Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Looks like Biden is about to flip PA, and that is before all the major vote dumping from Phila and Pittsburg. Even without AZ/GA/NV, that's 273.

As I stated before, people are too focus on voting for a President. Like the Latino districts where Trump kicked ass, did they only voted for down-ticket GOP due to Trump or they are now GOP Converts? For FL it is easy why the Cubans went hard for Trump, Trump listened to them and gave them their wishes. Still there are questions that remains to be answered. People are like whores when dealing with political alliances: They sleep around when it is convenient and have "abortions" from their old party when the results goes wrong/hate for them. With time things changes, Dems could be 180 and be Anti-Cuba hardcore for what we know.

Also, does this mean the Dems love the EC now?

 

Re: systemic racism. Any study you look at despite it's origin shows that black men are (on average) 2.5X as likely as white men to be murdered by cops. Now take a look at how many cops are charged with murder and how many of those were against whites and how many against blacks. The numbers are pretty basic - no education is required past 1st grade level to do the math.

The idiocy of liberals is "defund the police". They leave it at that statement and expect that everything will be hunky-dory. What they're not making clear is that in order to get rid of the bad apples, they have to shut down departments (so they can get around union protections) and then start them back up and hire back those who don't have records of violence, abuse, etc.

 

Shit Marv, I could have told you that with how many metal straws I saw trading hands over recent years, not to mention the hyper-aggressive marketing that promotes eco-friendly, organic produce. Of course you're charged a premium for the latter given the relative inefficiency with which food crops are grown sans the use of (synthetic— scary!) pesticides

On a more serious note, the way I see it is that mass interest in any single "movement", even characterised as they might be by good intentions, will always leave a door open for those with surpluses of business acumen and are wanting in moral compunction. I've said this before but my time in marketing turned me into something of a cynic when it comes to anything like what you've listed above, and more than the12 hour rotations and shitty pay I resent being robbed of that hope.

Being peer-and-industry pressured into upgrading tech that should theoretically last for longer is the pits, yes, but at least it doesn't attempt to claim any sort of moral high ground.

I don't think the green movement is bad in and of itself by far, merely that genuine efforts to achieve the ideals set by the same are a steeper cost than many are willing to pay. I'm not willing to sacrifice use of my air conditioner at any point of the year because besides keeping me from broiling in the summer it keeps the humidity in check at all other points of the year! Also hey modern refrigerants have far fewer drawbacks from an environmental perspective, never mind that the global warming potential of none of them is at 0. Far as I can tell that's physically impossible so RIP.

https://www.bijlibachao.com/air-con...d-for-air-conditioners-and-refrigerators.html

But hey some of them don't damage the ozone layer so let's focus on repeating that ad nauseam in marketing material!

I will make an argument for the boomers (use of this term is ribbing, I know a lot of you are actual boomers but I still love y'all even if your biases are in direct contradiction to mine) saying that WFH can make people unproductive. Someone I know had a minor meltdown because her family was yelling at her in the middle of a business meeting over something silly— could be a "here" thing because I presume this wouldn't be as much of a problem if you lived away from your families, but some family systems are genuinely toxic.

Whether or not that's too far deviated from "normal" is not something I'm equipped to comment on, but many cases do exist.

And this is why I enjoy talking about shit like this because within my circles, the whole ACAB thing is genuinely sticking and the sentiment seems to be growing steadily, contrary to expectations that this would be a flash in the pan— without regard for the actual proportion of the overall population it constitutes, loud voices have a tendency of carrying. People also are wired to fixate on perceived threats and so the fact that law enforcement does a good job most of the time carries no real weight in assuaging fears.

Does that mean that the mass media really is leveraging the animalistic aspects of being human to further their own ends? Not necessarily, proof is lacking.

Where'd you get the 1.32% figure?

Nothing much to say with regard to your second point other than the fact that your country is emphatically not a community grows more evident by the day, it seems.

 

Just so we're not talking past each other here, what's your definition of "institutional racism"?

 

Um, manipulating our desire (i.e. our non-rational feelings and nature - our appitites usually involving our stomachs and sex organs) so that we buy more stuff is the whole and only reason mass media exists. Its first and last goal is to sell you something, either physical or ideal. It does not exist to inform, "make the world a better place", increase public virtue, or any other such thing. This is the sky is blue stuff.

That number is just audiophile guesswork. "Systimatic racism" is an hegelian-marxist anthropological abstraction, and people/organizations/societies don't work that way, and the Civil Rights movement was not built upon such fictions. Most Americans believe in an anthropology of tolerance and liberality, and are unwilling to claim people are racist by nature. The Dem's flirtation with it is one of their biggest mistakes. They went for short term manipulation, and it cost them and will in the future I would think.

 

So what exactly is systemic racism abstracting? In what ways are we glossing over skin color as a proxy for much deeper seated "truths" about general behaviors of large groups of the population? Or am I misunderstanding? I'm honestly curious to hear your opinion.

 

So while this thread is entertaining and somewhat calm and reasonable place to vent frustrations, I have a different idea. A social experiment if you will. How about we come up with solutions that we can all not necessarily love but at least accept as reasonable?

We can do one problem at a time. We can reason through data, do our best to figure out what it really means, consider the social and economic impacts and see if we can find a way out of the quagmire.

Otherwise we're all just a bunch of assholes sitting around bitching and moaning.

 

Racism is certainly real. I vividly recall the casual racism (and the casual sexism) of many in my youth (small town Oklahoma). Whole cultures, body's of law, and civilization can be racialist and this is part of our history and most of the worlds. However, As used today by the intellectual leaders of BLM mean something very specific when the speak of a "system" of "racism" - a certain conception of a "system", a certain conception of "racism", both couched in Hegelian historical materialism. Allow me to skip to the end of that which they speak by quoting Ibram X. Kendi, a recognized leader of this philosophy:

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.

The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.

The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

This conception of what discrimination is, how it works, peoples place in it (e.g. do they "will" it or otherwise control it in some fashion, or is it willed upon them by forces beyond their control) is Hegelian. In other words, people are just cogs in the machine of larger historical forces and are manipulated by them. Self will, change (for better or worse) are besides the point - at best unimportant "private" matters. No matters what the color of your skin, your recognition of the personhood of the other (skin color included or not), and your moral disposition toward them - does not matter. What matters is external systemic power.

We are now very far away from the Civil Rights movement, couched as it was in a moral appeal to our individual consciousness and classical liberal worldview/values -"...not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Kendi does not care about my character or even his own - we are but unit's in a powever struggle. Hegelianism is materialism written over the human soul. Even if you are a classical liberal who does not believe in the soul, you probably believe in persons as moral agents and something more than mere units to be manipulated in a grand historical mechanism.

BLM and Kendi don't have a chance (though they could do real damage, and have already) because this sort of anti-moral and anti-will philosophy has failed everywhere it has been seriously tried. Like I said most folks here in America believe in other basic things about humanity, and they might at first be partially impressed with foolish "woke" commissars like Kendi (and the media will as always manipulate the situation so they can stir desires and sell them things), but it won't last long..

 

Mmm... "All white people are racists."

The premise, as I see it is... by being the inborn beneficiary of a lopsided system with built in prejudices, you are also racist... without building the system yourself or really choosing any of it. Simply by surviving in it and therefor contributing to it, you are perpetuating it, regardless of intent. Therefor, you are racist, no matter what you do. Unless you are willing to uproot everything, you're as much the enemy as the system that actually governs things is. Just because you exist within that hierarchy.

I generally won't have this conversation with people. There is nothing for anyone to gain out of it. I've seen so many people fall into the trap of trying to contest it. You will be gaslit. I may never truly know what it is like to be a black man, but I am reasonably certain that I did not choose to be born in this position any more than anybody else. It's the worst kind of stalemate.

It just strikes me as going after the wrong things. I've never understood what it is that I am meant to relinquish that is going to equalize the system. There are so many things about the world that directly affect my life and at times cause me total existential grief to the point of borderline absolute, world-weary bitterness. Soul-crushing "this will never be better - I will live and die in this and I can't accept it." type of stuff. And the torture of it all is that I see no way to change it. Many times I find myself unable to even make my own life better, and at best can only make my peace and try to focus on something more actionable.

It's like getting mad at a part of the engine in the car that someone drove into a crowd, you know? People are dead, the driver is running away, and you're here politicking with a radiator cap about how its whole existence is murder.

The insult isn't in the accusation of racism. That kind of shit just bounces off of me. It's the insinuation that somehow by the color of my skin I am any more in control of things in my life than anyone else. Our positioning in life will differ, but we all have the same general needs and fears. I feel like that gets lost in these guilt-driven sorts of arguments. Factor out the human element and there is no practical solution.

We are all stuck on this ride and that means the individual is immutable. It cannot be factored out in a meaningful way. And really, the majority of white people are still towards the bottom of the totem pole. I don't think climbing over one another will work. We'd all just fall lower.

 

Just one example of how brilliant Bernie Sanders is. When people here talk about “all presidents/politicians lying etc have a look at how intelligent and insightful and accurate this clip is of Bernie exactly predicting what unfolded in the election.

 

One of the few things he is right, maybe the only thing he is right IMO.