism has little to do with it. Other races/creeds/colors/cultures have not been as uptight/nervous/fearful as conservative whites (that I am aware of, I could be wrong). I just don't know why these people can't relax and adopt a "live and let live" attitude. The world would be a lot better off if they did.

[-] 1 points by LeoYo (5909) 11 years ago

Blood, Oil and "The American Dream"

Thursday, 11 October 2012 09:41 By William Manson, Dissident Voice | Op-Ed

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12045-blood-oil-and-the-american-dream

Something is rotten in the state… -Hamlet

In our times, in a media-saturated culture in which well-packaged and comforting lies are explicitly preferred to unsettling truths, those who reveal sordid realities are often dismissed if not reviled. Whistleblowers and voices of integrity—from Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader to Julian Assange and Bradley Manning—engage in the often-thankless vocation of disturbing complacency; and those awakened from their lying dreams angrily threaten to “kill the messenger” (figuratively?—or perhaps literally).

I am reminded of Henrik Ibsen’s bitterly satirical play An Enemy of the People. The protagonist, a maverick scientist named Dr. Stockmann, has dreamed up a project to turn his backwater town into a cosmopolitan health spa. However, he later discovers that the project, upon which the town has invested its capital and its future, is hopelessly ruined by contaminating waste coming from upriver. At a meeting of the townspeople, he tries mightily to inform, explain, warn—but his fellow citizens refuse to listen and shout him down, finally even labeling him “an enemy of the people.” At that moment, he announces the discovery of an even greater source of corruption–“that all the sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the whole fabric of our civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.”

In the last half of the 20th century, the American economy promised the realization of a “dream” of universal home ownership and a veritable cornucopia of consumer goods. The coveted, high-consumption ideal of unparalleled material comforts, based as it was on easy credit, offered the two-car garage and the three-bedroom house. But by the 1990s, with almost one motor vehicle per adult and domestic oil fields largely depleted, the economy had become addicted to an endless ocean of foreign oil. As U.S.-based oil companies further extended their tentacles globally, a bloated U.S. War Machine-in-overdrive laid waste to entire countries, creating incalculable human suffering in its quest to secure access to the oil which fed an insatiable Moloch called the “American Way of Life.” Dis-information and fabricated pretexts manufactured the consent of a largely passive populace which resigned itself to, or often cheered on, the next waging of aggressive war–“the supreme international crime,” according to the Nuremberg Charter. By 1996, U.S. diplomat Madeleine Albright matter-of-factly stated on national television that the deliberate killing some 500,000 Iraqi children had been “worth it”—and her remark provoked little concern, let alone outrage, among the American citizenry. (The draconian U.S.-UN sanctions in the early 1990s, had deprived the Iraqi people—whose water treatment plants and medical facilities had been deliberately destroyed in the Gulf War—of urgent necessities like vaccines, medicines, food.) Two millennia ago, ruthless Roman commanders would lay siege to a city, starving the people into submission and enslavement. But such generals, no matter how cruel, lacked the advantages of modern artillery and air strikes. And, despite other fiendish torments available for their use, they did not have the chemical know-how to drop clouds of white phosphorus or giant combustibles, thereby burning and incinerating thousands of people living below. Often merciless, their crimes were nonetheless circumscribed by the spatial and technical limits of the times. Such was not the case in the U.S. invasion, bombing, and occupation of Iraq.

The statistics are horrifying, unspeakable—although we must (relentlessly) speak of them. If one ponders, for even a few minutes, what such statistics mean, one suffers serious emotional disturbance and disorientation. “Roughly” 500,000 children in the early 1990s? “About” a million people killed by the invasion and its aftermath? “A few million” more lives maimed, displaced, wrecked (as much by grief and despair as by physical mutilation)? Such statistics are terribly abstract, obscenely abstract: an adding-machine tabulates an endless list of corpses into an abstract figure to be entered in the chronicle of “collateral damage,” “civilian casualties,”—or a “body count.”

Yet such icy abstraction can suddenly become terribly concrete—when we scrutinize up-close the faces and bodies of children “unlucky” enough to have inhabited a city called Falluja. In the short RAI documentary “Falluja: The Hidden Massacre,” we see a city completely in ruins, bricks strewn everywhere, with the occasional motionless, crushed child to be discerned beneath the rubble. We see, with a fierce lucidity, the squashed faces and scorched skulls of little children—viciously burnt to death by the napalm (MK77) the killers chose to inflict on these innocent victims. We see many other things, unspeakable things, unspeakable crimes of which we must find a way to speak—and to speak with searing moral clarity.

Within neo-colonial systems (empires), those living in the “core” nation are led to believe that they can and should enjoy an affluent standard of material comforts—even if it is based on military conquest, resource-expropriation, and the exploitation of cheap labor (in “peripheral” places like the Middle East). Those Americans who continue to believe in an unrealistic standard of material affluence—based as it is on an addiction to an energy-guzzling, hyper-consumption “way of life”—will continue to tolerate U.S.-initiated oil wars and minimize the threats posed by global warming.

If trying to sustain the “ideal” of American-style prosperity nowadays is based on war (i.e., imperial Terrorism)—as well as its counterparts of trade embargoes and “regime change”–why even care if the U.S. economy continues to falter or even collapse? True, those who suffer the most are always poor people and innocent children. Nonetheless, even with better jobs and financial reform, “the American Dream” of material affluence can only be sustained by expropriating Middle Eastern oil through military aggression, draconian sanctions, and neoliberal privatizations.

The “American Dream”–with its equation of “consuming” with living, with its “middle-class” ideal of car and home ownership, with its addiction to frivolous (and vulgar) amusements—is, in itself, morally bankrupt. The culture is an insatiable Moloch which feeds on oil—and has already demanded the mass sacrifices of innocent children ten thousands miles away to get it. A “declining” standard of “living”? High unemployment? Persisting problems with affordable health insurance?

Surrounded by a soulless banality propped up by vicious wars, those who hold fast to truth and universal human values are confronted with Dr. Stockmann’s haunting question: “What does the destruction of a community matter if it lives on lies?”

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.

[-] 1 points by LeoYo (5909) 11 years ago

Well, I hadn't looked at the video but now that I have, how is it not about religion and racism? The Pilgrims? That was about religious persecution. Dispossessing Indigenous people and enslavement are both racist-based and inspired by religion i.e. Israelite conquest of another peoples' land and Manifest Destiny. Witches? Right back to religion again. Ku Klux Klan and gun laws? Right back to racism.

As for other races/creeds/colors/cultures, have you heard about what impoverished religious people do under cultural duress? Like the Taliban for instance? Or the mass human sacrifices of Meso-American empires, religious in nature but oh so effective in maintaining terror in the subjugated peoples.

America is built upon the subjugation or extermination of other people for either land, labor, or resources. To maintain that condition in a country in which historically abused people are increasing in number and acknowledging their own ethnic identities, those who have been in control are going to be uptight. One cannot exercise control over others, be it religiously or racially or even simply politically, without being uptight. Being in control for gain is apart of the cultural identity. There are just different degrees of feeling it for various people and conditions. If it were discovered that the Indigenous Nations were being armed with the intention of taking back all lands lost in broken treaties, a lot of easy going liberal Americans would suddenly become just as uptight.

[-] 1 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

Well, I see your point. I can't speak for the rest of my race, but I have never had any desire to subjugate/dominate anyone. I have never had much of a desire to defend property or land. I take life rather philosophically, and realize that people ultimately don't have anywhere near the control over their lives as they like to think that they do. Those that do believe this spend an awful lot of time and energy either working at defending that which will ultimately be removed from them at death, or else worrying that it will be removed from them one way or another by government or whatever. Speaking only for myself, and realizing I am in a definite minority opinion about this, if the indigenous people you refer to were to take what I have away, my attitude would probably be that they have that right. I would try to make do elsewhere. I don't have that much longer to live on the planet anyway...probably 20 years tops. So I have become quite accepting of things that, admittedly, I would probably not have been able to accept when I was younger (like my mortality, for example).

[-] 0 points by LeoYo (5909) 11 years ago

In living in America, you've never needed any desire to subjugate/dominate anyone. For the most part, it was already done for you long before even your grandparents had been born. And though personally, you may stand out from others in your attitude towards the rights of others, the subject of your post pertains to the reason why those other than you are the way they are.

[-] 1 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

Yes that's correct, and I still have interest in trying to understand why a certain segment of the white population is that way. I am not that way. Perhaps I might have been that way if I were raised in another era where conditions were more severe. I don't know. I just have a hard time understanding conservatives. I always have, because I have been a lifelong progressive Liberal.

[-] 1 points by LeoYo (5909) 11 years ago

I have learned that in wondering why any people are a certain way, to look around the world and throughout history to see if they are truly a certain way or if it is simply a universal condition of humanity when subjected to particular conditions.

[-] 0 points by BetsyRoss (-744) 11 years ago

"Relax and adopt a "live and let live" attitude"???? Like YOU???? The man who started the following thread?????:

http://occupywallst.org/forum/global-warming-my-wife-and-my-epiphany/

And a hundred other threads demonstrating how "uptight/nervous/fearful" you are OF conservatives????

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha yeah. Your idea of a "live and let live" attitude is MUCH different than the popular definition of that term. still chuckling

[-] 1 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

Your bait may be in the water, but this fish ain't bitin' Betsy.

Well what do you know. You actually got me to respond after all after I said I'd never respond to you again. Congratulations.

And I do not fear conservatives at all, other than those who are lunatic dangerous. And that doesn't include all of them.

[-] -1 points by BetsyRoss (-744) 11 years ago

So the apocalyptic epiphany was simply an out of the ordinary episode for you, and this laid back "live and let live" attitude is how you normally are. Am I getting it straight?

[-] 2 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

The epiphany was a personal revelation resulting in a personal belief that there is not enough collective will in the human population to reverse the gw trend (and no, Betsy, we're not getting into that again). But I have no fear about it. I do not fear that which is inevitable and which I can personally do nothing about. The feeling I get about gw is deep sadness/depression, not fear.

This is a post about fear. Why are you dredging up old posts and attempting to assert intellectual superiority again? Rhetorical question. You know what I get when I input user:BetsyRoss in the search field of this forum? Not ONE contribution from you whatsoever -- zip, nada, zero, nothing. And you have been on this forum since January 28, 2012. Way to go Betsy.

Why don't you go back to the University of Troll where you came from and teach your Sophistry class there. You are a "word mugger" waiting in a dark alley looking for opportunity to attack when you sense an opportunity. I'm sure it gives you a smug sense of accomplishment to poke what you think are holes in Liberalism, but that is a sad way to spend one's time. Take up something more constructive like, say, bobbing for french fries.

[-] 2 points by DKAtoday (33802) from Coon Rapids, MN 11 years ago

Hear Hear - well said.

[-] -1 points by BetsyRoss (-744) 11 years ago

I realize that your question is rhetorical, but I'm going to give you an actual reply anyway...you know...to help explain my "conservative brain" to you.

In my opinion, people who actually HAVE some kind of intellectual superiority or some sort of certification that demonstrates that they have knowledge that needs to be shared with others are the ones to whom society should listen-but with enough personal integrity to actually do one's "own homework" so to speak before accepting it as true or factual.

Thus, in my view, someone would have to be either well credentialed, completely trustworthy, or vastly arrogant to assume that whatever he/she thinks or feels is certainly worth the investment of time and consideration of others as a topic of discussion. I lean towards vastly arrogant in your case because you have no credentials that I know of, your arguments aren't consistent or fact based as often as they are mere opinion (which makes me LESS inclined to trust you) and you like making snide/rude points like saying that anyone who hasn't posted/started an actual thread here has contributed "zip, nada, zero, nothing" without ANY thought at all to how insulting that might be to everyone else who hasn't started a thread here. Thanks for clarifying for everyone how you really feel about the rest of us.

So, if it's not for the "smug sense of accomplishment", why is it that you spend SOOOOOO much time and effort trying to poke holes in conservatism? Why else would someone be willing to admit that they simply don't understand how or what conservatives think in one thread, and then declare that they KNOW exactly what conservatives think and why in another?

I mean, outside of full on crazy, arrogant as hell is the most likely determination I can make based on the evidence. And I don't think anyone of any particular party or social group deserves to be subjected to the rantings of either type without at least a "whoa Nelly" as a heads up.

That's really what people like me FEAR more than anything...silence in the face of arrogance and/or batcrap crazy. :-)

[-] 2 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

I am deeply humbled to be in the presence of such greatness as yourself. I am but a lowly citizen who has dared to speak his mind without the apparent credentials that you deem essential for "free speech" to be acceptable. In that regard, I ask you "Are only those who meet your self-assigned criteria as 'credentialed' to be deemed worthy of speech on a public forum such as this?" What are YOUR credentials? My guess would be a Ph.D in Hypocrisy, with a minor in Judgmentalism. But I almost forgot that contributors to this forum are mere guinea pigs for your amusement in your self-admitted Social Science experiment.  So I guess you wouldn't be a good Social Scientist if you dared to taint your experiment with even ONE original post to this forum since January 2012. No, such a radical thing as actually creating your own conversation point, instead of waiting in ambush to attack someone else who actually cares to engage in concerned conversation about the issues that are important to the real participants on this forum, is just too much to ask of the Great Social Scientist and self-appointed Ms. High-and-Mighty Betsy Dross, who's elevated sense of Self and conservative judgmentalism speaks infinitely louder than a million original posts (oh wait...that's right...you don't have any).

It's really a shame Betsy. A person of your obvious intelligence and gift with the written language could have made worthy and possibly even important contributions to the discussions that take place on this forum, instead of being relegated to the conversational backwaters as your karma score so clearly indicates.  Occupy is supposed to represent 99% of the general population, and that would obviously include a lot of conservatives. That's why you have no doubt seen me on other posts making at least some attempt to understand conservatives better. But in all honesty, if you are representative of the typical conservative mentality (which I have to trust you are not), then it is no surprise whatsoever that such a deep divide exists between the two ideologies. If you are representative of a general conservative strategy of wait in ambush, look for weakness, then attack mercilessly, then I guess it is futile to attempt to bridge the gap. Class/ideological warfare will likely continue unabated forever in this increasingly hostile and uncivilized exchange of salvos.

You can stand in judgement of me and everyone else on this forum who you deem "uncredentialed", and therefore unworthy to breathe air and utter words in the same space as your self-righteous, judgmental, arrogant, self-elevated, assumed-to-be-superior, mental illness will choose to believe. It doesn't matter to me at all. As I have said before, I find you tedious, boring, and a waste of my time. I would be most curious to hear from others on this forum who might share a similar view of your "contributions". Judging by your karma score, it appears they have already spoken via voting. You are a waste of my time and effort, and the only reason I have spent this much time on this response is to expose you to a candid world for exactly what you are --- Queen Bitch Troll !!!

[-] -1 points by BetsyRoss (-744) 11 years ago

Thank you for yet one more expansive demonstration of your tolerance and that self ascribed "live and let live" mentality! Funny how all one has to do is touch one of Mr Humble, Lowly Citizen's raw open nerves and those fangs and claws just come RIPPING to the surface.

I note you didn't even touch the "completely trustworthy" part of my post. Freudian slip or just too busy posing as various deep thinkers to catch that one?

And PLEASE-everyone follow the link provided by Underdog with his words "self-admitted Social Science experiment" above. It leads to another discussion he and I had where I QUOTE HIS views on the human race IN HIS OWN WORDS. Look for the "ape brains", irrational, and driven by FEAR among other fine examples of I guess what he wants people to think is typical, Liberal mentality.

[-] 1 points by VQkag2 (16478) 11 years ago

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

"Fear is the path to the dark side"

[-] 0 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

And can you imagine the amount of big bucks Big Pharma has made just on tranquilizers alone in this country?

We are one big screwed-up country with all of our nervous and fearful afflictions.

[-] 0 points by VQkag2 (16478) 11 years ago

Repubs use fear like old Sith lords dude.

[-] -1 points by Clicheisking (-210) 11 years ago

Though I'm not a repub I have no fear of you leftwinganarchistmarxistinfantileworldviewinc. Fools. Trust me, you people are not nearly as afraid( most don't even care) of you as you seem to think. Get a grip.

[-] 1 points by VQkag2 (16478) 11 years ago

You ain't makin sense. We ain't tryin to scare people. Repubs are.

Is that who you are talkin about?

[-] 0 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

And, apparently, the (R)s have a disproportional amount of that dark side, Master Yoda, because Conservatives have more built-in fear biologically than Liberals. So what can be done about that? Remove their amygdala's?

[-] 0 points by VQkag2 (16478) 11 years ago

LOL. It's funny but it really is a trueism.

I read a psychology article about how when people are afraid they become more conservative. Apocolyptic world would lead the most liberal to shoot 1st, while the experiment showed conservatives would be more liberal if they had superpowers.

So it is human nature to be more conservative when afaid. This is why the republicans must keep people living in fear. It is how they create voters for their candidates.

Very unhealthy/damaging for society. It feeds on itself and forces pols to become more & m,ore extreme & to pass legislation against one group after another.

So what must be done is to ratchet down the fear mongering that was created when they exploited the 9/11 attacks, then the rest of the fear tactics they've used against minorities, LGBT, immigrants and whoever else thay come up with.

"It's the only way to be sure"

[-] 0 points by Shayneh (-482) 11 years ago

If you believe what this cartoon shows maybe you need a lesson in the History of the United states and how people struggled to survive and work towards a "better life" -

Of course it's not like that today - people don't know what it's like to "really struggle".

[-] 0 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

You want to explain that a little better? You sound like you're in love with John Wayne, the Old West, etc. where "a man was a real man back then in the "good old" days." The fact of the matter is, people struggle in every age. The nature of the struggle is just different now than it used to be. Back in the days of the pioneers it was more of a physical struggle. Now it is more of a psychological one.

[-] 1 points by Shayneh (-482) 11 years ago

Tell me how do you think a person becomes successful? Is it by sitting on their butt complaining to everyone that they can't get a job or is it by being determined to succede? Which is it?

Why do you think the United States is more advanced then the rest of the world and why do you think everyone wants to come here to live?

It sure isn't because someone is coming here to be "unsuccessful" is it?

[-] 0 points by Underdog (2971) from Clermont, FL 11 years ago

Spoken like a true conservative. I have had lots of conversations with cons about their beloved independant mentality, so I'm not going to get into another one on the pros and cons of what you are defending. I know the argument of the Enterpriser and the whole Randian philosophy. Contrary to the belief held by most of them, not everyone can be an Enterpriser, and it is a fact that most small businesses fail rather than succeed. People know this, especially anyone who has tried a small business that failed. You are guilty of oversimplification in your thinking and/or view of the world.

[-] 0 points by DKAtoday (33802) from Coon Rapids, MN 11 years ago

The only thing we have to fear - Is Fear "itself".

Fear is the mind killer - the little death.

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