BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out

Subject: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: GUEST,Your Conscience
Date: 21 Jan 06 - 11:45 PM

Revenge of the Mutt People
Bred for meanness

"There are some things so disgusting that only a white man would be willing to do them."
-- Walter Wildshoe, Coeur d'Alene Indian


Many years ago I worked at an industrial hog farm owned by the Coeur d'Alene Indian tribe in northern Idaho. The place stank of the dead and rotting brood sows we chopped out of farrowing crates -- bred to death in the drive for pork production. And it stank of the massive ponds that held millions of gallons of hog feces and rotting baby pigs, and every square inch was poisoned by the pesticides used to kill insects that hogs attract and the antibiotics fed to hogs from hundred pound sacks. The Coeur d'Alene Indians refused to suffer those kinds of conditions; they wouldn't even manage the place. They contracted it out. As my friend Walter Wildshoe said: "Only a white man would work there."

The hog farm, however, offered one company benefit. The white manager gave employees any young pigs that developed large tumors -- those with tumors smaller than golf calls went to market with the rest of the hogs -- or were born with deformities such as heads scrunched sideways with both eyes on the same side, or a leg that stuck out of the top of their body instead of the bottom. We employees would butcher and eat them. Among hog farm employees, all of whom were tough descendants of the Scots Irish mutt people, free pork of any kind was prized, deformed with tumors or otherwise. You never saw a Swede eat the stuff.

[Edited for length- one screen of text should be the limit. That text is available many places.]

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 12:26 AM

Yes, I see the people you speak of every day in this small town in Canada. They are just as you say. They read the Toronto Sun, a colossally ignorant and zenophobic newspaper that is 98$ ads and girlie pictures, and 2% content. They basically believe in violence to solve political problems, specially violence upon anyone who seems to be "foreign" in any way. They smoke, drink, and eat junk food. Their ignorance is palpable. When the USA bombs anyone, they are delighted. It serves as a catharsis for the eternal level of dumb, inarticulate rage that simmers just below the surface of their unrealized lives. They know they got robbed, but they're not sure by whom. The "good life" has eluded them. They need someone to hate...so why not hate "gooks" or "towelheads" or somebody like that?

This isn't really a new thing. The British Empire had a similar underclass which it sent all over the world in red uniforms, and flogged to death on the decks of wooden ships for infractions such as failing to salute an officer. A dumb, unaware, tough, perpetually frustrated underclass is needed if you want to provide large numbers of willing hands and empty minds to murder foreigners and take their lands.

Very interesting essay you have offered.

Beside those white "Mutt people" you mention in the American forces are the frustrated young blacks from the inner city ghettos. That's a volatile combination. Listen to the music they play in their Abrams tanks and Hummers. It speaks volumes. It is the voice of a moral and spiritual vacancy, mouthing violence and obscenity to a heavy rythm track...looking for something to destroy in order to feel alive for a few minutes.

Yes, those people need equality. They need education. They need a good start in life. I simply do not know any way of providing that in a free market, competitive, dog-eat-dog system that has no intention of rescuing the perpetual underclass from the hole that they are in. To rescue them would be called "socialism". Like in Sweden. You aren't gonna see that happen in the USA, which values its economic inequality far too much to even consider such egalitarian solutions.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 12:39 AM

You know, I grew up totally differently to that. My parents didn't have much money in the early days, but the whole home environment was very "upper-middle class" in tone. They didn't smoke. They didn't cuss. Nobody ever got drunk. Nobody ever got high. Nobody ever got violent. Nobody broke the law. Everything was clean. There were a million books to read. Wine was a drink you might have with a nice meal once a week, so it was a social grace, not a way of getting drunk. I was aware of the "Mutt people" you speak of...the tough kids from tough homes...but they were living in some other kind of world I could not even comprehend at the time. I couldn't make out why they were so goddamn mean. It just baffled me. Later, as an adult, I realized why.

It's amazing how different people's lives can be. Why did I land where I did? Why did you land where you did? I cannot say.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:07 AM

I hope others take the time to read the opening post and LH as well. It is one of the best perspectives on why America continues to encourage ignorance and immorality. Of course! It provides ready and willing soldiers to fight their dirty wars.

It would be so easy to create a fair and just society. We could start by providing decent care and support for pregnant women and by providing childcare and education for their children.

When there are billions of dollars available for war, space programs, Hollywood and casinos, why is it so hard to find money for education?

Why? Because an educated population is not as easy to enslave.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:53 AM

BEautiful stuff GYC.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Azizi
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:25 AM

I would not call this article beautiful. Thought provoking. Sad.
But imo definitely not beautiful.

It seems to me that members of every race has been socialized to accept violence against individuals and groups of people who are them and not them. I'm not sure that White people as a group are now or have been in the past more violent than non-White people. And I'm not interested in developing measures or exerting energy to test that hypothesis.

However, one of the first thoughts that came to mind when I read this article is I bet all those folks who think that race doesn't matter would have been mad as all get out if a non-White person had written it.

Also, I vehemently reject the conclusion that all of the music that "young blacks from the inner city ghettos...play in their Abrams tanks and Hummers...is the voice of a moral and spiritual vacancy, mouthing violence and obscenity to a heavy rythm track...looking for something to destroy in order to feel alive for a few minutes."

But, again, I'm not going to engage in an exchange here about that. Those who want to accept simplistic sound bites will do so regardless of the truth of the matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Azizi
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:52 AM

Although I don't want to get into a which race is worse debate,
I must add that my beginning statement does not negate the fact that the United States and various European nations have in the past and continue in the present to engage in genocidal acts against nations that are largely if not exclusively populated by people of color.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 03:13 AM

Oh, I'm not saying it all is like that, Azizi. I'm just saying that some of it is. Quite a bit of it, in fact. Have you noticed the kind of soundtrack that accompanies a lot of war footage in action movies that glorify war? It usually features a relentlessly heavy bass and percussion with a relentlessly cruel sounding masculine vocal track. That's supposed to be tough, manly, get-the-job done sort of thing. I saw a little video on the use of a Predator drone to destroy some Iraqi insurgents on a highway with a Hellfire missile. (interesting name for a weapon of "freedom") It made much of the fact that their mortar cost $300 and their mortar shell $20, while the Predator and the missile cost many millions of dollars. This means: "We are rich. We kill poor people who ain't worth shit with a missile that costs more than you can earn in a year, because we are the MASTERS of the WORLD, FUCKIN' A!!!"

Well, this little video was proudly put out by the very military forces that own the Predator drone, and the soundtrack was silent, until the Hellfire missile hit...raising a tremendous explosion which must have incinerated its targets totally. Then there burst forth a triumphant, blistering rap song of some kind. Its basic them was, "Don't fuck with us, cos we are the big guys, we are the USA, and we will find you! (Resistance is futile.)"

In Vietnam they spent so much money to kill each Vietcong that it was said they could have ended the war just by paying them all half as much to simply stop fighting!

Looks like the same deal now to me. Do you doubt that the system finds it convenient to brutalize its young American people with brutal music so they will go out and kill for the system? The "moral and spiritual vacancy" I speak of comes not from the people themselves but from the system...TO the people who are most vulnerable to it. That includes poor whites, poor blacks, poor Hispanics, and anyone else who is poor and gets a basically lousy start in life because of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 04:02 AM

Very moving piece, GYC. And Azizi, it's not a definitive statement, it's simply a perspective, and a particularly valuable one at that; because "white mutts" usually cannot articulate their condition so eloquently - why, most of them wouldn't even recognise it. And I don't dispute the genocidal acts you refer to, but this is about how to raise your willing perpetrators of such acts, before we even get there. It's closer to the root in many ways.

There are many things in the statement I recognise, even as an outsider, but I could never have descibed them so succinctly.

Yes, plenty of food for thought...Thanks GYC and LH.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 07:06 AM

I live in an area just like GYC describes. Hardi and I were "called" here to minister to the gracious, business-oriented segment of one of the towns' people. "Towns under 40,000," heck-- our whole enormous, mountainy COUNTY is only 41,000 people.

Some of Hardi's people hail from a similar county in Illinois, an "upscale" (oil refinery workers') branch of the family in a similar county in Kentucky. His people ran the gamut socially (and so did mine), so we're both pretty comfortable around folks of all sorts, and they, mostly, with us.

We've come to see that the "mutt people" (and the people who profit from their presence) are human beans just like everyone else. There are, as GYC eloquently describes, of a particlular culture one can identify viscerally. But essentially, the wants are the same wants as anyone else, the wounds hurt the same way, and the same goodnesses inspire them, draw them, and motivate much of their behavior.

"They" most especially do not need, want, or respond to people from some "better way" "educating" them.

They just want, in most things and more than anything else, a little ROOM to be their best selves; to define what that is; to strive toward it without being told they "aren't good enough."

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 07:43 AM

Well said, Susan, the third paragraph especially. But you had a leg-up in recognising them as human beings; partly through your own socially mixed background, and partly no doubt because of your calling.

Now I wonder, how many of the so-called Democrats in the US, or even those further left of them, or how many of the so-called socialists or Labourites in the UK would agree with all of that at anything other than an intellectual level...

Logic says that these people are as you say. But it's heart that accepts them as such.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 09:18 AM

Well, justa couple thoughts this morning....

First, yeah, I know of these folks... I lived for the last 20 years with 'um right up the road from Wardensville, WV, where hidden cameras caught the employees of Pilgrims "Pride" using chickens as soccer balls... This is not a communtity in Page County, Va...)

My second thought was of "Brave New World"...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 09:19 AM

El Greko, thanks. But I learned this in a peer counseling community, not in my present "calling" or upbringing. When you have held all sorts and conditions of men and women in your arms and heard their stories as they weep (or rage, or laugh), you find they all feel about the same weight, no matter the measure. But from that experience, yes I do extrapolate in my "calling" and maybe this is part of why people open not only their hearts to us, but their spirits.

I think, at bottom, GYC challenges us not to "educate" those he calls the "mutt people," but to acknowledge that we ALL benefit from their having accepted the roles in the food chain he describes. And they are tired of being laughed at in redneck jokes, of being stereotyped as Bushite idiots, and of being blamed for the world's ills.

Country music has been full of anthems about the positive values rural/mutt people live by, in this last year. And it's more than lip service, more than saber-rattling in a time of war, more that Bush-hyped patriotism, more than Bible-thumping-- Hardi and I see these values lived every day, in every segment of our rural community. Values about neighboring, taking care of the world, holding family close, loving our elders as they become more and more wise and precious with the years. Bedrock tenacity, reflected in the values.

Something is stirring that we best hear, in that music. As we ourselves are music people first and foremost, we may find ourselves understanding more and fearing/jeering less.

BOONDOCKS MUSIC VIDEO

Now, here we have a MUSIC thread.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: leftydee
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 09:34 AM

It's always about the haves and the have-nots. Race or ethnic origin is just a convenience to easily identify the have-nots, don't believe for a moment that a "mutt" gets any special preference from the " all-ready-have-too-muches". The rich get richer and the poor get babies. The difficulty in breaking out of mutt status is something I never considered before and I appreciate you pointing it out. I'm a mutt myself and managed, with a lot of help and an extra dose of dumb luck, to break out. I've done what I could for lots of folks but never looked back for my brothers. That will change, Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: JennyO
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 09:53 AM

I usually tend to skim past the political threads, especially the ones mentioning Bush, and as for long posts, it's very rare for me to take the time to read the really long ones.

But there was something about this one that got me in. I kept going, and read every word. This is excellent stuff GYC, and so true - probably the best thing I have read in a long time.

The thing about it to me that makes it chilling, is that the $y$tem depends on it, and I can't see a way that it is ever going to change.

I could lean out my window and shout "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!", as in the movie "Network", which affected me in a similar way, but in the end, what CAN we do to change things?

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Troll
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 10:02 AM

Thanks GYC. I came from the same small town that you did. Only my town is in the mountains of North Carolina.

It will be interesting to see all the people who will agree with you. I wonder just how many will really UNDERSTAND?

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: jeffp
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 11:22 AM

Let's give credit where credit is due. The original post was written by Joe Bageant. His web site is here.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: number 6
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 11:28 AM

"It seems to me that members of every race has been socialized to accept violence against individuals and groups of people who are them and not them. I'm not sure that White people as a group are now or have been in the past more violent than non-White people. And I'm not interested in developing measures or exerting energy to test that hypothesis."

Basically what Azizi states here is sums up my views regarding this thread ... but I will add poverty wherever it exists incites frustration, hoplessness and from that violence. Yes, it is the poor (of all nations of the world)that makes up the majority of fighting ranks of all arimies.

But the opportunities are there in your country (U.S.) to break out of that culture, if there is a strong will to ... is there also a fear for many of these people to break out of that culture?

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 11:45 AM

My father was born and raised poor in Kentucky and West Virginia. He grew up during the Depression. He wore his hand-me-down shoes until he literally couldn't find things to hold them together anymore.

He remembers being 6 in Arjay, KY and watching his uncle Pat stagger drunkenly from a sallon carrying a rifle and firing 6 times into a crowd of men. The rifle misfired all 6 times. He was taken to jail where he spent the night and came back the next morning, hungover and dragging his rifle behind him. No harm done. Nothing to worry about.

According to my father, these rural areas were dotted with gangs--not black or hispanic kids from the mean streets but poor white kids who knew how to shoot a gun before they could talk. He said, you got your own piece on your 14th birthday (silver-plated .45 was considered THE shit) and from there on out, you used that to settle all your arguments, grievances and problems.

My father remembers many times, simply running for his life from some gang headed his way. He remembers a 12-year-old boy with a rifle pointing it at him and making stick his mother's brand kitchen knife between two rocks so he could blow the shit out of it. My father went home and told his mother he dropped it. It was a very hard knife to get in those times and she beat the hell out of him for breaking it. He knew if he told her how it really happened, his drunk-ass stepfather (real father deserted the family) would have killed that kid and his whole family. He'd rather take a beating he didn't deserve.

When WW2 started, he joined the Navy in late December of 1941. He served 5 years and made 1st class petty officer--I was the only of his children to follow in his footsteps militarily. I served even longer. When he returned to Kentucky, his life was right where it had been when he left. He went back to Japan as part of the rebuilding team, married there and spent the next several years there.

When the family came to the States (I wasn't born yet), my mother went to live with him in squatterville USA. Big change for a Japanese girl in a fairly wealthy family. She still talks about how horrible it was. One thing that got me was her description of these large, dirty, disgusting, amorphous critters she saw slopping about in a pen. What ARE those things?? Sheep, my father said. Sheep?? Sheep are cute and white and fluffy!! These are disgusting!!

Unfortunately, a lot of non-Americans seem to think that way about Americans--cute and white and fluffy. Then they come to America and see the truth. I've been seeing it since the day I was born.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 12:21 PM

I think that in order to recognize the truth of the 'mutt theory', you probably would have to be a 'mutt' that had somehow broken free from that world. I know it it true because, I too, know these people and these small towns and the urban ghettos. Poverty is a nasty way of life but like Susan said, they still have the same hopes and dreams for their families that people from every social strata have.

I disagree that, "They" most especially do not need, want, or respond to people from some "better way" "educating" them.

My parents knew that most teachers came from a different social strata but they also knew that to rise above poverty, their children needed to be educated. It may be true that adults need to be educated by people from their own community but I don't think that is true for children. Children have not yet been exposed to the thoughts and ideas that separate us from one another.

The 'mutt theory' is a very good description of how the American system 'dumbs down' its most vulnerable citizens and creates discord among different social groups. The underlying values of most Americans may be the same but there is alot government can do to provide equal opportunities but they don't. Instead, they divide and conquer their own people.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 12:25 PM

The editorial in the opening post to this thread appears to come from this source...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan06/Bageant10.htm

It is the writing of Joe Bageant. I wonder how the author would feel about his work being posted here without attribution.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 12:25 PM

Oops. Crossposted with jeffp. Sorry about that.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Once Famous
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 12:36 PM

Since when are Jews a "race"?

Jews and Asians have long stressed education and proportionately, are better educated.

They could be an influence, but instead you have whiners like this poster just pointing fingers.

Pretty good writing for a socialist, or someone with an excuse.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 12:40 PM

I disagree that, "They" most especially do not need, want, or respond to people from some "better way" "educating" them.

No one wants education imposed upon them (or their children) with the message that the recipient isn't good enough, or with the great happy news that someone who is clueless about real life has come to save them by making them into someone else they have not asked to become. Of course people do want education, and they want it available to themselves and their children at THEIR CHOICE. They just don't want it delivered along with shit sandwich for lunch. They want-- what a surprise-- to be respected as they are.

If that wasn't clear from my earlier post, well, What You See Is What You Get.

What do you choose to see?

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:25 PM

The sad thing is, many mutt people are intelligent but growing up in circumstances where they don't know it.

In the case of my father, he'd made up his mind from early on that he would have a family, that he would never desert them and that he would never be a drunk. He was a dropout with nothing going for him but he made good choices. Not easy choices but ones that paid good dividends provided you survived them and learned from them. He ended up a retired automotive engineer--a knack he picked up from his days helping to rebuild Japan. He learned how factories and conveyor belts and motors and pulleys and assembly lines worked.

My ex-brother-in-law, like my father went to a one-room schoolhouse and lives in a cabin in the Tennessee mountains. His family has a history of law-breaking and violence including murder. But he reads Scientific American and has a fascination for gravitational lenses which he understands at least as well as most astrophysics majors. He can talk about relativity and quantum theory. Although I haven't him in a while, I'll guarantee he's boned up on string theory and supersymmetry to a depth that even most college graduates don't bother to pursue. His favorite books I recall were The Right Stuff and Asimov's Foundation trilogy. He's strong as an ox from chopping and stacking cordwood all his life and he is a countryboy I mean to tell you. Southern boy, as southern as they git.

I remember serving with a lot of these mutt people. But I found a lot of him were great guys to hang with. Admittedly, I felt a certain kinship with them and never had any problems that I remember. I remember one guy, total redneck from the Georgia woods. He showed me pictures of his hometown and it really did look like something out of Deliverance. One day I walk past his rack while he was showering in the head and on his mattress lying facedown open to wherever he left off was Goethe's Faust, which I discovered he was an extreme fan of.

Other mutt boys I knew though were just fuckin troublemakers. Amazingly able to get into huge but needless trouble. When they leave the ship, they go out and raise hell--period. That's life for them and they weren't about to change it none. I remember two of them coming back to the ship drunk and bragging how one pissed into a beer bottle and they took it into a 7-11 and emptied the contents into the nacho cheesedip.

So, I don't know, but it does seem we are losing some bright and productive people by neglecting the intellectual development of this class. Either we educate these people and learn them some manners nd let them contribute meaningfully or we can sit around wondering why these nachos we just bought taste so damn funny.

My fault with the opening post is that while white people are diverse in America, so are Jews, so are blacks. No one is more diverse than Asian-Americans or more stereotyped as being all the same. And who decided that blacks deserve affirmative action but that Asians don't? Have you ever seen a Vietnamese, Cambodian, Filipino or Hmong community? You talk about poor, umemployed, gangs and they have no hope of going to college because even though they're non-white, they're the wrong kind of non-white. They're the kind of non-white that isn't even socially perceived as American and is called a model minority because the higher classes of Asian-Americans as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc are passed off as the reality and totality of Asian-American life--they're good and smart and love to marry with whites so they don't need affirmative action. Consequently, the lower class Asians may as well be illegal Mexican immigrants instead of the full citizens most of them are. Then there are Indian-Americans were are neither recognized as Asian or American.

The bottom line is that affirmative action would be infinitely more preferable to me if were class-based instead of race-based. By taking the best and brightest from the poorest communities and educating them for free and grooming them for important jobs, they can serve as examples to their communities. But to tell an impoverished Laotian family with bright kids that they ain't black enough to get affirmative action while some middle class blacks kids get preference for some kind of perceived suffering they aren't actually undergoing does not make sense to me.

America's priorities and intentions seem hopelessly out-of-whack.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Azizi
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:45 PM

GUEST,AR282, I find your posts very interesting.

Are you saying that Asians are considered part of the "protected class" of people by USA's affirmative action laws? That seems to contradict the information that I believed and that I found online such as:

"Protected Classes - Protected classes are composed of individuals identified for protection under equal employment laws and regulations. Many of the protected classes historically have been subjected to discrimination. Bases for protection identified by various federal laws are:

Race, ethnic origin, color (African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans)

Gender (women)

Age (over 40)

Individuals with disabilities

Vietnam-era veterans

Religion

-snip-

Vietnam-era veterans??

Who knows. Maybe that list will include Desert Storm and Iraqi-era veterans soon.

My source for this list is the Penn State University Diversity Office
http://www.psu.edu/dept/aaoffice/definitions.htm, so maybe this applies just for Pennsylvania universities, but I don't think so.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:48 PM

I like the notion of affirmative action based on class. That is a brilliant thought.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Once Famous
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:49 PM

You know, if it wasn't for that fucking Nascar, some of those mutt-boys might actually read a book.

Nascar is mutt-boy white America mentality. Gee, ever notice there are no Jewish or Asian drivers?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:51 PM

Asian drivers in Nascar.

I am trying to get a mental picture here . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:53 PM

Everyone in the US has education forced on them unless they are being home schooled. And in the small towns the people being desribed in the article in the opening post often get their education handed to them with a good dose of condescention. I've lived in enough small towns, and my son had his first five years of schooling in small towns, to know how this works.

What would be nice for the people being discussed in this thread, since they're going to have their schooling forced on them anyway, would be if that education would be a good quality one. Sometimes it is, and oftentimes, it is not.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Azizi
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:53 PM

Sorry, in my last post what I meant to ask GUEST,AR282 was "Are you saying that Asians are not considered part of the protected class?
I thought that Asians were included in the protected class category and would therefore be eligible for affirmative action.

BTW, I also like the idea that poverty should be a criteria for affirmative action. The problem is how would poverty be defined, and how soon would it be before the government ended affirmative action completely. Bottom line- is I don't trust our government to do the right thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 01:59 PM

Poverty already is a criterion for one form of affirmative action-- HEAD START.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Once Famous
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:05 PM

So what do you socialists out there propose, how will it get heard, how will it get implemented, and who is going to pay for it?

I know. Have a surcharge at Nascar events.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:25 PM

How will it be implemented? In the USA? It won't. It wasn't implemented during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and it won't be implemented in the declining USA either. If you want to see it being implemented, you'll have to go to various parts of western Europe and witness it there.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Once Famous
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:31 PM

Sorry, but I don't feel safe in places like Spain or France.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:34 PM

How about Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and Finland?

(the truth is, nowhere can be guaranteed to make you feel safe...but I would feel quite a bit safer in most of those places than I would in the USA)

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:35 PM

Neither did the Romans in the dying days of their empire.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:37 PM

LH, you got between me and MG - my statement was in response to his feelings of insecurity.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:39 PM

Right.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:39 PM

We have a form of socialism rampant in Canada. It's called National Health Care. The payments are deducted from my pay cheque. Cover an entire family of about $1000 per year.

How much does health insurance cost in the US?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Once Famous
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:40 PM

Why, El Greko, were you there to know how the Romans really felt?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:42 PM

"Cover an entire family of about $1000 per year."

Should read "Cover an entire family for about $1000 per year."

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:43 PM

More.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:50 PM

We have other forms of socialism too...

Police, some TV and radio stations, communications systems, fire department, highway and transportation systems, public schools, armed forces, post offices, municipal, provincial, and national government structures and justice system, railway systems, and so on and so on. Every modern society depends to a large extent on socialism.

Socialism is what you use to do things that aren't inherently profit-driven or profitable but STILL have to be done anyway to keep society functioning at all! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Once Famous
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:54 PM

All of those things were built on government money from taxes and awarded to contractors who bid for the right to build them with that money.

That is hardly socialism.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:56 PM

Well, I think of socialism and capitalism as the left and right hand of society. They are made to work together harmoniously and accomplish something useful. There's no point making them mutually exclusive or turning them into enemies.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Once Famous
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 02:58 PM

You ought to be Hillary Clinton's campaign manager!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 03:10 PM

Where I live, if you work and the employer has a health plan and kicks in part of the premium, a family health care plan will cost the employee somewhere between $200-$300/month USD...which works out to $2400-$3600/year...

If you secure health care on your own, away from any sort of an "umbrella," premiums can run anywhere between $400-$600/month, which equals $4800-$7200/year....maybe more if you have serious health problems ... provided you can get an insurance company to insure you.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 03:19 PM

I, too, agree that affirmative action should be based on class. Although we try to deliver equal opportunity through public education, very few students from the lower classes make it to university. Perhaps a good start would be to provide free tuition to those students who excel academically and who are from families living below the poverty line. At least there would be some incentive to succeed in school.

I struggled through university with absolutely no help or incentive from anyone. My own mother was threatened by the thought of her daughter obtaining a university degree. She was afraid I would become 'uppity' and forget my roots. Sure I was given govt. student loans but that's not much of an incentive when you realize that after graduation you will still be living below the poverty line for many years. Now that I am about to retire, my student loan and accumulated interest has been paid but I have very little saved for retirement.

The statement that, "No one wants education imposed upon them (or their children) with the message that the recipient isn't good enough, or with the great happy news that someone who is clueless about real life has come to save them by making them into someone else they have not asked to become," isn't going to help form positive attitudes about learning. Its this kind of thinking that keeps people in their place.

I agree that we need more teachers from other cultures and other classes to provide education to our children but how is this going to happen without higher education? Individuals have to break through the barriers and to do this they need to transcend the anger that keeps them down and they need financial help.

My daughter once thought that her way of "getting even" with a teacher who was "clueless about real life" was to shut down and refuse to do the assignments. Luckily, I was able to convince her that the way to prove her wrong was to excel academically. Another time a high school teacher stated in class that children from single parent families didn't have a chance. My daughter walked out of that class and marched into the principal and demanded an apology. She told the principal that the teacher had no right to destroy her hopes and dreams. She received the apology.

So yeah, its a struggle to overcome poverty, become educated and hope for a better future for your children but its not impossible. If America is to maintain its reputation as the land of opportunity, education is crucial. To call teachers that are from a different class, clueless, is just another way to create division. Its a stereotype that serves no useful purpose. Teachers come in all shapes and sizes.

I'm happy, Susan, that you think you have been called. Many teachers feel the same way. Most teachers, however, have been asked to consider the question, "Are you doing this for your benefit or for theirs?" Upon reading your post, I think that you derive a great deal of pleasure from being in the position to nurture those that are less fortunate. My questions are, "Who derives the most safisfaction from the fact that they open their hearts to you?" You or the one you pity? Does opening their hearts help them to rise above the misery of poverty?

I think it is far more useful to educate the poor than to pity them.

Yes, the mutt boys are real. They serve the needs of the military. They do not serve the needs of society or anyone else. I grew up with these mutt boys, I even have a brother that is a mutt boy, and when he couldn't find work, he became a Marine. When he came back home, he resumed his mutt boy ways. What a waste! He was such a sweet, sensitive child. I'm sorry to say that he just couldn't find a meaningful place in society and that he still has not found that place. For awhile, his life as a Marine gave him the self-esteem he needed. Too bad it didn't carry over to his civilian life. It just made him into a mutt man.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush Constituent Lashes Out
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 06 - 04:03 PM

Martin - "You ought to be Hillary Clinton's campaign manager!"

Holy shit!

I never thought of that.

Wow.

Do you think...?

I am going to start working on that idea right away, Martin! ;-) (Anything to get to sit across the table from Hillary and gaze into her calm blue eyes whilst discussing campaign strategy...)