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Old 02-08-2017, 09:28 PM
 
8,012 posts, read 8,180,438 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hbdwihdh378y9 View Post
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.
If this is how you define racism then this country indeed has a long history of racism starting with it's very founding. The only difference now is there are non-whites migrating to this country which is causing an uproar.

 
Old 02-08-2017, 10:59 PM
 
Location: Ohio
1,884 posts, read 992,287 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mainebrokerman View Post
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..
Truth.

Except for the Neanderthals "dying out" (in comparison to Homo Sapien DNA). I think that was half inter-species violence, and half Sapien women rejecting the Y chromosome in neanderthals (actual stillbirth, not social rejection).

Social expectation plays a HUGE role in shaping how testosterone influences behavior. Regardless, the "aggression" will always be there. There needs to be an outlet. Be it violence, social dominance, or sex. Sex seems like the nicest and most natural outlet.

It makes you wonder, should we push for prostitution legalization?

In any case, people don't give enough credit to evolution in all of this. Perhaps nature has insofar selected this behavior as advantageous. Doesn't make it right.
 
Old 02-09-2017, 07:18 AM
 
Location: TN/NC
34,908 posts, read 31,015,053 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri View Post
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.
Many of these Appalachian coal communities did not even exist a hundred years ago, or were nothing more than dots on a map. Yes, many were boom towns, and were probably not sustainable over the long term due to cheaper natural gas, automation reducing the need for workers, the easiest to get coal being already mined by now, cheaper coal in the Mountain West, etc., but none of that minimizes the loss of a way of life in these regions. Yes, there is certainly plenty of blame to be passed around among corporations, governments, and individuals themselves.

While it's fine to "celebrate" the innovation, your comment comes across as extremely callous and insensitive to communities which have lost their way of life, do not share in the metropolitan prosperity, and are receiving little to no meaningful attention or aid from governments. And yes, there are literally thousands of former miners and workers with no experience in mining, who would mine if the opportunity was there and wages were right.

When people are told "it's over," especially from those not in their communities, this implicitly tells them that conventional modalities are no longer effective, and to start looking around for alternate, sometimes radical, solutions.

I don't think we've hit "peak white radicalization" yet - not even close. The culture of self-hating hating and blaming whites is still strong, and isn't even that old. My generation is largely doing the shaming, and I believe it will be the next that really lashes in populism and nationalism.
 
Old 02-09-2017, 07:53 AM
 
Location: TN/NC
34,908 posts, read 31,015,053 times
Reputation: 47269
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ro2113 View Post
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.

There is no easy fix to this.
I was reading last month's southwest Virginia business journal last night and the consensus from several long-form articles from energy executives is that while there may be a short term bounce in coal from favorable policies under the Trump administration, it is, in effect, a "dead cat bounce" that is not going to hold up, and I agree. However, it does provide well-paying jobs in the meantime until, ideally, the economy can be diversified away from such a dependence on coal, tobacco, whatever.

With that said, if you want to avoid radicalizing people, you have to actively try to bring in those left behind into the mainstream fold. If Trump is considered outside the political mainstream, and I agree he is, then southwest Virginia is ground zero for radicalization for its high levels of Trump support. For years, Richmond has ignored virtually any part of the state west of Roanoke. The votes and money aren't in communities like southwest Virginia, so the state and federal governments do not deem those areas worth the time to try to heal and bring into the mainstream. Trump at least paid lip service to these people ad issues. Whether he meant anything he said, who knows, but he is the first national candidate in my lifetime to bring up issues which are on a lot of minds.

There have been all sorts of concessions by local governments to try increase employment in this area. Around a decade ago, two defense contractors wanted to open offices in rural Russell County, Virginia. Local leadership, desperate for employment, offered the companies a property tax abatement for a decade and other incentives, but that wasn't enough. The company said they needed workers, so local leadership got together with local community colleges to provide various training programs, and the companies promised to hire the graduates, then didn't hire the graduates and brought in H-1B workers. Transplanting some urban Indian guy into the middle of nowhere in southwest Virginia isn't going over well, so it's been a swinging door of staff turnover. People would stay long enough to get their green cards, then leave. One of the companies, which I worked for, lost its state of Virginia IT support contract, and is likely to close the doors on this office when this ends. The other office is hanging on by a thread with greatly reduced headcount/turnover. the hiring pool has essentially been exhausted, and those jobs are likely to be moved back to urban areas of Virginia.

What did that community get from this attempt at "diversification?" Medium term jobs added, with the employees mainly living in the closest decent sized cities, and not living in the communities they work in.

I don't know what the solution is, but current ways of thinking have been completely ineffective at addressing the concerns of rural, small town, and often poor white communities, and unless things change, you are going to see more radicalization in the years ahead.
 
Old 02-09-2017, 08:16 AM
 
4,224 posts, read 2,992,216 times
Reputation: 3812
The boom-towns in the Rockies that gold and silver once gave rise to are in so many cases today called "ghost towns." The same needs to happen in Appalachia, etc. Coal and steel jobs are not coming back. Ever. Aside from planting pot, there is little else of any economic prospect to turn to. People need to leave. This is the message that markets have already long been sending.
 
Old 02-09-2017, 05:05 PM
 
20,955 posts, read 8,605,339 times
Reputation: 14048
Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious Conversation View Post

Yes, there is certainly plenty of blame to be passed around among corporations, governments, and individuals themselves.

While it's fine to "celebrate" the innovation, your comment comes across as extremely callous and insensitive to communities which have lost their way of life, do not share in the metropolitan prosperity, and are receiving little to no meaningful attention or aid from governments. And yes, there are literally thousands of former miners and workers with no experience in mining, who would mine if the opportunity was there and wages were right.

When people are told "it's over," especially from those not in their communities, this implicitly tells them that conventional modalities are no longer effective, and to start looking around for alternate, sometimes radical, solutions.

I don't think we've hit "peak white radicalization" yet - not even close. The culture of self-hating hating and blaming whites is still strong, and isn't even that old. My generation is largely doing the shaming, and I believe it will be the next that really lashes in populism and nationalism.
It sounds like you believe in some "big government" that sees all and should have went to these communities and told them decades ago "your way of life is over"?

Let me repeat. I lived there 45 years ago. It was over then except for a few jobs no young people wanted anyway. The population in many of these areas has been declining for decades and some of the counties and towns are down 60 to 80% in population....and many of them are older folks.

Where is my compassion? How about the War on Poverty - LBJ and all - which was somewhat directed toward Appalachia? How about the welfare, health care, clinics, food stamps, etc. which I have supported to help these people?

Most of the people I read doing the shaming are the young people who escaped from those areas and received an education. They can look back and realize that it was/is hopeless. The land is not worthy of growing crops and, as mentioned, the resources were all sucked away by Wall Street.

It sounds like your point centers around more who tells them.....then the reality on the ground.

In my perfect world the courts of this country would have annulled many of those mineral rights robberies and then the states could have built up funds to create more modern communities and industries. But this is capitalism. Even in other very developed places of this nation you can go and get back the job that was previously lost - at 1/2 the wages and no benefits. Is that my fault too?

The problem is Wall Street....two words which reflect that most of the wealth of this country has ended up elsewhere other than where it should have been.
 
Old 02-09-2017, 05:13 PM
 
20,955 posts, read 8,605,339 times
Reputation: 14048
Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious Conversation View Post
I don't know what the solution is, but current ways of thinking have been completely ineffective at addressing the concerns of rural, small town, and often poor white communities, and unless things change, you are going to see more radicalization in the years ahead.
Much of the history of these areas involved murder (feuds), moonshining, hiding from the IRS and other such things. It's a well known truism of history that the "Scotch-Irish" who settled into the MTS. were vary of government in ALL forms - and became even moreso when their lands were abused in various ways (coal barons, lumber barons, dam builders, Oak ridge and more).

I think, at this point, we are discussing a vanishing breed. I have family who came from there and most of them moved up to Ohio and W. PA a couple generations ago...and have no intention of moving back.

It's time to make most of it national or state forest and perhaps have a few population centers with some decent industries.
 
Old 02-10-2017, 01:37 PM
 
Location: Posting from my space yacht.
8,452 posts, read 4,723,297 times
Reputation: 15354
To the extent that anything alleged in the OP is even true, I will simply say this. If you are going to tell someone they are bad, they are often going to get defensive about it. When the person being disparaged belongs to a group whose self defense is defined as hatred, then the act of being defensive is seen as being hateful. When the person being defensive knows his self defense is going to be perceived as being hateful, he may often feel free to live up to the perception, because he's going to have to live with the label either way.
 
Old 03-17-2017, 10:20 PM
 
2,799 posts, read 2,249,004 times
Reputation: 3709
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrmondaynight View Post

If mass shootings were to be treated as a "mental illness" we'd still have to examine why such an illness disproportionately affects White Men.
Do we have any stats that demonstrate this dis-proportionality? I thought the data showed mass shootings were clearly more likely to be male, but it was a multi-ethic phenomenon.

"According to data compiled by Mother Jones magazine, which looked at mass shootings in the United States since 1982, white people -- almost exclusively white men -- committed some 64% of the shootings."

"If you look at the whole list, it turns out that whites and blacks are pretty proportionate to their population, very close," general male population."
Who commits mass shootings? - CNN.com

Not saying I disagree with this thread, white supremacists are a scary lot and fighting against them is a necessary social task. In most parts of the country, "white supremacist terrorism" is probably more of an issue than "Islamic terrorism."

But, I just though this point should be cleared up so we don't talk past each other.
 
Old 03-18-2017, 02:05 AM
 
Location: Silicon Valley
7,623 posts, read 4,537,696 times
Reputation: 12680
Default Radicalization vs Networking

I think this thread is off base in a premise of thinking radicalization is going up. If anything, I think tolerance has increased substantially in many ways amongst all races. However, this has only grown to alienate the caste losers even more.

Consider, in any group, someone is likely in last place. The guy that's not smart, not good looking, not talented, not organized....God's lottery wasn't kind. It takes a rare person to be able to own their faults, and the losers of society are no exception. I have a cousin that was a complete loser in the little town he grew up in. He works intermittently, I don't think he's ever had a serious girlfriend and by sheer never leaving looks set to inherit a small farm that will make just enough for him to live on. He knew every racist joke in the book, despite the fact that there were 0 minorities in the little town he grew up in.

Why? That guy needs to feel better than someone, and being unemployed and disconnected in a rural area, he creates a group that he's better than. For him, it's a straw race, and the internet provides plenty of examples of other races doing stupid things. It's his echo chamber. The reason why him doing something crazy would show him as an individual is because he's already been cutoff by society.

Yet beyond information, the internet brings contact with other similar losers, which in some ways is good because real people are growing less and less tolerant of holding real conversations with him as having a connection with a known racist is more and more of a social liability. Alienation sets in real life and is replaced with internet relations. The internet allows for networking with other similar losers.

It could be a race, or a political creed, a sexual preference, a religion, an economic group, a geographic difference. Protestent vs Catholic. Liberals and Conservatives. Gay and Straight. Rich and Poor. Urban vs Country, technological advanced vs old school purists...and people profit to feeding the echo chambers. Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher both feed opposite ends of the spectrum, clinging to their respectives side's need to feel superior to the other side.

The radialization is merely the next step. Now finding a group of losers, pulled together by hate, there's a new pecking order, and how terrible would it be to be the loser of the losers, or deemed not real by the others. Need to burnish credentials...go beyond talking and act. This is not new, but it is better publicized now.

The way to reverse it is via outreach. When you see the obvious losers of a group, make an effort to engage and respect if you can. When something stupid is said, just completely refuse to give it credence, but don't let it break the connection. Instead, try and get something else of interest going for them. In this band called life, everyone's got an instrument to play. Helping them find the good instrument makes sticking with washout losers much less enticing.

Tough act to follow, but that's the solution....unless of course you're just looking for a group to show you're better than. Turns out my cousin can carry a tune pretty well, and if he wanted to play with our band, he was going to have to be nice to all members not matter what. After a time, acceptance. If he wanted to go to the parties, he was going to have to be cool, but then he could play with other bands. After a longer time, appreciation.

Find the good in one another folks.
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