We need to discuss the online radicalisation of young, white men (Rush Limbaugh, unemployed)
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Policies against the coal industry, while viewed as well-meaning by doe-eyed liberals on the coasts, raise energy prices and negatively impact employment in other regions of the country.
Simplistic statements such as this do not consider that employment in coal has been declining for 100+ years..you know...because they found oil. Now employment in coal is declining because Nat Gas is cheaper....and, of course, there are now machines which mine most of the coal.
Coal employment took a dive starting in about 1980 - yes, under Saint Reagan. This was probably due to deregulation and the leveling out of the price of oil.
If you want Nat Gas and Oil/Gasoline at 3X or more the current price, you might be able to get a small spike in coal mining. But in terms of the number of jobs or economic activity - that's over. Coal = Horses as far as a technology whose time has come and gone.
"Doe Eyed" liberals like myself who have been in the energy biz for 40+ years see stuff like this and celebrate:
"Electric generating facilities expect to add more than 26 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale generating capacity to the power grid during 2016. Most of these additions come from three resources: solar (9.5 GW), natural gas (8.0 GW), and wind (6.8 GW), which together make up 93% of total additions. If actual additions ultimately reflect these plans, 2016 will be the first year in which utility-scale solar additions exceed additions from any other single energy source."
Think about that.....over 16 GW of NEW installed solar and wind in one year! This is something for doe-eyed human being to celebrate. Oh, those doe-eyed people aren't all on the costs since some of the leaders in thes wind generation are Red States like Kansas, Texas, etc.....
The crumbling "way of iife" you speak of was well underway when I lived in WV in 1972. Most all young and ambitious people were leaving...and that tells the tale. These places really never thrived in the real sense - more like indentured servitude to Wall Street and the Robber Barons who owned all the mineral rights.
It's over. Don't shoot the messenger, but we're not likely to have thousands of Americans who desire to mine coal...not free market companies that want to mine it when the price is higher than Nat Gas.
Time to move on. To what? Who knows....but lamenting over a lost society which, in many ways, never really existed in a sustainable fashion...seems fruitless.
The liberals brought on identity politics in the first place and at the macro level it's been the awakening of white identity politics that brought the trump win.
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Originally Posted by Razza94
Because the left profiteer from division, so they try to manufacture and exacerbate it whenever possible. It seriously backfired on this occasion.
The liberals weren't the ones making up stories about illegal immigrants and refugees only coming here to rape and kill instead of just escaping whatever hell hole they left.
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Originally Posted by Serious Conversation
The problems are multifaceted are cannot be boiled down to simple causes like "the corporations" or "the government." Your perspective of "too much wealth and efficiency" really speak to how divorced you are and what a poor understanding you have of conditions and areas that are not so well to do as those in your bubble.
Many corporations are indeed exploiting a docile, frightened populace - medical insurance companies are a great example.
In many cases, the government is actively pushing policies that increase poverty. Policies against the coal industry, while viewed as well-meaning by doe-eyed liberals on the coasts, raise energy prices and negatively impact employment in other regions of the country. Where I am, the municipal politicians are desperate for any sort of economic growth and new employers, so they throw out massive incentives, ultimately handing out millions of taxpayer dollars for businesses that have mostly failed within a few years. Our little city is drowning and the government is promising the sun and stars to any prospective help. The state government in Nashville should, on paper, be promoting the entire state and working to improve areas that are struggling - instead, they do nothing to promote struggling areas in Tennessee, and focus on promoting themselves.
On one hand, the federal government takes an active role of pushing us into poverty, and on the other end, the flow of welfare and assistance is at a level just enough to keep people subsisting and lazy. I know several families that have multiple generations on social assistance, and where whole families have no one local working. No, it isn't a glorious living, but it's enough to subsist living in some crummy trailer on a hillside somewhere.
Many working age poor whites, especially here in Appalachia, are neither working nor looking for work. They're often on drugs, into crime, and at the margins of society. They're far from "wealthy and efficient" - in fact, many are idle and poor.
If you're idle and poor, you lack hope, and if you lack hope, for whatever reason, it's easy to become idle and then poor. Once you have time on your hands, lack hope, and see your community and historical way of life crumbling around you, yeah, it's easy to look for those alternate solutions. "Wealth and efficiency" is a buzzword for the information economy on the coasts and NFL cities.
But it speaks to the desperation of these rural areas to think that these jobs will be returning and at the same level of prosperity they previously held. Taking the coal industry as an example, in the past you could not only earn a competitive wage but benefits especially pertaining to health plans and pensions given how hazardous such work is. Now even with Trump's deregulations is there any guarantee that these fossil fuel companies will be fair to workers? that's up for the company to decide and the company's main goal is not to serve this country or their community, but to maximize profit.
It's easy to blame government but there's also the simple fact that our economy is evolving. Low skilled workers are expendable and no matter who is elected president that will not change. If offshoring and immigration is stopped, automation will continue. Many of these folks in these regions will need to earn a degree or trade certification just to have a shot at making a decent living regardless.
Working in core industries can be tedious, dirty, or carry a threat of injury; but it often does provide a sense of dignity not found in hospitality, retailing, government bureaucracy, or the million-and-one demeaning daily events lumped under the term "customer service". That is a larger part of the problem than many here are willing to acknowledge.
"Yes, ma'am; I'm here to help with a problem, but I am not your personal servant, and truth be told, I really don't care whether you "have a nice day(!?)" or not."
Most Americans are willing to work hard but they expect to be compensated very well for their hard work and that's the issue. The job market rewards skilled workers not back breaking yet unskilled menial labor. That's why these companies hire illegal immigrants.
The liberals weren't the ones making up stories about illegal immigrants and refugees only coming here to rape and kill instead of just escaping whatever hell hole they left.
Perhaps not, instead they seek internal division among their own citizens. Often warning about what the evil white man will do to everybody if the liberals don't win power.
Think about it, if we all got along, what purpose would the left serve? It needs to keep people in poverty and suspicious of one another, or else it will no longer be relevant. Just look at the condition of the inner cities where the Democrats have ruled for decades. They don't want to help those people, or else they would have done something by now.
Perhaps not, instead they seek internal division among their own citizens. Often warning about what the evil white man will do to everybody if the liberals don't win power.
Think about it, if we all got along, what purpose would the left serve? It needs to keep people in poverty and suspicious of one another, or else it will no longer be relevant. Just look at the condition of the inner cities where the Democrats have ruled for decades. They don't want to help those people, or else they would have done something by now.
We have had several republican presidents as well as mayors in those cities as well as state and nationwide elected officials and conditions still haven't improved. So no that is woefully incorrect. What do gain or hope to prove by being blindly partisan?
There's one thing white people don't do, and that's see themselves as a cohesive group.
That is incorrect. White people very much see themselves as a cohesive group. In this way: as a white person, I can walk into any department store and know I have very little to worry about in terms of being suspected unfairly. This is because I benefit from the collective behavior of all other white people. I know we are cohesive like this. I don't want to let the collective down by giving the surveillance people reasons to start looking at me for my color. So, I act in obvious, predictable ways, especially knowing the store camera is watching me. I have even performed for the camera as an old white person, moving slowly, not too fast. Gone are the days where I'd pause to think for a moment in a store aisle with my normal resting face. I keep my dumb half-smile on my face at all times. Many employees nowadays are foreign-born and English is not their primary language. I had better make them feel comfortable. My speech to the employees is never challenging to hear. I speak with elocution in a way familiar to them. That is my contribution to my race when I am in a public store and I know that other white people know what I am talking about. Non-white people have no idea, I bet, that our public behavior is a conscious act. And why shouldn't it be, for anyone, ever? To them, we white people are just being "us". All whites benefit from good white behavior. It's a cohesive thing.
There was a black comedian on TV many years ago who joked that, upon entering a theatre, he found a white couple sitting in his seats. His joke was that, once he asked them to move, they quietly complied. He went on to contrast that, if the couple had been black, they never would have been as passive as those "white breads" to leave without some verbal resistance. He made wussy facial expressions when talking about the white couple's cooperation and got all "in-your-face" when describing the black couple's would-be reaction. With this joke, the audience laughed, and good fun was had by all.
What do you see there? I see the tools of social grace. It's up to each of us to decide which couple I am talking about in saying that.
When an officer of the law gives me a direct order, just like in the department store I am aware of things. Here, I am aware he has been given special authority in society. I also am aware he is the one with the gun. I know he has the gun. When a cop tells you to hit the ground, what do you do, even if you think he's making a mistake? Sorry to say, but you can ask any white person for the correct answer: You give immediate compliance, and dispute it later. Yet, there are people who make it a thing, speaking up out of a sense of outrage or to get sympathy, that they need to tell their children what to do. Well, duh. How do so many white people know not to fight the guy with the gun? Perhaps a study needs to determine how white people got their knowledge and why it does not spread to enough other people. To be sure, there are dumb white people who don't get it, and we can see them, shirtless on TV, laying on the ground, handcuffed, in an episode of COPS.
Don't blame white people that our cooperative social behavior is well-established. Imitate what works. Don't hate it. We whites could wreck it for ourselves if enough of us chose to, but I'll leave that to the youth of today who seem to prefer friction over a little common sense.
I am aware that blacks accuse other blacks of "acting white". I am aware that whites are noticed by blacks for our nicey-nice ways, any amount of which would not be respected by blacks if such ways came from blacks. Look at the way I described my conscious behavior in the store. Now that you know, am I not acting in preemptive ways similar to how blacks know they have to act?
Whites face profiling in ways not apparent to others. In the 1970s I had long hair and a was looked at with suspicion by store clerks and just about everybody else in my small cowboy town, just for that. In the 90's, with short hair, a clerk followed me around the store, pretending to adjust products on the shelf in whatever aisle I was in. What they saw but had misinterpreted was that I saw a friend in another part of the store and was trying to avoid him. This made my behavior atypical as they saw me keep looking elsewhere and not on the products in front of me that they were selling. As soon as I realized that, I snapped to it and made my behavior again be obvious and predictable.
Where I will agree with you about white people is that we do not complain as a cohesive group. When we do that, we are slapped down with the white power accusations. The ability to complain as a cohesive group is the privilege of women and minorities, not whites.
And while I'm talking, this thing about "white privilege" is a smoke screen. If I am white and receiving preference from others because I am white, and if you don't like it, you need to go to the person who is doing the discrimination and take it up with that person. If someone likes my name more than yours, that's between you and that person. I am only the (beneficial) recipient of the discrimination, not the discriminator. My claim here is that people who accuse "white privilege" are not willing to employ existing mechanisms, legal and social, to face their discriminators, the true bad people who are performing this discrimination. It is much easier for people to blame the recipient of wrongful discrimination, making up some vague idea like "white privilege" that keeps the conversation outside of the arena of law. It keeps the accuser from having to face the correct party. To face the correct party could mean having to invoke the arena of law and prove your case. But, they don't want that. The arena of law is conveniently avoided by the accuser because it would, firstly, require the accuser of white privilege to go to the source of it and not to any available assumed recipient of it (translation: any white person they damn well choose), and secondly, require the accuser to do their homework and have their pertinent facts together in making their accusations of discrimination. No doubt many accusations would fall apart under the inspection of the law. However, in place of the functional solution of the law, this misdirection known as "white privilege" makes playing the victim popular to a much larger group of laypeople while requiring very little from them by way of jurisprudence. It's no surprise to me that this idea has caught fire like it has.
Tell me that black people do not show preference to black people. Tell me that Mexicans do not show preference to other Mexicans. Tell me that orientals do not show preference to other orientals. Tell me that these things do not happen and I will call you a liar. Each of us cannot be treated fairly all the time. Don't come to me because others have treated you poorly. Go to them. Do not blame me for their actions just because I have the same color skin as them, you racist. I will not be BS'd by anyone with some shaming tactic of "white privilege" when the accusers themselves have unclean hands and, importantly, dishonestly fabricate this tactic to subvert the law, to go after the innocent recipients and not the guilty perpetrators, and arrogantly think they are righteous for it.
Show some intellectual honesty, accusers, and you will be seen for it. Perhaps only then, progress can be made.
Last edited by sylvianfisher; 02-08-2017 at 06:47 PM..
It's obvious Elliot Rodger, Dylan Roof and all of the others didn't just pop up out of nowhere.
Excuse me, but you DO realize, don't you, that Elliot Rodger was, most emphatically, NOT WHITE?
One of his big problems was his sense of physical inferiority to his big, blond, beautiful (and probably packin') father. Next to his "dad", Elliot truly WAS a hideous little nothing. Imagine having to suppress thoughts like, "My lips are too red. My lips are too puffy. I have the jawline of an exceptionally ugly GIRL! Compared to my "dad", I'm not even MALE!" Half his vocalizations are rationalizations of why it doesn't matter that he's not as big and square-jawed, and well-equipped (and smart), as his father.
On top of that, Elliot was brought up by two nonwhite immigrant women, and so his enculturation was nonstandard, too. All this was more than enough to make Elliot neurotic. And, on top of that, his brain seems not to have developed correctly. He's hardly a good example of ANYTHING. (I suppose you could use him as an example of the possible unintended consequences of interracial marriage).
go back 20,000 years....tribes use to eat other tribes and girls were traded as sex slaves...
human existence has been around 200,000 years?????
for over 100k years as homo sapiens....we've been cannibals...pedohiles, and murderers..
there's a reason we survived the larger neanderthals .... we killed them off we are a very agressive animal
not justifying anything,,,,but take a step back and i think its a wonder more deaths and shootings dont occurr??!!!!
try riding around boston on a busy work morning,,,,see the a-holes with cars.. if we were all armed we'd be shooting each other over driving skills
radicalization of white men??????????
some get recruited in jihads.....
some are somewhat nuts to begin with ...and listen to the damnation on the media every night....this scares them..
ok here's a theory.....
look at the animal kingdom,,,,,,the males can get very agressive...but the have an outlet,,,whether its fighting with other males or....trying to intimidate other males ....either way its an outlet..
today...men act the least bit aggressive society scorns them.......and with social norms,,,the feminists have pretty much made us into predators.....
so many males have a lot of pent up rage..... thats why many play sports in high school or college...its an aggression outlet...
but with society doing less physically.... the stress, tenseness, and some rage just gets bottled up....
many are walking timebombs
observe guys that watched the superbowl together and when the patriots won,,,then are hollaring and screaming
to let the rage out..
and maybe thats why road rage is so prevalent,,,, its pent up stress/rage..
not an easy answer..
who is more likely to ravage and loot??? whites/blacks/latinos/asians????
is this pent up frustration????
thats why you gotta be careful with words....when black lives matter comes out and pretty much says its open season on cops,,,,
you know there will be some nuts on the edge,,,,ready to shoot them..whether they are black or white
my psychology professor said over 30 years ago,,,,we are an animal species that live in a modern society but our brains function as if it was 25,000 years ago..
we've always been severely violent towards each other or groups..
I believe I mentioned the economy as a valid concern and it is a valid concern for people of all races. As far as the drug epidemic goes there is no piece of legislation that can curb a person's addiction to drugs. Especially considering that this new drug epidemic is fueled by legal drugs. This seems to be a social issue that can be best addressed by those personally affected by drug addiction.
It's funny how people blame immigrants for depressing wages but never blame the companies that hire them because they want to keep labor costs low. It says a lot about people's attitudes and is part of the reason why the 'r' word gets bandied around.
Actually, people blame those who hire them constantly. Virtually everyone who opposes illegal immigration wants to punish those who hire them.
And the reason the "r" word gets bandied about is that some people want to define "racism" in a way that always makes whites the bad guys. If non-whites complain about something that whites do to them, then whites are being racist. If whites complain about something that non-whites do to whites, then . . . whites are being racist.
But if you define "racist" in a neutral way so that it is limited to actions with a racial dimension that are actually wrong, then it's impossible for opposition to immigration to be racist. The immigrants and their supporters (if there is a racial dimension to immigration) are always the racists because they are always the aggressors. The natives (of whatever race) are always in a defensive posture protecting what belongs to them from people who want to move in and share what the natives built.
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