Liberal Forum

HarveyMushman » 05 Feb 2024, 8:22 am » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 8:22 am

 (PART V OF V) 

Anecdotally, I will say that, as a nurse anesthetist for more than 30 years, I worked with dozens of non-Jews who suffered from diseases such as Tay-Sachs and Canavan disease. I was privy to their medical histories because being so informed was a part of my job. Finally, I know that Nazis need to believe Jews to be a "race" onto themselves to somehow make their being genocided more "acceptable," but it isn't the case.

Jews insist they are a distinct ethnicity. Are you genuinely looking to smear jews as nazis?

That's kind of silly. I mean, with the possible exceptions of Leo Strauss, Irving Kristol and Bill Krystol, the idea of a jewish nazi is sort of silly. It's right up there with black klansman. 

HarveyMushman » 05 Feb 2024, 8:22 am » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 8:22 am

Per Cannonpointer's query, "Is this Jewish source lying about itself?" I have no idea the motivation, so I cannot speculate whether the source is knowingly lying. However, I will say that many Zionists, including many Christian Zionists, put forth the proposition that Jews are a "race" of people to justify the theft of land belonging to Palestinians. But I digress.

I thought it was to justify killing them - not to justify their killing. You're all over the board on this whole jews-are-not-an-ethnicity thing.

It looks like there are a whole lot of terrible motives for agreeing with jews that they are a distinct ethnicity.
 
 

Cannonpointer » 05 Feb 2024, 11:18 am » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 11:18 am

Do we "remove inequality" by stomping our feet? By gaslighting?

Inequality is a fact of life. The fastest runner is not equal to the slowest. One is at the top of the hierarchy and one is at the bottom.

 

Your question is partially correct, relative to the "we" saying it is fact. Anyone saying otherwise is an outcast of type cast people believing anything is possible when people believe real isn't self evident.

Cannonpointer » 05 Feb 2024, 11:35 am » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 11:35 am

Jews insist they are a distinct ethnicity. Are you genuinely looking to smear jews as nazis?

That's kind of silly. I mean, with the possible exceptions of Leo Strauss, Irving Kristol and Bill Krystol, the idea of a jewish nazi is sort of silly. It's right up there with black klansman. 

I thought it was to justify killing them - not to justify their killing. You're all over the board on this whole jews-are-not-an-ethnicity thing.

It looks like there are a whole lot of terrible motives for agreeing with jews that they are a distinct ethnicity.

There were Jewish Nazis. 

LowIQTrash » 05 Feb 2024, 6:24 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 6:24 pm

There were Jewish Nazis.

Yes, but I feel safe in ignoring that fact in debate with current company. If he wants to throw that out there, all the better. He keeps dismissing the National Socialist phenomenon, and when I follow up on those quite facile dismissals, I end up feeling like I'm chasing the guy for answers he will actually stand behind. 

It seems to me a fellow willing to preach marxism - the least favored of all the isms; the veritable black sheep of isms - should have a few answers about the other isms on tap. 
 

Cannonpointer » 05 Feb 2024, 6:31 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 6:31 pm

Yes, but I feel safe in ignoring that fact in debate with current company. If he wants to throw that out there, all the better. He keeps dismissing the National Socialist phenomenon, and when I follow up on those quite facile dismissals, I end up feeling like I'm chasing the guy for answers he will actually stand behind. 

It seems to me a fellow willing to preach marxism - the least favored of all the isms; the veritable black sheep of isms - should have a few answers about the other isms on tap.

Marxism is like a weird cross between religion and pseudo-science. Yes there are useful tenets like Marxism pertaining to economic theory, but the fact that all Marxist countries adopted nationalist (despite claiming otherwise) facets to "unite the people" lends more credence to the anti-Marxist ideology espoused by National Socialism. 

When Stalin rallied the SU to fend off Hitler's invasion he didn't appeal to Marxist ideology...he appealed to "defending the Soviet homeland."
 

LowIQTrash » 05 Feb 2024, 6:55 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 6:55 pm

Marxism is like a weird cross between religion and pseudo-science. Yes there are useful tenets like Marxism pertaining to economic theory, but the fact that all Marxist countries adopted nationalist (despite claiming otherwise) facets to "unite the people" lends more credence to the anti-Marxist ideology espoused by National Socialism. 

When Stalin rallied the SU to fend off Hitler's invasion he didn't appeal to Marxist ideology...he appealed to "defending the Soviet homeland."

This fellow has quite a few really flimsy bugaboos. First, he seems to despise nationalism. He insists that it is antithetical to socialism - though he vacillates on that point, when pressed.

Next, he gets very hinky when asked to explain why national socialism as an economic ism is a bad thing. He just goes to nationalism, and when ya put a little heat on him to defend that, he goes to dismissing national socialism's stellar economic record by saying that hitler cheated by essentially enslaving the german people. When ya put heat on THAT claim, he says he never made that claim - basically, wants to get into nitpicking what he said. Pinning him down on why National Socialism is not meritorious, given its record, is a never ending cavort. 

Then there's the racism thing. In his mind, racism is some byproduct of capitalism. But that is so incredibly discredited by history as to be just silly. The **** Inuit are racist, for **** sake - and they are hardly capitalist. Racism is older than capitalism by a long shot. The Israelites were doing genocide when their economy was nomadic.

And he's real hinky around explaining the difference between racism and anti-semitism. He said it was different because jews are not a race - which is problematic on two levels. Implicitly, his answer tosses the arabs out of the semite ethnicity. That's pretty ****. The arabs trace their lineage to abraham - a descendent of shem, from which the term semite derives. They are cousins of the jews through abraham. Possibly retarded step-cousins that the jews are trying to at once remove. 

Another issue is that jews consider THEMSELVES a race - or at least an ethnicity. The jews are throwing the arabs out of their homes - based on their ethnicity. I'm just guessing, but I suppose the corner he has painted himself into requires denial that arabs are an ethnicity, as well. Ya can't deracinate only one element of the semitic bloodline. 

I also have a problem with his quite unusual and - to me - inexplicable issue with hierarchies. He has this thing about how hierarchies are planted by capitalists to divide the working class. Like racism, it's a capitalist trick. The thing is, I'm pretty **** sure that the great apes have extremely durable and static hierarchies. Does he disbelieve in both God AND evolution? I'm also quite sure that racism predates capitalism. One could credibly argue that the practice predates Smith's coinage of the word - and I would refuse to take the counter-position. But what one cannot argue is that the Israelites wandering the the desert were capitalist when they genocided the this-ites and that-ites and the-other-ites. Possibly even the yose-mites. 

The more I question him, the confuseder he seems to me. And some of his claims are just downright religious in nature - like the invented doctrine that hierarchies are artificial.
 

Cannonpointer » 05 Feb 2024, 8:38 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 8:38 pm

This fellow has quite a few really flimsy bugaboos. First, he seems to despise nationalism. He insists that it is antithetical to socialism - though he vacillates on that point, when pressed.

Next, he gets very hinky when asked to explain why national socialism as an economic ism is a bad thing. He just goes to nationalism, and when ya put a little heat on him to defend that, he goes to dismissing national socialism's stellar economic record by saying that hitler cheated by essentially enslaving the german people. When ya put heat on THAT claim, he says he never made that claim - basically, wants to get into nitpicking what he said. Pinning him down on why National Socialism is not meritorious, given its record, is a never ending cavort. 

Then there's the racism thing. In his mind, racism is some byproduct of capitalism. But that is so incredibly discredited by history as to be just silly. The **** Inuit are racist, for **** sake - and they are hardly capitalist. Racism is older than capitalism by a long shot. The Israelites were doing genocide when their economy was nomadic.

...

Another issue is that jews consider THEMSELVES a race - or at least an ethnicity. The jews are throwing the arabs out of their homes - based on their ethnicity. I'm just guessing, but I suppose the corner he has painted himself into requires denial that arabs are an ethnicity, as well. Ya can't deracinate only one element of the semitic bloodline. 

The more I question him, the confuseder he seems to me. And some of his claims are just downright religious in nature - like the invented doctrine that hierarchies are artificial.

His responses were 90% similar to my responses back in 2013. I also believed back then that racism was a byproduct of capitalism, National Socialism wasn't "real" socialism (only radical leftists have the "right" idea of socialism), and that humans' imperfections (e.g. "Joggers" being prone to criminality, JeШs being rent-seeking, scheming parasites, human hierarchy as oppression) are merely due to sociological constructs as opposed to biological tendencies.

But as @FOS has said many times, he has had a MUCH easier time convincing Trotskyists and other far leftists that his world view is correct - because

1) Retarded liberals will shriek and call him a "racist" 

2) Retarded conservatives will label anything they don't like as "socialism." Obama (Wall Street's MAGIK Negro) = "socialism." 

3) Retarded LIBERTAR(D)IANS will say that National Socialism runs contrary to freeDUMB. Refusing to accept the "Free movements of people" across borders, not allowing JeШs to rent-seek with impunity, not allow LGBTQ+ agenda to run rampant across society, etc. = anti-freeDUMB. 

-------------------------------------------

[It is difficult for me to decide which of these groups is the most retarded. I would say libertarDians are probably the smartest because they are the most likely to employ some form of deduction/reasoning skills, but their deductions are almost always wrong. Conservatives, due to sheer luck perhaps, are arguably the least destructive right now even though as @FOS said they are pretty useless. Liberals tend to rely on pseudo-science and emotional argumentation so not much to say there.]

-------------------------------------------

4) Radical leftists will more often defend their position using logic (albeit flawed) and some degree of empiricism/science. The problem is that the data/science they work with is garbage. If you show why the data/science is wrong, they have a higher "conversion" rate.  

 
 

Cannonpointer » 05 Feb 2024, 8:38 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 8:38 pm

This fellow has quite a few really flimsy bugaboos. First, he seems to despise nationalism. He insists that it is antithetical to socialism - though he vacillates on that point, when pressed.

Next, he gets very hinky when asked to explain why national socialism as an economic ism is a bad thing. He just goes to nationalism, and when ya put a little heat on him to defend that, he goes to dismissing national socialism's stellar economic record by saying that hitler cheated by essentially enslaving the german people. When ya put heat on THAT claim, he says he never made that claim - basically, wants to get into nitpicking what he said. Pinning him down on why National Socialism is not meritorious, given its record, is a never ending cavort. 

Then there's the racism thing. In his mind, racism is some byproduct of capitalism. But that is so incredibly discredited by history as to be just silly. The **** Inuit are racist, for **** sake - and they are hardly capitalist. Racism is older than capitalism by a long shot. The Israelites were doing genocide when their economy was nomadic.

And he's real hinky around explaining the difference between racism and anti-semitism. He said it was different because jews are not a race - which is problematic on two levels. Implicitly, his answer tosses the arabs out of the semite ethnicity. That's pretty ****. The arabs trace their lineage to abraham - a descendent of shem, from which the term semite derives. They are cousins of the jews through abraham. Possibly retarded step-cousins that the jews are trying to at once remove. 

Another issue is that jews consider THEMSELVES a race - or at least an ethnicity. The jews are throwing the arabs out of their homes - based on their ethnicity. I'm just guessing, but I suppose the corner he has painted himself into requires denial that arabs are an ethnicity, as well. Ya can't deracinate only one element of the semitic bloodline. 

I also have a problem with his quite unusual and - to me - inexplicable issue with hierarchies. He has this thing about how hierarchies are planted by capitalists to divide the working class. Like racism, it's a capitalist trick. The thing is, I'm pretty **** sure that the great apes have extremely durable and static hierarchies. Does he disbelieve in both God AND evolution? I'm also quite sure that racism predates capitalism. One could credibly argue that the practice predates Smith's coinage of the word - and I would refuse to take the counter-position. But what one cannot argue is that the Israelites wandering the the desert were capitalist when they genocided the this-ites and that-ites and the-other-ites. Possibly even the yose-mites. 

The more I question him, the confuseder he seems to me. And some of his claims are just downright religious in nature - like the invented doctrine that hierarchies are artificial.

Holy ****.  Thats a basketful brother.  Hard for some of us to grasp.
Is this like the disputes between Stalin and Trotsky.
Veins of socialism?
 

Sumela » 05 Feb 2024, 10:11 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 10:11 pm

Holy ****.  Thats a basketful brother.  Hard for some of us to grasp.
Is this like the disputes between Stalin and Trotsky.
Veins of socialism?

It is rumored that Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Hitler were all at one point in Vienna, Austria at the same time. Whether or not they all got to converse is another story  (almost certainly no but it would make for interesting theatrics)

LowIQTrash » 05 Feb 2024, 10:15 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 10:15 pm

It is rumored that Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Hitler were all at one point in Vienna, Austria at the same time. Whether or not they all got to converse is another story  (almost certainly no but it would make for interesting theatrics)

Dayyum.  To be a fly on the wall.    
 

Cannonpointer » 01 Feb 2024, 8:40 pm » wrote: ↑

01 Feb 2024, 8:40 pm

 

(PART I OF IV)

Cannonpointer: "'Humankind makes its living through cooperation.' 'A man alone is lost,' or whatever contrary claptrap the libertarians wish to spew. But humankind is FORMED through competition. Neither is bad, and both are bad. Neither is good, and both are good; it all depends on the circumstances. 

What is NOT dependent on circumstances is the ubiquity and the necessity of hierarchy. You are lost if you cannot distinguish what is more needful than the other. Everything is rank-ordered; everything is hierarchical. The decision of which sentence is first in a paragraph relies on and reflects hierarchy. You are employing hierarchy when you write against hierarchies." 

When I rail against hierarchal structures, I discuss them in the context of a permanent, one-sided, top-down, my way or the highway system of human interaction. They're systems of dominance borne of patriarchy that say, in effect, "I'm up here, you're down there, that's the way it's always going to be. So, shut up about it." 

I'm not talking about non-permanent, rotational systems of management that foster respect for the managed due to their rotational design. An example of such a system of administration is industrial unionism, as depicted in the following chart offered by the Socialist Labor Party: http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf One could define industrial unionism as a hierarchical system: "a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority." Nonetheless, it's a nonoppressive hierarchy predicated on managers being workers who would be temporarily elevated to management positions democratically - through their fellow workers voted into those positions. People like Cannonpointer can and do poo-poo these systems of authority, but some socialist societies have used them in various forms for generations and to significant effect. Additionally, the capitalist system's one-sided, top-down, "we don't care what you think" hierarchical structure demoralizes workers while causing them to feel powerless on the job and in their lives more broadly. It necessitates "Happy Hour," often leading to poor work performance. 

 Cannonpointer: "What is NOT dependent on circumstances is the ubiquity and the necessity of hierarchy. You are lost if you cannot distinguish what is more needful than the other. Everything is rank-ordered; everything is hierarchical. The decision of which sentence is first in a paragraph relies on and reflects hierarchy. You are employing hierarchy when you write against hierarchies." 

As a 65-year-old former pro-capitalist who once bought into that thinking, I'm familiar with it. 

In a post dated 02 May 2014, Cannonpointer wrote: "The cost of shaking hands with UL prevents free enterprisers from operating in that market -the same thing is happening in almost every market. The little guy is locked out by the engineered and manipulated expense of sitting at the table. Only Wall Streeters, using OTHER PEOPLE'S capital, can afford to play the game. We must return to a free enterprise economy, where the little guy doesn't face unsurmountable obstacles to starting a small business." (Continued in PART II)  

 http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf  

(END OF PART I)
 
 

Cannonpointer » 01 Feb 2024, 8:40 pm » wrote: ↑

01 Feb 2024, 8:40 pm

 

 (PART II OF. IV)

Yes, just as the little guy/worker is, in many cases, locked out of quality medical coverage and higher education, many would-be petty capitalists are faced with corporation-protecting regulations that thwart the "little guy" from playing the game. For example, when seeking approval from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), toy manufacturers must submit hundreds of copies of each product they wish to sell for safety testing. Of course, many, if not all, petty capitalist toy manufacturers cannot afford to give the CPSC hundreds of copies of their toys for any purpose. So, as Cannonpointer stated, "The little guy is locked out by the engineered and manipulated expense of sitting at the table." 

Whether or not the Disney Corporation, Hasbro, Mattel, and other toy manufacturers petitioned the CPSC to adopt the rigid safety standards that require a high number of toys to be given to the commission, the result is the same: the little guy/petty capitalist is locked out of the toy market. The large market share of giants like Disney, Hasbro, and Mattel is protected, and prices remain artificially high. But irrespective of whether or not the game has been rigged in proverbial smoke-filled rooms to favor large manufacturers, it's just capitalism. IOW, given their immense wealth and significant market share before the CPSC's establishment in 1972, those corporations would presently dominate the toy market anyway. The CPSC's seemingly unfair safety-testing mandates may serve mega-corporations like Disney, but they didn't "make" those corporations, and their elimination wouldn't "break" them. The same is true for virtually all other industries because it's capitalism itself that has destroyed "free enterprise," not "[t]he cost of shaking hands with [Underwriters Laboratories]." --Cannonpointer. 

So, just as insurance capitalists are never going to allow for a no-out-of-pocket-expense healthcare system, and the monetized higher education system isn't going to permit a cost-free system, toy industry leaders and other capitalists aren't ever going to allow for the return of "free enterprise." As Cannonpointer pointed out, the capitalist system is "statist and parasitic." As such, its influence and power over workers is unbreakable by means other than a socialist revolution. 

I wrote: "I didn't discuss 'Skans.' I only mentioned his use of the ["taking 'free' stuff from the government screws workers"] meme to manifest a point." 

Cannonpointer's response: "I saw no reason to defend or attack Skans' pedestrian meme. It flies under the head of any intelligent audience. CLEARLY, you already understood it was ****. Should I waste space preaching to the choir?" 

Okay. But referring to the meme as "****" is an attack. And Cannonpointer's "CLEARLY, you ["Harvey"] already understood it was ****" indicates that Cannonpointer agrees with my assessment of the meme, to wit: "That type of thing [Skan's meme] has been forever put forward by the apologists for capitalism and, sadly, their working-class supporters. It's a con job intended to prevent workers from understanding that they produce all economic wealth through their labor power alongside nature. Ergo, it's calculated to make workers feel guilty about accepting 'free stuff' when they and they alone produce that 'free stuff, what little there is." (Continued in PART III) 

 http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf  

(END OF PART II)
 

Cannonpointer » 01 Feb 2024, 8:40 pm » wrote: ↑

01 Feb 2024, 8:40 pm

 

 (PART III OF IV) 

"Accepting 'free' healthcare or 'free' higher education doesn't constitute being enslaved by the government any more than getting 'free' police and fire protection embodies being enslaved by the government. Again, it's a bait-and-switch designed to ensure that the vast majority of free stuff keeps flowing to the non-productive capitalist class." --Yours truly 

Maybe Cannonpointer agreed but didn't wish to say so. I also find it interesting that, although virtually all of this forum's right-wingers, its conservatives, neocons, and Nazis, agree that "taking 'free' stuff from the government screws workers," none of them have offered a counternarrative to my assessment. Maybe my position that "accepting 'free' healthcare or 'free' higher education doesn't constitute being enslaved by the government any more than getting 'free' police and fire protection embodies being enslaved by the government" is accurate. 

Cannonpointer: "Ah, so racism is about economic motivations. Interesting.Now, does that mean that the black fellow was racist for stealing my **** or that I'm racist for distrusting black fellas after that?" 

Whether a black person who steals from a white person is given to interpersonal racism or not, most black people who steal things do so because of the socioeconomic conditions dealt to them by institutionalized or structural racism. So, in nearly all such cases, interpersonal racism is incidental, while structural or systemic racism is the primary motivation. Although Nazis have a vested interest in perpetuating the false notion that "all black people steal," it's a baseless lie rooted in simplistic "thought" and a lack of discernment. Again, I have the impression that Cannonpointer resides in the mostly depressed southeastern US or has otherwise seen the worst of black people. But to extrapolate those experiences to where one assumes that all black people are dishonest is racist and childish. I have a very well-to-do black neighbor who steals large amounts of money every hour of every day. It's just that he steals it from his wage slaves through a system of bourgeois legality known as private profit. But hardly anyone sees this as a problem because most people don't understand the Marxist analysis of wage labor. After all, they're not supposed to understand it. But it's enormously problematic for individual workers and society at large. It leads to many of the vagaries that foster theft between workers and, in turn, perpetuates interpersonal racism. It's a vicious cycle that begins with the economic exploitation of workers. 

Cannonpointer: "How might the Olympics work in a non-hierarchical socialist society? Will the workers vote on how to fix the bridge, or will they be exceptionally attentive to the engineer on the project (assuming that a society that eschews hierarchies is even CAPABLE of producing engineers)?" 

Olympic Games hosted by a socialist society within a predominantly capitalist world are no different than any other Olympic Games, i.e., the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. The Olympic Games would be a simple matter of one-on-one and team competition in a world where capitalism and borders have been eliminated. With the needless - indeed the divisive spectacle of nationalism removed, athletes would be free of the politically-induced restraints that have forever hampered the Olympic Games. They would finally be about athletic excellence and nothing more. (Continued in PART IV) 

http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf 

(END OF PART III)
 

Cannonpointer » 01 Feb 2024, 8:40 pm » wrote: ↑

01 Feb 2024, 8:40 pm

 

(PART IV OF IV) 

Concerning "how to fix a bridge," I imagine it would be a combined effort by the transportation and construction industries as roughly indicated by the SLP's Socialist Industrial Unionism chart: http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf  And, given that elected, rotated, recallable, and thus fully accountable managers would decide which bridges need repair, there'd be no need for the cumbersome process of each worker voting on which bridges need repair. Anecdotally, I once sat in on a meeting in Mayari, Cuba, where elected municipal officials and several local citizens discussed and voted on where the blacktop would be used after a few truckloads of blacktop were dumped. Not only did that experience demonstrate to me the highly democratic nature of Cuban society, but it also showed that even "workers voting on how to fix the bridge" can work on small-scale applications. 

And yes, socialist societies are more than capable of producing engineers. After all, its prodigious production of top-notch engineers was one of the reasons that the USSR transformed itself from a backward and typically uneducated society under the Czars to an industrial powerhouse that beat the US concerning the space race in less than fifty years. 

(END OF PART IV)
 

Now you are posting like JoeB from .org.

LowIQTrash » 05 Feb 2024, 10:10 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 10:10 pm

-------------------------------------------

4) Radical leftists will more often defend their position using logic (albeit flawed) and some degree of empiricism/science. The problem is that the data/science they work with is garbage. If you show why the data/science is wrong, they have a higher "conversion" rate.

I red pilled one of those in the rw recently. I was taking some classes, and I was disappointed to find the entire faculty woke. I took one of them and beat him half to death with logic - turned him all the way around. I started with a tough one - the gender insanity. He accessed some pseudo-science, jabbering about hormones and the unseeable/unknowable. I asked him whether he was aware that he was flying in the face of Aristotle. He looked quite shocked - lost a shade from the blood leaving his face. That was a hell of a thing to hear from a student. 

I told him, just think about it. A is A and can never be B. You're telling me it can be - and you're saying this at the expense of women. It is the height of misogyny to force women to accept men in their showers and sports, on nothing but the word of those men that they are not creepers and peepers and fruitcakes. I could see that this affected him - the man had daughters.

I told him to think it over, and I issued this challenge. I told him the next time we spoke (class was scheduled for two day later), I would shoot down any pillar of woke ideology that he cared to present. I said it isn't just gender nonsense that the woke were wrong about. They were wrong about everything.

The next time I saw him, he felt confident that he could defend the canard that men make more than women. That's a pretty easy one, I'm sure you know. I walked him thru education and nursing, gaining his admission that there was no pay gap in THOSE disciplines. I said how about waiting tables or being a hotel maid - ya think men get extra genital pay in those fields? No - not in those fields. I pointed out the dearth of broads on deep sea oil drilling platforms and in the north sea fishing fleet - and their over-representation as baby sitters and receptionists. I asked whether he thought they SHOULD receive the same money for those jobs as a dozer operator or a carpenter. He acknowledged they ought not. So I asked, just where ARE women making less money. He fished a minute and said, "Wall Street CEOs."

I told him that those salaries are negotiated, and assuming that women got less purely because of their sexual equipment was a univariant analysis that was not suited to get to any meaningful conclusion. I asked him whether it might be that women were not as good at negotiating - that they tended to take the first offer. He appeared to have an aha moment. I THEN pointed out that if it were in fact true that there was a boys club on wall street that had gotten together at their secret no girls allowed fort and taken a blood oath to pay women less, it would not be worth society righting the wrong. Who cares if a wall street CEO can only afford one jet and three mansions? How many people out of 300 million does this "problem" affect? That seemed to sink the hook.

I was pretty proud of myself for planting a stink grenade on that campus. My work there was done...

Sumela » 05 Feb 2024, 10:11 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Feb 2024, 10:11 pm

Holy ****.  Thats a basketful brother.  Hard for some of us to grasp.
Is this like the disputes between Stalin and Trotsky.
Veins of socialism?

I was thinking Tweedledee and Tweedledum...   

HarveyMushman » 06 Feb 2024, 8:02 am » wrote: ↑

06 Feb 2024, 8:02 am

Whether a black person who steals from a white person is given to interpersonal racism or not, most black people who steal things do so because of the socioeconomic conditions dealt to them by institutionalized or structural racism.

What if that was horse ****?

What if the diaspora killed off 95% of those leaving africa, and only the few capable of planning ahead for the harsh european winters survived? What if evolution - efficient and never wasteful - simply did not require of subsaharans those extra 20 IQ points that survival in europe required? What if it left subsaharans more athletic, more impulsive, and less intelligent than their european counterparts?

Just stop for ONE MINUTE . As an intellectual, IF EVOLUTION HAD DONE THAT, would you want to know?

It's a yes/no question, and it is not rhetorical. If evolution had done that, would you want to know?

HarveyMushman » 06 Feb 2024, 8:02 am » wrote: ↑

06 Feb 2024, 8:02 am

Although Nazis have a vested interest in perpetuating the false notion that "all black people steal,"

Who told you that?

You seem to have a lot of arcana about nazis that the rest of us do not.

If you believed - you, personally, genuinely believed - that random blacks were only 25% more likely to injure you than random whites, would that knowledge cause you to avoid association? Or would you have to be a full-blown nazi (VON HOONDRED PERCENT OF DAS SCHWARTZEN STEALEN UND SCHITTEN!) in order to protect yourself?

HarveyMushman » 06 Feb 2024, 8:02 am » wrote: ↑

06 Feb 2024, 8:02 am

But to extrapolate those experiences to where one assumes that all black people are dishonest is racist and childish.

I say it is childish to reduce the argument to the point that I'm a mississippi cracker unless I pretend to be color blind and see racial issues through your eyes. I have lived in San Francisco (6 years) and Los Angeles (2 years) and Las Vegas (9 years). I cannot imagine surviving San Francisco without ulcers if I were some big race hater. I was married to a Hindu woman. I speak conversational Spanish - learnt it at 40, because I saw the demographic shift occurring and saw no reason not to stay ahead of the curve. Naturally, learning Spanish required a great deal of association with people from a very different cultural background than I.

So, no. I am not a mississippi cracker.

I DO use the term "boy" a good bit - but in the context of "Whassup, my boy? you chillin'?"

HarveyMushman » 06 Feb 2024, 8:02 am » wrote: ↑

06 Feb 2024, 8:02 am

I have a very well-to-do black neighbor who steals large amounts of money every hour of every day. It's just that he steals it from his wage slaves through a system of bourgeois legality known as private profit. But hardly anyone sees this as a problem because most people don't understand the Marxist analysis of wage labor. After all, they're not supposed to understand it. But it's enormously problematic for individual workers and society at large. It leads to many of the vagaries that foster theft between workers and, in turn, perpetuates interpersonal racism. It's a vicious cycle that begins with the economic exploitation of workers.

I feel no compulsion to defend capitalism in order to question the ism with which you believe it ought to be replaced. I am full-on in support of outlawing capitalism - which would be as easy as the government ceasing to support and enforce it. 

Your pretense that racism is a product of the very capitalism that it predates has been blown to smithereens. But you continue blithely on as if on read-only. You have not come to terms with having been refuted on that point - and you really ought to. It's an important issue. 

I think you have serious hang-ups about race, racism, etc. I'm sensing white guilt. Hell, I'm smelling it. 

 
 

HarveyMushman » 06 Feb 2024, 8:03 am » wrote: ↑

06 Feb 2024, 8:03 am

Concerning "how to fix a bridge," I imagine it would be a combined effort by the transportation and construction industries as roughly indicated by the SLP's Socialist Industrial Unionism chart: http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf  And, given that elected, rotated, recallable, and thus fully accountable managers would decide which bridges need repair, there'd be no need for the cumbersome process of each worker voting on which bridges need repair. 

Sounds like representative democracy. We've tried that - and we're reduced to fighting over who goes into which bathroom stall. Also, you switched the argument from how to fix a bridge to which bridge to fix. Without hierarchies, the how-to becomes more an issue than the which.

Engineers should have no more say than brick layers - should they? You want to keep those patriarchal hierarchies around to work their mischief?

HarveyMushman » 06 Feb 2024, 8:03 am » wrote: ↑

06 Feb 2024, 8:03 am

Anecdotally, I once sat in on a meeting in Mayari, Cuba, where elected municipal officials and several local citizens discussed and voted on where the blacktop would be used after a few truckloads of blacktop were dumped. Not only did that experience demonstrate to me the highly democratic nature of Cuban society, but it also showed that even "workers voting on how to fix the bridge" can work on small-scale applications. 

And yes, socialist societies are more than capable of producing engineers.

Oh, be clear: I do not doubt you there. I just do not believe they have your silly view of hierarchies. I believe they are - like nature itself - one big hierarchy build on smaller hierarchies that are composed of still smaller hierarchies all the way down, all the way down - right down to the family, where questioning mom or dad gets the response, "Because I say so." And that is hierarchy.

I think your views of race, racism, nationalism, and hierarchies has you off-axis. I think until you get that problem sorted, the ism you offer is pie in the sky.

Cannonpointer » 06 Feb 2024, 10:27 am » wrote: ↑

06 Feb 2024, 10:27 am

I red pilled one of those in the rw recently. I was taking some classes, and I was disappointed to find the entire faculty woke. I took one of them and beat him half to death with logic - turned him all the way around. I started with a tough one - the gender insanity. He accessed some pseudo-science, jabbering about hormones and the unseeable/unknowable. I asked him whether he was aware that he was flying in the face of Aristotle. He looked quite shocked - lost a shade from the blood leaving his face. That was a hell of a thing to hear from a student. 

I told him, just think about it. A is A and can never be B. You're telling me it can be - and you're saying this at the expense of women. It is the height of misogyny to force women to accept men in their showers and sports, on nothing but the word of those men that they are not creepers and peepers and fruitcakes. I could see that this affected him - the man had daughters.

I told him to think it over, and I issued this challenge. I told him the next time we spoke (class was scheduled for two day later), I would shoot down any pillar of woke ideology that he cared to present. I said it isn't just gender nonsense that the woke were wrong about. They were wrong about everything.

The next time I saw him, he felt confident that he could defend the canard that men make more than women. That's a pretty easy one, I'm sure you know. I walked him thru education and nursing, gaining his admission that there was no pay gap in THOSE disciplines. I said how about waiting tables or being a hotel maid - ya think men get extra genital pay in those fields? No - not in those fields. I pointed out the dearth of broads on deep sea oil drilling platforms and in the north sea fishing fleet - and their over-representation as baby sitters and receptionists. I asked whether he thought they SHOULD receive the same money for those jobs as a dozer operator or a carpenter. He acknowledged they ought not. So I asked, just where ARE women making less money. He fished a minute and said, "Wall Street CEOs."

I told him that those salaries are negotiated, and assuming that women got less purely because of their sexual equipment was a univariant analysis that was not suited to get to any meaningful conclusion. I asked him whether it might be that women were not as good at negotiating - that they tended to take the first offer. He appeared to have an aha moment. I THEN pointed out that if it were in fact true that there was a boys club on wall street that had gotten together at their secret no girls allowed fort and taken a blood oath to pay women less, it would not be worth society righting the wrong. Who cares if a wall street CEO can only afford one jet and three mansions? How many people out of 300 million does this "problem" affect? That seemed to sink the hook.

I was pretty proud of myself for planting a stink grenade on that campus. My work there was done...

The fact you are enrolled in CC classes is something to behold. The only reason I'm enrolled is to get "student" discounts.