Dave since you seem to be the one democrat on the board who wars with the conservative mind set I picked on you a bit by pulling a few quotes from previous discussions. You have mentioned more than once the amazement at GOP voters who for some reason do not understand their place in society according to your view. Now just for the record I do not consider myself rich, I was the middle child of three children whose father was a policeman in the City of Miami. My parents in my eyes were middle class and did not have the money to send us kids to college because they were hit by taxes of selling a house and did not realize the taxes involved. The truth is mom and dad were not very good money mangers. All three kids managed to make it to higher education but it took some longer to make that goal than others. I for the record consider myself middle class. I make between $80 - $125,000 per year depending on the yield of the crops and the current market. I am supplied a vehicle every three years as well with insurance and fuel paid to use as I like. My wife does not work and has not worked since our son was born almost 20 years ago. OK so I have shown that I consider myself middle class, neither rich nor poor but happy where I am at, except for the shitty hours I work compared to most folks. I have mentioned time and again my disdain for government but I seem to always vote conservative. How can this be according to most liberals and evidently some American communist (More of this later on). The simple answer is I can identify with conservatives more than what has been thrown out by the democrats. I manage a business where we spend money in the pursuit of making more than we spend. Unless you can show me otherwise the data indicates the democrats are for bigger government and think expanding government is the answer to the ills of society. This would require more government spending and expansion so in return require higher taxes on those in private business. These higher taxes would diminish our returns from our hard work and investment so the end result is we would make less revenue to share with me and my employees. In my reading I came across a website of American communist who were bitching about the 2010 election results and the phrase "class consciousness" was brought up. It seems they think as you do about voters who seem to not understand their place in the scheme of society. For example: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cacheNRU49uogXYJ:www.politicalaffairs.net/the-2010-election-culture-war-and-class-consciousness/+lack+of+class-consciousness&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com And: Now correct me if I am wrong but this reads that either the GOP voters are living a dream and think that they are rich and identify themselves with the rich "or" because they are not realizing their place in society we (The democrats and Communist) cannot use the cultural placement to our advantage and cause division and anger to get their votes...That's how I read the Tea leaves... How do you see it?
Interesting stuff Ralph. And it does bring to mind another factor that may rile some folks but it's something that just cannot be overlooked in this discussion. I believe there are some factions of white people who still harbor racists views......self acknowledged or not and this group of people would vote against any party that they deem to be advocates and supporters of African Americans. I am certain that the degree of this feeling varies greatly but when all is said and done if all else is equal then race would sway their vote. I think it probably falls also more into a rural white religiously conservative population than it does into urban educated whites. What matters to these folks less is that they are middle class and not especially catered to by the GOP as a result.
Racism does exist. It is alive and well. However, you will find it more in the opposite direction. Affirmative action and past issues (pushing feelings of entitlement) have fueled this shift. What you do see in the white community is a resentment which comes from a person that had no hand in slavery having to "pay the price" to people that were never enslaved... except by their Democrat led government. 8)
While you search for the reasons of support for conservative ideals, you speak of racism, religious zealots, economic elite and red neck ignorance, you miss completely the single most important element.....the basis upon which the country was founded and one of our core values as a society..... People just want to be left to live their lives as they see fit in an environment where the singular role of government is to protect and preserve the basic freedoms upon which this country was born .....to be free from government intruding upon their daily lives and without oppressive and often arbitrary and politically motivated regulation and taxation. To be free to choose their own path toward life, liberty and happiness..... The lib/dem ideals are quite different wherein they see big, active government choreographing society based upon their own values and ideals as if they were somehow provided tablets from God almighty himself providing us poor ignorant citizens the path towards civil salvation..... I'm sorry but I just don't believe that a few wise men/women in Washington can possibly make better decisions for the well-being of me and my family than I can myself and the collective judgements of society as a whole........the farther we get from our founding ideals as a nation/society, the worse it seems things have become. The core values of the lib/dem/progressives is far removed and in some cases in radical opposition to the rugged individualism, personal accountability and freedoms to choose that formed the core basis of the Founding Fathers wisdom.......
The devisive politics that has been the cornerstone of Team Obama is really beginning to bear fruit now. Obama is just the figurehead. Take away his teleprompter and he stumbles and stammers. They found the right guy, a person with a sketchy past, a guy who rarely if ever refers to his own youth or previous life. The power brokers behind him are trying to structure a new order in this country and he is the mouthpiece. We have a paralyzing divide among political factions promoted by the WH. The wealthy and corporations have been targeted for demonization. People with religious convictions are mocked. Racial crimes are on the rise. Police powers are continually restricted. We enter into military conflicts without discussion or congressional approval in some cases. We even have the ATF providing guns to Mexican drug traffickers. We have spent ourselves into a cataclysmic state. Now we are seeing anarchy around the world starting to foment right here. The best way to break down a society and re-tool it in a hurry is to turn everyone against one another and this administration is good at it.
Well don't tell me how racism was brought into this topic but I'm game. No argument from me that racism is still alive in every country and every race color and creed is guilty of this. Tom brings up a great point though with the the results of affirmative action. The same policeman father I mentioned up above retired after 30 years. The last 15 years my Dad took the lieutenant's exam to bump up from sergeant in the hope of higher pay. He would study for weeks leading up to the test and never finished lower than fifth in the class with several years being the highest score. My father never made lieutenant in 15 years even though he had the highest score at times. Affirmative action demanded that the police force promote six blacks and four woman before using the test results for the most deserving sergeant. But only ten lieutenant positions were available every year. :!: Dave do you think my father was just a little bitter from his experience. What affirmative action did was create non ending racism. Dave you are wrong on many accounts. One is if you want to find the most radical bigots of racism out there they are not going found in the rural areas, they are located in the large concrete urban areas. In rural areas we cannot avoid each other we have to interact no matter the color of our skin, we are too small and spread out not to have contact with each other. In urban areas you can be anonymous to the person you ride by every day. You look at each other but you can never speak if you don't feel the need. Dave are you surprised to see the London riots where most rioters are black and burning down there own neighborhoods, I wasn't. I have seen this too many times in Miami and L.A., does this make me a racist or a realist...?
Good posts.....thoughtful ideas. I guess the bottom line is that racism does in fact exist and it does shape views and opinions.
bias and bigotry of every type - racial, religious, social, ethnic, geographic, etc exist in virtually every corner of society and do in fact shape views and opinions and to be sure, on both sides of the political aisle.....
:idea: These are great posts and one of the better political discussions that I've ever seen here. If you're a Democrat, you must begin to see what has become of your party. It has returned to it's roots: "Jackson's asses."
This is incredibly good, thanks BuckeyeT People just want to be left to live their lives as they see fit in an environment where the singular role of government is to protect and preserve the basic freedoms upon which this country was born .....to be free from government intruding upon their daily lives and without oppressive and often arbitrary and politically motivated regulation and taxation. To be free to choose their own path toward life, liberty and happiness.....
No thanks to me Ralph....thank the Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers. Those are their core values and ideas that inspired the masses and fundamentally reshaped governance worldwide.....I just happen to believe very strongly that they got it right....
If you are one of the people who think "taxing the rich" is the panacea for all that ails us, then read this story in today's LA Times...... New national debt data: It's growing about $3 million a minute, even during his vacation http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/08/obama-national-debt.html
I got as far as this and I hit reply, so if this has been covered, I apologize. That being said.. as one who was raised for a good bit of his youth in a predominantly black neighborhood and still to this day has close ties to the black community (even here in Alabama), I can say with all certainty that for as much as I bust the balls of the white southerners.. there is no group of people (collectively) as racist and bigoted as the african-american community. You can scoff or stomp your feet all you want at that notion. I am far from extrapolating the micro to the macro here. Not all of them, mind you.. I'm not using that idiotic of a broad brush stroke.. HOWEVER, I would put those numbers at a statistically significant percentage (conservatively at 30-35%) who absolutely hate Asians, Hispanics, Gays, Jews... just regular old white people are actually way down the list.. and why wouldn't we be? We give them stuff and will continue to do so for some time. Some may not like white people, but they don't hate us.. Interesting enough, earlier today I watched about a 15 minute video. It was of a white transexual (male to female) who was beaten repeatedly, drug around a McDonalds and stomped until that person was left twitching with seizures.. The perpetrators of this profane and disgusting attack on humanity were 3 black women.. The incident was video taped by the all-black staff at the McDonald's. The staff made almost zero attempt to stop this beating. In fact, the only person to put themselves in harms way to stop this attack was a little old white woman who was 70 if she's a day. You can actually hear the staff members encouraging the attackers to get out of there before the police arrive. True, someone there called the cops (I am assuming a manager) but there's the staff encouraging them to flee justice... Now flips those roles.. if that was white on black, you'd be marching up and down the streets and posting in forums and waving fingers reminding us all that we're just a racist honky nation that does nothing but drain the resources of this country while exploiting the black man... The reality is that racism, bigotry and intolerance are not exclusive to whites. It's a human problem, not a Caucasian problem. When you refuse to admit this, or start off an argument by singling out just one race, then you are doing humanity as a whole a disservice. Ok, continue on... I just had to call ********.
The first hint I had at the attitudes of the White House were when Obama commented on the arrest of a professor in Cambridge, Mass. Recall his first impression "the police acted foolishly." Nah, it couldn't have possibly been the over the top rabid black professor. Then there was the prosecution of the Black Panthers in Philly who were caught on film obviously trying to intimidate voters back in 2008. The White House and their justice department refused to prosecute because Voter Intimidation laws weren't written to protect white. Then there was the health care bill. I imagined the folks in the Oval office laughing their asses off as they put in a new tax against tanning parlors. Racism in this country. Please, spare me.
<object><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xlk0cq1R5wg?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xlk0cq1R5wg?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>
Speaking of racism in many colors boys and girls today's example is this: http://news.yahoo.com/second-largest-u-indian-tribe-expels-slave-descendants-011650136.html