General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 14

It is a feasible defense if you accept the premise of your statement. I don't. Race relations are not different for us, they're different for white people. It was understood that the policies were adding on to further racial disparities and that it would lead to mass incarceration, white people didn't care, because they wanted to feel safe. The Clintons used that fear to go farther right and get rid of the notion that the Democratic Party was there party of "minorities".

 

Fair enough. I have read how the Welfare Reform bill affected low income, minority families and increased mass incarceration. I do not disagree with that, but if what we are saying is true then is there no truth that her statement was just relating to those who are drug dealers, but was a case of misinformation and, on the whole, the reform act was affecting far more innocent lives than criminals? Was this deliberate and not simply misinformed in your eyes?

I did not grow up during that time and am not a POC. This is why I want to take the lengths to educate myself and not accept everything on face value.

 

Read this article.

Superpredator” is an awful-sounding word, it’s true, but the main problem with it is the ideas it represents, not that something about it makes you cringe when it hits your ears. That’s why the sound-bite summary that you often hear of Hillary’s remarks — usually something like “Hillary called black kids superpredators” — collapses the charge into something both too simplistic and easily deflected; Hillary’s statement doesn’t contain any explicit references to race at all. So if you don’t know the history of the term, you might — incorrectly — assume that the problem with using it is that it just “sounds” racist, in the same way that referring to “thugs” sounds racist in certain contexts. After all, people still use the word “predator” when talking about crime without invoking any racial connotations at all.

Ultimately, though, “superpredator” isn’t like “thug”; its racial connotations aren’t separate from its original meaning. In other words, superpredator is itself an inherently racist term — not an unfortunate slip of the tongue in the wrong context. To see that, we’ve got to hop back into our time machine and look at the ideas that the word represented when Hillary used it.

 

The reform act isn't what is at issue. That was part of a broader project to recast the Democratic Party as not beholden to its traditional base, to demonstrate that they, too, could be financially responsible, tough on crime and great for businesses. So, yes, it was intentional, insofar as neoliberal reform was meant to realign politics to the right to better serve the ruling class. That it was racialized speaks to the fact that class formation and racial formation are intersecting and are mutually reinforcing ideological/material forces. The Clintons, then, used racialized fear to pass their policies in order to further the interests of the ruling class, and as they are co-extensive, their white supremacist ideology.

 

yes, you can rank the remaining GOP candidates, but it

i try not to be a judgmental person but every time i see Bill Clinton or hear anything he says i just get super grossed out. he's so sleazy and withered and gross.

 

He is a rapist and a racist. That Hillary has him stumping for her is emblematic of how little she cares about the interests of women and people of color. I mean, she effectively called his accuser a liar.

 

I had a weird epiphany of sort tonight after listening to a panel on refugees and global suffering including Gilian Kleinschmidt. He talked about how he always starved for revolution but would never become a revolutionary because he knows that, like all revolutionaries, the power would corrupt him. One thing he said about the vertical nature of "charity" versus actual action made me think of a Galeano quote.

So I was reading Galeano tonight with music playing in the background when Joan Baez came on. I thought of how I always despised the hippies, for whatever reason, since I could remember. But I certainly never despised them on philosophical grounds: as I've grown up I realized that their message of non-violence, environmentalism, racial harmony, and vaguely leftist economics was absolutely fucking right. What I despised was their limp-wristed image: the fragility that their critics cast on them and that they seemed to gladly embrace with their flowered hair, acoustic guitars, and hemp dresses.

I realized that I had never wanted to demonstrate like they had. I'd never wanted to counter corporate financers of hate and selfishness (and the stupid voters they supply) with peaceful disobedience. What I really wanted was reciprocate their image of boldness with a similar movement: one that didn't meekly reason, but one that marched on them and held their face in the dirt. And that's when I realized that similar dispositions are what probably corrupted great men such as Guevara and similar appreciaters of Galeano like Chavez.

It's a frustrating world. I don't know. It just felt like a sad personal revelation of sort.

 

I finally got to reading this all the way through. Absolutely phenomenal critiques on both races and one of the more enjoyable readings I have had in a while. The argument on the historicity of fascist yesteryear being incompatible with the proposed impossibility of Trumpism developing different modes of fascist organization was especially interesting.

 

Some are saying Clinton's rant against black lives matter and defense of the crime bill he passed is 2016's Sista Souljah moment; that is, it wasn't a gaffe, it was meant to send a message to the general electorate that the Clinton administration will push back against activists.

The Daily 202: Bill Clinton’s argument with Black Lives Matter protesters is 2016’s Sister Souljah Moment

 

MetroCards are notoriously hard to use, so no.

 

Nah. Way too much momentum (and bipartisan agreement) on criminal justice reform. Whoever the next president is, regardless of party, will most likely be signing a bill reversing most of the 90's tough on crime nonsense. I could see Trump refusing to sign it, but outside of that, it's happening. I guess it's possible Obama gets to sign it, but I think this Republican senate has made it clear that they're not getting shit else done while he's President.


Not sure what can be done federally about state and local police departments in terms of reform outside of just using the the DOJ to investigate after shit happens. I like most of the reforms you (dom) have proposed, especially when it comes to community oversight groups and such. I just don't know if it's possible for the FedGov to make them happen.

 

The point isn't that there won't be reform, the point is that they also want to demonstrate that they're not beholden to black lives matter, which many moderates believe to be radical.

 

Just was told on Facebook that Hillary's use of the term "superpredator" wasn't racist, but if it was then Bernie's statements before the '94 Crime Bill were also racist:

"It is my firm belief that clearly there are people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them. But it is also my view that through the neglect of our government and through a grossly irrational set of priorities, we are dooming today tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence. And, Mr. Speaker, all the jails in the world — and we already imprison more people per capita than any other country — and all of the executions … in the world will not make that situation right."

Granted, I don't believe in prisons. But Sanders at least recognized the way the government put people in a position to be targeted.

 

I'd refer them to this article I posted earlier.

 

He wouldn't read it because it was MTV, and then said that it contained no facts. Lol

 

Anyone listen to the keeping it 1600 podcast channel 33? Its pretty good, I just hate how obviously they're into Hillary. They just had Thomas Perez on this week its so unfortunate how out of touch he is. They spent like 20 minutes crapping allover Bernie, some of it deserving but some of it not. I can't recall a single negative thing they've said about Hillary during this election cycle and they also don't realize most people are already she's corrupt...judging by a quote from this same new episode. Blah.

 

Terrifying to think that simply even saying the lives of black people matter is considered a "radical" idea

 

Sanders Over the Edge

Krugman's anti-Sanders op-ed in the NYT

"And the timing of the Sanders rant was truly astonishing. Given her large lead in delegates — based largely on the support of African-American voters, who respond to her pragmatism because history tells them to distrust extravagant promises — Mrs. Clinton is the strong favorite for the Democratic nomination."

 

Can't believe that guy writes for the NYT, how the mighty have fallen. Should have called the article "hot takes of the week with a guy who uses a lot of words to say one thing, and that thing is not always necessarily correct"

 

Reading that alot of rich conservative billionaires are trying to convince former USMC general James Mattis to run as a third party candidate if Trump gets the nomination.

All I know about Mattis is that he has an almost Patton like admiration from alot of marines, someone played him during a scene in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill, and he would say alot of things like this:




also this kind of reminds me a bit of the alleged "Business Plot" of 1933.

 

Governor Rick Scott gains the upper hand against that woman who called him a mean name to his face at a Starbucks

 

Surprised no one posted that yet, well done.

 

I've lost more respect for Krugman and the NY Times than for any person or institution by far this cycle. A lot of that derives, I suppose, from the naivete with which I had once admired both.

Fuck Krugman.

 

i agreed with Krugman's article to an extent :|

 

it's utterly hilarious after the clinton campaign openly questioned Obama's drug use and whether or not he was a muslim that they now feel like they can have the upper ground on any fucking human being alive but here we are, it's 2016, neoliberalism has to keep chugging somehow, time for totally empty identity politics and our "left" party electing a warmonger president