Sorry for the sensationalist headline. But now that I have your attention:
The following is a reply I posted to Marie3 on Booman’s recent article Casual Observation. She wrote:
The ugly side of the libertarian coin. Which is why most decent people outgrow any fascination with libertarianism within the six months from which they first encounter this seductive sounding political stance in late adolescence.
Go read the whole thread for a more balanced view of what I was talking about if you wish.
Read on.
…most decent people…
Sigh…
There it is again. A variation on the “everybody knows” riff.
From my comment here, on Booman’s recent “Quote of the Day: Bobby Jindal” thread.
…everyone knows it to be true.
Apparently not.
Obviously not.
The key word here…the key word in almost all “politics”…is the word “everyone.”
Everyone knows…
Everyone knows what?
That Obama was born in Hawaii?
No.
That Moscow is the capital of Russia?
No.
That Barack Obama is nothing more than a slick PermaGov centrist wrapped up in Democratic sloganeering?
No.
Etc., etc., etc.
“Everyone that we agree with” is the “everyone” of political rhetoric.
Jindal looks like a freshly hatched chicken. God only knows what kinds of machinations got him the governor’s chair in Louisiana. “Agree” with him? Why? He is as wrong as is almost every professional pol in the business of getting elected. He’s not even a gnat on Trump’s massive neck.
FUGGEDABOUDIT!!!
AG
Your “decent people” appear to be people with whom you agree, Marie.
Who are we to say that no “decent people” believe other things than do we?
My grandparents were “decent people” on both sides of the family. They went to church; they stayed married…sometimes for the sole reason of raising their children well…they fought wars in which they believed; they took care to harm no one who did not threaten them and their families. They also had no fucking idea about what it means to be a minority citizen in this country, thought that women belonged in the house raising children, would never have dreamed of voting for a black dogcatcher let alone a black president, lived in strictly segregated neighborhoods, had absolutely no use for people whose sexuality was different from their own…including people who had sex out of wedlock even if they were heterosexual…and cast a squinty eye even on Christians of other denominations. My parents…one a member of a rabble-rousing NYC Irish Catholic Democratic family, the other a member of a semi-rural, rock-ribbed Protestant Republican family whose history in the NYC area went back to the 1630s…had to elope and go join the Royal Canadian Air Force and fight in The Battle of Britain because their families were so opposed to the relationship. Do you not have “decent people” in your family who never evolved to the level at which you exist in terms of social beliefs? I’m betting that you do.
We all do.
So now…back to the problem at hand.
It is often said that you cannot legislate morality. I’ll go one step further. You cannot legislate evolution. It either happens or it doesn’t. How many millions of the roughly 325 million Americans (not counting however many millions of so-called “illegals” are here, most of whom work for people like you and me washing dishes and delivering food, etc. at wages so low that they that defy imagination) absolutely, positively resemble your ancestors and mine in their beliefs. Given the low tide 28% approval rate of people like Butch II when he was in office, it looks to me like fully 1/4 or more of U.S. residents are right back where my grandparents lived in terms of societal evolution. That’s pushing on 100 million people. Plus…they’re the ones who own most of the guns. Can we somehow “legislate” their obedience to what we consider higher socially evolved notions? On the evidence of the last 50+ years, the answer is a resounding “No!!!” Are they dying out? I sometimes wonder. Given the Trump phenomenon, I wonder more now than at any time in the past. So I say…give them their own damned country/countries and let’s see who wins that competition. My bet? The country/countries that operate on the principle of human ecology will win and the others will degenerate into satellite states like the many small Eastern European countries that now waver back and forth between being part of Europe and part or Russia.
But that’s a real minority opinion.
At least for now.
It’s a dream.
So it goes.
We will see how long it remains a dream.
Another 8 years of the bullshit in which we have all been forced to live by the oligarchy and there are going to be a lot of people looking for a way out.
On all sides of the societal evolutionary scale.
Watch.
AG
Feel free.
I certainly do.
Except of course for that drone hovering outside my wind…
UH oh!!!
Gotta go.
Fast.
See ya. (I hope.)
Later…
AG
Exquisite trolling here, but it deserves a response nonetheless.
Arthur Gilroy pathetically dreams of returning blacks, gays, and other racial/social minorities in the South back to 1840, or 1880, or 1950. Oh, and don’t forget his support for a re-establishment of the white male patriarchy which doomed women to forced birth and nothing approaching equal rights, professionally, socially or politically.
This refusal to take responsibility for the fate of his fellow Americans reflects a sort of hatred for these people, a hatred that Arthur refuses to come to terms with, but it’s an effective form of hatred from him nonetheless.
He claims that you can’t legislate morality. However, we CAN legislate behavior, and do. We CAN enforce Federal civil rights, and have. His position here essentially negates much of American history, back to the passages of the 13th thru 19th Amendments. It is agreed that the securing of civil and voting rights gained through Federal laws and regulations has been bumpy. The Reconstruction was largely abandoned; patriarchy has kept women in an unequal status even after they gained sufferage; and on and on.
But it is self-evident that progress has been made since 1840, or 1950, or 1960, or 2010. This progress has not been uniform or adequate, but the end of Obama’s Presidency will show a better, more equal, more secure country than the one his Presidency confronted in 2009. What Arthur suffers from here is his personal unwillingness to confront vicious racists, sexists, patriarchs and Christianists who want to gain the power to stand athwart history yelling “Stop!”. Instead, Gilroy wants to hand these people the power to reverse American history.
We fought a Civil War over the ideas Arthur advocates for here. His side lost.
What if, centerfielddj?
What if we had not fought that war? I don’t know for sure myself, but I believe that as the world moved on into the 20th century and industrialization, the south would have become a failed state. Hell, it might have even become a black state in time, or itself suffered insurrection and secession by majority black states. Wouldn’t that have been interesting!!! When the Civil War started the deep south’s slave population averaged out at about 40% of its total population. By 1900, the black population of the U.S…still largely centered in the deep south…had doubled and reached almost 9 million.
Hmmmm…
We’ll never know, though.
Will we.
History is written by the winners, and the winners needed cheap labor no matter what the name of the game.
It was a great victory, that war.
Riiiight…
That must be why 150 years later most of the minority population of this country remains in a state of near-slavery. In the ghettos of the north and west it’s actually worse than it is in the south.
Some victory.
AG
P.S.I repeat my statement to you in that same thread about continuing to accuse me of some kind of racist.
But of course you won’t meet me to talk about it. People like you never do. You just continue your baseless accusations because…because why, exactly? Because you aren’t intelligent enough to understand what i am saying? Because you need to demonize people who disagree with you? (That’s really what my article above is all about. “Everybody knows…”) Because you’re just another internet troll? Some hellish combination of the three? I really don’t know.
Step up to the plate, bubba. I would really love to see your face.
Arthur please don’t be a Trump you do not have the market cornered on truth and knowledge. Calm down. You heve gained my respect on the Permagov insights. But don’t attack the people here on the blog who recommend your writings and comments lets stay together….. I’m running for cover! I’m not worth it Arthur.
Oh god I should have never replied…. 🙂
Centerfieldj pisses me off. No attacks on anyone else, but smack me in the face with accusations of racism and I will respond in kind.
Bet on it.
AG
Arthur is one to lecture a commenter about a failure to understand what he’s saying.
Did I call him a racist, sexist, patriarchist or Christianist? No, I did not.
Did I say that the recommendations in these posts of his empower racists, sexists, patriachists and Christianists who wish to oppress and do violence to those they hate? You betcha.
Arthur gets his feelings hurt and his quick response is to want to physically confront the person who hurt his feelings.
That inspires our support for his views, doesn’t it?
Cliven Bundy shares views which parallel Arthur’s:
Arthur gave rhetorical support for Bundy here at the Frog Pond during Bundy’s confrontation with the Bureau of Land Management.
Centerfielddj writes:
Yes, you did…unless of course you are a lawyer, a politician or some other parsing, ass-covering bureaucrat, at which point all bets are off as to the real meaning or content of anything that you say.
It is not “hatred” that I feel towards my fellow Americans or my fellow human beings. Not even towards knee-jerkers from the left and the right like you. I identify a huge problem going on in the U.S. today…a problem of scale, a problem of sheer size and complexity…and think that a move towards decentralized government would help to solve that problem.
You want to argue with me? Fine.
You want to accuse me of hatred? Not fine at all. Stupid, actually.
End of story.
AG
Arthur writes that it might have been better if African-Americans had been kept in chattel slavery in a scenario that even his fevered imagination concedes would have stretched at least a half-century past 1865.
And now, he says that it’s futile to defend the civil rights of gay people in 2015 in Kentucky. Arthur even conjures up stories which have rocks being thrown through the windows of homosexuals and people accosting them on the street and beating the shit out of them. He conjures up these stories while simultaneously and explicitly telling us the Federal government should stop trying to defend the civil rights of same-sex couples in Kentucky and other States.
I’m sick of acting as if these views are within the arena of reasonable discourse. Arthur has the right to express these views. I have the right to call these views vile. They are some of the nastiest expressions of white male heterosexual privilege imaginable.
Arthur holds himself so emotionally distant from being an enslaved African-American in 1900 or a homosexual in Rowan County in the violent world he wants to imagine Kentucky citizens would want to bring to their neighbors today if the Federal government stopped their meddling.
I’d like to hear how these dismissive views do not have in their explicit conclusions a whiff of hatred. Let’s repeat: Arthur thinks the Federal government should allow Kentucky residents to viciously assault homosexuals in public and at their homes. With this, Arthur’s attempt to separate himself from such immorality by saying “these Southerners are backwards and inferior” lacks practical meaning.
Let’s repeat: Arthur thinks the Federal government should allow Kentucky residents to viciously assault homosexuals in public and at their homes. We can certainly presume he wishes to defend the rights of those same citizens to oppress and assault African-Americans, Mexicans and other non-white males. We know that Arthur supports voter ID laws which disproportionately take the vote away from minorities, women and the poor. Given his near absolutist moral/libertarian views, it is difficult to imagine limits to Arthur’s expressed interest to encourage a return of the Confederacy.
It would be interesting to hear what those limits might be.
You make serious accusations .. pls provide a link or links to AG’s comment(s).
Arthur, two days ago:
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2015/9/9/232050/1836/12#12
“As far as dissolving the union…this country is now too big, too diverse culturally and too populous to be adequately governed by a centralized federal system. If one truly believes in rule by majority consensus, then decentralization is the only way that it is going to happen.“
So, he’s repeatedly and explicitly called upon dissolving the United States. He’s established here that he thinks it would have been acceptable to keep African-Americans in literal slavery past 1865, for as long as it took for things to sort themselves out. Here’s an additional outcome that Arthur is willing to accept in the wake of this devolution, from his comment on Thursday:
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2015/9/9/232050/1836/10#10
“Long term, what are (the prospects for gay Kentuckians) in that area of the country? Consider it. Publicly homosexual in an area where they are considered to be totally alien freaks by the majority white Christian populace? Please. Are their civil rights going to be “enforced” when people drive by their house and throw things at it? When their faces and names are published in the local fundamentalist press? When some hooligans…just as likely to be local cops as anything else…pull them into an alley as they are going to dinner and beat the shit out of them? This government cannot even enforce the “civil rights” of the soon-to-be-majority of darker-skinned citizens in areas like that or even in the biggest cities of this country, with DC being perhaps the worst offender of all. The rule of law means nothing if the majority of people in a given area do not believe in it. Not unless that area is under some sort of martial law.
“I personally believe that this union in which so many of us seem to passionately believe should be broken up into smaller countries. Someone wants to live in a country where homosexuals are stoned to death? Great. Move to the U.S D.S…the United States of the Deep South…wallow in your ignorance surrounded by others like you and watch your system implode from sheer stupidity.
“
It is very telling that Arthur conjures up a bunch of prospective physical attacks which have not happened in any meaningful frequency in the wake of Oberkfell, in Kentucky or anywhere else. He still imagines that our country is as it was in the wake of Brown v. Board, when these sorts of physical attacks, oppressions and murders did take place.
What brought those physical attacks and oppressions out of fashion? Passages and enforcements of Brown v. Board, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, the very Federal interventions he describes as unworkable in the face of much lower levels of resistance to civil rights for homosexuals in 2015.
Part of the interventions which enforced Brown v. Board, the CRA and CVA were occasional Federal martial law implementations. He derides the very concept of temporary martial law here, suggesting that he would have preferred that the Federal government allow the Southern States to prevail in their massive resistance efforts in the ’50’s and ’60’s.
And he followed these morally deficient statements by this very poorly gauged threat:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/9/9/232050/1836#16
“…it looks to me like fully 1/4 or more of U.S. residents are right back where my grandparents lived in terms of societal evolution. That’s pushing on 100 million people. Plus…they’re the ones who own most of the guns.“
Regarding other parts of Gilroy’s commenting record I’ve unearthed here, I’d prefer to not dig through months and years of Arthur’s posts, but I will if I need to.
It’d be better to ask Arthur to be an honorable man and stand on his record. Arthur, have you written in acceptance of voter ID laws and support for Rand Paul’s position on the issue? Have you written in support of Cliven Bundy as he persisted in his confrontation with the BLM over his lawbreaking use of Federal land and refusal to pay grazing fees?
And, finally, I’d ask you, oui, and others who care to take up the question: do Cliven Bundy’s statements in the video link differentiate themselves in their effects to Arthur Gilroy’s theories?
Arthur Gilroy’s associations with the statements from Cliven Bundy are deepened by Arthur’s repeated comments on this blog that the post-Reconstuction era of laws, policies and social constructs which enforced complete segregation created economic and community conditions for African-Americans that Arthur claims were preferable to the overall conditions African-Americans live under today. Arthur has also joined Cliven in speaking negatively of the effects social welfare programs like unemployment insurance have on the morality of Americans.
I invite Arthur to defend those portions of his worldview which support outcomes of the Jim Crow/pre-Great Society eras as well.
His “interpretations” of what i say are his evidence.
In his dreams, I am a closeted Nazi.
So it goes.
Ignore him.
AG
Pro-Bundy sentiments from AG:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/4/14/113842/056
http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2014/4/15/222133/764
A more explicit defense of Bundy (“Lissen up, you kneejerks…I agree with what he said,…), and a long attack on social welfare programs, tinged with the sort of language heard at TEA Party rallies. Make what you will of his defense of his position:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/4/24/112755/181
The comments to this post include Arthur’s strong defense of Jim Crow and an attack on the Great Society, with many subsequent commenters correcting his factual mischaracterizations:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/4/27/132847/382#18
You are the racist, sir. Not me. You argue vehemently for the continuation of a sham federal civil rights system that is only a “kinder, gentler” version of the rigid segregationist system that preceded it. Look at the numbers. Unemployment numbers. Arrest numbers. Educational numbers. Wage numbers. Welfare numbers. Look, goddamnit!!! I have no solutions…not really…but I am not not afraid to call the present system a total failure. Token integration only, from top to bottom.
Here is what has not really changed.
An old American black saying:
As true today as it was in the 1800s.
Bet on it.
AG
Today’s conservative movement and Republican Party doesn’t believe brown should stick around, at all.
Among the many, many differences between the Parties and our movements.
Here y’go, centerfielddj. The real results 150+ years later of that Civil War that you seem to believe your “side” won:
150+ years later. Some win!!!
And here is the real belief of most of the minority citizens of this country about such changes after over 150 years of almost total, jerk-off bullshit. I repeat:
There it is in a nutshell, centristfienddj.
In a nutshell.
“Civil Rights!!!???”
A total failure on the face of it.
WTFU
The St. Louis area racial breakdown?
Sure.
Do the math.
That means that about 56.5% of the St. Louis area’s population is non-white. people that we we laughingly refer to as “minority” members are actually in the majority in that area.
Hmmmm…
How about the Baltimore area? You know…where the other serious riots happened this year?
Here’s the news, Bubba:
A little less than 70% of the population of that area…anoverwhelming majority…is comprised of “minority” members.
HMMMMMM…!!!
It’s enough to make you think…if of course you actually have any brain left after swallowing the neo-lib bullshit that passes for news here in the U.S.
Now…if these areas had been truly self-governing with little or no so-called oversight from the Federal…let’s call a spade a spade here…overseers for the past several decades, do you really believe that that racial discrimination would still be the dominant societal system there?
Please.
WTFU!!!
AG
Reverend Barber has a response:
Interested in your response.
Quote:
“In 1870 you had more African-Americans serving in the [North Carolina] Geberal Assembly than you have today.”
Precisely.
Why, centerfielddj?
Why do you suppose that is true?
It is true because after the Reconstruction period…and after the Civil Rights Act as well, about 100 years later…white supremacist factions in the federal government (Read “Republicans” today, mostly, but white supremacists of every party allied with big money that wanted to preserve cheap labor any way that it could possibly do so.)…white supremacist factions at the federal level connived with local power brokers to roll back the “Reconstruction” by the use of domestic terrorism and economically-enforced Jim Crow segregation.
Rev. barber talks about the reactionary “Redemption Movement” in the early 1880s. Why did the federal government allow this? because…just as now…it represented far away money that wanted to continue an essentially captive, marked by skin color pool of cheap labor. Had North Carolina been a sovereign state rather than essentially a chattel state of a more and more powerful central government, things would quite probably have worked out differently. Ditto voting rights.
All done until the 19060s. The so-called Second Reconstruction. Notice what happened after with one hand the feds “gave” blacks equality while simultaneously other federal hands…bet on it…murdered political champions of civil rights like JFK, RFK and MLK Jr. and ran massive drug attacks on black neighborhoods across America (See the history of the Iran/Contra boondoggle for a glimpse of how that worked) , disrupting the social fabric that had held strong through the worst of segregation times. I lived and worked in the black neighborhoods of Boston, NYC, Indianapolis and Atlantic City just prior to their total destruction. They were destroyed by heroin and later by crack. How come that didn’t happen to white neighborhoods, centerfielddj? Because the federal government not only allowed but channelled massive amounts of destructive drugs at very low prices directly into those neighborhoods. Quite consciously. Bet on that as well. Why? Because a healthy black social culture was seen as both a serious political threat to the political/economic power system as it stood and also because that system depended…and depends to this day…on cheap minority labor.
JBJ was undoubtedly complicit on some level…even if only tacitly… in the murder of JFK. He’s also the political “hero” of the Civil Rights bill? I call bullshit. Cities were burning and the feds had to stanch the bleeding until they could figure out ways to keep their cheap labor population disenfranchised. They gave with one hand and took with twenty others.
Or…as Malcolm X said so clearly:
Still true today.
And what is “America” in this instance?
It’s the federal government, bubba.
The federal government.
You want “equality?”
Me too.
Human ecology. Survival of the most fit. From each according to his abilities and to each according to their needs.
The federal government has been complicit in hustling equality out of the picture twice since the Civil War that you think “we” won, and it’s working on a third time unless I miss my guess.
“BREAK UP THE U.S.???”
Why not?
It ain’t working this way.
Bet on that as well.
AG
Arthur, Reverend Barber goes on to recount the second Reconstruction period. He describes the reforms of the second Reconstruction as vital, not trivial, reforms that improved the lives of millions and are worth defending. He calls, stirringly, for their defense.
Most to the point, do you hear an embittered leader here? Does Reverend Barber dismiss the value of the United States? Does he label it irredeemable and call for it to be carved up?
He’s worth listening to, much more so than you and I.
Why is he much more worth listening to than you and I?
Really, centerfielddj.
Why?
Answer me that before we go any further.
AG
Reverend Barber is a truly inspirational leader of a movement which is building something substantial, meaningful and good, spiritually and physically. He’s also enormously articulate and knowledgeable.
And, unlike me, Barber always seems to maintain his ability to use strong but respectful language when expressing himself, even when it becomes difficult to extend that respect.
You write:
I know nothing about Rev. Barber other than this video. He is indeed “enormously articulate” and appears to be knowledgeable about the subjects that he covers in that video as well.
But…you could find any number of people who would say the same things about people that you apparently despise. And..there are truly thousands of others who do not occupy positions of public importance…who have chosen not to do the grunt work that is absolutely necessary in this culture to become important or famous who are also “enormously articulate and knowledgeable” about things that are occurring in this country and around the world as well.
You write above:
And then you write:
And here you are back in the “Everybody knows…” fallacy. You agree with him and thus assume that he is correct and that others who disagree with him…on tactical issues, not strategic ones…or are not in positions of public prominence are not “worth listening to”.
I “listen to” everybody that I can find who is weighing in on subjects that concern me, and I try my damndest not to prejudge them. When someone consistently makes a lot of sense…like Ron Paul for more than a couple of decades and Noam Chomsky since the mid-’60s…I listen. And I change accordingly.
I have come to a point…due to going on 50 years of “listening” broadly… where I no longer trust the political system of the United States on any level whatsoever. Am I “not worth listening to” because I do not occupy a high public position in a totally rotted-out culture or is it that you simply don’t listen to people who make sense but come to different conclusions than yours? That’s why I asked “Why is he much more worth listening to than are you and I?”
i mean…Donald Trump is much more famous than is the Rev. Barber, yet I am sure that you are not paying much positive attention to what he is saying. Right? So where on the scale of fame and power do you decide that someone is not worth listening to?
Or…is it just that since “Everybody knows…” that your positions are correct and those of others are not, “[Fill in the blank] is worth listening to, much more so than you and I.”
That’s why i asked that question.
Your answer is apparently because:
A-You agree with him.
and/or
B-He is somewhat famous.
I disagree with what are apparently his efforts to work within this rotted-out system. I respect his strategic goals…human equality…but I no longer think that it is tactically a good idea to support the present system as it now stands. Why? I answered that question with my comments above regarding how the federal government has given a little publicly while at the same time secretly taking a great deal in this regard. I stand by this position.
I am not worth your attention?
Great.
I lay it out as I see it.
Feel free to not pay me any mind if that’s what you want to do. Things will work out as they must no matter what youor I do or say. I believe that the life of Life…also known as evolution …is not done with us. It is not done with the entity now known as the U.S., either. This country in its current form has reached an impasse as far as racial integration is concerned and it seems to me that the goal of human equality would be better served if in some way the government were to be seriously decentralized.
How?
Maybe a breakup is what is necessary. That’s beginning to look like the only way, to me. The continuing rise of Trump on a sotto voce platform of white supremacy scares me to death. If he is elected president I will “break up” the country the only way in my power. I will leave. Bet on it.
You?
Later…
AG
We don’t have a totally rotted-out culture.
There is plenty of great things going on in your neighborhood, just as there are in mine. All of it is made more possible by the support of the Federal government and the American people, all of them. You don’t believe that. That is irrelevant. It is true.
Where we come to a different place on your presumptions is that I don’t listen as much to people who don’t make sense. A person who writes that the goal of human equality would have been better served if African-Americans had been left in slavery past 1865, and the goal of human equality would be better served if Southerners were freed from Federal civil rights laws so officials could deny them the right to marry and police could join citizens in assaulting homosexuals in the street and stoning them to death, does not make sense.
A person is not making sense when they stand by a position even after many of the claims supporting that position can be shown to be factually incorrect (for example, overall African-American poverty in the U.S. went sharply down after the major Federal interventions of the ’50’s and ’60’s, and national poverty rates for African-Americans remain at much less than half the level they were at before Brown v. Board).
Building movements which get people to work together is the only way we’ve ever gotten our people and our government to increase human equality. Reverend Barber is the leader of the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. That movement will become successful in beating back the aggressive attacks on human equality which have taken place in that State. One of those attacks has been on voting rights. Unfairly constructed voter ID laws are among the attacks the Republican-controlled State government has employed.
Your idea is to separate people, to drive them apart. That comes clear in your writings. This desire of yours to create more pure battles of the fittest goes far beyond your sensational desire to break up the U.S.
It is not sensible to maintain a belief that separating people who have less power will bring about an increase in their human equality. Multinational corporations, oligarchs, financial service titans, religious demagogues and the other powerful oppressors we suffer under today would maintain and grow their power over a broken-up United States. It wouldn’t turn out the way you fantasize that it would.
It’s frustrating to see progress rolled back. People of better will have to be willing to stick it out and fight to reduce the power of those who wish to foment division and grow inequality, using methods that make sense. It makes no sense to claim that the U.S. of 2015 is worse than the U.S. of 1950, or 1900, or 1850. Everything that has happened, the good and the bad, has delivered us, overall, a far superior Nation. The only way that historical trend will end is if people of good will give up on the American enterprise.
As you choose to disagree with Reverend Barber’s tactics now, you also choose to disagree with Reverend King’s philosophy which was instrumental in forming his movement’s tactics:
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
“…I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds…
Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
“
50+ years later?
Not.
Still.
Strategically…yes. We should all become better people, especially if we want to survive as the human race.
Tactically? No. His approach did not work. I say this on the evidence of the many police murders and other depredations on the minority community if for no other reason.
His “philosophy” was fine.
His tactics failed.
50+ years later.
Baltimore.
Sorry—I really am…but there it is.
Nothing has truly changed except the hype.
AG
All of life in our Nation, and in our world, is not contained by the relations between the citizens of Baltimore and their Police Department, added as they are to the many attacks by the powerful against the less powerful in our extremely flawed United States.
Your worldview is even more extreme in its pessimism than a worldview which finds the glass more than half-empty, knee-jerkily ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
Your recommended path forward would take that glass, toss its water on the floor, and place the glass upside down on the table so it could not be refilled. That way lies ruin.
Effective, long-term collective action, culturally and electorally, is a more likely path to gaining the human equality we both seek. Those who are successfully encouraging, crafting, financing and enforcing greater human inequality have shown themselves willing to take collective long-term action.
There is no effective choice outside learning from our failures and successes and facing the oligarchs down with our own long-term work, not if we accept that “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
The percentage of African-Americans living in poverty went down very sharply from the passage of the Great Society programs through 1975, and continued to edge downwards through 2000. These poverty rates have edged slightly up since then.
http://blackdemographics.com/households/poverty/
The results of this current survey speaks against your perceptions and the anecdote you chose to emphasize:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-surprising-optimism-of-african-americans-and
-latinos/401054/
“…in the age of Obama, white Americans–and in particular those under 30 or nearing retirement age–have all but given up on the American Dream. More than four out of five younger whites, and more than four out of five respondents between the ages of 51 and 64 said The Dream is suffering.
By contrast, 43 percent of African Americans and 36 percent of Latinos said The Dream is alive and well. The same two groups, along with Asian Americans, were also more likely to say that The Dream was still achievable for those who are willing to work for it, and they reported being more optimistic than white Americans about their own future. When it came to the state of the country, barely one in four whites believe the nation is on the right track, while nearly two-thirds of African Americans do. And the poll found a similar gap in perceptions about the country’s future: Less than half of white respondents said America’s “best days” were ahead of it, while fully 80 percent of African Americans said they were.”
Oh AG. I live in the southern burbs of Chicago. We have the same demographics as Chicago. 1/3 black, white, hispanic, and about 5 percent asian. The homes range from mcmansion to $20,000 fix it up. About 1/3 of the homes are rentals and appartment buildings. All the kids go to the same high school which is ranked one of the best in the country. The graduation rate is 95%. College night the gym is full of every branch of the military, 4/2 year colleges, and for profit trade schools. There are enough counselors that every graduate leaves with an acceptance letter, finnacial aid applied for, military commitment, or a job. I have lived here for 15 years and there has never been a drive by shooting and only 1 instance of gun violence. We also have the same rate of people using government food and economic assistance. So tell my why there is so much violence 30 miles north in Chicago?
I dunno, shan. i don’t live there. Can you tell me?
I [u]can[/u] tell you this…if all of those figures are true and you live in a small small suburban town…and if those kinds of numbers hold up in the surrounding suburbs…then it quite likely has to do with more power of home rule combined with a much smaller…and thus less profitable to the hustlers…governing bureaucracy. Which is exactly my point.
I can also tell you this…in the suburbs immediately surrounding the NYC area, those numbers only hold up if the suburb is majority white and majority middle class and above. I made the mistake of letting my ex-wife talk me into moving to one of those suburbs less than 20 miles away from midtown Manhattan. It was as racist as any town in Georgia or Mississippi. The racism was enforced in…kinder, gentler…ways, but it was plain to see. This town shared a border with another, larger town (a small city, really), the school system and general government of which of which had totally tanked during the Reagan/Bush I years. The smaller towns surrounding it were mirror images of the one in which I lived until about 12 miles northeast another small city existed which had similar problems as the one next to my town. In my experience, where I lived is more typical of the suburban U.S. experience than the place you describer. I wish this were not so but it is.
AG
I looked at the numbers.
Unemployment:
https:/research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph?g=V0F
“PermaGov” policies have not shown themselves to have undifferentiated results. Note the escalations in African-American unemployment levels have happened during Republican Administrations. And Obama’s Administration has overseen a long, sharp reduction of African-American unemployment that parallels the reductions among all Americans, despite GOP intransigences at the Federal, State and local levels which have hurt public sector job levels, which has a greater proportional effect on African-Americans.
Arrest/prison rates:
https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#/media/File:U.S._incarceration_rate
s_1925_onwards.png
The Obama Administration will be the first Administration to oversee a reduction in the number of Federal and State inmates since the Johnson Administration. African-American incarceration level reductions track with the general population. And yes, the War On Drugs has been a moral and physical obscenity. It is beginning to end, but is a long way from finishing.
Education:
http://blackdemographics.com/education-2/education/
Almost no African-Americans were able to gain a college degree before 1940. That has changed.
http://blackdemographics.com/education-2/elementary-high-school-education/
Primary school test scores and achievement/aspiration levels have trended up in the last two decades.
http://blackdemographics.com/education-2/college-university/
This information refutes a common trope.
Welfare/poverty:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/13/whos-poor-in-america-50-years-into-the-war-on-povert
y-a-data-portrait
“In 1966, two years after Johnson’s speech, four-in-ten (41.8%) of African-Americans were poor; blacks constituted nearly a third (31.1%) of all poor Americans. By 2012, poverty among African-Americans had fallen to 27.2% — still more than double the rate among whites (12.7%, 1.4 percentage points higher than in 1966).”