Over on “But HE said it first!”, Crawford mentioned:
Colleges are teaching students that “whiteness must be eliminated”. Granted, they don’t strictly mean white people, but the way they define “whiteness” maps to traditional American values.
I decided that I would see what my Left (and other) friends would say about this. I posted up something on my FB wall, basically asking people why I ought to be embarrassed or upset about being white. I mean, I’m lily white. I have Magyar blood on one side and British on the other. The only thing whiter than me is a Scottish redhead.
Yet I feel no shame over this. I know the media is speaking about how whiteness is some sort of disease we need to get rid of. I don’t see any of my friends saying it, but because of who I am In The Real World [tm], I sort of self select. But I know that a lot of those people read the media that’s presenting this message. So I asked, at noon on Feb 2nd.
And here it is, some 6 days later, and I had a mere handful of responses. Most were of the type to say, “That’s crazy, no one should be saying that.” They all expressed concern over what I was reporting. Because they’re my friends, they all went and checked out the links I sent, and then went off to process what they’d read.
And then there was that one. I’m sure you know the type. Presents as cute, fluffy, innocent… right up until something challenges their world view.
That one wrote a lengthy reply to me, basically saying that if someone had ever accused me of racism, that was obviously my own fault. They couldn’t possibly consider introducing me to people of color after my statements. Apparently, by this person’s commentary, I am responsible for how those OTHER people chose to label me, even though those others don’t know me (and this one person actually does, in person). I was online when it was posted, and went to read it. By the time I tried to reply (about 30 seconds later), the comment had been removed.
I wondered if it was FaceBook, because goodness knows, FB does that sometimes. But nope. Not only was the comment deleted, the person in question felt that my statement required them to unfriend me.
Don’t get me wrong, the person is welcome to unfriend me. After reading what they wrote, I was considering doing the same thing to them. I just found it interesting that they would write something that was victim blaming, and then delete it. I would think they saw the error of their ways, were it not for the unfriending.
So there you have it. I challenged my Left friends as I challenge my Right friends, and got mostly crickets. Those few replies I did get were the type to say, “That’s horrible; I’m not saying that.” I pointed out to them (as I did to people on here) that if they’re standing on the left side of the great divide with those people, then they are literally WITH those people. If they don’t want to be supporting those people, they need to step farther away from them.
Your last few sentences I like to sum up by saying: the Democrat party is evil and those that support them are bad people.
Interesting. Thank you, very much, for both conducting the experiment and sharing the results.
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I’ll have to ponder some of your findings. For instance, most of the people who replied to you, apparently hadn’t heard this before. So there are a few possibilities: they haven’t, and this is news to them too; they have, but just not in that bald of a phrase; or three, they’re lying. (I don’t mean to disparage you, Hagar, or your friends without meeting them, but it is a possibility.)
>> I’ll have to ponder some of your findings. For instance, most of the people
>> who replied to you, apparently hadn’t heard this before. So there are a few
>> possibilities: they haven’t, and this is news to them too; they have, but just
>> not in that bald of a phrase; or three, they’re lying. (I don’t mean to disparage
>> you, Hagar, or your friends without meeting them, but it is a possibility.)
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Oh, no problems. I thought the same thing myself. I happen to know that at least the bulk of them aren’t lying (ie they’re face to face friends I interact with on a regular basis as opposed to “just FB” friends)… but not all of them. Among those, this was definitely news. Nicely enough, they all seem to have gone to do some investigation of their own, which made me feel much better. 😉
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We’ll see what happens going forward. This week has been a different experiment, one which maybe I’ll post about another time. LOL
FWIW, I tried to think if I’ve heard the phrase… and I have, but it was from such an unreputable source, I dismissed it as trash, and didn’t bother to even follow up to see if others were carrying the story. I tend to spend my time practicing hedonism, so that kind of junk just doesn’t fit in my schedule. Raising that sentiment or phrase in public is akin to the retard shouting ‘niger’ on the playground to get attention.
so I offer IJB a fourth option? maybe Hagar’s friends did the same as me and dismissed it and forgot it? IDK, it didn’t strike me as important at the time, and had to actively think of when and where I had heard it to report back. And that’s what I recall of it… basically trash and dismissed just as quickly.
It is indeed interesting to read your posts. This whole “racism “ shtick has been perpetuated by the America hating liberals. Media pushes the agenda with a straight face. The results of your experiment could point out the media is losing more and more people. Some who tune out media might not seek alternative news and could be unaware of this latest propaganda… Your 1 friend’s reply shows the intolerance of radical left liberals..
>> This whole “racism “ shtick has been perpetuated by the America hating liberals.
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I admit to a knee jerk pull back from this one. However, I think it’s at least partially true. Certainly, a lot of the people who are perpetuating this seem to dislike the country (as it is, anyhow). I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that there is “liberals” and then “those OTHER liberals”, and “conservatives” and then “those OTHER conservatives”… and that those four groups are very wide apart from one another.
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>> Media pushes the agenda with a straight face.
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Again, totally agree with this. The media (or possibly people or someone behind the media) is pushing this stuff in a big way. And it’s more than just selling papers at this point. I’ve always tried to ask the question, who profits from any particular thing? Following the money will almost always take you to the source. But right now, I can’t figure out who is gaining from this destruction of polite society.
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I do think that the media is beginning to show its true colors. The question is, who’s behind the curtain? That’s the question I want answered. I don’t think it’s anyone (or any group) that’s classically considered conservative OR liberal.
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>> Your 1 friend’s reply shows the intolerance of radical left liberals.
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Yes it does. I was surprised. It’s someone I know “in the real world” and have interacted with just fine on many occasions. I will be rethinking that, of course.
Hagar, some additional background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_okay_to_be_white
Simply put — signs and flyers reading “It’s OK to be white” received backlash. Regardless of the statement’s origin, it’s innocuous, and had the reaction been “yeah, sure, no question” it would have no power.
But that wasn’t the reaction…
Interesting. I agree that innocuous statements can certainly be taken over by any group or individual. I also know that the media can be suggestive that a take over has happened when none has (as was the case with a group near me, where one person caused a massive backlash).
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I can see that the “okay to be white” thing would have a different feel in different places. In my neighborhood, it would probably be ignored. We’re all white. It’s a white area. In downtown Harlem, there might be a different reaction, and it might feel like an attack.
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How a message is perceived is, of course, owned by the person perceiving. However, the rest of us DO need to be somewhat aware of how messages may be received. For instance, calling myself a grammar nazi in my particular part of the world just makes people chuckle. Said in Germany, it might be an offence to be arrested over. There are times when it’s important to pick the right word choice to get a message across, where one word will be much better than another.
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But it feels an awful lot like a lot of people are working themselves into a full lather, lately. It’s like they really WANT to be upset. It’s an action as opposed to a reaction, if that makes sense?
It makes perfect sense. Some people do seem addicted to being enraged and upset … and like any addiction, they trend towards needing more to get the same effect. So they find justifications to take offense over ever-more-trivial things.
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If not the same phenomenon as “fear porn,” it sure seems closely related.
First let me say, that I am that Redheaded Scot, and I do glow in the dark. Ok, I am consistently in liberal circles, both in Florida, Ma. VT, NH, NY, PA, OH, and OR annually. I read news feeds from these states daily as well as national and global news sources, four hours a day or whenever I’m not working. And the only time I have to interact with Critical Race Theory and or, White Guilt and any effort whatsoever to eliminate whiteness, is when I am in predominately leftist areas. Locally, If I leave central Florida and visit business associates in Tampa, Orlando, or Miami, I essentially leave a far-right conservative realm and enter a far-left liberal realm and it is immediately evident upon engaging with the general public in both realms, polar opposite experiences occur i.e., personal congeniality radiates in former and is extinguished in the latter.
What is curious is this: why any American race individual would embrace what is blatantly insane; to categorical believe all non-Black or non-Hispanic, or people who “look” white, are in fact condemnable people, and should suffer for being born white….and why some people from every race, reject any type or form of such thinking.
Is it due to the level of intelligence? Is it due to the level of morality? Is it due to the influence of the state? I would suggest that it is a mix of all three influences at varying levels depending on each individual, resulting in agreement or disagreement.
One fact is for sure in my experiences, the more a person is in agreement with the state, the more racist they are against other races. To be prejudice means, to prejudge before coming to know the truth; assuming the worst before experiencing it, and not allow correction of the assumption. No matter the results, once they are emotionally invested in the belief, they “won’t” abandon it. History be damned.
Racism is collectivism. Statism is collectivism.
Racism is only a tool the state uses to achieve collectivism, I would not consider Racism as the totality of Collectivism.
No, it’s not. They’re just aspects of the same impulse. Same as tribalism and classism.
When you used the term ‘racism’ you were referring to the actions of the state to bring citizens into ‘one property’ of the state, thus eliminating race entirely, resulting in no personal identities. I misunderstood you then. I used the term from the personal perspective of an identity, as in Black American, European White American, etc. In this case the leftist state which exists within the USA uses race to divide and destroy unity of the One American People Indivisible.
I actually think that this … quest to be offended, this need to be outraged… comes not necessarily from liberal areas, but from large cities (which do TEND to be liberal, but not all are). I don’t know if you’re aware of a rat experiment done a few decades ago, where the scientist made a rat heaven… lots of space, lots to do, work for them to enjoy, etc. It was utopia. And then he let it slip, just a little…. and utopia turned into hell. When the number of rats reached a certain percentage of space (a percentage that nearly all these huge cities surpass, I might add), they would go absolutely nuts.
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I think THAT is what’s happening. Too many people being forced to live on top of and next to one another, stewing in their own stink. It’s just not right. Humans (and other animals) are not meant to live in such ways.
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Places where people are a lot more spread out (even liberal places!) tend to be a heck of a lot more laid back. I know a lot of far leftish liberals who live in the middle of nowhere and carry guns, for instance. No stress over it, they support the 2nd happily. That’s because they aren’t trying to figure out a direction to carry their firearm safely. In the cities, there is NO direction you can safely do that in. It’s stressful.
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I once suggested to Awa, in a conversation, that we ought to wall off the cities. Let them be their own city-states and make their own rules, while the rest of the country just goes on doing what it does best. The rules necessary in the rat warrens are vastly different, because otherwise they start to cannibalize themselves. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I did hear of the rat experiment some years ago. And I do agree with you that the more space a person has, the more peaceful they tend to be–having room to maneuver is always very reassuring when faced with a degree of adversity. One can create angles for offense and defense or simply…..run.
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And I like your suggestion of using walls of separation, however, let the determining factor be, conservatives vs. liberals, one on each side of the wall, say along the Mississippi.
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Fact I’ve come to experience as true: a liberal only ‘feels liberated’ after they have forced a conservative to be…less conservative. And once they have caused this concession, they’re never satisfied, they always want more compromises while rejecting anything remotely like this process for themselves.
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Liberals truly believe their ideology is utopian, whether in a city or in the countryside. And conservatives know positively that utopia is a lie based in deception, and thus, they don’t strive for it. Ask any professing liberal if they believe in individuality as the primary linchpin of their ideology. If they say they are for it, they are confused as to the true definition of a liberal.
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To be liberated, you must be absorbed into a community and become one in spirit. Then and only then are you truly liberated. And I do agree with one of the commentors here when he says to the effect, stop calling them liberals for they liberate…nothing. He’s right, they are the true slave traders spinning lies to the emotionally led people, who do their own thing and believe they are “The Original Wrapper”–Lou Reed, but they’re not even close.
Hagar:
As always, thanks for providing a perspective that I unfortunately do not get as often as I should. There are always two side to every discussion, and we (humans) tend to stick to the side we agree with. Have a few points/questions about your concluding paragraph.
“So there you have it. I challenged my Left friends as I challenge my Right friends, and got mostly crickets. Those few replies I did get were the type to say, “That’s horrible; I’m not saying that.” I pointed out to them (as I did to people on here) that if they’re standing on the left side of the great divide with those people, then they are literally WITH those people. If they don’t want to be supporting those people, they need to step farther away from them.”
1. When you challenge your friends on the right, do you get better or worse responses? Looking for a disparity, are the folks on the right more open? More childish/confrontational? More willing to challenge/accept the narrative? Curious if there are any trends you are seeing.
2. If everyone is saying “That’s horrible, I’m not saying that.” who do you think is? These types of things (whiteness is a problem, etc…) are all over the place. People are getting a lot of air time for saying these things. It is part of company training materials. So, who IS saying it? If pretty much everyone says “I would never say that!” it would never be out there.
3. “…they are literally WITH those people. If they don’t want to be supporting those people, they need to step farther away from them.” That is a bit harsh. If I distanced myself from every single person who holds an idea I disagree with, I would not have any interactions with other humans at all. I disagree a LOT with what some of the folks on the right say or do, but I still stand to the right side of the political aisle.
However, I do agree with the intent of the statement, if not the actual words. Examples abound. When someone like a Maxine Waters says inflammatory things, and the rest of the Democrat Congressional Caucus is silent, there is not other option but to assume they are OK with it. (Curiously, if a Republican said something that was even remotely off-color, demands for every single republican to denounce what was said, and the person saying it, abound from the left.)
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No need to answer, just food for thought.
I think the reason so many were surprised and hadn’t seen that message is because a great deal of the media is focused on not letting those messages spread too fast. We know because we pay attention.
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The reason the left hates LibsOfTikTok is she threatens the silence they’ve established around their crazies. All she does is highlight things that have already been published — so if anyone is “encouraging violence” it’s the crazies who posted the stuff in the first place. Silencing her wouldn’t stop that material from being posted, it would just limit its circulation to their own circle.
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They also use labels — “transphobe”, “homophobe”, “white supremacist” — to signal to people that they shouldn’t pay attention to the messenger.
>> 1. When you challenge your friends on the right, do you get better
>> or worse responses? Looking for a disparity, are the folks on the right
>> more open? More childish/confrontational? More willing to
>> challenge/accept the narrative?
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So… it’s slightly different. Folks on the left are often more willing to talk about feelings and thoughts, and less willing to discuss, say, The Constitution. The left is touchy feely, while the right is concrete (generally speaking, of course). So I can (usually) talk about my feelings, even ones at odd with them, with my left friends. They will listen, offer good advice, etc. I can do the same with concrete things with my friends on the right. When I switch that up, things… don’t always go well.
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Folks on the right are more willing to look at hard, scientific facts, in my opinion. Folks on the left are swayed more by opinions. As an example, if I pick a contentious subject and talk facts at the left, they shut down entirely and stop responding. The right will get up, talk, get in my face, high five me, whatever. If I pick an opposite subject and talk emotions and feelings, unsubstantiated opinions, the left will blossom and listen, and the right tends to shut down. Again, just in my experience here, which is of course limited by my own biases.
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The right, again imo, is more willing to listen to logic. For most things. For a handful of subjects, they’ve become a “hill to die on” and no amount of logic seems to get through. The left doesn’t want to listen to logic, but if someone’s soul hurts, or someone’s been abused, they’re there for you.
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One isn’t bad and the other good. They both have good and bad parts to the responses. Each has strengths.
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>> 2. If everyone is saying “That’s horrible, I’m not saying that.” who do
>> you think is? These types of things (whiteness is a problem, etc…)
>> are all over the place. People are getting a lot of air time for saying
For this particular subject (whiteness) and a handful of others, I don’t think it’s “the left” as a group. I think it’s a handful of loud, obnoxious people who are whinging on about their current bug up their butts. Or possibly, it’s someone/some group that’s attempting to destabilize the US at a community level. Frankly, I’m beginning to feel like that latter option is the actual one. 🙁
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>> That is a bit harsh. If I distanced myself from every single person who holds
>> an idea I disagree with, I would not have any interactions with other
>> humans at all. I disagree a LOT with what some of the folks on the right say
>> or do, but I still stand to the right side of the political aisle.
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It IS harsh. I tend to judge people by my own standards. There’s a reason I no longer consider myself to be liberal. My stance on the Second and the First are both *wayyyyy* too staunch to be considered left. LOL… I don’t stand with them because they are ideologically opposite to me. Even though I still agree with many of the things the liberals stand for.
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It’s not so much that you have to not stand on the right side of the aisle, so much as you ought not stand too close to the guy saying women should only be kept as sex toys and incubators and have no other purpose. You might agree with him about some things, but the nutty stuff deserves a shuffle to the north, if not the left. If that makes sense?
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>> When someone like a Maxine Waters says inflammatory things, and the
>> rest of the Democrat Congressional Caucus is silent, there is not other
>> option but to assume they are OK with it.
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Exactly. If I were standing next to someone who was protesting a military funeral, because “war is bad” and “solves nothing”… and I stay there, and hold their hand… y’all are going to assume I’m with stupid. And rightfully so. That’s why I moved away. I might agree with that person on, say, abortion stuff… but I sure as hell don’t agree with them on this.
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A lot of this is really difficult to put into words. I struggle to find the ways to discuss things that will allow people who think differently than me to actually understand what I MEAN. I worry often that I’ll make things worse by using the wrong words. I work through it, but it’s a constant concern of mine.
“The left is touchy feely, while the right is concrete” what you’re saying is the right is rational, and the left is irrational…
I see it more of:
The left lives (or wants to live) in the world the way it should be.
The right lives in the world the way it is
Hagar:
Once again, good insight.
I have found a similar thing, re: left tends to be emotion driven, right tends toward logic. Left tends to be swayed by opinion, right by data. The left is OK with judicial activism, the Right tends to be Constitutionalists. Etc… It is also a reason why the people I know who tend to the left are more likely to have problems with friends/family that voted Trump than the other way around. Have seen more leftists block friends and family than the other way around.
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Your response regarding “group” as a whole is important, and I think better illustrates what I failed to communicate well. People tend to “group” others because it makes their lives easier to do so. But, that does not make it correct.
Then again… those that are logic driven will recognize that, whereas those that are emotionally driven will not.
“The left doesn’t want to listen to logic, but if someone’s soul hurts, or someone’s been abused, they’re there for you.”
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Unless you’ve been declared an un-person. Then they’ll just pile on.
By the way, anyone else see a resemblance between the picture of the two hands, and a certain painting done by a dead white guy on the ceiling of an edifice owned by a certain patriarchal heirarchy? (Yes, the hand on the right is flipped and further away, but still.)
I think they blocked you, when you are blocked you can no longer see their posts or comments even in your content. I believe this also applies to unfrineding with specific privacy settings. It has happened to me. Some people do it as a tactic to look like they get the last word in with a mic drop because their statement stands and everyone else sees it but you can’t see it or respond to it.
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I think it depends on who you ask. I think many people on the so called right would not have heard of similar things. I think it is people into the culture war or politics that will have seen the detailed version beyond the I recall faintly hearing some thing like that but I didn’t care enough to verify if it was greater than mere rumor.
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I am going to use this term in an as nice and undenigrsting way as possible; there ks no malice to it here, it is simply a very apt description. There are many many people who are avowed lefties or righties that are no more politically and culturally awake than most NPCs but will side 110% of the time with their party no matter what because if it comes from their party it fits their world view and is good so they support it.
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Just think of all the people you know who are into guns and love guns and shooting, but still call every magazine they see a clip and couldn’t tell you anything technical about their firearm/ammo/WTC if their life depended on it. Its the same for anything else. People can be involved in something at a surface level and never dig deeper, sometimes because they don’t want to of care to and sometimes because they believe they’ve already scrapped the bottom.