RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive393

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, (new)(back)

Who is John Sullivan?

Conservative keep saying shit like he was responsible for the Capitol Riot. Who is he? 68.0.188.149 (talk) 01:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

John Sullivan? Isn't he an "as seen on TV" guy? An Advocate (talk) 01:27, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

The BoN is referring to this: [1] UShistoryanalyzer (talk) 01:31, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

There's a whole Wikipedia article on the guy. He's one of the few protesters with any sort of leftish connections (tenuous, he did latch onto Black Lives Matter, but no one -- BLM or Proud Boys, which he also seems to have some connections with -- seemed to like his shitstirring very much. I would call him a mere Rebel Without a Clue, with more emphasis on the "without a clue" part than usual). Of course, this means that the Trump Deflection Engine goes onto hyperdrive because, surely if one guy in the riot has a BLM connection, it's all antifa's fault or something. Meh. We all know the instigator of the riot was Angry Baby Without a Clue and his Russian tool "America's fallen mayor", anyways. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:11, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

First acknowledged heavyweight boxing champion, and last major bare knuckle fighter. In his case, the right wing media may be on to something. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 01:46, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Guy I went to school with and who started an apprenticeship the same company and time as me without either of us realizing it. Haven't seen him for over 40 years... why... what's he done?? :) Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 23:28, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Looks like some county level officials are in hot water

https://www.aol.com/republican-elected-officials-michigan-county-164342055.html

In my home county, numerous county level officials (all Republican) got extremely large hazard pay checks meant for frontline workers during the COVID pandemic. Actual frontline workers got very small amounts of said money. All this was decided behind closed doors and with almost no public disclosure. These county officials might be in violation of Open Meetings Act. This law means that all county matters are supposed to be publicly disclosed and completely transparent. A Genesee County judge ruled that the county officials had to return the money that were given. --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 00:02, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Confessions of a pessimist

When I was a teenager I was deeply attracted to the ideals of the enlightenment (science, rationality, and scepticism), and the potential they had for transforming society. I believed that political ideologies such as liberalism or conservatism could be compared in terms of being more, or less, intelligent and rational. I believed in socialism; I couldn't believe that people couldn't see how outdated their concepts of society, justice, and equality were—how outdated they all were in contrast to the developments of science. I was convinced that science, reason, and intelligence could both transform and organise society, into one favouring liberal and socialist ideals, where decisions would be made using the best scientific knowledge available.—This, the old cliché itself that has characterised the state of youth for time immemorial.

As I matured (I am 22 now) both emotionally and intellectually I realised, and appreciated, the structure one is born into: I recognised the slowness of change, that socialism is not feasible, that the current "capitalist" economic system is the best we humans can do and is supported by our best science (ideally a Keynesian system with a socdem government). One also realises that there are large hordes of humanity who will never care about science, rationality, art, or culture; about gaining knowledge and improving the world. The world we live in is one in which a significant proportion of any society would rather eat cheeseburgers, play the lottery, have followers on social media, watch tv, and engage in magical thinking (the content has changed throughout history, but the form remains constant). I've learned to tolerate this melancholy fact, I don't expect much to change—but I'll sure as hell continue to try my utmost to change the world for the better and to defend science, reason, and human decency—the world is, in spite of all its horrors, worth fighting for!

I end this bloated rant with a question: what value is there in engaging with people who don't accept basic scientific premises? Leucippus^{Salva veritate} 00:06, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

• Modern Mixed-system socialism is not just feasible, it is currently in practice in dozens of countries.
• Just because many people do not care about science or reason does not make the endeavour important nor keep it from transforming and improving society
• You are 22. To say that you have matured is perhaps a little pre-mature
• While it is one thing to be sceptical that radical change will happen, it does sometimes happen, but more importantly we are living in a society that is the result of extreme radical change. Go just about anywhere, anytime in the past and suggest to them that women could openly take part in the governance of a country, that the average citizen could enjoy the quality of life of an aristocrat did in their time, that one of the biggest political issues at the moment is which bathroom transgender people use, that in several countries atheists are in the plurality (and a couple cases majority), that most people have instant and free access to an enormous library of information and that political leaders cannot arbitrary destroy you because they do not like what you said etc and they will think you are a possessed daemon and try to kill you or think that you are crazy and will stick you in a cage and poke sticks at you.
• Most people do not realise how exceptional it is to live in a country with a long list of (imperfect) rights. This IS the end result of the enlightenment (though certainly made possible by growing wealth...however unfairly it was achieved). Reason and secularism made it possible.
• There is little value in engaging with people who do not respect the rules of intellectual discourse. Try to show them the value of intellectual discourse ShabiDOO 00:35, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

"Which scientific premisies?" would be an imbecilic answer, fit for an empty discussion that would go and change nothing. Science, obviously in the thrall of Capital and the State can only provide a magical justification all of capitalist societiy's "limitations" and "alienations". Another said it miles better then I can in "The Conquest of Space in the Time of Power", you should read it, it is barely four (4) pages.

"As I matured" (As if you can mature in any real way beyond child-consumer and adult-consumer). "(I) both emotionally and intellectually I realised, and appreciated, the structure one is born into" (Capitalist society would obviously mold individuals into liking it. Even the most insanely moronic subject would swear themselves sworn enemies to Capitalist society when they witness this, but there seems to be no greater madness then the Capitalist mode of production). I am wasting my breath here. For someone who thinks and acts for the transformation of society, there is no point in listening a second too long to those who find something good, or even merely something worth tolerating in Capitalist society. Even and especially from those anarchists, socialists and communists we who later see prostituting themselves in service of their sworn enemies. An Advocate (talk) 14:50, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Are you a religious nut? Have you even read Marx? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:57, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

No, I am not religious. Yes, I have read Marx. An Advocate (talk) 15:19, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

So you're aware he argued that capitalism was in fact good in comparison to previous systems, and that further it was necessary for the industrialization of a society. So you're earlier statement is incorrect. Ergo you should formally concede that capitalism does in fact produce some good results, even if it is not itself an optimal system. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 15:15, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

No, he did not say that Capitalism was good in comparison to previous systems, He said, verbatim "that socialism is not feasible". I don't know where you are getting that from. An Advocate (talk) 15:19, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @ShabidooI don't know what countries you're talking about, but if your talking about Nordic countries they aren't socialists at all. If you're talking about China, well, that's not the most humanist model... GeeJayK (talk) 15:22, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Considering Shabidoo is a humanist, It seems more probable that what he means by “mixed-system socialism” is not Cuba or Venezuela, but rather one of the Nordic countries. However, as GeeJayK already noted, the Nordic countries aren’t socialist, they are social democracies. Leucippus^{Salva veritate} 17:43, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

There are many different kinds of socialism, I would think by this point no one would seriously consider there is one definition of socialism. The world has seen dozens of radically different variations. Several countries in Europe have socialist parties governing them and consider themselves socialist countries. So yes, none of them have economies which are entirely controlled by the people but new industries and weaker industries are protected (EU agreements permitting for EU countries) and regulated and there is a moderate redistribution of income through generous social assistance. So if the statement is: an effective prosperous stable state which which the economy is entirely controlled by people is not possible: then yes I would agree. "Socialism is not possible" is an extremely overly broad statement. ShabiDOO 18:04, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Well, I've never seen any of these parties considering their countries socialists (although it wouldn't surprise me). I agree that there are many different forms of socialism, but in the end it does boil down at least in part to public ownership of the means of production, and I'm not aware of any western European country where the majority of the means of production aren't private. Most of these countries also have a far better fiscal consolidation than America and UK (most of these mechanisms of fiscal consolidation were created by the social-democratic parties), and their welfare system is far more sustainable. Meanwhile the Chinese tax burden is extremely low, the country has almost no labor rights and most of the population doesn't know any form of welfare state. Does that mean in some aspects US is more socialist than Sweden and China? I don't think so, but it does show how shallow the discussion of socialism vs not-socialism can be. Regarding socialism being impossible or not, well... Of course it is not impossible, Cuba has been a socialist country for 60 years after all. The criticism is that it is (at least in my opinion) a very inefficient system. GeeJayK (talk) 18:16, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

When I used the word “Infeasible” I meant more precisely that in highly developed nations such as the UK or the US, socialism—with centralised planning, or calculation in kind, or large worker cooperatives that own the means to production—would probably be incredibly difficult to implement in a way that can efficiently meet the needs, and deal with the demands, of the population of a large scale economy. Of course socialism isn’t impossible!—Science changes and is never completely certain. If our best economic theories, in connection with political science and sociology, were to develop in a way that demonstrated socialism’s feasibility, then to blindly cling to capitalism in spite of its obvious faults would be antiscientific and, to quote Popper, would be rejecting a “beautiful dream”. However, our best science has not, as far as I know, demonstrated socialism’s viability. Marxism, which is socialism’s theoretical base, is: unfalsifiable, outdated, effectively disconfirmed by the wealth of historical failures, and mainly occupies the fringe of reputable academics. This user “An Advocate” is precisely the kind of juvenile rebellious radicalism that gives a bad name to mature, sophisticated, left-wing thinkers like GC, who recognise that reform as opposed to revolution, is the practical reality of living in this world. I don’t think anyone who is intellectually honest needs persuading of the attractions of egalitarian socialism—if it can be got-off the ground. Leucippus^{Salva veritate} 20:49, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@An Advocate Capitalism is an improvement over previous systems follows directly from "the current "capitalist" economic system is the best we humans can do and is supported by our best science". 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 15:24, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Saying that "Capitalism is better then the systems that preceded it" is irrelevent because the original statement, as I read it, was that (paraphrasing) "the Capitalist mode of production is the best that a society can do and the supremacy of Capitalism is a scientific certainty". An Advocate (talk) 15:30, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

As a staunch supported of free market capitalism, I personally consider the term "scientific certainty" an oxymoron. GeeJayK (talk) 15:33, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

It is relevant in the context of your statement "there is no point in listening second too long to those who find something good, or even merely something worth tolerating in Capitalist society". If capitalism is an improvement over previous economic systems, then that is something good found in capitalism. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 15:38, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

(forgot to put an a inbetween listening and second) For those who think and act in the transformation of society. You missed the preceding statement that makes it for a certain group of people, making it subjective and not objective. From this misunderstanding, I don't think you or GC actually read my comment. An Advocate (talk) 15:42, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think you read your own statement. You argued that no good comes from capitalism. If you misspoke, then simply say so and correct yourself in a later statement. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 16:15, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I definitly read my own statement, and you obviously didn't. My statement, for those with the attention span of a fly, was that, and please read closely: That for those who want to transform society, then (subjectively, remind you) no change eminating from the source of the ills of society can ever bring good to society as a whole. For those who fight in the name of Marx, of Socialism and Communism, and the Proletarian, then there is nothing coming from Capitalism that one can respect. An Advocate (talk) 17:38, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

"For someone who thinks and acts for the transformation of society, there is no point in listening a second too long to those who find something good, or even merely something worth tolerating in Capitalist society" Don't lie. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:18, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

To address your latest series of claims. Please explain to me how misogyny and homophobia (social norms) are rooted in capitalism (an economic system). ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:21, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I am not lying, if you think I ment the statement of those who want to transform society having nothing good to say about Capitalist society as an obective one, I ment that as a subjective one: "FOR those who want to transform society", and I definitly have nothing good to say about Capitalist society. As for homophobia and misogyny being rooted in Capitalism, I never made a claim even near such a topic, and I can twist my mind into an interpretation where I could. An Advocate (talk) 18:42, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@An Advocate "...no change eminating from the source of the ills of society..." It seems to me that you need to proofread your posts before you submit them, lest you basically argue that capitalism is the source of all of society's ills. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:48, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Fine, I will closer read my posts before posting them. I was just angry and ranting at someone making the imbecilic arguement of the victory of Capitalism being a scientific certainty. An Advocate (talk) 18:51, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Fine then, we'll leave it at that. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 19:03, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm getting my first Covid vaccine tomorrow

So if I don't edit tomorrow or for a few days after that, it'll be because I'm feeling a bit under the weather after getting it. I'm sure I'll be fine and even if I'm not, it will be a small price to pay. I'm cock-a-hoop about getting the jab. And since private language schools in Taiwan will be allowed to reopen from tomorrow, providing that all the staff have been double vaccinated for at least two weeks, I'm a step closer to getting off Zoom and going back to teaching face-to-face. Spud (talk) 13:03, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Nice. I didn’t have any side affects when I got mine, but I know everyone’s different. Hope it goes fine. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 13:11, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Great news Spud. My first shot laid me low for a day and a half. Had my second yesterday and just got a sore arm. Good luck!

Moderna here. First shot was a sore arm, like, someone had punched it the night before. That's what happens when you inject fluid and stretch the muscle fibers, of course. 3 days later it was fine. Second shot was the same thing, except 24 hours later I was exhausted. But I survived.

Plus side, Moderna has the highest effectiveness vs the Delta Variant, so, yay for that.

Ugh, what we need to do is open up all the nightclubs but only for those who've been vaccinated. The doormen are allowed to be as rough as they want; if the person makes ANY arguments about why they shouldn't be required to get the vaccine, they get sent to either the back or booted out of the line entirely. There's too many customers and not enough establishments that the places can afford to simply filter out all the assholes. CorruptUser 16:19, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Happy to hear it. To be honest, I'm somewhat surprised you hadn't gotten one already. I received my first Pfizer shot in late May and will get the second in just over two weeks. I was under the impression that you are fair bit older than me, but maybe Taiwan has had difficulties getting the vaccine.

Taiwan tried the close-the-borders tactic, which was initially successful, but apparently airline personnel brought the virus in anyway. Consequently, Taiwan has been slow to vaccinate and has not had enough vaccines. Bongolian (talk) 18:21, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Anyway, great news things are moving up for you. All the side-effects I got from the first shot was a sore arm for two days. Knight Commander^{In Service}_{To Her}^Goatness 16:31, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to the 5G zombie club! --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 16:47, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Pfizer kicked my ass for like 16 hours after the first one. Drink lots of fluids.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:05, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Astrazeneca gave me three days of fever. Good luck. GeeJayK (talk) 18:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

MODERNA GANG. MODERNA GANG. Anyways, I remember posting here when I got both doses. Since, I'm type 1 diabetic, I'm already used to getting shots in the arm, so the worst that can happen to me is it being very sore. Rockford the Roe ^{boop my snoot}_{praise Oscar Wilde} 18:29, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely NO effects from either Pfizer jab. Scream!! (talk) 18:55, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Mild temperature after my second jab. Pfizer I think. Don't know didn't askAMassiveGay (talk) 19:42, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Little bit light headed the morning after I had the Pfizer jab, other than that, no noticeable side effects. To be honest, I’m surprised with you Spud, you being a junky and all … you, Begbie, Sick boy and Renton, must of shot up loads back in the day. Leucippus^{Jodie Foster made me do it!} 19:47, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Getting my 1st shot in about 6 hrs.... Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 23:29, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

So, umm, I need a new computer chip. Can I have the one that comes with your vaccine? CorruptUser 00:44, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Duinno - why do you want the downgrade - it's only an i, single core, 1 bit, 0 cache..... Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 03:47, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Spud, one last thing: before you get the jab, don’t forget to ask the nurses to play Lou Reed’s Perfect Day. Leucippus^{Jodie Foster made me do it!} 01:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I took the first of two injections this past Friday. I take the second in just under a month. And I got it... at my local supermarket, a Kroger. It's interesting to get the jab, then buy my Mountain Dew to go with my Moderna, then... well, sleep most of the weekend. Not that that's so unusual, I'm old and nap a lot, but I napped more than usual, so that might be the vaccine's much spoken of side effects... Kencolt (talk) 04:13, 27 July 2021 (UTC)\

For me, I had a slight headache in the evening and a sore arm the next day. 1 person I know was in bed vomiting for a week after the first dose, everyone else I know had either mild side effects or no side effects at all. --RWRW (talk) 17:55, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I've had the jab and I'm feeling great!

So I had my first vaccine about seven hours ago and I'm feeling absolutely fine. No side effects at all. And the jab itself didn't hurt a bit. To get my Taiwanese work permit renewed I have to have an HIV test every year and I've had some right butchers stabbing away at my arm to get the vlood for that in the past. You can also insert your own Trainspotting joke here if you must.

To satisfy the curiosity of @Knight Commander, I'll be 48 next month (you could find that out by looking at my user page). And everything Bongolian said was true. My life had been almost entirely untouched by the pandemic until 18 May this year when Taiwan finally went into "soft lockdown: for the first time. I'm actually surprised I git the first dose this quickly. My name was only put on the waiting list last week.

For a bit of local colour, I had the vaccine on the basketball court of the sports centre at a military academy. I got the jab while looking at a portrait of Sun Yat-Sen and the flag I love so dear. They were playing soothing classical music the entire time. And if you're interested, the vaccine I got was the AstraZeneca one

And then there was talk at my school this afternoon about when some students I haven't seen since May come back in September. It's been a pretty good day. Spud (talk) 11:45, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Kinda surprised it's only now you've been offered the jab. I was offered mine months ago. But apparently I'm in an at risk Group. Just surprises me whenever I hear some group or other is offered the jab, and I think "they are only being offered it now?'. I think that I was offered it so early when I don't think I should be considered 'at risk' at all has skewed my perception. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:57, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Some countries have done better offering the vaccines than others. Around our area (US), it's been pretty much available to most since around, April or so? (I got the second Pfizer shot in mid May.) I understand the UK has been quite good at making the vaccine available as well. Taiwan apparently had less urgency due to avoiding some of the worst of the pandemic, and that seems to have been the case for other countries not slammed by the disease. But some of these countries are making up for lost time now. In other cases, some countries run by Bebê Bravo types have had shitty corrupt government to partially blame for the lack of availability. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:28, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, in Kansas we’ve had full availability for adults since May, which is when I got mine. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 15:59, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I got my first jab today too actually. My left arm hurts and I was a bit tired earlier but I feel good. Evilatheistheathen (talk) 13:16, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I've been hesitant to tell anyone, because I'd hate to contribute to the blowback, but when I got my second dose a couple months ago, the immune response caused a minor but persistent chicken pox reactivation that has left me with scabies sores on my mouth and a low grade cough ever since. It's finally starting to recede, but it's been pretty annoying and painful. Still better than dying on a respirator while COVID's active immune-antagonizer proteins cause the same thing, but side effects with a 0.5% prevalence have to hit somebody. :-/. Maybe if I'd had a chicken pox vaccine instead of chicken pox as a kid... ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 16:40, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Do you mean shingles rather than scabies? AMassiveGay (talk) 17:26, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes I think I do. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:01, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Got mine - no issues at all - barely felt the injection - other than being 12 minutes after the booked time!! Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 20:37, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah I have to get blood tests every few months, and I was honestly shocked at how little the initial shot hurt. I’ve only had my first Astra-Zeneca so idk how it is the second time, but for me, it made my normal chronic pain a lot worse. That’s kind of expected tho, bc any amount of muscle pain does that to me. The first day after I was really tired and kinda feverish, but the second day was just like a normal bad pain day, and then afterwards fine! 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜 01:35, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

The Walgreens people told me to move my arm around afterwards to work the muscle. It worked for both shots, and I only had mild soreness the next day. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 01:42, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I am Aaron James

Hello, I am new to RationalWiki. Aaron James (talk) 19:43, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. We have stale donuts and bland coffee over there. Why don't I tell you about what my rock bottom was. So I had spent the weeke-

Oh sorry, was on autopilot there. Welcome! CorruptUser 19:50, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

My name is Bongo, and I am a listicle addict. Uh… sorry, wrong door. Bongolian (talk) 06:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to the Evil Atheist Liberal Communist club. We strive to turn everyone fabulous and make people into atheists. --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 00:06, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I have yet another idea that I am trying for a zombie story (my Google Drive is filled with partially written stories)

It is an alternate history story where the Axis Powers won WW2. With that, a horrifyingly corrupt and sadistic puppet government that controls that United States, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. It is also a zombie apocalypse story. The story takes place in 1985. My main character lives with his son in an internment zone along with a variety of ethnic groups. Jews are automatically put into forced labor camps by the twisted government. Japanese people and Italians are given high social status.

That is the main world. This story involves the main character and his son living in an internment zone. At the very beginning the main character is trying to overcome his homophobia because his son is gay and he did not want him being killed by the government. His homophobia is due to the government policy of slaughtering gay people. However before the father and son could talk about it, the boy's homosexuality is found out by the government and is violently murdered in front of the father. This leads the dad on a quest to start a revolution when a zombie apocalypse is starting.

My main themes are personal growth, acceptance of differences, questioning of morality and striving for freedom. --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 01:07, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Sounds cool. I've always liked to think about historical "what-if"s. --Goatspeed. _{Stalk me}CircularRasoning^{Prototype lab} 02:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Voter ID

So, I found out the other day, that there's only a single European country (UK) that does not require photo ID to vote. It's basically the norm everywhere. So what makes the US so different from Europe that voter ID would be worse here than in France? In the US, you are legally required to have a photo ID in order to work (I-9 form, for instance), to say nothing of opening a bank account or boarding an airplane. Some states don't require photo ID to buy a gun (seriously, wtf?!), so that's probably a more important issue to focus on, but I really don't understand why it's as controversial as it seems to be.

If the issue is that photo ID costs money, shouldn't the focus instead be, I don't know, making it so that any state that requires photo ID to vote must provide all government issued photo IDs free of charge? CorruptUser 16:41, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Most countries in Europe have a compulsory national identity card. The UK does not. Neither does the US. Which is why both nations I believe fall back on other documents, such as Social Security numbers (US) or driver's licenses (both). Historically, opposition to national identity cards has come from multiple sides (it's an issue, for instance, which the ACLU and Rand Paul both agree on). Personally, I'd be okay with a national identity card if it was securely designed -- Lord knows that it would be pretty hard to design anything worse than the current identity hodgepodge, and in these computerized times something better is needed. But there's a strong opposition to this.

At any rate I don't think a photo ID voting requirement would be any sort of problem with a decent identification system. It would make things more secure, even, if well designed. But without one, the "information unaware" or those with other issues regarding the ID face barriers to voting. The "political take" is that it affects minorities / Democrats mainly, although I'm not so sure that is the case (too lazy to search if anyone has done a study on this). I do remember a photo ID voter law in Pennsylvania affecting the traditionally conservative Amish and Mennonite communities in that state who have a religious objection to taking photographs, so such a law would need to designed carefully (instead of being a slapdash political talking point) to work well. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 17:08, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

In conversations with others I've tentatively proposed a single federally issued photo ID at no (direct, obviously taxes come from somewhere) cost to the citizen for voting purposes: in one shot it solves the phantom issue of dead people and other non-citizens voting, steps around the BS of closing DMVs in strategic areas to keep one's political opponents from the polls, and prevents people from voting in multiple states. At the time, it seemed like they (being persons largely on the traditionalist end of the political spectrum) were quietly opposed to it for reasons 1 and 2 (1 being the rhetorical red herring they use to excuse losses and 2 being the real reason, their fear of certain demographics exercising their right to vote), but there could be resistance just because it accords power to the federal government normally reserved to the states: it might brush up against the right of each state to decide how it appoints its electors, yadda yadda. And this is leaving aside the religious, primordial fear of the Beast: perhaps this ID is his mark, and ye shall know Tribulation by it? Artificius (talk) 17:11, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

The main problem is what counts as a valid ID. In Texas, for instance, a student ID does not count but a concealed carry permit does. Plutocow (talk) 17:31, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

A concealed carry license is issued by the state, a student ID is not. I don't know Texas law, but I would hope a CCL already requires having shown proof of residence and identification. As for the Amish refusing ID, let's be honest here. They don't believe the camera steals your soul, they simply ban anything that would enable any Amish child from ever having a chance at escaping from their way of life, and photo IDs along with internet, cell phones, or a high school diploma would allow the kid to get a job other than farm-work and achieve some level of independence. They are the world's most adorable cult, but they are a cult and we shouldn't have to put up with cults. CorruptUser 17:42, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Since I'm one of those kinds of Europeans who have a national ID, I want to point out that the cost of a national ID is ludicrously cheap for your average citizen. The price for a dutch ID is 64 EUR (doubled more or less if you need one urgently), which sounds like a lot, but it's valid for 10 years, so in terms of budgetary concerns it's not even remotely an issue. You're required to have one on you at all times and law enforcement can ask you for it. It's also a valid travel document for the Schengen area at the same time. A full passport is more expensive but most citizens don't need it. One other thing that I do want to point out is that unlike the US, we don't have an SSN that lets you do a ton of stuff and is a disaster if it leaks. Rather we have a citizen number and a document ID. Together, they're a valid identifaction, so if your ID leaks into places where it shouldn't, you can just replace your ID and invalidate your old one so it's not a problem forever. Some food for thought I suppose. I see no reason why the US shouldn't have a national ID either from my point of view. Techpriest (talk) 17:51, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

As far as I know the UK before it exited...it was the only EU country that didn't have mandatory identity cards. And in most countries by law one must carry their identity card with them at all times (in most countries it contains a lot of government related and even emergency medical data) They are extremely easy to get and replace and are usually very cheap. It makes requiring voter ID a negligible hindrance to voting. This is not the case in many US states that do not even have identity cards and getting some form of ID which isn't a license (for those who do not or cannot drive) quite a burden. This invariably overly affects marginalised people. Clearly the point of these laws. Any law which makes voting difficult is sinister and the motives behind changing these laws are usually immoral. ShabiDOO 18:21, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

So it seems like we all agree that we could have a cheap/free national ID and voter ID laws without there being any real issues? Maybe I'll make another poll... CorruptUser 18:27, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

k, poll added. Are the categories good enough? Other positions that we are ignoring? CorruptUser 18:32, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that in the US, the conversation around voter ID is mostly about keeping people from voting, specifically black and brown people. While a smaller and smaller segment of people is effected by decades of institutional racism, like not have birth certificates for black babies, or not allowing black people to run birth announcements, and forcing black people to pay excessive fees for basic forms, voter ID functioned as a codeword. Older Black Americans born primarily between 1930 and 1970 in the South were among the ones whom getting an ID was a burden, because they couldn't prove they lived where they lived or they were born where they were born, and the system to get those documents was intentionally unnecessarily difficult and expensive. In the six decades since the racism inherent in this system has been generally dealt with, and the importance of this group of voters has waned with their passing and new voters coming in. My feeling now is that carveouts need to be made, and money needs to be allocated to provide ID's for this group, and a drivers license should be enough to vote. Especially when you consider that Congress passed the Real ID Act in 2005, and has given states multiple opportunities to comply when it went into effect in 2008. However the group of people shouting loudest about being right about voter ID, have generally moved on to other methods to disenfranchise voters, like requiring signature matches, or removing drop boxes, or banning drive-thru voting. I just tend to not people seriously if they are pushing for voter ID's and not acknowledging that there are barriers it creates.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 19:18, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

So then shouldn't the response be to remove those barriers or couple the various voter ID acts with stuff that addresses those very issues? Literally 80% of Americans favor voter ID laws, and the more this is in the news the more out of touch the Democrats seem to be to the average American. So solve it in a way that the dog-whistlers can't complain about without actually sounding deranged; complaining about government not charging for IDs is about as suicidal a position to take as complaining the government didn't raise taxes. Then we can move on to more important discussions, such as water rights or the electric power grid. CorruptUser 19:46, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, there is no need for ID anyways. Voting fraud is exceptionally rare. Since the US doesn't have mandatory ID carrying laws, it is still burdensome for the poorest people to take time off work and go get an ID (even if the card was cheap or free). As poor people are more likely to vote for one party than another, their default disenfranchisement skews the vote more than any voting fraud ever would. Unless the photo ID people made house visits for the poorest citizens or if the government paid the poorest to take time off work to get their ID in order to vote...adding in ID laws would be anti-democratic. ShabiDOO 20:40, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

On average, there are more poor Dems than Reps, but poor Dems tend to be concentrated in the cities where there's the most access to social services. It's not impossible that restrictive ID laws would hurt Reps more than Dems...

And yes, voter fraud is not likely to be a serious problem. If anyone rigged the vote, it would be the politicians, not the people. From a personal standpoint, I think there should be some filter on who is allowed to vote, and that should be anyone who has their shit together enough to show up on election day, and anyone who picks up the ballot to vote early has their shit together enough. CorruptUser 21:28, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

The thing is @CorruptUser, the GOP has already taken the position that the federal government shouldn't pay for these ID's. When you examine this issue through the lens with they operate, fundamentally the GOP doesn't believe American citizens have the right to vote. Two-thirds of them view it as a privilege which can be denied.[2] You can't negotiate in good faith when one party fundamentally doesn't believe in the primary tenant of democracy.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:18, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

But to not negotiate at all, even if the other person isn't acting in good faith, is to lose the public. The Dems need to push for voter ID with federal payments, because right now, the Republicans are making sense to the public even though they have other objectives. It's an albatross around the Dem's necks, but if the Republicans hold it up in congress then it becomes their albatross. Similarly, it's also absolute shit for the Democrats to push to deny Cuban refugees asylum while simultaneously encouraging it for all the other Latinos crossing from the South. It's being perceived as nothing more than blatant electorate rigging, because current Cuban-Americans tend to vote Republican, and it will be used against the Dems in 2022.

And while we are at it, how about increasing student visas by a few hundred thousand people, and also making easier for them to apply for citizenship after attaining a degree? I keep saying it, but the US government is downright insane to not have a near-unlimited cap on student visas, considering that it's basically rich foreigners paying you to both spread pro-American propaganda and take their best&brightest citizens. CorruptUser 22:31, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

"The public" consists of many sides, and my impression is that the public on the side of nativism and reacts to shit culture war nuggets isn't going to care about any justification for opening borders. It's just furriners to them, and they mad about furriners. And this lot tends to hate universities as well, so bright furriners won't be a convincing argument to them, either, even though you are spot on. I've seen articles that suggest that there has been a negative affect in foreign appeal of US universities during the Trump years for various reasons, including stricter bureaucratic measures on foreign students. A shame if that effect really turns big and permanent, it's one of the US's top assets.

Biden seems to be tip-toeing around Cuba, probably because even among Cuba activists there seems to be a lot of strongly felt opinions in both directions on issues like the embargo. Kind of wish he'd at least reverse Trump's tightening personally.

Everything's so politicized these days, unless you dig into the issue, I think people tend to be for photo voting ID if you are a Republican, and against if you are a Democrat, and for many people they don't have really good thoughts beyond that. The interesting thing is that the Republican push for this though is coming at a time where Angry Baby politics is sort of causing a realignment. Working class whites (particularly in rural locations) are drifting towards Republicans, while white collar suburbia is drifting towards the Democrats. So ID laws might not do what is intented. The biggest shit going that may have some future impact IMHO is laws that some Republican states are making that politicize election boards and secretary of states, making it potentially easier for a future Angry Baby to pull shenanigans. Though hopefully that Cyber Ninjas fiasco in Arizona, which has over the last several months moved from pure farce to batshit insane dumpster fire, discourages that sort of thing. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 22:57, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Actually, 60% of Democrats are in favor of photo ID. It's higher amongst Ind and Rep, but it's a clear majority for both major parties. Being anti-ID is just bad politics, but being in favor of easy/free ID's may not be. CorruptUser 17:52, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Over here passport or national ID card required for voting costs about 50€. It lasts for 5 years. I can manage that easily, but I can see how that disenfranchises bunches of people. You can actually get The Social Insurance Institution to pay for it, but it requires jumping through a bunch of hoops. To put it simple, you have to care pretty mightily to put the effort to get your voter ID if you don't have steady enough income to pay for it (which makes it really easy).

I'd prefer free (as in taxpayer payed) national ID cards to solve the problem. But the fact that you can't lose the civic confidence anymore by being convicted is a significant improvement to U.S. system. And you might have to jump through the hoops (and I'd prefer you didn't have to), but everyone still gets to vote in theory. Hell, we have special arrangements for in prison voting. Knight Commander^{In Service}_{To Her}^Goatness 18:22, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Felony disenfranchisement is a separate issue, but I don't oppose it on principle. What I do oppose is it being permanent; if we say you are ready to reenter society, you should be allowed to vote. CorruptUser 18:37, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Id is needed in to access services like the dole, or starting new job. It usually a combination of passport, drivers license and/or bank statements/gas bill sort of thing. If dont have none those things getting hold one type of id requires other id - you cant get id without the id and if have some its really expensive to renew a passport. It took me months of ballache to get signed on (and the old dear registering me vote far from where i live. Paying the 80+ quid it cost to renew the passport) fuck how you get all that if you didnt have friends + family to help in a crisis. You only need the voting card to vote, that gets sent if are registered to vote in your area. Nothing more on the day than a bit of card board. There pressing need for voter id in uk, no massive election fraud or anything. You could argue for some official gen purpose id, but voting? Aint needed here. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:07, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd love to see a homeless guy with a sign that said "Can't afford the $80 paperwork needed to get an ID in order to work, please help, God Bless!"

It's something I've complained about IRL but not too much here. I don't believe government should ensure every last person is living in luxury, or even comfortably, but rather that absolutely no one is too poor to work. Government should do everything reasonably possible to break the poverty cycle. If you are freezing half-to death in your run-down apartment or suffering from malnutrition or lack of basic medical care or don't have the clothes to even let you get a job, well, you are kind of stuck aren't you?

What I have said before is that the system is cruelly designed to keep people perpetually in poverty. Neither side has any intention of fixing this, Republicans don't want people to be capable of living independently of church, and Democrats don't want people to be capable of living independently of government. "E pluribus unum" is Latin for "Fuck the poor".

I think the difference between us is that, while yes, Racism is still very much a thing, I think today, Racism is a drop in the bucket compared to Classism. Yes, Historic Racism was the original reason Black people's ancestors were forced into poverty, but today it's the entrenched cycles of poverty that keep them there. Break those cycles, and most of the disparity will disappear. Reform public school funding, expand all the public universities and have auto-acceptance for anyone at the top of their school no matter how bad the school is, don't let people simply move to a suburb to avoid property taxes, make it easier for ex-cons to get jobs, stop putting people in prison for low-level first offenses, require minimum wage for prison labor even if those wages get garnished by the state (because if the companies have to pay those wages...), and for the love of Noodles, actually fund CPS. No, seriously, prisons are often warehouses for the kids that CPS has failed. CorruptUser 14:23, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Looking for direction in updating an article

Hi I'm new to RationalWiki. I want to make some improvements on this article but I'm looking for some feedback.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project

I'm having a hard time determining the intent of this article. Is it intended to be informative or a critique? It seems like a little of both to me, perhaps a little more informative than crtiquey, but could use some improvements either way.

Secondly, what's the best way to make improvements? I've left some feedback in the talk page but it seems awful quiet in there. I'm guessing maybe stir up a debate? I think some points are correct and some points are not. So a debate would have to address point by point, and I'm not sure if that's appropriate in a debate page.

Thanks in advance. Hansen128 (talk) 03:24, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

This article is critical, but it doesn't need to be. If you want to see two examples of articles that were critical and became more neutral, you can see wha I did here on fiscal responsibility and this one (which I still disagree, but I don't have time nor knowledge to edit on HAES. That being said, most articles tend to be critical because one of our missions is to document pseudoscience. If you prove to us that the Venus project is just a normal project, then, well, the article might even be deleted. GeeJayK (talk) 04:03, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

In terms of our mission statements I guess that it would be justified under "crank ideas". If it's just some thing which exists in the world - why would we have it?Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 11:46, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Joe Biden twisting eight-year old girl's nipple

Senator Daines’ niece, Maria Piacesi, says Biden pinched her nipple: Underage victim accuses Joe Biden of assault. I saw this on 4chan, have not heard anything about it from mainstream media. Poptopic doesn't look like a very reliable source. Is it "fake news"? DepressedAustralian (talk) 00:31, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Do you have to ask?ShabiDOO 00:42, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Your first two sentences answer the question in your third. 173.197.107.12 (talk) 01:00, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

The basic gist: if what the website says is correct, Poptopic is two ladies, one a "experienced game designer who has interned for some of the biggest studios in Europe" (tee hee, lolwut), and a "former, albeit small time, reality TV producer" who run this bloggy-news-thingy from a corporate co-habit space (read: very small) that publishes whatever they get from "anonymous sources", and the site is mostly light tabloid entertainment bullshit. We all know that Biden is a bit touchy feely but I'd treat this as bullshit until confirmed by a source with more heft. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 02:10, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Stop getting things from 4chan. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 01:07, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

There's video. Is the video a deepfake? DepressedAustralian (talk) 03:55, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@DepressedAustralian Both the people in the thread you cited actively push misinformation. (The one who posted the video also pushes election conspiracy theories.) As such I'd say they are unreliable sources for allegations this serious. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 11:42, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Why the hell are you on 4chan?~April ^Chat? 14:20, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

The original video is from C-SPAN, it's here, at about 1:21:00. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 15:04, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@DepressedAustralian Oh my goodness! The original video you posted from Twitter looked a little grainy, but I found irrefutable video analysis that PROVES Biden really did grope that girl! The media must know! Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 20:31, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@DuceMossolini the link was shown as already clicked, so I knew something was up... SixtyNine (talk) 04:28, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Not surprisingly, the girl is the niece of a republican senator, therefore unreliable. The video shows no grasping at all, so the claim is ostensibly a lie. One might question whether any contact is allowable on the chest area of an 8 year old girl. My view is it is a wan question.UncleKrampus (talk) 16:41, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Video of a guy who “proved” JFK was assassinated by CIA. Thoughts?

Somehow I got in the conspiratorial side of YouTube and found this video where the guy is cocksure his explanation of the JFK assassination is correct, he says at the end that it’s a joke and you shouldn’t believe this but I feel like it’s just to save face as it makes the entire video pointless.

This is the video, I watched it at 2x speed because the guy waffles a lot but this it what that gist of the video I think:

James T got hit but his testimonies didn’t line up therefore there should be a second shooter, smoke was seen from a different area, CIA purposefully hid information about this, footage that would prove second shooter “mysteriously disappeared.” Umbrella man was the person to have the go ahead for the shoot, JFK’s brain went missing during autopsy. The narrative of Oswald doing the shooting on his own was made and popularised by the CIA who suppressed information. Director of the CIA was meant to protect the president but failed and then was promoted to become the director, says he can’t remember being there despite being there.

What do you guys think? Everyone in the comments is saying how absurd the one shooter and magic bullet things are and the conspiracy is correct.

Sorry if this is rushed, I’m at work, having OCD episode about this and my manager is really on me so just making this quick. Thank you Just gonna put the link here as having trouble with it https://youtu.be/hjkaYboVDOQ .-WMS (talk) 16:01, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Approaching 60 years after the assassination - Freedom of Information requests, 'loose ends and passing mentions in documents', 'Muggins here is keeping some official documentation #whatever they say# in case #they# try and make me carry the can, and arranging for someone else to look after it (as #they# will go through my own documents, as in the movies/novels)' and nothing has 'escaped into the public domain.' Anna Livia (talk) 18:26, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

When someone is alleging a crime occurred (conspiracy to commit murder, treason, and murder) it's always best to frame everything in strict legal terms and standards. Who? What? How? Why? When? Where? This is all to that I'm not impressed. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 19:32, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

the official story is oswald done it while the alternatives point to more people involved on the ground. either case is not beyond the realms of possibility. problem is there is little to prove one way or other. most of the evidence is very he said/she said. witness statements reflect the unreliability of memories of an event that were not paying enough attention to and were looking the wrong way till it happened. conflicting accounts dont mean someones lying, it means people see different things, miss different things, while looking at the exact same thing. enough witnesses saying something similar things might mean something. one person sees something no one else did might be the clincher. some one swears they saw a man with a gun another just a walking stick. someone else sees smoke from a rifle, some else saw him light a cigarette. nothing is proven or disproven from that kind of stuff. it can help point you in the right direction when its still fresh, where to search for discarded gun, shell casings, but theres none of that. all we have is grainy home videos, unintelligible sound recordings, that could be a million different things, could be nothing. the forensic evidence has scientists contradicting each other in the same reports. official reports like the warren commission, and house select committees have conflicting conclusions, and are all realms of probability, nothing certain. all we know for sure is oswald got collared for it but was dead before it went to trial. all claims of the 'real truth' behind it all are presented as incontrovertible proof, presented with such certainty and conviction that this chain of events they are presenting is the true events, couldnt have happened any other way yada yada yada. they asre liars or idiots seeing what they wanna see. unless they've opened a drawer and found photo from time with clear images of gunmen on knolls like its wheres wally. its a coin toss for every possible conspiracy that involves real possibilties and not aliens or time travel. not even going to comment on who was behind it all. there is even less to go on than grainy photos. you make a list of powerful people and shady groups from the sixties. drew a circle round them. thats who did jfk. it was the mafia. it was the gays. it was castro, it was anti castro, it was the cia (who at this time had tried making castros beard fall out, poisoned his cigars, exploded his cigars, called him a poopy face behind his back. their plan for jfk was just shoot him.) they aint saying, no one is saying, except when they are certain they overheard someone say they defo did it but only they heard it, no one else heard it, but they work for the cia, why would they make it up? anyone and everyone could have done, but zero evidence to say anyone particular did beyond it makes a better story than known crank with a gun. the cia is a shady organisation who do shady things. you wouldnt put it past them. they wouldnt give you a straight answer if you asked them for the time. zero proof they did they though. the certainty people have with these things in the first place should set alarm bells ringing. it says they are liars or idiots. they are always certain. always deadly earnest. they are true believersAMassiveGay (talk) 19:49, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm just waiting for the Gerald Ford failed assassination conspiracy theories. There's noticeably less crankery around that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:50, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The truth is that JFK was about to release information held by NASA about alien visitations. The US had been in conversation with these aliens for years and they had revealed that our particular iteration of the universe came into being 6,000 years ago. Coincidentally the same information would also have revealed the Earth was flat.

Obviously any part of this information would have resulted in Global Panic and a fall in the value of the dollar. In consequence the hit was actually arranged by the Federal Reserve in order to preserve dollar values.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:42, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

'Consider the consequences':

X (person, group, organisation, state of choice) - 'You do what we want or we will reveal (you had Y girlfriends etc, were involved in these dubious activities etc) during the election campaign. Result of revealing blackmail - slapped wrist equivalent (depending upon the prudishness etc of the electorate).

Result of assassination revealed - prompt, possibly disproportionate, response (possibly by third parties taking 'the moral high ground' aka 'better act now, or it will be us next time.' Anna Livia (talk) 15:43, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Jan. 6 Commission: What will the end result be?

I know that the end result is currently unknown but I do hope that those who supported the Insurrection/Terrorist Attack against the US Capitol are punished. Again, we will not know what will happen and I make no claims of what will happen once it ends. --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 02:01, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

None of those who instigated the event will be punished in any meaningful way. This is de facto. The GOP controls one half of the legislature and will not hold its members accountable. My advice is to keep your expectations as low as "there will be an investigation", because even that's uncertain. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 02:08, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I have a more cynical view. I think Trump really had no plan at all before Jan 6th. He and his ilk just kept throwing fuel on the fire, he had absolutely no idea what the consequences would be or when a disaster would occur. Once an "organic" coup occurred, if the riots did get worse and they broke into the senate chambers to butcher members of congress, at that point Trump could declare emergency powers and take over, but if they failed he could pretend he had nothing to do with it. So he just sat back and watched. CorruptUser 02:44, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

According to General Milley and other officials, Trump was at least in the early planning stages of a coup or insurrection after he lost the election. Now I'd agree it's probable that he didn't iron out the details, but I'd be willing to bet some of his inner circle might have tried to. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 02:52, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

It is insane how unfazed most Americans are about Jan 6. In just about every other highly developed democratic country I know if the legislature had been stormed by a mob it would have been met by absolute outrage, new multiple laws quickly passed and unreserved condemnation by nearly everyone. It is shocking that a party would even fight against an inquiry happening. If I were an American I would be very anxious about the health of democracy at the moment. ShabiDOO 03:08, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Well, people have sprayed bullets into congress before. Then Carter decided to pardon them, because fuck Carter. CorruptUser 03:18, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

There's a deep-rooted cynicism in American politics paired with an absolute, pathological ignorance. GOP advocates have started arguing in court that politics are a zero-sum game, which basically means they don't believe in democracy - representative or otherwise. I couldn't tell you when the cynicism started (reading our history it seems to occur in fits and starts), but the ignorance has probably been there since the beginning, at least since Isaac Asimov commented on it. Artificius (talk) 03:35, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

All it can do is erode further confidence in American institutions, the media and congress. But hey, who gives a crap anymore anyway? Dutchbag (talk) 04:01, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I'm not expecting any indictments coming directly out of work by the committee, but it does serve at least some important functions. When the committee completes it's mission, it will be able to write a comprehensive report on what happened and why. Writing a comprehensive report is outside the DOJ's mission, but the existence of the commmitte keeps the heat on the DOJ to do its job of finding all the conspirators and indicting them. The committee can keep the event in the media in the run-up to the 2022 election, which should have a negative impact on GOP election goals. The GOP clearly does not want the committee to exist, otherwise they would not have fought so hard against it. The existence of the committee (sans GOP obstruction) subverts the GOP's goal of burying the event like it never happened so that it can easily be repeated. It's been said that a failed coup attempt is practice for a successful coup. Bongolian (talk) 04:03, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Given the ways things are going on the macro-scale, I don't doubt that saying for a moment. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 04:09, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this will impact the midterms that much. GOP voters are pretty well insulated from reality by their brand of hyper-partisanship-I don't think many of them would turn on the Republican party no matter what the commission would reveal.

This is a bit of a tangent, I know, but I think the actual deciding issue of the midterms will be federal voting rights reform. The capitol riot merely showed them that they have to take a different approach to taking and holding power. As for this commission...it's just preaching to the choir.-Flandres (talk) 11:57, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Highly recommended podcast

From BBC radio 4. It is called Sideways. I recommend starting with the 1st episode. Especially the first series, are certainly the most insightful, thought provoking and profound ideas I have encountered outside of books and articles. ShabiDOO 19:42, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Weird problem with site.

For a few weeks now I've been getting an intermittent issue where RatWiki becomes unavailable to me in the UK. This lasts for between 1 hour and 1 day but if I use a VPN with any location other than the UK I can connect immediately with no problems. Any other UK based people seeing this? Any ideas what may be causing it? Oldusgitus (talk) 10:52, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

no problems hereAMassiveGay (talk) 10:54, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

AMG ditto. Leucippus^{Salva veritate} 12:05, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Now I don't need a vpn, can read and login as normal. As I said, it's very intermittent. TY anyway. Oldusgitus (talk) 15:02, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Might want to check your PC's dns cache. Flushing it might be a good idea. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57540901/how-to-clear-dns-cache-of-internet-provider (also might want to clean out your browsers cache too ctrl + shift + del on firefox )Cardinal Chang (talk) 22:03, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Works fine with UK exit nodes on Tor. Try setting your DNS to 1.1.1.1. Rockford the Roe ^{boop my snoot}_{praise Oscar Wilde} 00:56, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Race-Norming

I read this article in WaPo this morning [3] expecting to be frustrated, and instead I find myself furious that in 2017 the NFL required doctors to engage in a fine bit of racialism and a tinge of pseudoscience. I would love a neurobiologists take, because in the abstract I could understand how this practice could help people of color, essentially compensating for the fact that decades of research on brain function came mostly from middle-aged white men, but it's application would seem to lose value as education and living standards even out. The agreement reached by the NFL though seems specifically about denying the maximum amount of claims as possible from players that are mostly Black.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:31, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

The NFL already tries its damnedest to downplay the long term injuries and risks of the sport, and deny compensation in general. I am less than surprised that they deliberately layer on blatant racism just to be extra greedy assholes to non-white players 173.197.107.12 (talk) 03:25, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Problems with Pronouns

I'm writing background lore for my sci-fi setting and keep running into this same problem. The issue is that a large group of the population are genderless robots, and using they/them/theirs is vague. An example: "The admiralty wanted to remove the upstart in their ranks. They decided to station Junius and their fleet at the remote colony world of Bevin-3, where they would be unable to gain fame through valor and conquest." The problem with the "their" is that it isn't obvious if it is the admiralty's fleet or Junius' (it is Junius'). The problem with the last "they" is that it isn't obvious if Junius or Bevin-3 would be unable to gain fame through valor or not (here Junius is being referred to again). It would be so much easier if Junius was a male or something so I could just use his/he for those two cases. The problem is that while he/him/his/she/her/hers only ever refers to a single person, them/them/theirs can refer to people, objects, organizations, groups of people, or abstract concepts. I feel like if I started throwing around ve/ver/vis only like a fifth of people would know wtf I'm talking about, and if I made them all "hims" and "hers" it wouldn't make sense why they are picking genders for themselves when the entire concept of sexuality is meaningless to them. Does anyone know of any authors or books/publications which have found an elegant way to deal with this problem? MirrorIrorriM (talk) 15:53, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Pronouns in general are confusing.

"Sally met up with Sarah. She said something nasty, and then she punched her. The fight lasted for quite some time, and she ended up in a coma. She visited her in the hospital, but she died a week later. She was charged with murdering her, and now she faces up to 40 years in prison. She regrets what she did to her".

That's why I hate speaking with my mother, because she overuses pronouns to the point that no one can understand what she is saying. CorruptUser 16:11, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I think the second "they" is pretty clear in referring to Junius, as previous sentences were discussing how Junius was a thorn in the admiralty's side. I'd ordinarily suggest finagling with the sentence structure and increasing the number of nicknames or descriptors (for example, with the caveat that I don't know your worldbuilding so I don't know if this is apt: "The admiralty wanted to remove the upstart in their ranks. They decided to station Junius's fleet along with its arriviste captain at the remote colony world of Bevin-3, where they would be unable to gain fame through valor and conquest.") but I imagine you're doing a lot of that already.

Either way, yes, anaphora can be confusing. It's actually considered one of the next Turing tests. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 16:29, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

So use the names more often - eg "The admiralty wanted to remove the upstart in their ranks. They decided to station Junius and their fleet at the remote colony world of Bevin-3, where Junius would be unable to gain fame through valor and conquest.". Reading a SF novel series at het moment where ve/viz/ver is commonly used - so far I'm not actually sure whether the subject is male, femail or robot!! Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 01:48, 23 July 2021 (UTC).

In the example you have given you don't need the first "theirs" at all. "The admiralty wanted to remove the upstart in their ranks. They decided to station Junius and the fleet at the remote colony world of Bevin-3, where Junius would be unable to gain fame through valor and conquest." Presumably the existence and ownership of the fleet would have previously have been made clear to the reader.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:07, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@BobI know I didn't have to use their and they in that context, my point is that I could have used his/he in that context, but can't with their/they. Of course there are ways to get around it, but I was complaining about how the options for pronouns are worse than if it was a gendered character.

@Aloysius the Gaul what book is it? If it is a pretty successful book series that might give me the confidence that people would be familiar with ve/vis/ver. Also in my case I am not writing a novel, I am writing background lore for a pen and paper game. Having succinct descriptions of events is important, and repeatedly using the character's name could make it take up too much space. Depending on the final format of the book, Junius' story might only be an index card sized bordered rectangle at the corner of the page on the Bevin star system. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 15:23, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

If you want to see how another author has treated the issue then read the "Culture" series by Ian M Banks. Sentient AI's (frequently warships) make up a large part of many stories. It's been a while since I read the series, but I don't recall him having any pronoun problems.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 15:50, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Using 'ze'/Swedish 'hen' or some equivalent may be appropriate in this context - 'X (robot) looked at Y (person) "Lorem ipsum" ze said.' After a few uses the reader will have no problem.

Possibly relevant SF writers groups on FB might be more useful. Anna Livia (talk) 20:01, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@MirrorIrorriM - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36637658-mutiny-at-vesta

Eh? If them robots are really genderless perhaps you should use "it." I assume a genderless robot would not be insulted, after all, they are only objects. Do these robots have feelings? If so, was that a good idea? UncleKrampus (talk) 01:23, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

All of what you typed sounds absolutely devoid of imagination, creativity, empathy, and kindness to someone asking a genuine question. Kntai (talk) 09:39, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Aaaand I will readily apologize for a bit of a knee-jerk here, but I took umbrage at those two last questions after the ready assumption that these robots are only objects.

Kntai (talk) 09:56, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Robots are only objects. You are romanticizing a scenario that is quite impossible. An artificial life form is not a robot, by the way.UncleKrampus (talk) 17:11, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I would point out that SF/F is about challenging the impossible, the norms, and asking questions in what-ifs. The question of sentience, agency, objectification, personhood in constructs/robots/androids/artificial lifeforms (as you decided to leap to) is not new in the genre. Kntai (talk) 10:42, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

What I can give as advice to someone who's familiar with a genderless language is to use names a lot and settle upon a neutral pronoun and use that, then for mixing it up refer to their role or position, and also mix in first or last names (or in this case, model names, perhaps). It's certainly something that messed with my mind much of the time when writing. Experiment! Kntai (talk) 09:44, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Super-Earths: Should we pump some iron and get that sexy exo-planet body?

Knowing that Super-Earths are exo-planets with 1-10 times the pressure of our Earth (which we are destroying while pretending that everything is fine) and could possibly have life; should we send space probes or should we hit the gym to get ready for Super Earth exploration? --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 01:00, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Quiiiite sure that it'd be cheaper to switch to nuclear/renewables than to ship everyone to another planet. Also, stop using plastics when not needed...CorruptUser 01:56, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

There have been suggestions to literally pump iron to fix the Earth.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 07:53, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

The major question - how to get to such planets within a reasonable time and finding out if they are habitable and do not have 'creatures which protest too much.' (See also SF stories about people decanted to other worlds that are marketed as wonderful but which are actually somewhat the reverse.) Anna Livia (talk) 09:10, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Meh. If we’re going to the super Earths, it probably ain’t going to be as baseline humans anyway, wandering around spinning habitats and waiting for the gravity to fail or to complete our thousand-years journey emerging from equally fictional cryo with hopefully few de novo mutations, whichever comes first. Keep calm and embrace the robot parts/extensive genetic engineering that’ll get descendants of our biosphere into the universe. They can print out svelte, sexy forms to inhabit once they’ve got a magnetosphere to protect their squishy bits from cosmic radiation and know what materials/proteins to use so’s not to die looking like melted Barbie dolls in an alien atmosphere, (reasonably) assuming you might want to be something other than a shapely android/gynoid/synthetic Sergal/digital avatar (minus your fleshy, lead-shielded brain) after God knows how many centuries between stars. "Reasonable time" could be contextual. Artificius (talk) 07:53, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Polls

It is really great that we have such an active interest in new polls, but in the last couple weeks they have been changing so quickly it seems like there is only a few days to vote before they change. Might we slow down just a tad on changing them? It doesn't have to be like in the past where changes were very infrequent, but I kind of think it is more fun if each poll is up for a couple weeks? Or am I alone on this? ShabiDOO 07:09, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

too many cooks is the problem with polls AMassiveGay (talk) 11:59, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I was going to make this into a poll, but then I realised it probably would be more irritating than funny, so I did not do that. 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜 13:47, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Let's blame me. I think I've created 1/4th of the polls since I helped get the polls back into the SB. CorruptUser 16:50, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Does anyone else think the polls on pornography reflect a majority male usership? UncleKrampus (talk) 00:25, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Didn't create that one. My last polls are the 3 at the bottom... CorruptUser 00:39, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

The problem with "I think therefor I am"

https://www.quora.com/What-is-collective-solipsism-in-an-individualist-society/answer/Larry-Lang-8?comment_id=213475530&comment_type=2

This isn't about solipsism but I was arguing with a user in the thread about how thought doesn't prove "I" just thinking. They then shift to trying to justify "I" as an identifier to which I would say that it is meaningless as such a thing if there isn't an existing thing to correspond with it. That aside I did check out the original phrase "I think therefor I am" and find the criticisms of it more valid than the phrase itself.Machina (talk) 19:19, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

The error apparenly causing your problem is, in leaving the idea of "existance" sufficiently vague, to fail to be able to determine what could qualify as existing. Well, the things we perceive as existing are automatically assumed to exist. If no, how do you define "existence?" How can we question "existence" if we do not define it? The definition is "those objects we can mutually agree are perceivable through our senses. Without this definition we cannot understand what we are speaking of when referring to "existence." The fact that Descartes thoughts are invisible to others is a problem. More accurately, "we apprehend each other, therefore we are." UncleKrampus (talk) 20:40, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, the I is presumptuous but the general meaning can be updated to: "I can contemplate my existence, therefore there must exist something of which I am a part (even if I isn't the right pronoun) which may or may not be an autonomous being. It doesn't prove that you exist as an individual or an individual human on Earth in the here and now, just that you exist at all. It really is a tautology, and nothing particularly profound. He coined the phrase as part of a fairly innovative approach to philosophy where he starts with extreme scepticism of everything and tries to answer questions about if we even exist. Descartes does bring up the possibility that we are something else (for instance the evil daemon thought experiment) though he gets out of this by some terrible argument about God's nature. Modern versions of this: brain in a vat, ghost in a machine, elaborate simulation or something more exotic like being part of a hive mind with the illusion of individuality are all possibilities that cannot be dismissed (though there is certainly no evidence to take any of them seriously). That we contemplate our existence means some phenomena is occurring of which we are a part, even if we possibly have no control over it and it is an illusion. Something must exist for this to take place, though yes, it may be an illusion that the "I" plays any role in it. Though again, there is zero evidence that the "I" does not ShabiDOO 21:28, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Still sounds kind of iffy to me. All "I" really have evidence of is the sensation of "I" but that's easily shown to be fallacious through experiments with phantom limbs where it feels like something is there but it isn't.Machina (talk) 20:48, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

What sounds iffy? Please be specific and explain. ShabiDOO 21:06, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

im going to hire machina as my defence for the murder i just done with loads of witnesses, filmed me doing the murder, buckets of dna evidence, my signed confession, and in court i will wear a tshirt saying 'i did a murder' on it. 'beyond reasonable doubt? you cant even prove your existence to yourself'

sovereign citizens eat your heart out. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:28, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Well it's like I told the guy in the thread that thinking just proves thought, not a thinker. It also assumes you know what thought is and whether or not you are performing the process known as thinking. Not to mention the whole briarpatch of issues that come with defining what it means to exist. I use the notion of a phantom limb when people bring up the senses as evidence of a self because it shows not only how they can be lied to but how they aren't reliable evidence for proving that you exist. There were other points he made in the thread but each one was worse than the last.Machina (talk) 03:26, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, these are all valid points that shouldn't be controversial. You still exist. We wouldn't be having this conversation if we didn't. Be your existence a human being in the material world or if you are a figment of someone's imagination, part of a larger consciousness, an echo, a phantom being, a simulation or something more exotic...is irrelevant. You exist. I don't see how that can be denied. That you are any of those specific things cannot be demonstrated and we have no reason to take them seriously. The only argument you can possibly take seriously in this whole thread, is that there is some phenomena that has enabled reflection about your existence, which confirms your existence (whatever to exist means, and whatever your existence actually is as we intuitively perceive existence or not). It is a tautology. ShabiDOO 04:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Me-tooery was a bad mistake

Chair neighbor at the clinic watches Fox News exclusively. Non stop carrying on about Cuomo.

Tine to recognize that me-tooery only hurts Democrats and it's time tp give it a rest. I always had misgivings, because the presumption of innocence and due process are big deals for me. But if me-tooery can't stop Trump it can't stop any Republicam. 'Feminism' has created a pitfall that only hurts Democrats. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 15:25, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Smerdis, go home you're drunk. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 16:07, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

It did some damage to Newt Gingrich. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to swing a state nomination or two.CorruptUser 16:13, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Helping the democratic party isn’t the point of MeToo, or at least it shouldn’t be. Christopher (talk) 17:03, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

The point of me too is to bring awareness to and limit rape culture. Seeing the fierce resistance to admitting that rape culture even exists shows how much it is desperately needed. Rape culture is harmful to men and women. Telling victo.s that fighting against rape culture and outing the people who raped them is a bad thing because it is a burden to a political party and it is inconvenient and unpalatable for others is fucking deranged. You should throw your unqualified support behind victims and those who are fighting the normalisation of rape denial and rape culture. ShabiDOO 17:10, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't just making a joke, I honestly think Smerdis typed that post out while drunk. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 17:15, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Shabi, if only one side is held up to standards, eventually that side will have candidates that are orders of magnitude cleaner than the opposition. Yes, it sucks that Cuomo is being ousted but Trump couldn't have been, but if the Democrats are held to such standards that the problematic members have their careers ended before reaching the top then eventually the Republicans won't be able to say "butbutbutbutbut Bill Clinton!" That is not the case at the moment, the Democrats are somewhat better but are still very much comparable in terms of overall shittiness. CorruptUser 18:43, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Are there actually Cuomo defenders? Because it's seemed to me for a while that the Dems are at least more willing to acknowledge when their political superstars turn out to be harassers. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:47, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm in NY. Yes, there are people who defend him, just as there are people who defended Trump. As for acknowledgement, haha, no, if that was the case Biden wouldn't have gotten the nom. CorruptUser 18:54, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Given that one of the very few good things Betsy DeVos ever did was reign in the excess that was going on at OCR before, and that Cuomo led the charge in attempting to reimagine that the 5th Amendment didn't apply to college students in his state, it could hardly be happening to a nicer guy. This is, after all, the same state where a student engaged in a harassment campaign against another student was punished by being invited to the 2015 SOTU. In my home state, CT, when they brought this affirmative consent idiocy to a vote someone suggested that legislators adopt it for themselves too; that this was rejected out of hand shows they were more full of shit than a week-old colostomy bag (and yes, I've actually had to empty a colostomy bag before). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:24, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Every person who worked in a nursing home I had talked to said that everyone was convinced that allowing the COVID-infected patients to leave the hospitals and return to the nursing homes was known to be a disaster waiting to happen and that Cuomo had been hiding all the COVID deaths. We all had morbid jokes about how this was secretly Cuomo's way of reducing the budget, considering how much each member cost. If the state has to pay $100k/member, each resident would live 2.2 years, and 9000 seniors were killed by Cuomo, he saved NY State about $2 Billion. Woohoo! Think about all the schools that could have their funds redirected to Cuomo's friends with that kind of money! CorruptUser 19:48, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

So let me get this straight, it is a bad thing that a Governor who has been accused of sexual harassment is paying a price for it...because a politician who was even worse in another party did not pay a price for this? This is pretty much a direct example of enabling rape culture. Basically sticking up for the perpetrator of sexual harassment/violence/assault, because that person paying a price is inconvenient for you or makes your life or your future goals complicated. Just take a step back and imagine that instead of it being the sexual harassment/assault of woman...Cuomo was accused of beating the shit out of his children every day and saying vile racist shit to his staff. Would you stick up for Cuomo or any other democrat politician just because a Republican politician who did the same never got dinged for it? I understand it is a ridiculously unfair double standard, but that still doesn't diminish the suffering of the victims of sexual assault nor the goal of ending the normalisation of rape culture. ShabiDOO 22:30, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Stating the fact that behavior like this used to be considered fine. While I think there may have been some poor equivocation in some instances, those in power are the ones threatened by this, and they should be afraid.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:39, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Probably the worst example of scoring an 'own goal' with me-tooery is Sen. Al Franken, who should have been the Democrats' Great Communicator, with celebrity and ready wit at his side, and a candidate for national office. Instead, he was hounded from public life for a trivial misdemeanor. His 'scandal' was orchestrated by right-wing media figures. If giving him a break 'enables rape culture' then let's. (Fortunately there's no such thing._ Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 15:14, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, he "air molested" a sleeping soldier through extremely thick body armor, which wasn't a real issue AFAIC... then seven women complained about inappropriate behavior on his campaign trail. CorruptUser 15:19, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate that the NY Governor ostensibly has transgressed a line of civility and should be called to account. But let's not compare lewd comments and inappropriate touching between adults with severely harming children. Ariel31459 (talk) 16:57, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

it is not the uneveness in who gets taken down as a result of metoo thats a real issue. its not who gets taken down, its that its sen as a win or as the solution. a possible rapist loses their career, or convicted and jailed as a result of metoo is not a victory. unless they have a high profile abuser victims of abuse will not find justice from publically outing their abusers in this manner, for those few it can work its a last resort because the justice system was inadequate in dealing with victims of abuse that made reporting to the police a traumatising ordeal on the top of the trauma of the original abuse that probably wont result in a conviction while cases of historical abuse could not be heard at all. metoo was a last resort that piqued public interest because of the accused fame, their downfall is framed as victory, and everyone pats themselves on the back for a job well done. case closed. then next one, and the next. victory after victory. using a last resort that has done nothing to rectify the problems that make metoo necessary. has there been significant changes in laws and procedures that would make reporting abuse a worthwhile prospect? in employment practices that wont see a victim of abuse sidelined or 'let go' at the earliest opportunity for speaking out? in the uk, the chance of a rape conviction is the lowest its ever been. why bother putting yourself through the ordeal of rape test kits and with stangers discussing you sexual habits and prodding your intimate parts when it will probably be dropped? the goals of informing the public about abuse and encouraging victims to report abuse are futile if the problems in the system that prohibited reporting of abuse is unchanged and possibly worsened. metoo claiming another scalp isnt another victory its a sign that the system is still broken and does little to fix whats needs to be. and its last resort that is not really an option if you've been abused by a no body who tweeter wont get worked up over.

the conversation now is not about rape and access to justice its now about rep vs dem, cancel culture, meToo's gone to far. there is still poor chance of justice for victims of abuse. little is changed since its inception - there is still a need for something. i dont think metoo does what it needs to though. its given cheap victories through people doing no more than sharing a hashtag. it made us feel good about ourselves but obscured the real problems left unaddressed.

real victory will be getting justice for victims of abuse through the courts in a manner that does not needlessly victimise them anymore than they have been already, and not involve going to twitter in anyway shape or form to have any hope of redressAMassiveGay (talk) 17:30, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

The guys at the top have always been and continue to be the ones that cause the bulk of the problems, but they are immune to the systematic reforms because they are the ones creating those reforms. But as they say, shit rolls downhill, and all the systematic reforms hit the people at the bottom.

Imagine you come across a medieval town with Blue and Orange people. All the Orange people are peasants, as are most of the Blue people, but all the Nobles are Blue. To solve this inequity, the nobles decide to tax the Blue peasants to give to the Orange peasants, but make absolutely sure that the Blue and Orange peasants are too busy being angry at each other to go after the Blue nobles.

That's basically where we are. Are the Ivy Leagues full of too many spoiled rich white kids? Create Affirmative Action for the college admissions, ensure that poor white people are too upset at Black people getting in with lesser qualifications to notice that Felicity Hoffman's kid cheated entirely. Do the same with businesses; make efforts to hire Black people but keep everyone too angry at that to notice that the CEO's nephew was made VP straight out of school. So too with sexual assault and so forth. Create all these HR initiatives that actually make it firable offense to date a coworker (yes, this is allowed in most states!), yet the rich white men at the top still harass and screw around without consequence. CorruptUser 17:58, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Genetic disorders common in ethnic groups being twisted into racialist ideology (Likely ties into racial inequality in healthcare)

It is known fact that various genetic disorders may be common among certain ethnic groups. Sickle Cell Anemia is common among African and Arabic people while Tay Sachs Syndrome is common among Hebrew people. However these disorders can happen to any group.

I find it sad that racists will twist these facts into racist nonsense. The racist idea is that ethnic minorities are inferior. These racists tend to use the fact that genetic disorders can be common in certain groups as proof that others are inferior.

This also ties into racial inequality in the healthcare system. Idiots pretend that genetic disorders solely exist in non-white people and at the same time use political leverage to make getting healthcare among ethnic minorities more difficult. Distortion of one fact feeds into a much bigger problem. --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 01:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

If you want a couple for white people, cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease are overwhelmingly in people of European descent (the people in the village of Barranquitas have some European ancestry). Plus, just as conditions like vitiligo occur in all populations but are far more pronounced in darker skinned people, rosacea occurs in all populations but is a whole lot more obvious in lighter skinned people. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:09, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

People with genetic disorders are human beings. It's sad to see people to 1) devalue the lives of people with genetic disorders, 2) use that devaluing to be racist.—ClickerClock_{💾 talk.txt} 02:21, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Just bring up multiple sclerosis, which is most common in the alt-right's favorite domain, northern Europe. The Vikings may have spread it.[4] Also, I wouldn't call sickle cell anemia or thalassemia genetic disorders per se. Yes, they are terrible diseases to have, but they are genetic adaptations against endemic malaria. Bongolian (talk) 05:21, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

do racists use genetic disorders in this way? doesnt seem like there is much utility in conditions that are not infectious and that you are unlikely or have no risk of getting yourself, and for those they do have them its for reasons out their control and not poor lifestyle choices that they have, and the nature of the conditions would need to be explained where people might not even be aware of these conditions in the first place. its a hard sell it seems to me when there exists a condition that is infectious, incurable, and deadly. it is one that is spread through the dirty and immoral behaviour of those infected, and it is rife in the poorer parts of the world. AIDS ticks all those boxes. its provokes a fear and loathing with a contempt for sufferers whose moral depravity can be blamed for bringing it on themselves, so you wont feel guilty piling onto the afflicted. difficult to see spinning sickle cell into something that could get a response anywhere close to what AIDS can provoke. AMassiveGay (talk) 21:16, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

A "tell" I've seen of the racialist sect is the overwhelming focus on "white" versus "black", and even then there is horrible over focus on one kind of white (north-west Europeans). East Europe, much of Asia, and Latin America are often ignored. Certainly one side is ignored when something that might be contrary to their "me superior" claim might emerge. It makes it that much easier for academia to ignore them, which generally they are. This isn't the 1920s, we know much more about this sort of shit these days to know what worthless opinions they have.172.58.27.99 (talk) 07:45, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

January 6th committee hearing, first day.

Since there are still deniers. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 00:46, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

It's all kinds of fascinating / terrifying watching a Lost Cause narrative being spun up in real time. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Depressing too. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 16:08, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

It's so chilling knowing that no matter how much evidence of this atrocity is revealed, the right-wing will keep vigorously drowning it all out with new lies.--April ^Chat? 22:40, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Footage shown at the Janurary 6th committee hearing

Though I notice this gets less attention than it should. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 13:51, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Curiously had to pop into edit/preview mode to get the video link to show. On the topic of it getting less attention that it should, agree. Kntai (talk) 06:27, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Economics GCSE fail

This [5]. When aluminium was first produced an infant royal baby was given a rattle made of it as something very exotic: now it is all over the place. Anna Livia (talk) 09:19, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Ask a Spaniard. Importing shiploads of gold and silver didn't make anyone richer. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 14:14, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

”Injecting enormous amounts of new currency into your economy never hurt anyone!” — Robert Mugabe. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 14:44, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

GCSEs are taken by 15-16 years old (and older students at an equivalent level) - but having large quantities of (resource X) suddenly become available can generate opportunities/economic development.

It would make more sense for 'appropriating aliens' to make use of 'asteroids being remains of planet cores' as sources of minerals and Outer Region Snowballs (Kuiper Belt/Oort Cloud) for water than planetary mining - just add rocket-equivalents one side and 'follow me fly-by-wire' devices (and momentum-slowing rockets) on the other and 'pull' them back home - no issue with gravity. (The technology will be more complex than this but the concept is simple.) Anna Livia (talk) 17:00, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

UShistoryanalyzer reveals how stunted his media diet is yet again

Dem Congresswoman: States Should ‘Creatively Draw Districts’ so Dems Keep House in 2022 Hmhmhmhmhm...... UShistoryanalyzer (talk) 18:15, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh look, more bad sourcing... ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:16, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

National Review's mostly fine. UShistoryanalyzer (talk) 18:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

AHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAAAA!!!! No. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:18, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Doesn't pass the sniff check on MBFC or on Wikipedia, without even delving into our own coverage on them. Techpriest (talk) 18:42, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

As if those two sources are any better? UShistoryanalyzer (talk) 18:44, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Note USHA isn't actually addressing the problems, he's just trying to pivot and dodge. This is your brain on dogmatism. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:46, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

They're decent enough for checking if a source is a good one or a bad one. National Review is decisively one I'd consider to be "bad sourcing". Also part of me finds it rather rich that the Republicans of all people are now moaning about the ethics of Gerrymandering. Wikipedia puts its sources to user review and MBFC I have never had any complaints with in checking if a news site is bending the truth in it's favor. Techpriest (talk) 18:48, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

@Techpriest I mean there's also the fact that the National Review was founded to be the "thinking man's" partisan hackery. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:56, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

To be fair, Wikipedia doesn't consdier MBFC to be reliable. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 19:43, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

National Review can be okay but also can be pompous hackery. This was the later. The article twisted a quote by a Democrat saying that one needs to watch Republican redistricting efforts into a position that she advocated redistricting herself, a classic case of putting words in someone's mouth. There was no reason given, frankly, other than apparently this National Review columnist can't read or (more likely) knows people don't read articles these days and just share clickbait article titles that justify their shitty paradigms. At least when Cracked made clickbait in the old days, it could lead to something actually humorous... 172.58.139.102 (talk) 06:51, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Reading the article and the likely accurate quote therein, the quoted Rep (and the article itself) references the long, currently GOP-dominated yet historically American tradition of gerrymandering and how such cynical plays have given the GOP a strong hand going into 2022. If they hadn’t been skewing to their audience with the headline, this might have seemed a solid bit of reporting. This is an argument for a switch to something like mixed member proportional representation in lieu of FPTP to political nerds, a note in the hopefully distant future autopsy of the American republic for historians (“was a smoker, frequently uttered ‘one man, one vote,’ heavy cocaine user…”), and clearly a gotcha moment for conservative apologists.

Your excessive use of ellipses and “Hmhmhmhmhm” to simulate thought-provoking commentary is more concerning though. That shit is more aggravating than a fat bastard preaching Communism or temperance. Artificius (talk) 19:16, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

As super refuckingdiculous as UShittery's sources are...gerrymandering is a rifrickingdiculous problem in the US. While there may be another country in the western world that doesn't have independent commissions for redistricting, I do not actually know of any. It is insanely undemocratic and an extremely serious problem that few take seriously. It is an overwhelmingly republican led problem at the moment, though democrats aren't entirely innocent of it. Though it definitely is yet one more tool in republican party's how to unashamedly play as dirty as possible all the time playbook. Gerrymandering is still an outrageous phenomena that next to no one is doing anything about. ShabiDOO 01:19, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Most of the worst gerrymandering examples are in red states, but Illinois and Maryland have some pretty egregious districting. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 03:27, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

It is yet one more reason so many other nationals roll their eyes when Captain 'Murica types keep claiming that the US has some sort of special magical claim to democracy (or at least is a bastion of it). It is hard to take this claim seriously when you have outrageous gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, an absurd electoral college, first past the post districts, virtually zero limits to campaign donations and interference by corporate interests, only two parties and an even seeming "meh" in response to social media and Russian interference in elections. And in almost ALL of those cases, the supreme court won't rule against any of this. This is not to mention election campaigns that are utterly saturated with vicious negative adds. What the shit is going on with American democracy? ShabiDOO 05:49, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

What’s wrong with it? Like all systems of government (and all games) it has an inevitable set of emergent flaws that eventually render it inoperable (unplayable) if it’s not routinely reformed (patched) to account for these problems as they arise. A deeper flaw with our system of government has been exposed and exploited by Newt Gingrich and his ilk these last several decades, and this flaw has led to a feedback loop of cynicism and stagnation. Everyone with a little money or a lot of patience for the game rolls the same class, and as that broken class in serious need of nerfing swells in number it resists the reforms which would keep the context, the game it exists in playable. Even minor, routine operations of government become politicized as this class feels its primacy – its right to pwn the noobz – threatened, so the blood of the body politic runs with elevated pressure and is prone to clotting. If the change comes – when it comes - it comes in violent fits and starts, to the detriment of all. So maybe the problem is that we should listen to the doctors and eat our veggies? Artificius (talk) 18:23, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't get why congress can't just make a national redistricting committee for gerrymandering - I think it's the filibuster, which definitely needs to be limited. I honestly don't see a reason for it. You earned 50 seats, why in the fuck should you need 60 to do anything? Gale5050 (talk) 21:06, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

The simple explanation is that the Democratic leadership fears what the GOP would do without the filibuster if they take the Senate. There are more complex (not to mention more cynical) factors though...-Flandres (talk) 22:09, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

The reason the US congress can't just make a redistricting committee for gerrymandering is that how a state selects its representatives is a decision and power reserved to the states, not to the federal government. The census is federally administered IIRC, but what to do with it is entirely up to your local legislature. Some states are actually making a bit of progress on this front. Artificius (talk) 05:06, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I found the mother-loade

So I was surfing 4Chan's /Pol/ board, looking at shock content and pseudo-intellectual debates, and I found a thread with the theory of a hitherto undiscovered crank master. Not a Jones or Icke, but a Adachi at the very least: Christopher Jon Bjerknes. Mr. Bjerknes alleges that Hitler was a Zionist/Rothschild puppet and a Communist, who would start WWII and lose it on purpose to spread Communism to the world and fulfill an ancient Jewish prophecy by acting as a "Esau/Amelek prosecutor" and perhaps even the fucking Messiah. I am not kidding. he has a website called "JewishRascism" and the Renegade Tribune, a National Socialist website actually wrote a series of articals debunking Bjerknes, called "The Lies of Christopher Bjerknes". Is he significant enough for me to make a page about him? An Advocate (talk) 23:37, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure if he's significant/loud enough to be page-worthy yet. His blog doesn't seem to be very active; just advertising his books, looks like (and judging from the number of Amazon reviews, they're about as popular as a lead balloon). I kinda doubt his ideas will pick up steam either, given how you say even Nazi sites are calling him out (possibly for the wrong reasons). If we have a "list of Nazis" or similar floating around somewhere in articlespace, I think that a brief blurb there would be more fitting than an entire article given his lack of popularity. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 23:59, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Ok, should I add him to the list of cranks on the crank page? An Advocate (talk) 00:01, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Advancing the agenda of a people by wiping out 65% of them in the cruellest death camps ever created. Batshit insane asshole. ShabiDOO 00:42, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

The darnest thing is that if you look in the renegade's debunking of him, Bjerknes can't seem to decide whether he thinks the holocaust happened or not! An Advocate (talk) 00:46, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

That or Webshites, I think. Other folks can chime in too? ℕoir LeSable (talk) 01:58, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Not one of you big brains replying here decided to patrol this user’s edits first. Hmph. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 02:27, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

May I ask what that means, Mussolini? An Advocate (talk) 03:14, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Your account is not autopatrolled; exclamation points show up next to your edits in recent changes for sysops, and only go away when somebody patrols the edit. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 03:24, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

People responded to you without patrolling your edits so I had to go fishing through the diffs and do it while I was on my phone. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 03:41, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

The site (like any intertube site) gets a lot of vandalism. If someone posts, if they show they aren't a completely obvious vandal, will get "autopatrolled". A little while later, and they prove themselves to be sane-ish, we do an initiation where all of us punch them while they say the names of 5 cereal brands demote them further to sysop, to help deal with vandals. If they really are gluttons for punishment, from there they can volunteer to be moderators, in which case the cereal thing applies. CorruptUser 04:18, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

More cover page articles

I constantly find myself on the RationalWiki front page and it is always the same 10 articles over and over again. Could we please have some more stuff on the cover page than these ten? Thanks.SixtyNine (talk) 03:25, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

This page, which has nominees, may be of interest to you, as might this page, which has guidelines about demotion. You are not alone in having thought this recently; the articles for demotion page was only created this year. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 03:31, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm just glad we didn't go with my dumb "articles for braining" name... CorruptUser 04:13, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Also, this page, which are 1-level below cover pages: Category:Silver-level articles. The best way to get more cover stories is to do the hard work of improving articles to that level. Bongolian (talk) 06:52, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Channel 4

I have just started to do a page on the public broadcaster Channel 4. Please feel free to expand it. Euromec (talk) 13:23, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

It's at Draft:Channel 4. Bongolian (talk) 19:04, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Plainlist template

Hey, all. So I noticed earlier today that I've been made into a sysop, only to discover shortly thereafter this isn't that much of a big deal over here.

Still, as a token of my appreciation for this site in general I've lifted Template:Plainlist from our Wikipedia overlords. It's a pretty essential template for creating plain unbulleted lists as it negates the need to use <br /> tags to create a similar effect (and also has the added benefit of being easily identifiable in a page's source).

See this edit for example. Take care! Jay D. Easy (talk) 18:11, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

What the fuck is “Computer”

Please help I am the only trans girl in the planet who does not know how to code. So I signed up for a coding class at university thinking it would be fun and helpful. So far it has instead been, stressful and bad. Also they’re the only class I’ve ever taken that doesn’t do lecture recordings, so I’ve missed the first two lectures. Anyone have good resources on, how do ppl do “MySQL” and “RiPPLE” thanks! 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜

coding is for nerds and they only do it cause they spent there entire lives from early teens do nerd things instead of smoking and stealing booze from their dads drinks cabinet so they can already code by time normal people think it might be useful tool, and they make you feel stupid because they know all the background stuff that all bewildering and confusing and xso boring and they laugh at you because you are learning java like some kind of caveman and its stressful and you have a hang over and didnt do the work, and they just jealous because you are not a nerd, and actually an std means i have had SEX, nerd.

i did not complete the degree. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:23, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

FYI both my sons got 1/1 software engineering degrees - 1 is mildly autistic - no grandkids from him I think, but he got head hunted to Berlin for E120,000 pa and E30,000 sign on, so I am pretty happy with that. He was the one was writing basic before he was 10! The other is pretty happy locally, nice girlfriend, is a great cook, making more than me - wasn't at all obvious he'd be into computing as a young teen. Looking forward to grandies in due course :D Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:15, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

There is one other trans girl who doesn't know how to code. Don't beat yourself up about it, code language sounds nonsensical to be perfectly frank.--April ^Chat? 14:51, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Open up MS Access, create or download a bunch of dummy tables. Use the wizard thing to create the queries for you. Open up the queries and see what SQL code is spat out. Make adjustments, play around with it. Go to the W3 website here, learn more.

SQL is easy, almost everything is of the form "SELECT X FROM Y WHERE Z". Sometimes Y is a single table, sometimes Y is a dozen "joined" tables. Sometimes the SELECT is just the raw data, sometimes you'll have a giant CASE WHEN THEN WHEN THEN WHEN THEN ELSE END. CorruptUser 14:58, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Techpriest Your help here is needed. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 16:33, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Once again, W3 schools, good resource for learning SQL. CorruptUser 16:54, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Agree on W3 schools. A very good reference. If you're having trouble keeping up, make use of the teacher's office time to get help, get your questions answered, and get back up to speed. Bongolian (talk) 17:58, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm willing to try and provide free tutoring if you need it. We could do it through the rational wiki discord server. I love teaching computer programming to people, as I think it is a very empowering tool once you learn to use it. I've also programmed several SQL databases before in my professional career, so I'm familiar with it. Can't tell you much about RiPPLE, unfortunately. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 23:06, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Programmer here. Is "RiPPLE" the exact spelling (i.e. written down, not spoken) of the tech that you're learning? I couldn't find anything about it on DuckDuckGo, but there is a concept called "REPL" (read, evaluate, print, loop) that might be more relevant to a MySQL class. Basically, a REPL is how you input lines of code one-by-one and have them do something immediately, instead of putting your code in a file and running it all at once. 71.95.132.118 (talk) 18:09, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Googling suggests that Ripple is a cryptocurrency programming language; if that's it this is pretty useleess IMHO for beginners. SQL on the otherhand is very much in demand, along with Java/Javascript, Python, "the web suite" (HTML,CSS, various frameworks), and (for lower level) C/C++. There is no way anyone knows everything in IT. Google is your friend.

The ultimate goal in programming is, however, not the language itself per se but learning to thing how to think and divide "I want to do x" into the logical steps the dumb computer needs to know. A left field suggestion in this regard (based on what I see my daughters' kids doing) is a good graphical programming gaming engine like Scratch or Construct 3. At least it is more fun to make simple little games then rote exercises...78.196.23.53 (talk) 21:40, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Python is what I'd recommend if you're starting from a goal of "making shit". It's easily accessible, has a literal fuckton of library support and lots of eager people willing to help (me included, if you have python questions, ask me on the talkpage). Hell, Inferno Bot is written in Python. If you want to learn more about the deeper functioning of a computer, I'd recommend Rust. It's up and coming but it's far more accessible than a lot of the other low-level languages (and actively stops you from shooting yourself in the foot, something which other low-level languages don't even try doing). In terms of support, I'd say it's library support brushes up to python in usability. If you want to make money off of big corporations, then learn Java. It's an awful language for productivity but it will beat teaching a rigid way of programming that other people will understand into you (and is also a decent language to branch out from, Java will also teach you about most OOP concepts). Finally if you want to write code that makes everyone hate you, learn Ruby. Fuck ruby, nobody likes ruby. Techpriest (talk) 21:51, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Also the best book to learn python is completely free: Automating the boring stuff with Python by Al Sweigart. Techpriest (talk) 21:53, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Having only the vaguest memory of BASIC (a primitive programing language) from 20 years earlier, I gave python ago. Using nothing but a free PDF I downloaded online and literally no help, I managed to teach myself enough basics to put together a non-graphical tic tac toe program. I then made a non-graphical video poker game. And then finally a really bad looking graphical version of the video poker game. I did this all in one month with just a few hours of study and tinkering a day. If I can do it, anyone can. Python was relatively easy to learn (at least the basics), and there were tons of free resources to use. ShabiDOO 22:10, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

After my first class: RiPPLE is just the platform we use to do the exercises. Also it’s mainly just database stuff. We’ve started out drawing relational database models instead of codin. We don’t do that for a couple more weeks apparently 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜 05:35, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

You might be buying into a crypto scam with this ripple thing... just warning you in advance. Techpriest (talk) 16:04, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I mean, I did not give them any money (it’s all done by my university), and it seems RiPPLE has nothing to do with computer shit and is just a generic educational platform where they give you quizzes and shit. It might be a crypto scam, but it would be an incredibly intricate one that doesn’t expect you to give them any money or personal info outside of your student number, and also that scams you by giving you online quizzes about how to draw relational database models or whatever it’s called. 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜 03:42, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I found this summary. Haven’t read it all the way through, but it was developed by one of my lecturers from the looks of things (seeing as he’s one of the authors). Nothin about crypto in there from what I can tell but who knows 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜 03:46, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, sounds like it is what is in this link then, a computerized learning platform. Unfortunately, the author chose a name that is the same as this crypto company (whose longest section in the Wiki article is "Litigation")... that's why a couple people here raised a flag. Doesn't sound related at all though. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 17:53, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

In case anyone missed the latest insanity by UShistoryanalyzer

Never in my life have I seen someone argue that Miranda rights statements and the right to a defense attorney were bad things. Holy shit. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 14:40, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

M E R C I F U L G O D. I stopped following this thread when it just seemed to be a re-tread of previous death penalty/criminal justice discussions we've had with him. I just re-read it after what duce said and saw analyzer talking about the horrors of Miranda rights. Things seem to have gotten a bit out of hand...-Flandres (talk) 14:55, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Guy also said we need to bring back firing squads and electric chairs because lethal injection is too humane, apparently. What's stopping him from suggesting iron maidens and quartering? --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 16:58, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

I was half-worried he would say something favorable about Zyklon B.-Flandres (talk) 17:24, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Once again, we see that the hardline defense of retributive justice is nothing more than barely disguised psychosis and murderous bloodlust. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 17:48, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

"I don't give a fuck about civility." —GrammarCommie, 2 July 2021 [9] UShistoryanalyzer (talk) 17:58, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

And? Your whataboutism and ad hom achieve nothing other than further diminishing you in the eyes of your peers. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:03, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

😂😂😂 As if you're one with the standing to lecture me about that. UShistoryanalyzer (talk) 18:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm still stunned that I've now seen someone argue that Miranda and Gideon were bad decisions. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 19:40, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not surprised honestly. USHA has been so hardline in favor of the death penalty that it's only natural for him to embrace the idea of industrialized slaughter. (Yes, that is a reference to what you think it's a reference to.) ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 21:04, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

And he says this while also saying Democrats are sabotaging due process. WTF? --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 21:24, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

This is the type of shit that makes me question my pro-capital punishment opinion.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:45, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Hope you don't plan on a trip to Israel, Palestine (probably not a good idea to begin with), Thailand or France

https://news.yahoo.com/u-cdc-urges-avoiding-travel-194156161.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

With COVID cases on the rise in these nations, the CDC issued a level 4 travel advisory for these areas. --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 22:09, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

All of those countries would be amazing to visit and are on my bucket list, but I’m glad I don’t need to go anywhere right now. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 22:46, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I actually was in Paris last week. Honestly from my perspective I'd be more worried about places with low vaccination rates and high COVID flareups like Louisiana and Mississippi, or Trump ass-kissing governors that consider ignoring basic hygiene a part of owning the libs (see the governors of Florida and Texas). COVID protocol was in my opinion pretty good in Paris --facial masks required for public indoor areas and transport, and a pass sanitaire (proof of vaccination or negative COVID test, the CDC card worked for visitors) was required for large events or public places with a lot of people (like museums). Seems like this week the French government plans to greatly increase the places where the pass is required, which I see as fine at least in principle. Paris / France also have a decent vaccination rate at the moment (around 65% first dose and 54% "fully vaccinated") and that's despite a very slow initial rollout (one person was impressed that I was fully vaccinated in mid May).

Not sure what the situation is like in the countryside, I know there were a bunch of noisy protests surrounding the pass sanitaire while I was there, and I imagine pockets of derp exist in France. It's still probably a risk one many would not take for pleasure alone, which I can easily see. But to me the Level 4 is a bit bemusing considering that Florida right now has the same daily case rate as France, with 1/3 the population. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 01:24, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

This is a great site to compare lots of international Covid stats. If you look up the vaccination graphs you can see that the US and the UK have both lost the early lead they had over other high-income countries. And the developing world is, sadly, way behind.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 14:46, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Articles in need of expansion

Hello! I have been working on the article of one Miles Mathis because I didn't think the article gave him what he deserved. the guy's version of the Unified Conspiracy Theory and/or International Jewish Conspiracy (if you want to know, literally everything is fake. Everyone is an "gay Jewish actor" and faked their deaths) is so convoluted and insane that it needed greater justice, just imagine the logistics. I am asking if there is anything our community thinks should be expanded upon? An Advocate (talk) 23:13, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

New 435 districts

When will the maps of all the new 435 HoR districts will be released? Are they released at the same time across all 50 states or only one at a time? Would really want to see some maps right now. SixtyNine (talk) 04:48, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

If I recall correctly fivethirtyeight has an interactive map for redistricting. Not much will be ready for a while-the necessary data from the 2020 census isn't even out yet.-Flandres (talk) 04:55, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm finding Ballotpedia helpful in making sense of what's going on with that. Kntai (talk) 09:56, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Cuomo has resigned

https://www.aol.com/news/york-gov-andrew-cuomo-resigns-160600653.html Announced this morning at 11:45am ET. Aaronmichael5 16:30, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Good riddance.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:48, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Fully deserved!-Flandres (talk) 19:49, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Glad he's gone. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 21:21, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Goody good. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 22:04, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

At least he had the integrity to resign when his actions were revealed. Not many politicians resign when they land in hot water. --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 23:05, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Don’t give him too much credit. He knew damn well that the Assembly would have impeached his ass, and he’d end up in a very public and embarrassing trial. This is just him taking the Nixon way out and sparing himself. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 23:31, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah I kinda wish he was just forcibly yeeted and had to be glitter bombed rather than just quietly get out. The harm he's done is still there and alive. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 23:33, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

One point for the good guys SixtyNine (talk) 00:01, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

ehhh, in a few years we'll hear how he was railroaded like Al Franken. Dutchbag (talk) 09:38, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

From liberals perhaps. His cult following is certainly slavish enough. But from the left wing? I think not. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 12:18, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Franken and Cuomo were very different situations, with very different levels of power. If anything I think the GOP in NY will miss Cuomo because he gave them a seat at the table, and I'm certain the next elected governor will not.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:52, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Cuomo was investigated by the state AG's office, and they found that he groped multiple women, created a hostile work environment for dozens of others, and used his executive power to unlawfully retaliate against women who tried to oppose him. There should be no coming back from that. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 19:10, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

For those interested, here's a PDF of the AG's report into the Cuomo business. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 19:10, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Wtf is this

Has this shit (CW for racial slur) been happening to anyone else? Or am I just unlucky here. 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜 13:34, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

What am I supposed to be looking at in that picture?CorruptUser 14:19, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

the work of a troll since reverted AMassiveGay (talk) 14:24, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh, the black stuff on top. Yeah, saw that a while back, reverted too. It's fun to see them put some effort into their trolling instead of just blanking a page. CorruptUser 14:55, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Minus points for script kiddie posing though. "You keep using that word hacked, I do not think it means what you think it means" PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 15:14, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@Asela A small child has recently discovered the pigmentation tool for Wikimedia. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 15:15, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

How do i revert it when it happens thanks. It was on like 5-10 pages that I checked lmao 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜 15:25, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@Asela Since you have sysop you can just use the rollback feature from the recent changes page. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 20:22, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Wait so did the person just make a bunch of changes to different pages? Or was it some kind of “special page”? Sorry just when I looked at the pages I could seem to find the part causin the issue in the source code I guess. Maybe it’d been undone by that point and I just hadn’t refreshed ig 💜 ASELA^कुरा 💜 00:05, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

At least some of the vandalism that resulted in this was done by this account (look at the two hidden edits). One of them affected the Politics sidebar template which would affect any page with this, which would be a lot of pages on this Wiki. Not sure how that affected the All Things in Moderation talk page, unfortunately, but there may be other edits I am not seeing. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 00:39, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Critical Race Theory

Hey RatWiki, I am constantly being bombarded by news about bans on CRT at schools across America. I am trying to understand what the hell CRT even is. What the hell is Critical Race Theory and why is politicians are so angry about it? SixtyNine

In layman's terms- it is a legal-academic study involving a critical examination about racial politics in the United States. An example would be teach an unbiased history of the US. Now the GOP wants it banned because it goes against their nationalist views. Many right wing politicians want things like the Trail of Tears and slavery to be glossed over. It is similar to how religious groups want to shoehorn creationism in schools under science sounding names and terms (Intelligent Design). --USDA Certified Organic (talk) 00:19, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm quite certain that CRT is most definitely biased. CorruptUser 00:30, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

CRT is an academic movement saying that American institutions are tainted with racism on a fundamental level. Laws, social norms...all of these play a role in perpetuating racism even if they seem benign. Some of its ideas are influential because the U.S.A is having a lot of deep-seated racism exposed in recent years, but the movement itself is pretty small.

On the other hand, the term itself is mostly used as a boogeyman in popular discussion because a healthy amount of well-off white people are still triggered beyond belief by any discussion of racism that is not skin-deep and overly idealist. Most people ranting about it cannot define it accurately, and these school bans are hilarious because barely any (if any) schools teach CRT. In this case, CRT is "any discussion of racism that offends insecure white people." It's a less vile way of saying "Cultural Marxism."-Flandres (talk) 00:53, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

The function of CRT is a divisive blame-shifting tactic. The despicable, racist evils of the Democratic Party that covertly perpetuate to the modern era are presented as a sin of the entirety of America. UShistoryanalyzer (talk) 01:21, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I know I shouldn't bite, but if the modern Democrats are the real racists, then why are Texas Republicanss trying to remove things like why white supremacy and the KKK are morally wrong from the school ciriculum? Plutocow (talk) 14:01, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Ezekiel 18:20, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." Bongolian (talk) 02:30, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

That makes perfect sense, not blaming the modern Democrat party for the sins of the Klan. Will you condemn the lie that the Republican party had something to do with it? Dutchbag (talk) 03:31, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@Dutchbag Elaborate. What do you mean by "Will you condemn the lie that the Republican party had something to do with it?"? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:01, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Bongolian seems to imply that yes, the Klan tradition originated within the Democratic party, but the sins of the fathers don't fall upon the modern Democrats. Yet the Republican party - who were the first victims of Klan violence - get blamed for the Klan, which is a complete lie. Furthermore, there are virtually no lynchings today (maybe one per decade, not one every three weeks as was common as late as the New Deal era), yet lies persist about some kind of connection between the Republican party then, and now, with the Klan. Dutchbag (talk) 03:40, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Dutchbag Start reading. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 03:45, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

C'mon now, you have to do better than that. Bongolian admits the Klan started with Democrats, but you can't blame their kids for the father's sins. However, under the party switch myth, you can blame the kids. Dutchbag (talk) 03:55, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Dutchbag I know you're just spitting off talking points, but show me how it's a myth. Because for some reason the party of Lincoln really likes the Confederacy. And the Nazis. And the KKK... And the KKK likes them right back. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 04:00, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

(ec) At the height of Klan terror in the 1890s, Democrats were lynching one black every three days. By the New Deal up to WWII, Democrats were lynching blacks at a rate of 1 every three weeks. That's progress. When was the last time anyone ever heard of Republicans ever involved in lynchings? Dutchbag (talk) 04:05, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

It is an out-of-date theory that the nutbar right has bitten into trying to generate racial hostility. It looks like it's not working thank christ. UncleKrampus (talk) 01:52, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Why would you say it is out of date? ShabiDOO 02:11, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shabidoo Well, that's a good question. First of all, it is a law-based theory and the laws have not remained the same. Secondly, I see it as unscientific, as it is really a legal theory. The condition of Black people is different today, than in the 1970's when all that was going on, the CR movement, the Viet Nam war, the urban unrest, and the historical tangent created by that and more than I know to say. Thirdly, all historical theories are subject to revision, and I don't mean to pick on the fellas responsible for CRT. Fourthly, I don't think much of theories not solidly based in science and am liable to libel any one of them. These are all pretty good reasons, I suppose. UncleKrampus (talk) 17:10, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

So far the best summarized explanation I have seen comes from electoral-vote.com, a site run by academics. It's pretty lefty academic sort of theory, an offshoot of critical legal studies which in itself ties back to the Marx-Freud inspired critical theory. So you get hints of Marxism (from the original critical theory) and the Black Power movement and other 1970s lefty sort of movements.

A theory as nebulous as CRT cannot possibly be confined to the decade it first developed. While it may have its roots in legal theory it has broadened into issues of civil rights not confined to legal issues. Laws have changed...so have the scope and details of works written by CRTists. I do not know of any single field of study which has not adapted to social, political, technological and scientific change over the decades. To say democratic theory is out of date would be equally strange...as it originated in a political reality we would find almost completely foreign and it was born in the world of philosophy but has obviously not been confiend to just philosophy but broadened into political science, sociology and even economics. ShabiDOO 18:11, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

At the risk of appearing to be captious, The Standard Model of Social Science itself has been claimed, by some, to be out-of-date. I am intellectually helpless to fend off the likelihood of conclusions born from the dilemmas posed by determinism. Just to address your one example: pure democracy is an ideal, it doesn't exist instantiated anywhere as you know. Our American democracy comes down to us in a corrupted form, and it is in fact out of date.UncleKrampus (talk) 18:43, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

At any rate, the six points written at this site (taken from a book written by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic on the subject) seem like a good overview of what the acadameic part of CRT is, even though the authors note that the theory is kind of amorphous. The book the site recommends (Critical Race Theory: An Introduction) itself sounds like a good introductory text if you want to go further in depth.

Academia is not as universally far left as the GOP thinks it is, and as E-V.com notes some of it is provocative even in academic circles. On the other hand, because it is an obscure leftist theory, it has become a general boogieman for the GOP to use to promote the "white grievance" theme that gets the working white class to the polls. Same with promoting the rah-rah "American exceptionalism" view, the GOP paradigm is tied to this and CRT is something the GOP can point to as Bad Folks for not always being a jingoist cheerleader or something.

It's a great boogeyman for the GOP because it was so obscure. Doing something like banning critical race theory from primary schools does nothing, because no primary school was teaching it. Few if any GOP politicians can summarize what critical race theory actually is. They don't need to though. The mere thought of this theory sure has got all those people who spend their life at Breitbart waiting to get pissed off about things pissed off again. And the GOP is all about courting the "I'm not racist but this webshite blog about a Black person is pissing me off because reasons" voter. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 03:03, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I had a look at the 6 points on the e_v.com site and to be honest, I quite surprise it took so long for the GOP to get so crazy over CRT since it has been around for decades. So I assume it must be all rhetoric. I am honestly not a fan of CRT, since the assumption that all (or most) white people is racist and want to disadvangate people of colour is so stupid. And I say this as a person of colour. SixtyNine

It doesn't say all white people are racistAMassiveGay (talk) 06:52, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

The true leftie left is honestly very weak in the United States, at least for now. Something like Pacifica Radio for instance is truly on the left side of the spectrum, but since its existence is only at a few various urban community radio stations, most people probably aren't even aware of its existence. Better for certain GOP types to attack CNN as supposed commie enemies then, which is laughable. Meanwhile, far right blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and his numerous imitators are easy to find. (From what I remember, the New York Times's 1619 Project may have been what led the GOP to finally discover this theory, but I can't find any links at the moment.)

I am not a huge fan personally of what I've heard of the academic "critical race theory", which admittedly is Cliff Notes understanding, so I might be wrong. At any rate, it is no secret that tribalism exists and it is no secret that tribalism shapes laws. It is also no secret, contrary to many people's instincts, that "race" is a socially constructed concept. Where it fails for me is its seeming tendency to be a pure black and white American framing, and some overaggressive points that seems to oversimplify how tribalism shapes laws. Critical race theory does not explain, say, the caste system of India, but tribalism does. We've moved in history from where Germans massacred Jews in WWII, as everyone knows, to a point in time where Jewish supremacists in Israel shouting "Death to Arabs" is an actual thing (a small minority thing for the later, but still). Tribalism explains that. Critical race theory does not. Even from a United States perspective, it misses the mark on other minority groups. Asians have had a different experience compared to other American minorities, for instance, and I've heard some voices of dissent from Asian-American minorities on the CRT framing. LGBTQ challenges at first glance seem to be ignored. The challenge is to move beyond primitive ape instincts, and I'm not sure what critical race theory accomplishes in this regard.

At any rate, honestly there really wasn't a need or the GOP to call for bans. Many historians found the 1619 Project meh. Critical race theory had never been mainstream sociology, until now, it was fringe. It would have never gotten anywhere on its own. But it has served the GOP well as a dogwhistle for its racist base. The calls for bans, however, have conversely led to some people to actually consider using critical race theory and the 1619 Project in classrooms. Who knew, eh? For these types of teachers, I think there's a general goal to avoid whitewashing and actually teach that some of the United States hasn't treated minorities well over the years (a "no shit Sherlock" statement considering there was a war fought over exactly that, but I guess a "controversial" one for certain types of people). Even if both of the above are a wee bit meh and maybe overly leftie in this regard, not whitewashing history is a good goal to have. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:57, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@PanGalacticGargleBlaster From my understanding of the cliff notes version, CRT posits that institutional racism exists in the United States, primarily in the legal system (because it's a legal theory), and that this affects black people in the modern day. Of course it doesn't address anything else. You might as well ask why the theory of evolution doesn't explain how life or the universe began. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:13, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I should probably also mention that CRT is an advanced law course, second or third year if I remember correctly. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 14:18, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Maybe we should ease back just a little on the left/right dichotomy. Left and right stands as a useful tool for vaguely placing parties in a spectrum but you should be careful and weary of overusing it and overgeneralising. The world's political ideologies and people's own political stances cannot be meaningfully divided into two groups (even if you subdivide those groups into centrist to extreme subgroups). It should work as a starting point barometer, not as a general classification. As for critical race theory, it is a nebulous concept. If you extrapolate more academic and less post-modernist narrative type works, their goal is to mainly normalise recognition of institutionalised racism. This is an extremely worthy goal as institutionalised racism is obviously the case for anyone who dares to look and denial of this is very widespread. Even in countries which have reputations for more tolerance like say Canada or Finland are still suffer from institutionalised racism and you will meet fierce resistance from even progressively minded people if you suggest the extent of that racism. What do they hope to accomplish? Recognition of that this racism is system deep and the motivation to chip away at their roots and slowly reform. The amount of garbage mischaracterisations I have read about CRT, including here is astonishing. The goal is NOT to brand all white people as racist or make white people culpable for past misdeeds (or even current misdeeds). That is what opponents of CRT say to create a boogeyman out of something that shouldn't even be controversial. The only problem with CRT, is that some of the work takes a wishy washy narrative like post-modern approach that deviates from academic rigour, goes too far into relativism or uses evasive lingo and terminology that is hard to read (and possibly overgeneralises) making it difficult to critique. That is certainly not all CRT. It should not be something to be afraid or weary of. ShabiDOO 14:21, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Reparations

The unstated topic is that a lot of this has to do with the Reparations debate. Reparations really do mean all White people are culpable (and Asians and Hispanics too, for that matter). The money doesn't come out of thin air, there's no way to give Reparations that doesn't act as a transfer of wealth from non-Black people to Black people. CorruptUser 17:58, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

And reparations is one of those inevitably divisive and scary topics that automatically generates a voting bloc in solid opposition. Let's face it, reparations is a political non-starter, even as 'defund the police' is scary and a stupid slogan that you suspect was an opposition plant. And all of my ancestors who weren't in Sweden before 1916 were as far as I can tell 100% Yankee, even as I am 100% Yankee. All who fought, fought for America. My reparations are already paid. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 21:31, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

As a European, the entire debacle of CRT as a thing is... curious to observe to say the least. From my end, it really reeks of being a manufactroversy. It's not a cause the left was advocating for in any form directly, it was something that the right randomly started whining about a few weeks after Biden got elected. Reminds me a lot of "SJW" in it's stereotype, right down to the fact that I've never seen it used as anything other than a generic scary boogeyman. Techpriest (talk) 22:08, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@CorruptUser No. It means the US GOVERNMENT is culpable. You know, because it made slavery legal? Because the Government kept slavery legal, enforced it, and protected as an institution. What are you, mentally enfeebled? Are you too stupid to understand that if the government wronged someone, then that wrong should be put right? Is the idea of legal compensation for past wrongs (under the fucking law) too much for your retarded brain to comprehend?!?!? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:11, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

You know what? Don't bother responding. Whatever you say is almost guaranteed to be wrong because you won't do the bare minimum to inform yourself on the topic. I fucking regret doing the bare minimum, and even more, since apparently I could have learned nothing and shat verbal diarrhea from my lips while being an absolute poster child for the Dunning-Kruger effect. Apparently learning shit is now fucking too much of a hassle for RationalWikians... ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:34, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Plus the government enabled Jim Crow legislation, allowed blacks to be intentionally under-educated, took no action against lynching and race massacres, and used tactics like red-lining to concentrate black people into impoverished ghettos. It’s about a lot more than slavery. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 22:41, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@DuceMoosolini Thank you for correcting me. Genuinely, than you. I was so pissed I forgot the rest of the shit the US government pulled. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:48, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@DuceMoosolini I'm not disagreeing with you on this, but that's not my point in the slightest. The underlying issue with all the anti-CRT hysteria, and really anything to do with discussions on racism, is that there's a concern the discussion will move towards reparations, which as Smerdis noted is a complete non-starter. CorruptUser 22:57, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I wasn’t really responding to anyone. I was just noting that the issue of historical mistreatment of black Americans extends far beyond slavery. Many of the crimes committed by this nation against black people happened in post-bellum Union states, too. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 23:09, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Also don't forget that New England used to allow slavery as well, and in terms of the wealth generated by cotton, where exactly do you think the textile mills were? CorruptUser 23:15, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Which brings me to my broader point, that the legacy of institutional racism is an albatross that hangs on the neck of the entire country. And the fact that the USA beat the CSA does not absolve our nation of the crimes it committed after. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 23:22, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

The discussion moving to reparations.... Is that something we should really be concerned about, implied by the language, because on things I worry about in the race relations in the U.S., reparations isn't one. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 23:34, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘There is a variety of opinion on culpability for slavery and the Jim Crow era. There would have been cotton mills in New England with or without slavery because cotton was in demand worldwide. Black people helped to build America, but their labor accounted for about 14% of the labor force. Some, not many I hope, think that Americans are descendants of slaves and slave owners. That is trivially false. While slaves were about one seventh of the US population in 1860, there were only about 400,000 slave owners, and a white population of about 27 million. It stands to reason that the Federal government was unable to free slaves in the American south without a fight. Thousands of poor immigrants from Ireland gladly took the Federal bounty of $100 to take up arms and march on the south in the Army of the Potomac. Also, about 100 million immigrants arrived in the US over the 20th century. They may have benefited from the isolation of American blacks. One should keep in mind that the economic hegemony that produced slavery was beyond the influence of working class people. To say now that working people are holding the bag for economic injustices they are not responsible for creating is a weak political hypothesis. UncleKrampus (talk) 23:37, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@UncleKrampus Who passed the laws? Who allowed the wrongs to occur? The government of the United States of America. Who therefore, is liable? The government of the United states of America. Every one of you who speak out against the idea of reparations betray your ignorance of the topic with every word you utter. How do you solve racist policing? By addressing the entire institution from top to bottom and reforming or replacing it as needed. How do you address gentrification and racist hiring practices? By addressing poverty and income inequality as a whole. How do you think I know all this shit? BECAUSE I READ ABOUT THESE FUCKING TOPICS!!!! I fucking feel like an evolutionary biologist talking to a bunch of creationists. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 00:07, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

The only sound argument against monetary reparations is that a lump sum cash payment has no chance of overturning the effect generations of institutional racism is various forms has had on the lives of people living today. The worst you can say about it is that its nowhere near enough. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 01:19, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

True. I feel like that is not brought up enough in these sorts of debates. I would also like to point out truly "leveling the playing field" (as I often see it called) when it comes to racial discrimination would take political action on a scale that...well, "unprecedented" is putting it far too lightly.-Flandres (talk) 01:35, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Well GC I see you are passionate about these things. What gives with the "ping" thing? It didn't notify me. Some anthropologists claim there is a type of culture that supposes magical explanations for misfortune. I think Ruth Benedict described it in one of her books (Patterns of Culture). e.g., tribes on the Northwest Coast of America, once believed that misfortune was due to witchcraft or the evil doings of ones neighbors. In short, someone else must pay for ones misfortune. It was not uncommon, when there was an unexpected death in a family, for one of the members of that family to go looking for someone to kill as a response to even the score, so to speak. Other tribes, especially in the southwest (Hopi), would explain such events as part of the life cycle. I claim that the men who ratified the US constitution and the men who started the civil war represent the same "government," but also that they are different from the present government. The Immortality of governments has always been a subjective claim. UncleKrampus (talk) 02:03, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

So you are saying that the US government enslaving hundreds of thousands of people because of their race, and then later governments ensuring a lack of equality from those liberated slaves and then later governments enacting laws which make real justice for black people a challenge...was not necessarily immoral? Are there any circumstances where a government enslaving people because of their race...is not immoral Krampus? ShabiDOO 03:15, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@UncleKrampus Are you seriously trying to justify not paying one's legal dues with fucking semantics? Have you no fucking standards? Just call black people fucking niggers already and be done with it. Just openly be racist. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 02:26, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Just putting it out there (not directed at anyone in particular)... The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:55, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

If intellectual honesty meant spewing as much mindless profanity as possible at people who don't agree with me, I'd be a tenured professor somewhere. Not that I'm immune to it or anything. I actually have a history degree, so I know how to do research. Just like you, I am not a god among men, so I don't expect people to unequivocally agree with everything I say. And if I'm off to hell, perhaps I'll run into you there. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:19, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

The Blade of the Northern Lights is recommending a book (How to Win Friends and Influence People) that teaches people to feign interest in others so as to "screw things out of them" (Sinclair Lewis), and was wildly popular in Nazi Germany.[10] I read it… it sucked. Bongolian (talk) 03:30, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

It is pretty dull, actually, but like 1984 worth it to read just so you can say you did. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:46, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie You really need to check your tone. You are seriously sounding like your are in a tamtrum. We are trying to have a civilised debate and you are ruining it. In my opinion, I seriously don't think it will be possible to send reparation for actions for things that happen over 150 years ago is a bit much. Should Rome send reparation to Carthage over the genocide in 146 BC? - SixtyNine

Anyone else wan to fucking pick at my tone? Or strawman my explicitly laid out position based on actually reading up on what reparations are? Speak up. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 03:29, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Less than a minute. That's how long it took to pull up an overview article from Wikipedia. But of course, Wikipedia is the neutral encyclopedia anyone can edit. Here's one two opinion articles laying out positions similar to my own. Oh wait, there's actual debate about how this idea should work? Wow, maybe you'd all know that if you read up on it. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 03:56, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't want read self harm ideation again. Stop, all of you. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 04:10, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Of course I would love to hear GrammarCommie response to this but if I make a rebuttal, GC will block me again. But anyway, why should we do reparations for things that happen 150 years ago. Why don't Rome send reparations to Carthage? Instead of bring people of different people together it will be drive people apart. SixtyNine

I’m not into reparations as a concept, but I need to point out that this wasn’t 150 years ago. People are today living in ghettos that the government deliberately kept in poverty. Victims of the Tulsa massacre are alive today. People who were brutalized under Jim Crow are alive today. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 04:25, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

True, the Wikipedia article that GC shows is for reparations for slavery, not for Tusla or the Jim Crow laws. I would like to see reparations for those events since people TODAY actually experienced it then their great-great-great grandparents or something. Though the Tulsa massacre happened over a 100 years, I am not sure what reparations they could be. I mean all that alive today were kids when that event happened. They didn't owned any property. So I assume mental health services SixtyNine,Discussion

I’d be wholeheartedly against delivering a check to people just based on their skin color. However, I also think that the government needs to direct funding to historically redlined places like South Chicago or East St. Louis (both also the sites of race massacres) in order to help uplift the populations from poverty. You can’t change the past, but maybe we can stop the past from shadowing the future. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 04:36, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I definitely support getting people out of poverty and focusing on areas that have been disadvantages like buliding public infrastructure like schools, libraries and colleges. However, I don't think slavery reparations will do anything except bring 150 years of history back into the present. Plus the government of 1860 isn't the same as it is in 2020. The world has came a long time since slavery ended and Jim Crow laws have ended SixtyNine

And I agree something needs to be done, but both Affirmative Action and Reparations are too blunt. As someone said here or elsewhere, it should be class-based Affirmative Action. The current system of AA is broken because if you have two Black kids and one gets sent to prison because of a broken justice system, it's the other kid that gets a leg up in getting into a top school or a good job while the first kid can get fucked as far as the system is concerned. CorruptUser 04:42, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Also, I've said this before, but I think that employers should have a bit more immunity from the actions of employees with a criminal record. What I see happening is if an employee has a record, and there's an incident with a customer, the record is brought up as "proof" the employer created a problem. So even though the employee might've been a good candidate, too bad, the company doesn't need the aggravation. This is also why any time there's any sort of "incident" in a minimum wage job, the employee tends to be fired, because if there is a second "incident", well, there's a paper trail. Just imagine if the police were this overzealous in firing cops, but they have qualified immunity. So if you protect the employers, they start hiring ex-cons, and then the revolving door that is prison is smashed and maybe we could get the prison population down to 6-figs again. CorruptUser 04:51, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘"Why doesn't Rome give reparations to Carthage" is a pretty dumb red herring. Mainly because the Roman Empire hasn't existed for centuries, with the last remnant dying out at 1453, while the U.S. government of today is very clearly the same entity that profitted off of slave labor around 150 years ago. Plutocow (talk) 05:00, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

You're still buying into a flawed premise @Plutocow. As @DuceMoosolini was correct in reminding me earlier, it's a lot more than slavery. @CorruptUser So all the policy proposals I laid out are too blunt to handle over 300 years of abuse? Or maybe you're arguing against a strawman again. Maybe you should argue against my actual positions, rather than whatever bullshit keeps popping into your head. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 11:42, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

The easiest solution to this sort of topic is programs designed to help reduce inequality overall. Any fair policy in this regard will likely "lift the boats" of African Americans in greater proportion due to the historical injustice. Politically, due to lingering racism, I think many "reparations" actions that would specifically target African-Americans would not "sell" well unless you can find solutions akin to some programs for Native Americans, like the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, where public opposition was not too strong. I can't think of any personally that would work. At any rate, since the US's high Gini coefficient is also a big problem, programs to help reduce inequality would help solve multiple issues at once (including other non-Black minorities with historical issues). PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 13:31, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@PanGalacticGargleBlaster You're telling a political nerd something he already knows. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 13:37, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

My position is based around countering abstracted and technical racism. To reference Lee Atwater, I'm not basing my positions on policy around people saying slurs, but around laws that are subtextually racist. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 13:41, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

You told me specifically not to bother responding to you. So for the most part, I won't. CorruptUser 13:48, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Wow, that's a lot of text. Does anyone else have trouble getting notified? GC has pinged me a couple of times and I have not been systemically informed. By the way GC, I am impressed with your fervor. Am I mistaken or did you not state, here in the Saloon sometime last year, that you were opposed to reparations for various practical reasons? What changed your mind? @ Shabidoo: with regard to your question "So you are saying that the US government enslaving hundreds of thousands of people because of their race, and then later governments ensuring a lack of equality from those liberated slaves and then later governments enacting laws which make real justice for black people a challenge...was not necessarily immoral?" In a word, no. The number of slaves was tens of millions, but it was not the Federal government enslaving them: it was the several states. I should like to see class action suits against confederate states to see how far the claimants could go with that approach. UncleKrampus (talk) 18:51, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Slaves were allowed in DC and other federally controlled territories, not to mention various federal acts such as the Fugitive Slave Act that protected slavery. It would be absurd to say that the federal government held no responsibility for slavery, especially considering that ten of the first twelve presidents were slave owners. Plutocow (talk) 18:56, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

And then of course there's the Reconstruction era institutional racism (the original KKK, lynching, under-the-table attempts to retain slave labor, straight up domestic terrorism), the Jim Crow era institutional racism (Lynching, domestic terrorism, redlining, the second iteration of the KKK, literal laws prohibiting housing loans from the US federal government in any neighborhood with non-white people, Segregation, educational discrimination, etc), modern institutional racism (stop and frisk, racialized police abuse, the war on drugs, over-policing in black neighborhoods, disparities in how the death penalty is applied across racial lines, gentrification, more housing discrimination, more educational discrimination, generational wealth disparities, literally just all the shit from Jim Crow that wasn't obvious at first glance)... As for fervor, I literally just read up on this shit.

The best you've been able to muster is "we shouldn't punish all whites", which then shifted to "we shouldn't punish the working class" which shifted too "wow you actually engage with the topic" and is now "it wasn't the federal government's fault, only punish the Bad States".

As for my previous position, I changed it after learning more about the topic. You know, that thing you people don't do. And twice now, nay, thrice, I've made my position on reparations (for all of the previous wrongs) clear. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 19:34, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

It's a lot to take in on how thoroughly embedded racism is. It's really too bad people misunderstand it and reduce all the theory behind reparations to "I don't think I individually owe people", but I think the spirit of reparations is a broader scope than individual responsibility, similar to ACAB and defund the police, which was brought up in the thread. I'm not sure how reparations are defined but while I agree with its spirit and I think Black Lives Matter, I don't think payments go anywhere near the horrific grossly unfair centuries long kicking down, exploitation and spitting on black Americans, where people fought the bloodiest war on U.S. history over these practices, only for disgusting policy to keep on going for another century. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 19:50, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Sigh. Krampus. I will phrase my question differently: So you are saying that the certain state governments permitting the enslavement of people because of their race...was not necessarily immoral?" ShabiDOO 20:03, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

No. You know, I have a special respect for you because you appear to have some training. Why would you even think that?UncleKrampus (talk) 20:23, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Because Krampus, you said: "The Immortality of governments has always been a subjective claim." I am curious to what extent this moral relativism of your goes. ShabiDOO 20:51, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

As with Plato, ideas are immortal, but their reifications are not. It is dubious to assume that the morality of a people, a nation, belongs not just to its time, but to all time. One might imagine such ideas harbor original sin. Now, I am not here to disprove catholic-style notions. They are worthy of interrogation, however.UncleKrampus (talk) 21:10, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

So are you a moral relativist or not? ShabiDOO 21:47, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shabidoo Moral relativism is in some sense an incoherent meta-ethic, when applied to the example of Civil-War America. Much of what transpired at that time was widely viewed as immoral. There was, in fact, no uniform morality at the time of the civil war. The moralities of the time were divided between free and slave labor, violent and irrational. Slave labor, some today contend, was never economically efficient. The very moral fabric of the time did not hold. We look back today, clearly viewing one side, the Federalist side, as the right side. Was the Confederacy right to secede? If you say "no," you are prolonging the practice of slavery, perhaps for decades. If I play that game I must conclude the South was right to secede, as it were the only way to end slavery in America. The statements, "the South should not have upheld the practice of slavery," and "The South should not have seceded from the union," are both true, yet somehow incommensurate. Come to my talk page if you need more details, answers, etc.UncleKrampus (talk) 22:12, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I am super confused by most of your text here. You say that the morality of x has always been a subjective claim. But you also seem to reject moral relativism. I do not understand how you can make, and stand by the first claim without being a moral relativist. Could you please explain this further?

As for your analysis of the civil war through moral-relativism, I cannot make sense out of it. There are many forms of moral relativism and no moral system is "in a sense a meta-ethic" when applied to a specific moral problem. It either is a meta-ethical system or it isn't. And it is the same kind of system regardless of which moral problem you apply it to. Moral relativsim when it is not absolute is usually dependent on another moral system. There are very few moral systems I know in which the economics of slavery is relevant to its morality of one race subjugating anohter one. The only system in which it is relevant that I can think of is ethical egoism, which is a system embraced by few philosophers and no stable societies I am aware of. ShabiDOO 02:45, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘My discussion is meant to show that moral relativism isn't useful as a metatheory. I don't believe I ever wrote "the morality of x has always been a subjective claim." I certainly don't mean that. Following Searle, if people believe a moral precept, such a belief is ontologically objective, but epistemologically subjective. It is debatable whether a complete set of moral systems can be well ordered by desirability through any meta-ethical system. As far as "There are very few moral systems I know in which the economics of slavery is relevant to its morality of one race subjugating another one," that may be true, but there is no theory of one race subjugating another for reasons other than economics, apart from religious conquest. I suppose the new testament offers such a reason implicitly because slavery is not condemned anywhere in it and slaves are encouraged to work hard for their masters, and the old testament encourages wars of conquest. Now that's a bad theory, but it was used and frequently. As you know it was well disliked by the 19th century. Moral absolutism is also problematic. I apologize if that wasn't clear. Really, it is sort of a pain finding your questions here in this wall of text. I will answer anything you like on my talk page. UncleKrampus (talk) 03:39, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I realise now where the confusion came from. You said imorTality whereas I read immorality (without the T). So that was my misreading. Though to be honest I am a little more confused because I do not understand how the imorTality of something like a government can be subjective. Could you explain that a little? ShabiDOO 11:19, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

It is not only a lot to take in, it is yet to be thoroughly demonstrated how embedded racism is...in what exactly? Not exactly a shiboleth, yet vague enough for most Americans not to want to understand your emotional outcries. Not saying it can't be found. Looking backwards is a tough way to move forwards. And GC where did you get from what I wrote "we shouldn't punish all whites?" I would never make such an argument. I would say that reparations would be looked on as a punishment by the majority including millions of POC, people who look like AOC, for example. By the way, it's not my responsibility that most people don't agree with and won't accept cash payouts to the descendants of slaves. It doesn't matter to me either way because I don't know whether it would cause more harm than good. Studying history won't answer that question for you GC. You are, of course, free to guess the answer.UncleKrampus (talk) 20:23, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I don’t think GC was arguing for a cash payout to block people, and I explicitly rejected the idea earlier. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 20:26, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I like the idea of socially engineering visible disparities away. So, I guess I don't get what some folks are expecting.UncleKrampus (talk) 20:32, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@DuceMoosolini I was not. I literally linked to a different position three times. Krampus is now explicitly strawmanning my position. I would hope that the Moderators would seek to discourage such shameless dishonesty as fervently as they seek to discourage the use of slurs. I really would hope that, because otherwise they aren't doing their jobs. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 20:34, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Now wait a minute GC. I may be guilty of not comprehending your true intention in your comments, but I do not mean to misrepresent them. If you tell me your opinion is so and so, I will never claim it is otherwise. The moderators cannot help you explain yourself.UncleKrampus (talk) 20:39, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@UncleKrampus Bullshit. You were given access to the information but chose to willfully ignore it. You then argued against a position I explicitly do not hold. You engaged in dishonesty, and any impression of good faith is in tatters. Again, I would hope the moderators aren't hypocrites when it comes to enforcing behavioral standards. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 20:44, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

No, if I ignored anything I'm sure it was casual ignorance. If you want to come to my talk page and chat, I promise to have an open mind. If not, I do understand. UncleKrampus (talk) 20:55, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Correction; it was Cory who claimed that reparations would be punishing white people as a whole. @UncleKrampus I formally apologize for putting words in your mouth. I'm still pissed you misrepresented my position. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 21:01, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Apology accepted. The misrep was unintentional. UncleKrampus (talk) 21:13, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that modern America is inherently racist. As a person of colour, I think America has came a LONG way since the days of Jim Crow in the 1960s. I mean in 2008 America elected a black president! @Plutocow Your right that Rome (as a country) died out a long time ago, but no-one alive has lived before slavery was decleared illegal.The government of America in 1861 is different than in 2021. SixtyNine

The US government of today is still the same entity as it was in 1861 as there have been no successful revolutions, invasions, or collapses since that point. If I kill a person today, I may be a much different person sixty years from now, but I would still hold responsibility for the murder, and the same principle applies to the US government. Furthermore, while things have changed a bit in the last sixty years, segragated cities have largely remained as such and the modern schooling system is still disadvantagous to most minorities due to systemic issues like funding schools based on property taxes. (I was lucky to live near a gated exurban community so I could go to a decent school, the other schools around me in my blighted rust belt Appalachian area were so underfunded that one of them had to spilt their gym into five classrooms.) Systemic racism still exists from such issues that were never really addressed in the sixties and seventies, and those are directly issues descended from ex-slaves not getting any proper land or wealth from when they were freed, and many being forced into exploitative situations like sharecropping that wasn't really any better. And all this and I'm not even getting into the War on Drugs and the prison system that disproportionately affects blacks, with many still barely getting any pay for backbreaking work. Just look at the Mississippi River Delta, an almost entirely black area that is so poor that many areas don't even have running water or electricity. Systemic racism is still all over the rest, and while paying individual black people may not be the most efficient solution to the problem, the US government needs to do something to address this great injustice that has been going on ever since Jamestown (earlier, if you count the Spanish). Plutocow (talk) 23:40, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I think you mix up poverty and racism. This is an issue of people being too poor to live in gated communities and force to go to schools that receive less funding. And you know the solution to the War on Drugs? Either legalised all drugs (which I support) or just don't take any drugs at all (which I support whenever illicit drugs are legalised or not). SixtyNine,Discussion

@SixtyNine These issues are interconnected. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 01:18, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I, as a person of colour, has experienced racism from time to time. I also come from a well-to-do family. I believe that intersectionality only promotes victimhood. Let me explain why. SixtyNine (talk) 03:49, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I am incredibly glad that I live in the 21st century as life for people both white and of colour has greatly improved and that racism has been thoroughly deleted from our world (or to be more specific the parts where I live in). Back in the 1960s, nobody would have cared if for example a friend were racist and in fact you might like them for it. Now, being considered racist is a huge blow to your moral character. Those holdout racist now have to content to webshites like Stormfront and like to spread their filth. Can you consider such a change? Its amazing!SixtyNine (talk) 03:49, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

That is why I dislike this new anti-racist movement (intersectionality, white fragility and now CRT). They constantly tell people of colour that America is "inherently racist" and that we as POC have no hope. Yet, the founder of intersectionality, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is very successful and she is a full time professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School! When these people are asked on proof that America is racist they answer with vaguely with "when someone says urban, they actually mean black" or "when someone says dangerous neighbourhood they actually mean black neighbourhood". Its frustrating with talking to these people.SixtyNine (talk) 03:49, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine if i may interject,perhaps this video and excercise will help you better understand the issue of race relations and America’s systemically racist system. https://youtu.be/ga8z8Z23hag I also think this video also helps explain in partly what CRT is about. SensaurC-137 (talk) 04:03, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@SensaurC-137 Could you please give a condensed summary of what Dr. Richards is saying? It really long and I don't feel like I can understand his points unless you give me a TL;DR. SixtyNine (talk) 04:12, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence for your worldview beyond mere rationalization and GOP talking points? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 04:22, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Ahhh... There is people of colour in politics, science, law, economics, military, agriculture, mecidince, film/TV, law enforcement, sports insert job here... SixtyNine (talk) 04:28, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I asked for data, not random factoids. Just as we can't infer that every white person lives at the lower middle class level because I do, so too can we not infer the scoio-economic status of literally millions of people by what amount to anecdotal examples. If such logic was so, I could, for example point to the Jews who were friendly with the Nazis to downplay and even deny the holocaust. Give me hard data. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 04:33, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

For example, here's an example of data I found using a search engine and a knowledge of reputable sources. Do you have such? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 04:35, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

And how does this show anything? Yes sadly, on average people of colour have been hit worse by the Great Recession. But how does support your case? The economy is racist? SixtyNine (talk) 04:39, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

As I said before, you mix poverty and racism. SixtyNine (talk) 04:49, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Yes, I obviously understand that poverty has a huge effect on many of these issues, a I a person from the mostly white (though becoming a bit more diverse in recent years) and incredibly poor Appalachian region would obviously be aware of. However, you have to be aware of the historical issues that led to a vast majority of blacks being very poor, still to this day, such as slavery, sharecropping, segregation, redlining, being overly represented in prisons, etc. The town I grew up in has a poverty rate of 30%, but I guarantee you that for the minorities that live there the rate is closer to 90%. You can't use an example like Obama to disprove the existence of systemic racism, just like a cold day doesn't disprove global warming. The stats speak for themselves, as well as many historic racist policies that either haven't been meaningfully addressed or are still going on. Plus, one of the main reasons for the drug war, especially the targeting of cocaine, was specifically meant to target black communities, and one of Nixon's advisors even admitted as such. You can't pretend that all of the problems caused by slavery went away just because we admitted it was bad. Plutocow (talk) 04:54, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine You're begging the question here, especially considering that I've provided data and you've provided anecdotes. Here's more. Here's a respected sociological journal publishing a paper on CRT. So more data. Where is your data? Can you provide data to support your position that "intersectionality only promotes victimhood"?

Where is your data to support your position that the "new" (where is the clean line dividing modern movements from older movements?) black rights movement "constantly tell people of colour that America is "inherently racist" and that we as POC have no hope."?

I can't in any honest capacity consider changing my position on massive numbers of people based on one person's notions of how they reckon the world works. Give me peer reviewed data from reputable sources. If you can't, then reconsider your positions. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 11:04, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Racism or lack of interest in properly dealing with it is endemic in the united states government in ALL branches from legislative, to judicial to enforcement. Minorities are targeted by the police at completely disproportionate levels (far beyond their portion of population or even their level of crime), they face harsher treatment, are more likely to be profiled, stopped, charged and face violent treatment. At a legislative level, politicians do next to nothing about this. They could create legislation to reform enforcement practices (there is nothing stopping them), which would include reforming police unions and applying penalties to police to break policies. Not doing this shows tackling these issues are not important to them. This is either through wilful ignorance, ideological denial, political opportunism (it is an unpopular position) and I am sure there are more factors. Governments also pass laws which overwhelmingly affect minorities and marginalised people like voter laws which disproportionately affect minorities, penal system laws which disproportionately make it so poor black people have a harder time negotiating the justice system (for example bail). If the government cared about bringing about equality it would introduce a litany of social programs that would actually help level the playing field. They don't because they don't want to or it is not politically convenient. The judicial system is just as bad where minorities are more likely to be found guilty and more likely to be given harsher sentences. I do not understand how anyone could not find the over all system racist at every level. Inaction (not dealing with obvious problems) is just as bad as creating blatantly racist laws. Worse is the wilful ignorance. Having had a black President, having racism being more taboo and seeing more visible anti-racism campaigns is not the same thing as actual meaningful change. 10% change is still petty change. ShabiDOO 11:52, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I have gay friends who live in their illusionary gay paradise in the central gay neighbourhood of Madrid (Chueca). They have typically gay jobs, live in a gay neighbourhood and have mostly gay friends. While Spain is, compared with most countries, an extremely gay friendly country...that doesn't mean that homophobia is not a massive problem. Yet two of them believe that homophobia is gone, gays are completely accepted and that gays have nothing to complain about. I can point out the number of LGTBQ+ hate crimes per week (that occur in Madrid alone), the fact that not a single professional football player in Spain is out of the closet, the reports of LGTBQ+ suicides due to school bullying, that I hear phrases like "shut up...don't be a fag" in public all the time, that I have friends in sterotypical masculine roles like the construction industry who hear homophobic language every day and know their career would be stunted by coming out. And however much easier it is for gay people, lesbian culture is relatively invisible and transphobia is rampant even within the gay community. There are also regional government which are not implementing national LGTBQ+ policies. None of this changes their conviction that homophobia isn't an issue any more. Yeah there are gay celebrities, politicians and rainbows everywhere, companies support the movement and in the right bubbles you can live a life without encountering much homophobia. But to say that things are fine now is to ignore the suffering (including documented suffering) of countless LGTBQ+ people in the country. ShabiDOO 12:02, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

The thing with America is that there's always been a sort of "multiple worlds" aspect. How can America be both inherently racist and a melting pot at the same time? Well, it kind of is, particularly these days, there's pockets where racism is still strong and pockets where it is less so. We're now the country that elects a Black president, and then follows this up by electing a New York City reject who hypnotized the other sort of American character by calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers. Even 60 years ago I would say America had some of the stronger civil rights movements around (certainly there was nothing I can think of comparable outside of Western Europe) in spite of having Jim Crow laws, one of the strongest racial apartheid clones outside of colonial Africa I can think of, dominating Southern politics.

Things are much better for many minority groups in America compared to 60 years ago; the "bubble" where people don't care as much about sex or race has greatly expanded. On the other hand, anyone who thinks the "bubble" of racists is limited to a few blowhards on Stormfront is delusional. A tour of the rural South or other rural areas would perhaps be instructive in this regard. Hell, I thought the election of Angry Baby would have been instructive alone. The only reason Trump won the Republican primary in 2016 was because he said he was going to build a wall to keep out those Mexican rapists and he was going to deport the Muslims. He "told it like it is", or at least how the racists feel it is. And while most of the things said poster mentioned like CRT is small, white grievance politics is not small, else wise Fox News would not be so big. Fox News thrives on white grievance. (And yelling. Lots of yelling. That channel makes my ears hurt with all of these angry people shouting nothingburgers.)

There is nothing about this that means a minority cannot be successful. There absolutely is a Black middle and upper class in America these days, and in my opinion less chance of a Tulsa these days too. But there still is very much a wealth gap in this country, and some of it can be explained by systematic racism, especially counting the strong systematic racism in the past. It's hard to build up assets when others are willing to readily destroy it, we're only 100 years from Tulsa and only 50ish years from the (official only) dismantling of Jim Crow laws. That's not many generations away. So you create policies designed to reduce the Gini coefficient, they will happen to probably benefit those who have been systematically wronged in the past more, and that's okay. It's not that hard. It will help lift other boats too, of course. The main problem here is that the blowhard right is aware of this, and has weaponized safety nets exactly etc. with racist epitaphs before. When you think "welfare queen", do you picture some "white trash" stereotype scamming SSDI in order to buy steaks, lobsters, and Extremely Jacked Up Pickup Trucks? The people Ronald Reagan aimed that stereotype at certainly didn't. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:13, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

When I think "welfare queen", I think of Walmart and absentee landlords, where all that welfare money actually goes. Maybe I'm just weird that way. CorruptUser 15:12, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

its pretty easy to avoid homophobia if you avoid certain areas and dont draw attention to ones self. homophobic people at least. unless you live in a scary area. or if you provoke homophobes by accidently living your life. obs if that happens thats your own fault. probably too camp. they probably cause homophobia, someone once told me. fucking straight acting bores. they got all arsy when i questioned that after all the battles they fought for us gays. how dare i question his commitment to the cause. he liked a pint down the pub like real man. let that be an example to us all.

homophobic people. individuals. i am fortunate to enough to know how to avoid such people. (move to central london. if you live in the sticks you can avoid it by never going out locally). the institutional kind of homophobia? i dunno. i dont really engage with any services where it might be a issue (some where its worth mentioning in case it qualifies you for better treatment.) honestly for me personally where i am in the world, gay rights that affect me personally are done. minority communities or if i were trans plenty to do. outside of the area of london i live? or away from western europe, there is much work required.

tis much thew same with racism. i can avoid overtly racist people. i look like an aryans wet dream. racists arent racist to me. without swastikas or something to let me know (i didnt notice one guys swastika tattoo on his chest till i was literally fucking him. (didnt have me specs on) i dont know if someones racist. if race dont come up in conversation, or they dont make any racist jokes racism aint a problem. or like were i grew up loads of racists but everyones white and arnt exactly fixated on issues of race. you ignore the bad jokes and call it a night before going to an indian with ya mates pissed up scaffolder headcase pals. think joe pesci in goodfellas (are they joking? probably joking.but i hear stories) i can hear about what happened and how many coppers it took the next day. you never saw many indian guys outside of their restaurant.

in london, where i am? is very tolerant racially. moving to east, canning town, some lone drunken fool's racist tirade might make the metro. if you see it its late night, public transport and involves drunks. i avoid the pub if england play germany, but im not the target of overt racism normally. thats all about racist people.

institutional racism the structural stuff, dont come my way. but id have to be blind to not see it. or hear about, it more accurately. like stop and search and who gets stopped and searched still as racist as the old suss laws fuelling riots back in the eighties. id have to look at figures for education and stuff like that, but its not exactly hidden or hard to find or be unaware broadly of who have it tougher. knife crime has an obvious racial dimension (less so outside of london). im not worried about getting stabbed - i hardly match the likely victims. its difficult to see workplace racism. its not directed at me, or likely to disadvantage me, and ive worked mainly government and public sector or nhs. central london thats probs the most diverse (at my level) working environments with strict policy and guidelines over that kinda thing. actual overt government policy like the hostile environment produces things like the windrush scandel, plus increases in casual racism caused brexit and pandering by tory cunts and vacuous grifters. none of it is directed at me. most of it is read about, or heard second hand. if i lived in a quaint picturesque village, were everyone was just lovely and kind you'd have to be blind or willfully so to not see that not everywhere is a benetton advert.

this is all the uk though. london uk aint the west midlands. uk aint america. and new york aint florida. texas aint bumfuck alaska. what one sees and experiences personally varies from person to person, place to place. theres a limit to the awareness of problems and issues at a distance. but you would have to go something to be oblivious to believe racism aint an issue in the us. going into the detail of the prison system or police or education or any thing else is not ncessary here. theres away a hell of a lot a google search away. its an overwhelming amount of info just from wikipedia alone. if one hasnt already, then they are not interested and just want to regurgitate someone elses talking points.

the problem as it seems to me from the uk looking at the us is just how entrenched and interwined racism is in all areas of american society. any change comes piecemeal, painfully slowly, and fought hammer and tong at every stage, addressing issues in isolation. the sweeping changes required seem to me so wide reaching as to be impossible to make any kind of significant change. the us political seems only able to manage sticking plasters and plugging leaks. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:35, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

That's not a uniquely American phenomenon. Europe, and especially the UK, has long-standing issues with racism and the legacies of Imperialism. As the non-White minorities in the EU tend to be the descendants of mostly-willing immigrants and thus better off than the average from their countries of origin, one would expect racism issues would be much less drastic in Europe. I.e., the people and societies harmed the most from slavery in the US are still within the US, whereas the people most devastated by Imperialism are still in the former Imperial possessions while much of the Best&Brightest emigrated to Europe. Yet, correct me if I'm wrong that doesn't appear to be the case. CorruptUser 18:24, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

PS: Here's an interesting paper on racial discrimination in hiring. The only country to beat the US was Germany. CorruptUser 18:41, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

It isn't remotely a uniquely American problem. Anyone who says racism isn't a serious issue in Europe is full of shit. It is obviously less of an issue in countries with tiny immigrant communities. As per the best and the brightest coming to Europe as tends to be the case with Canada? It depends on the country. Some have a points based system taking in mostly educated immigrants. Others don't. Some took in tons of uneducated immigrants to replace their lower class (France, Germany, Netherlands) and are dealing with the aftermath of this. Some countries recognise the issues of racism, others deny it. It is quite a mixed bag. There are many social programs inmost countries that deal with marginalisation and poverty (to widely varying success). I would imagine I'd rather be an immigrant from Pakistan going to the uS than to Hungary or Poland. Though I'd might prefer Ireland or Luxembourg if I were educated. They still all have racism at every level of government. ShabiDOO 19:23, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

As far as the best and brightest, I think we are talking past each other. The Indian plumber coming to London is healthier/smarter/wealthier than the Indian plumber who stayed in India. Britain doesn't have to deal with the aftermath of the British Empire directly; India does. The people and their descendants who were most harmed by Imperialism, the destruction of families and generation poverty, those happened over there. The descendants of American slavery are mostly still in the US, not just the "best" with everyone else's situation somebody else's problem on some other continent. So one would expect that the immigrants and their descendants in Europe would have a much easier time integrating than slaves and their descendants in the US would have, even without the bitterness of Civil War and Reconstruction clouding things. Yet, that doesn't seem to be the case. CorruptUser 20:35, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

i dont wanna retread futile uk better than us nonsense - comparisons are pretty pointless when the situations are very different and shit in another way to each other, and through europe too (uk is best though just leave it at that). all i will say the police dont murder minorities quite so often. they still do but itchy trigger fingers less of an issue AMassiveGay (talk) 12:00, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Again, you are mixing poverty and racism. There is tons of successful black people in America including Barack Obama and others (just search them up on Google). GrammerCommie, I think the burden of proof has to be the one making the claim, not the one disproving it. So you must give me the data, not I must have data refuting it. To be fair with AMassiveGay comments, yes the poverty of POC has to do with historical injustice (as I you guys probably already know, the chain of poverty is hard to break) but this doesn't mean that poor POC are stuck in the bottom rung of society forever. You can break out of it! SixtyNine (talk) 22:45, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

im not sure what your point is. there is no one saying thing are impossible for black folk to succeed in life, or all black people are born poor. thats idiotic. look at the usual markers of success or a healthy society. look the demographics of people with a basic education. compare with higher education. compare the jobs people have. compare access to health services. compare the justice system, the prisons, the differing sentences. look at ages people enter the justice system and for what. google this stuff. datas not hard to find. disportionate representation of some groups in some areas more than others. sentencing disproprtionate harder on black people than whites for example. criminalised at an earlier age another. look at levels of hiv infections in different communities. look at reasons they are different. google the details, for numbers and the laws and practices that enables and perpetuates it all, reinforce racist perceptions. theres more nuance than just saying obama was president or some black folk have money. google is a thing and data isnt hard to find. you are asking for data and details in rebuttal to your own vague argument with providing no data or evidence in support that would allow us to give a more focused response. support your own argument with data and evidence. its too your benefit to inform your self of your own position and its merits. convince yourself of your arguments and put the effort in. show us yours if you wanna see ours. its a two way street. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:27, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Wait, higher HIV rates are the result of racism now? Here I always thought it was the result of lower rates of contraceptives and/or use of condoms. But yeah, I guess I really didn't put two and two together when I saw those gangs of white guys ripping the condoms off of Black men... CorruptUser 01:12, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Corrupt User, this article is but one example on how government policy directly or indirectly affects the higher rate of AIDS amongst African Americans. ShabiDOO 01:23, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ No race is any more or less suited to overcoming poverty than any other. African Americans are not gypsies who pursue alternate or parallel engagement with the economic system. If after decades of apparent equality, a race is consistently at a nobly higher level of poverty it almost certainly must be due to discrimination and different treatment. Any other explanation is just excuses and perpetuating stereo types. No race or sub-culture wilfully remains disadvantaged. A simple google search will give you academic answers and news articles. Here is a short list of government related inequality:

• African Americans are more likely to get charged, face prison and get higher sentences for the same crimes even when accounting for multiple factors (including crime rate)
• How voting laws disproportionately desenfranchise minorities
• Police shooting minorities at higher levels (one of many disturbing factors is an African American is twice as likely to have been unarmed and shot than a white American)

As for outside of government, simply getting a job and navigating the world is another problem:

• Minorities Who 'Whiten' Job Resumes Get More Interviews
• African Americans pay more for the identical house as white people

This kind of information is not hard to find. I could list many more issues. These same problems apply to other countries. Replace African American with Native Canadian and you have the same issues (it may be a little less severe but it is obviously a serious and completely unacceptable problem). ShabiDOO 01:19, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

From that first article you cited, after controlling for age, criminal history, and district, the racial disparity in sentencing is about 9%. I would've expected it to be a bit more than that... CorruptUser 01:42, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine I did provide sources for said intersection. You have yet to provide evidence that black public figures correlate with lower systemic racism. Further, you're childlike notion that people can simply break out of poverty by sheer force of will is admirable, but unfortunately doesn't correlate with the evidence. Now, if you would be so kind as to provide evidence for your claim that black public figures somehow disproves ongoing systemic racism, as well as the claims I asked you to demonstrate in this post here. I've provided examples of data for my claims, but you've provided none for yours. And, contrary to what impression you might be under, making broad sweeping assertions as you did in this edit does in fact require evidence. Provide said evidence or formally retract your claims. In my view this is a simple matter. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 03:39, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Ok you want some data about successful POCs. Let's talk about Asian Americans. As you guys probably already know, Asian American have been discriminate against for centuries for example [11], [12] among others. Yet, lets have a look at Asian Americans today;

• [13]
• [14]

SixtyNine (talk) 04:24, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

A few things, Asians here, particularly Chinese, Korean, and Japanese are largely well educated and well off to begin with before they immigrated here, so this reflects on the wages looking equal or better than whites. This also applies to Indians, if you consider those Asian. But iirc they basically have to work harder to match wages of whites and still face ugly discrimination from targeted violence to being singled out in job applications (my last name is Chinese; employers will assume I struggle with English). Asians from impoverished regions, such as particular ethnic groups in China, that immigrate here tend to be worse off, similar to the struggles of black and Latino people. That's a quick run down, won't do justice to this complex problem, but your soundbite of "Asians good as white" is really misleading and there's a problematic subtext of "if only the blackies and latinies are smarter/work harder" that can't be ignored, especially in context of this discussion. 🤨 --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 05:10, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Of course if you through the lens of "blackies and latinies" of course you are going to find what I said problematic. However, as I said before their is tons of black (and latino people which I haven't mentionied yet) people who are extremely successful (I hope I don't need to name them). The problem is I think we are over-generalising things. Instead of looking at people as racial groups we need to look at people as individuals. There are tons of racist people in America as well as dangerous stereotypes. In fact the bit about Chinese people finding it hard to find work due to stereotypes happened to a friend of mines recently (It's quite sad). That is why we need more representation of these groups in media. SixtyNine (talk) 05:30, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Asian Americans are far from being treated equally. Just look at what came out of the pandemic. What's worse, even some Asian Americans play into their stereotypes such as Andrew Yang with his sophomoric "MATH" slogan. Racist stereotypes should not be tolerated like that, not even as a joke. I'm surprised not a lot of people called Yang out on that. LongStylus (talk) 06:34, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘First of all, it's not just a "blackies and latinies" problem, Native Americans also suffer from severe systemic problems perhaps to a greater extent. Also, you seem to be a bit daft when it comes to systemic problems. One or even a few black people being successful does not disprove systemic racism, just as a few cold days do not disprove global warming, a few people winning the lottery does not prove that it is a reliable source of income, or a few people surviving the Black Death does not disprove it being a dangerous disease. You have to look at broader trends, and see that most black and brown people in America do not have the opportunities that Obama had. Yes, there are a few areas like Appalachia where whites are systemically poor, but the thing about black and brown people is that they face systemic issues no matter what part of the country they are in - even supposedly liberal areas like NYC and San Francisco still have massive issues. And it's not like generational poverty is the only factor. Studies show that black people are more likely to be thrown in prison for the same amount of drug use as white people (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5614457/) and resumes with black sounding names being less likely to be selected than equally qualified white sounding ones (https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-racial-names). You can't look at these obvious systemic problems and say "but Obama is president, so clearly black people don't face any issues at all besides poverty!" Plutocow (talk) 07:09, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

random break

its pretty clear that different racial groups suffer different issues to different degrees, effected by differences in how they viewed, are they recent immigrants? did they come with the mayflower? where ever slaves? lumping them altogether means problems for one group becomes invisible and ignored. the successes of another group with different circumstances used to brush aside the problems faced by others with vastly different circumstances. crt as i understand it, deals more with black americans, since it was black americans that lived as a slave caste along side the slave owners, its that relationship thats framed american laws directly and indirectly ever since, its that toxic relationship which has impacted every facet of american culture, poisoning and dividing the country since its inception. i dont want to dismiss the issues other racial groups have, but with crt having the focus it has, with blm, taking the knee, and confederate statues being very much in the news and the zeitgeist, i dont think it is unreasonable to expect the bulk of the conversation to be predominantly concerned with black americans. and we are responding to a claim that successful black people means racism aint a big deal. should we not respond with reference o the black situation? its not like anyone claimed that jobv opportunities of asian americans is representative of all or obsfucated this with 'poc - People of Colour'. im not convinced this has been all in good faith and say tjhere are successful latinoes too stil doesnt discredit the idea that some groups suffer more discrimation than other. and no ones claimed is all the same across the board. AMassiveGay (talk) 12:38, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine None of that backs up your three claims.

Claim A: That the existence of multiple black public figures, including former president Obama, disproves current systemic racism.

Claim B: That insectionality promotes victomhood.

Claim C: That the modern anti-racist movement "(intersectionality, white fragility and now CRT)" tells POC that America is inherently racist and that there's no hope.

Please substantiate your broad sweeping claims, or I will be forced to conclude that you are arguing in bad faith. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 12:57, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

"Instead of looking at people as racial groups we need to look at people as individuals." Also, this is completely backward. You can't argue about trends and such without this? Hell it's understood that racist experiences can be pretty difficult to spot unless you contextualize through groups and do comparisons of groups. I'm pretty sure something like critical race theory looks at both individual and bigger contexts from social groups then to local communities then to counties then states, nations, etc but your suggestion to focus on individuals is a really poor one. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 16:39, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

but if one individual can beat the odds then everyone can, and we can all get back to doing fuck all about poverty and discrimination with a clean conscience because its not racism holding people back but their lack of moral fortitude. the sense of moral superiority this knowledge brings will make the next round of golf all the more rewarding. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:52, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

<snark>Constantly telling Black kids the system is rigged against them causes disillusionment, and thus leads to them to simply "giving up" and falling through the cracks, meaning that all this talk about systematic racism is ''itself'' a form of structural racism. </snark>

The reality is that, yes, Racism is a serious problem in the US, but it's far from the most serious problem in the US. While yes, there's still disparities in hiring, life expectancies, education, criminal convictions, etc, when controlled for other factors, the bulk of racial disparity disappears (though not always entirely). Poverty and Classism have been the most serious problems for decades now, and while yes, Poverty may have been the result of past racism, it's predominantly the cycles of poverty and not racism itself that keep people there. CorruptUser 15:12, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine So are you going to provide citations to back up your claims or not? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 15:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Probably not. However, I agree with something similar to "Claim C", in that declaring the system to be overly rigged and insurmountable inadvertently causes disillusionment and thus leads to underachievement. Whether or not the system is actually rigged (and it is) is irrelevant, only whether or not people believe it to be rigged and by how much (less than many anti-racists claim). This is whether or not sixnine actually made that claim.

At the very least, I can find citation for this disillusionment causing a rise in Black Nationalism. I should also be able to find old citations for school children doing worse on tests they think are rigged against them, if you want. CorruptUser 16:37, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@CorruptUser Yes but disillusionment with the current system (justly or unjustly, it can be either) isn't really the same as the system itself having problems. I can link to the posts where SixyNine made the affirmative claims if you want. But yeah, I feel they should formally retract their claims if all they have is their gut. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 17:42, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Someone admitting they were wrong on the internet? Bwahahaha, good luck!

As for disillusionment, if the system itself creates disillusionment and thus lowers overall achievement, then that is most definitely a problem created by the system. We could call it "Feedback Racism"; the despair brought on by knowing about racism leads to further worse outcomes, simply knowing things are unfair leads to more unfairness. But all the "raising awareness" is also part of the system...

I think we can agree there is a moral duty to report the truth, even if unpleasant, in all but the most extreme of circumstances. If learning the truth about a problem causes some sort of "feedback racism" through disillusionment, so be it. But when you exaggerate the extant or nature of a problem, whether from ignorance or malicious intent, you actively cause harm. CorruptUser 18:17, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@CorruptUser I mean I admitted I was wrong on the internet so... Also, the dispute is whether systemic racism exists. If you hadn't noticed, I challenged the idea that things like systemic racism can be dimissed as things of the past. I also pointed out the the majority of the current problems are intertwined with economic organization and civic planning. These are things we can easily work on if we but put in the effort and brainstorm solutions. Social norms are a bit messier to try to deal with. But again, the dispute between SixtyNine and myself isn't to what degree systemic racism exists or how best to deal with it, it's whether systemic racism even exists to begin with. SixtyNine is taking the position that the world is made up of self-actualizing individuals, and I'm contesting that view. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 18:46, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

So long as you don't get stressed out about twerps being twerps on the intertubes. CorruptUser 18:58, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree with CorruptUser right here. Its the cycle of poverty that holding POCs not racism. Yeah sorry I wasn't around got a bit busy SixtyNine (talk) 05:47, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

This is nonsense. It is both racism and poverty. As I have said before, no race has any qualities which makes them less capable of getting out of poverty and yet specific races encounter barriers that make it harder to get out of poverty. If after decades one race, on average, has a large portion of citizens in serious poverty and this changes at a much slower rate than others, then racism is either plays a big role or is the major role in sustaining that. Communities do not wilfully remain in poverty. This should not be controvercial. To not see racism as a serious factor in this is to be wilfully blind. This happens in every country that doesn't have a neglibile community of visible minorities. ShabiDOO 07:06, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

you are talking to yourself shab. i find it difficult to believe anyone reading through and participating in the above dialogue with genuine good faith is still only churning out the same talking points like a mantra. links have been provided and the seconds it takes to google things yourself, a wealth of information instantly available, ammunition for whatever line you want to go with. search 'racism is not the problem' churns out a tonne of stuff if you want to go with that. if they are simply a halfwit, a fucking ridiculously idiotic argument would show engagement. a hateful virulently racist bigotted dogshit of an argument might involve some tortuous and ugly responses to points being made, would at least make clear their thinking. what we have is the same inane lines repeated with nothing to suggest how they were arrived at, nothing to support them, and nothing added or evolved. its a few inane mantras, increasingly inane as more and more actual argument and evidence is provided. they are not listening or dont want to listen AMassiveGay (talk) 10:23, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine That's nice, but you still haven't provided citations that back up your three major claims. Please provide the nessesary citations or formally retract your claims. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 11:48, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine Just to be clear, I'm willing to ping you every single day if needed, meaning this thread will never be archived and you will contstantly be faced with requests for citations every time you log into this site. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 11:52, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

@Shabidoo "As I have said before, no race has any qualities which makes them less capable of getting out of poverty"

The town with the highest poverty rate in the entire US is Kiryas Joel, with a per capita income of $4500/yr, and I blame their refusal to learn English or acquire a secular education, and the pressure for all women to be married off to become baby-factories well before they are old enough to drink. Though interestingly, in spite of the massive poverty, there's virtually no crime or homelessness.

Different cultures have different emphases on family structure, on education, on drug use, on contraception, etc, and those cultures do in fact have qualities which make its members more or less capable of getting out of poverty. CorruptUser 13:57, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

There's some nice soft racism there with overgeneralisations and harmful stereo-types. Nice. ShabiDOO 14:14, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

The entire point of statistics is generalizations, bro.

I would argue, however, that part of the more problematic parts of Black culture are themselves a legacy of centuries of racism and despair; cultures don't just appear overnight. You don't get defeatism and despair without having witnessed "good" people constantly being defeated, after all. I actually blame mass incarceration for the lack of family structure, even for people that never see the inside of a prison cell; you don't sequester millions of young men without that having some effect on the dating scene. But you have to know the true nature of the problem in order to fix the problem, even if you find the truth offensive. CorruptUser 14:34, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Mass incarceration is part of systemic racism. Come on duderino...pay attention. ShabiDOO 17:42, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

No, it's part of the legacy of racism, not the result of more racism being added in.

This might seem like semantics, but it's a crucial point. All the focus on trying to get White people to be "less racist" or whatever is the wrong use of our time, because there's relatively little racism being added as some sort of Satan-Fuel for the systems of oppression. We should instead be focused on figuring out how to break the cycles of poverty, because that is where the problems lay. CorruptUser 17:55, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I have already linked statistics that you are more likely to be sent to prison if you are black AND have a longer sentence. You commented on it. Locking away "all those violent blacks" has been an ongoing narrative for decades, though obviously these days it is more covertly packaged as part of the "tough on crime" narrative. In this case semantics = excuses. ShabiDOO

And if you had read your link or my comments on them, you'd know that "racism" amounts to only a 9% disparity in sentencing. The biggest reasons Black and White people have massively different sentences are prior criminal history, age, and district. That is, making up numbers here, a Black man and a White Man charged with GTA on average might have a sentence of 60 months vs 24 months, but a 25 year old Black man in Brooklynn with 1 prior conviction for shoplifting and a 25 year old White man in Brooklynn with 1 prior conviction for shoplifting would receive 26 months vs 24 months. Obviously, those 2 months are unfair, but not where the bulk of the problem is. CorruptUser 19:02, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry GrammerCommie I have an opinion piece from the New York Times however it has data https://web.archive.org/web/20200911072048/https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/16/opinion/racism-is-not-the-issue.html have a read. SixtyNine (talk) 23:15, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh and don't forget GC, AMassiveGay, and ShaidBOO, you are not speaking for the whole black (and other POC) community. There is ton of black and POC that disagree with you SixtyNine (talk) 23:22, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine Are you a troll? You give me an opinion piece from 1997, do not say which point it's supposed to support, which contradicts your positions, and all this after you got on my ass for my sourcing? You made broad sweeping claims about populations and groups. Give me the peer reviewed data to back it up. I don't want anything else. If you don't have the evidence to back up your claims, just retract your claims. I did it earlier in this thread when I made a claim I couldn't support. You can do it. But right now you're indicating to me that you made some comments in the moment without actually having done the research to back it up. If that's true, just admit it and move on. Easy, done. Everyone makes mistakes, but admitting that is more important than pointless internet posturing. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 23:32, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I never claimed to speak for black people. Or POC in general. I pointed out that your opinions conflict with the data on the subject, which is far more important than what color your skin is. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 23:33, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

SixtyNine, could you share some of your experiences with racism in America? ShabiDOO 13:04, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Look if the data says that America is inherently racist, then I will say that America is inherently racist. I believe that people have bias to people that have similar look and name to them and that racist people exist. And yes Shabidoo I have experienced racism in America like people just openly calling me n*****. I honestly don't believe that America is inherently racist but the data shows so I must be wrong. SixtyNine (talk) 22:43, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine What? What do mean by "inherently racist"? The data says there's systemic racism, not that a multifaceted social construct has some bizarre inherent evil. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 22:49, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I'm cruising this thread again and it seems to have gone massively off the fucking deep end. Also a massive misunderstanding of the legacies of systemic racism, current racial disparities across the criminal justice and financial systems, sprinkled with some bullshit about being Black in America.@CorruptUser I have to take issue with this premise, "The biggest reasons Black and White people have massively different sentences are prior criminal history, age, and district", because it implies that these are the only factors. But each of the three things you identified are themselves defined by systemic racism. Black and White people commit crimes at the same level, but only Black communities are over policed. When police interact in these communities, often they arrest and charge people for smaller infractions that would be ignored in white communities. Additionally the criminal justice systems doesn't make it easy to get things removed from your record, usually it requires money that Black communities don't have, or the time to interact with bureaucracy. Having a history of small misdemeanors allows prosecutors to charge future crimes with higher penalties, and allows judges to hand out stiffer penalties. But even in situations where a white person and a Black person commit the same crime, with the same criminal record, and live in comparable neighborhoods, Black defendants still receive more punishment than whites. Big reason for this is that there is no central system that store previous judgements that prosecutors or judges could reference, and even removing humans from the decision making still disproportionally gives greater sentences to Black defendants based on historical trends. This doesn't even address that the 13th amendment still permitted slavery for incarcerated people, and Black people freed by the Emancipation Proclamation found themselves arrested on trumped up charges, and forcing them back into the same fields they were freed from. I recommend you dig a little more into the historical wrong doings that literally oppressed Black people for another 100 years after gaining their "freedom".-RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:58, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

1) So age itself is now part of systemic racism? The fuck?

2) The judges within a district are all voted on only by the people within that district. If we were to carve up the districts into "white" areas and "black" areas, if Black people live in a district that has harsher penalties that's because Black people voted for those harsher penalties. Remember, the 1995 crime bill that gets blamed for mass incarceration and was sponsored by Biden was supported by Black leadership because their neighborhoods simply weren't safe to raise a family. They wanted the "overpolicing", and if you were to ask Black people, more than 80% of Black people actually want the same amount of policing if not more. Here's a Gallup poll for that. The "defund the police" crowd has never represented the Black community as a whole, the Black community wants competent cops, cops that represent their neighborhood, cops that are accountable for their actions, not less cops.

3) What you are talking about with regards to criminal history is money. You are describing a class issue, not a racial one.

4) And no, Black and White people do not commit crimes at the same level. Black people do commit more crime... until you start including other factors. When you include age, parents marital status, education, wealth, etc etc, Black people are less likely to be criminals. A young, poor, uneducated White man is much more likely to rob you than a young, poor, uneducated Black man, but a Black man is more likely to be young, poor and uneducated. Simpson's Paradox.CorruptUser 23:55, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

This whole progressive POV is based on the wrong points of analysis. An important or even the main reason People of color appear to get the shitty end of the justice system is because our urban black communities are unsafe and people there are arrested for really violent crimes at high rates, eg, the real number of arrests for murder and manslaughter was higher for blacks than whites in 2019, as were the arrests for robbery, despite representing about 14% of the population. Those problems are economic not due to racist justice system, but rather a racist economic system (perhaps).UncleKrampus (talk) 23:36, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Bullshit UncleKrampus. If a poor black person has a harder time getting a job, finding good housing, getting a bank loan or mortgage and staying out of the eye of police and the justice system etc (see above links) than a poor white person, CLEARLY it is more than just poverty that makes life pointlessly challenging for many in black communities, especially when they have a harder time getting out of poverty than poor white people. It's just poverty is a ridiculous white-splaining exucse. Biased laws, biased policing, biased justice systems, biased landlords, biased banks and worse...people who refuse to recognise how biased it is and do anything about it are as much, if not more, a part of the problem as poverty. That is not to mention the very policies that have relegated so many black people into poverty in the first place and a lack of politicians doing what is necessary to change them. This is NOT uniquely American. The same stupid excuses are made in Canada about Native Canadians, France about Muslims, Belgium/Netherlands about Turks/Morroccans and Spain about Latinos. The same tired shit that it comes down to poverty, that they are overly violent or do not want to better themselves. Tired, ignorant excuses. In every single case, they face discrimination, barriers to employment, housing, loans, fair policing, fair justice etc. At least in some of those countries the government admits it is a problem and are enacting programs to help weaken these barriers and ensure equality. ShabiDOO 00:55, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I am a POC, and I have never been arrested for anything and none of my family members (except my brother for being drunk after dark). So the idea that blacks are violent is bu****** SixtyNine (talk) 01:08, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine What??? What are you responding to? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 01:51, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Which of your links show that Black people have a much more difficult time escaping poverty than White people? Kind of spent a lot of time dissecting the very first link, which was where "current" racism likely accounts for a 9% discrepancy in sentence durations. As for job hiring and resumes and "James vs Jamal", from what I recall, when those studies were re-done using the same first names but instead did last names, the difference in callbacks mostly disappeared. E.g., "Ryan Miller" and "Ryan Jackson" have the roughly the same callbacks. CorruptUser 13:25, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@CorruptUserI cannot believe you are this ignorant but let's dig into this:

1. Age plays an important role in systemic racism. Because Black children are inherently viewed as adults and receive disproportionately aggressive responses from law enforcement. This week in WaPo there are have been two articles that illustrate this well. This one, involves police pointing firearms at children sleeping in their own room[15], and this one where a teenager gets put in handcuffs[16]. There are countless other examples in media where Black children are frequently presented as being fully functioning adults, compared to situations where middle-aged white men are viewed as "Young men". Black girls are especially targeted this way when they are the victims of sexual violence.
2. Not every single judge is elected, nor does every elected judge represent the population they have jurisdiction over. Additionally local elected judges may make recommendations for sentencing, but Appeals Court judges are most often appointed. There has been a concerted effort in some judicial circles to identify racial prejudices in sentencing. This book that was submitted to the Justice Department in 2004 detailing disparities in judicial sentencing[17] noting that judges weren't inconsistent in their sentencing, instead they were consistently using race as a factor in giving longer sentences to non-white people. Don't fucking bring the crime bill in to this either, without context your argument makes sense, but looking at the broad results of that legislation it is clear that the tools presented to the judiciary in that legislation have been disproportionally used on non-white people. Black people account for 13% of the population but they are half the prison population.
3. Race/Class cannot be separated in the United States. The Civil Rights movement was just as much an argument against racialized capitalism as it was against any other system. The March on Washington's full name is March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Black peoples lower socioeconomic status is directly attributable to being excluded from homeownership, federal loans, and other government services, that allowed white people to begin generational wealth accumulation in the early 20th Century. Just look up housing covenants and redlining to witness the system was designed to deny Black people.
4. My argument here was more directed toward using illicit substances. Black and white people use drugs at the same level yet Black people are more likely to be searched, more likely to be arrested and more likely to be sentenced to longer sentences.

The entire system was not designed to be color blind, and frankly it shows a disturbing amount of naivety to believe it was.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 18:49, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@RipCityLiberal

Do I think there is no racism in the US? Of course not. My argument is that isn't not "current" racism that's the main problem, rather "legacy" racism.

You are ignoring what "age" means in the statistical study that Shabi cited. "Age" just means "age". Throw in the age of the defendants in the model, check to see if there is any sort of weird heteroskedasticities in there, call it a day. If young Black kids are perceived as being "more mature" and thus get larger sentences, that will end up as almost entirely as part of that 9% unexplained portion, not in the age factor.

The study looked at only the initial sentences, not appeals. Two equal people, one black one white, the black guy gets a 9% longer sentence. Obviously something should be done to fix this, but we need to be honest about what the problem is. If the appeals is biased, where White kids get their sentences reduced much more often than Black kids, we should look into that. That link you just cited from the OJP? 400 pages long. Going to make a TL;DR argument here, and I'm just going to assume they didn't do anywhere close to the statistical analyses that the other study we are arguing about did.

Black people make up 34% (and not 50%) of the prison population, and yes this is a problem. But again, this is predominantly because Black people tend to be poor, and only a little bit due to being Black. And yes, racism does explain some of why Black people tend to be poor, but again, most of it is the legacy of racism rather than current racism

Those housing covenants and so forth are now illegal. Again, they left a legacy, but those laws aren't there anymore, though I'm sure there's some backwater town somewhere that hasn't gotten the message.

Actually you have a mistake there; Black people are less likely to use illicit drugs even before adjusting for wealth and so forth. Keep in mind though that Meth, the Redneck drug of choice, has the exact same sentencing rules as Crack. Yes, of course much of the drug laws were originally racist. Heck, even Prohibition was in part due to racism. But today? Drug laws are much more Anti-Poor than they are Anti-Black. CorruptUser 19:48, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I think what CU's trying to say is that if you waved a magic wand and eliminated racism, then it would make surprisingly little difference to the material conditions and prospects of non-white communities living in poverty. This is not an obviously ridiculous proposition, and anyone who's done any work in / around / with similarly poor white communities knows full well how steep the climb out of poverty is, and how deeply ingrained the feelings of despair, anger and helplessness can be.

This isn't an argument for any shirking of the anti-racism effort, rather it's a clear-eyed recognition of the importance of meaningful anti-poverty work as well. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 20:34, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes. I'm not sure what Shabi's point here is. You can't reduce systemic issues down to one factor, since they're interconnected issues caused by multiple overlapping factors. See also this explanation of how I think we should address the problems as a whole. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 21:11, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

HBC, yeah, that's pretty much it.

Furthermore, I also believe that the barriers to escaping poverty have been made worse since the 60's. CorruptUser 21:19, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

What is my point? My point is some people are trying to deny that systemic racism is a serious problem. It IS! And some are trying to say that it is poverty explains most issues that African Americans face. That is nonsense. Both are issues. I never said that racism is the one and only explanation of everything. Talk about straw-manning. BOTH are issues. Racism affects poor and rich African Americans. More affluent black people still encounter barriers to advancing their careers, encounters with the police and difficulties with the justice system. I didn't link articles/studies about black people escaping poverty because I honestly didn't think it was necessary. If throughout the entire history of the country, one race as consistently been economically disadvantages, the poorest of significant communities with a significant population stuck in poverty...it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this is a chronic issue. Not to mention you should be able to do your own homework. But here are some links. I am done with this conversation. I am fairly shocked that on a website with a progressive bent I need at all to keep arguing that systemic racism is an issue. Here is an article that discusses a report on how black boys are most likely to be stuck in cycles of poverty. A more in depth article discussing the same issue in case you do not hit the pay wall . A more general article about the chronic black and white pay gap. May I note that instead of reading these articles to try to poke holes in them and resist that systemic racism is a serious problem, try to learn from them and go on and read more. This info is really easy to find. ShabiDOO 23:16, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine Please respond to my question. "What? What do mean by "inherently racist"? The data says there's systemic racism, not that a multifaceted social construct has some bizarre inherent evil." ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 17:23, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm just still stunned that a real argument here is that because people aren't as openly racist as they used to be, somehow things are supposed to improve for non-white people when they were actively excluded from a system to the benefit of white people. It's a fucking stupid way to evaluate a complex issue.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:39, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@RipCityLiberal Could you please give me evidence that non-white people are actively excluded from the American system? I don't know of any organisation that actively excludes non-white people (except of course the alt-right). If for example it was known that Walmart actively excluded non-white people in their corporate structure, do you really think it would be possible in 2021 without a giant media scandal? It's like 9/11 truthers who only have conjecture and hearsay and not hard evidence. @GrammarCommie Isn't America racist on the funadmental level? That sounds like America is inhertently racist to me. SixtyNine (talk) 23:14, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine You care to re-read what I said? I used the past tense "excluded" in reference to the fact the non-white people were no included in the creation of the majority of judicial, political and financial structures that exist today. Feel free to google "Redlining" for yourself or you could look at the new sinister version coming into play.[18] Or perhaps you could look into the 13th Amendment and it's slavery cause, if you're lazy though Netflix put Ava Duvernay's excellent film on YouTube.[19] Don't ever fucking compare hundreds of years of codified, legalized oppression on non-white people to crackpot nonsense. The evidence is quite literally everywhere, and you choose to ignore it because it makes you feel uncomfortable.@GrammarCommie can defend himself, but I'll take a crack at this too: 3/5th's Clause. The foundational document for this country 'literally' counted Black people as property and less than human. Chinese Exclusion-Act is another racist law that comes to mind. Oh and Japanese Internment. Trying stepping out of your bubble sometime.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:37, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

This question earns a from me tbh. If we have to answer questions att this kind of fundamental level, posed by someone being not able to understand legality vs reality, it's not worth it. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 23:46, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@RipCityLiberal Of course I don't deny the past... I know about the 3/5 clause, Chinese Exclusion-Act and such. I thought we are dealing about the present right here, not the past. SixtyNine (talk) 23:52, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine "Isn't America racist on the funadmental level? That sounds like America is inhertently racist to me." Are you just making shit up now? Where did I ever claim what you're saying I claim/support? The united states has deep seated systemic racism baked into a fuck ton of laws. Laws, being social constructs, can be changed. Things that can be changed are not inherent, ergo, the US is not inherently racist. Have you just been arguing against a fictional version of me this whole time? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 23:53, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie Sorry, I was referring to Flandres comment at the very top of this discussion piece that CRT states hat American institutions are tainted with racism on a fundamental level. This conservation is getting so convoluted that it hard to keep track on what people are saying, Please accept my apology. SixtyNine (talk) 00:07, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

LGM you're right but I'm in a fighting mood. The actions of the past inform the present. First slaves were brought to America in 1619. 1788 constitution was ratified, including the 3/5ths clause. Emancipation Proclamation came in 1863 and wasn't nationally enforced until 1865. That would have been the moment to correct a lot of the wrongs associated with slavery for 246 years. 13th Amendment is ratified also in 1865, includes that nice little slavery clause for prisoners that is widely attributed to the beginnings of mass incarceration. Dred Scott V Sanford gets decided decided two years later, creating the standard for separate but equal, and thus Jim Crow laws. Tulsa Race Massacre happens in 1921, destroying years of Black wealth accumulated through separating from their white counterparts. Additionally Black GI's returning from WWI and WWII are denied that same VA benefits that create wealth and prosperity for white Americans through the rest of the 20th century. Not until 1954 with Brown v. Board of Ed is the question of separate but equal receive government challenge. Civil Rights Act comes in 1964, Voting Rights Act in 1965, Housing Rights Act in 1968.

@SixtyNine For over 300 years, Blacks specifically, but non-whites also were denied access to capital, equal protection before the law, and the right to live a life free from fear. Tell me how all of that is just supposed to evaporate in 61 years? The same racists that fought against these laws mentored the people currently in charge. They reared them at home. They built systems, like credit, to include factors to the detriment of non-white people. What is your argument here besides, "I've never seen racism so thus it doesn't exist".-RipCityLiberal (talk) 00:20, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine I accept your apology. Discussions can get confusing, but I'd recommend trying to double check before making a claim. I mixed up some comments earlier in the discussion and ended up with egg on my face as a result. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 00:41, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Firstly I don't deny that racism doesn't exist. It definitely does. But I have faith in humanity. A hell of change has happened in 61 years. We have the internet, smartphones, etc etc. The very fact that RationalWiki shows that things have change. If someone says the n word, what do you think would happen? Do you think the people can get away with saying the n-word in this day and age SixtyNine (talk) 00:44, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine Yes, they can. People can get away with saying nigger. However, All of the users pushing back on your positions aren't talking about people saying nigger. We're talking about laws, which have a much larger effect. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 01:30, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Could you give an example of a law that is racist? Like, "if you break this law you will go to jail for 5 years but if you are black you get 20!"SixtyNine (talk) 02:19, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

And I meant 20 years not 20 factorial years which is 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 years SixtyNine (talk) 02:19, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Stop & Frisk laws. Redlining laws. I should also mention broader social trends which are influenced by older laws and views, such as diferent trends in sentencing. Like, these are very basic on this topic. I know you're well off, but unless you're literally still in high school I fail to see how you can be so combative yet also so ignorant. And again, just because you haven't experienced something doesn't negate its existence. I've never been raped, yet I would not deny data on rape or issues within the criminal justice system in trying rape cases. But unless you want to contest the idea of knock on effects over time from older policies, I'm not really sure what you want to accomplish here. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 02:49, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@RipCityLiberal I understand that America use to have systematic racism back in 1860s but would you consider America to have systematic racist today? This is a fallacy. Just because things are bad back then doesn't mean it is bad right now. Take for example the Democratic Party SixtyNine (talk) 03:24, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

First, do you even understand "systemic"? You're not grasping the fundamentals of it very well. Basically, it's a sort of recurring theme. It can manifest in many ways, and just because legally black people have equal rights as us, it doesn't mean it reflects this in practice. You don't have to be actively racist to have racist results; for instance, people with black-sounding last names are less likely to be hired but this is not necessarily because employers are trying to be racist; instead they're probably exposed to the general reality of income inequality and seeing more white names as professional. Furthermore, since black people are less represented in, say, tech and tech development, this also reflects in the technology; Twitter was unintentionally cropping off black people's faces, soap dispensers couldn't properly work with black people's hands, etc not because, again, people are actively being racist but how the technology's design is decided and dominated by lighter skinned people and thus was tested primarily with these people. "Things bad back then doesn't mean it's bad now"; this is just a laughably flawed assessment of history. Black people are systemically held back centuries ago, extremely harshly, and while black people fought excruciatingly hard to achieve legal equality, take note the results today reflect history: income inequality, the criminal justice system, healthcare, education, life expectancy, etc. looking at how these stats are broken down by race does show a running trend of black people at a disadvantage. Systemic racism and looking at history of it is a common explanation for why today (and not like hereditarianism because that's debunked to hell). It's really concerning your questions show how extremely little you know about this, and I strongly suggest just simply studying history and sociology with a good textbook first as you'll save everyone time and effort trying to explain the very basics of things. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 06:11, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ With the 'Democratic Party' barb I know this person is a troll. Maybe they truly fail to understand "systemic", but it's obvious this person has no interest in understanding either.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:50, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I completely understand your point about differences between white and black life expectancy in America. I completely understand that when tech giants make AI, they fail to account for darker skinned people. I understand that people with black-sounding names are left out when they hand in their resumes (which I find incredibly concerning, I thank whoever gave me that info). I understand, OK? But I believe that they could be another factor in all this. Maybe it has to do with poverty, maybe it has to do with opportunities. And please don't tell me that today reflects history. The idea that that POCs live lives similar to pre civil rights America is untrue. I don't see any Jim Crow laws, no slavery and no Chinese Exclusion Act. Just because there are differences between blacks and whites doesn't automatically means "it HAS to be racism". Correlation does not imply causation. And so it goes. SixtyNine (talk) 00:48, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine "The educational credential used to be an effective way for a person from a deprived background to stand on an equal footing with other job applicants. It is still so treated that way in political rhetoric. The reality facing employers is that, given the aggressive affirmative action that universities have employed over the last three decades, educational credentials can no longer be used to compare the intellectual qualifications of black. Latino, and white job candidates." Do you agree with the quote? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 01:14, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I disagree. I believe we need affirmative action to help non-white people. As we can see in the past several decades doing nothing has done nothing to help blacks and Latinos get out of poverty. SixtyNine (talk) 01:28, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine So wait, you agree that there's still systemic racism?!?!? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 01:49, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Wait how? Please explain. SixtyNine (talk) 02:04, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

SixtyNine, while I do think that poverty and classism is the biggest issue in the US, and even the world, I do not see how things like discrimination against names popular in the African-American community. I guess one could argue that those names are associated with poverty, but then that would mean people were associating blackness with poverty (which is probably what is happening), and that is a good example of how racism has been embedded in our culture. AmericanSocialDemocrat (talk) 02:05, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine The sustained poverty ofand hiring discrimination against People of color, specifically black Americans, is part of systemic racism. Do you even know what you're arguing against? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 02:11, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie Ok, I think you and AmericanSocialDemocrat have made a good point. Poverty of POCs is at least is in part to racism (but I still believe its not ALL have to do with it). I had a look at the paper on hiring discrimination and I had to face an uncomfortable truth; racism is much more embedded than I thought. Thanks. SixtyNine (talk) 02:27, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine Re "Poverty of POCs is at least is in part to racism (but I still believe its not ALL have to do with it)." I already argued that while racism is a factor in in poverty you can't reduce complex social conditions down to one factor. Sure, poverty in the US isn't solely caused by systemic racism, even where racism plays a large role. There's other factors, such as class, which are co-morbid with systemic racism. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 02:38, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Given that nothing can be done about racism and much can be done about poverty, maybe it's time to dump the shibboleth we call systemic racism and focus on the practical issue: systemic poverty, which isn't limited to any special group.UncleKrampus (talk) 02:40, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie So are we now in agreement on something?<ref>Please say yes</ref> SixtyNine (talk) 02:46, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean nothing can be done on racism? Lots can be done on racism. SixtyNine (talk) 02:46, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I mean real racism now, not the statistical sleight of hand that just proves uneven results.UncleKrampus (talk) 02:49, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean? SixtyNine (talk) 02:54, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@SixtyNine At long last yes, we have reached understanding. @UncleKrampus But as I said before, these issues are intertwined. Now, it's my position that to actually address these issues we should understand how the problem is structured. Is there a baddie to try? No. There are what amount to accounting errors, some with long dead intent, some not, but all with interest owed. Thus the solution is for the US government to pay its debts. To speak less poetically, that means that the US Federal, State, and Local governments should launch a joint economic revitalization initiative. A New-New Deal, as it were. Naturally, because POC are over-represented in areas suffering from poverty they would receive larger shares of attention from such an initiative, but so too would the poverty stricken parts of white America. I feel this holistic approach to these problems will address many of them with straightforward, unified, efforts, rather than trying to address them in a haphazard and piecemeal fashion. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 02:56, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Good for me.UncleKrampus (talk) 03:05, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm strongly of the opinion that racism cannot be dismantled without tackling the fundamental structure of our class system and of our economy, but it is very clear, to me at least, that beyond the economic systemic racism that can be dealt with anti-poverty and anti-inequality measures, a deep cultural apparatus of racism exist, though it can be very subtle at times. However, for a very loud example, look to the white identity politics which defines itself in opposition to the other and that fueled in a large degree, but not completely of course, the rise of Trump in 2016, especially in the GOP primary. A good empirical academic work on this is Identity Crisis: the 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America by Sides, Tessler, and Vavreck. AmericanSocialDemocrat (talk) 03:14, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@AmericanSocialDemocrat While there is a socio-cultural element to be addressed, it is not something I specifically feel able to speak on. Budgets and bureaucracy? These I can handle. Overall trends, these I can account for. But I'm a firebrand and a jackass, which as we all know isn't exactly the ideal personality to push for empathy, understanding, and reconciliation. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 03:27, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@GrammarCommie That makes sense. We all have our areas of knowledge. Heck, I'm probably not the best person on here to the socio-cultural aspect, since a lot of it falls beyond fields I study. Still, from the work that I've done on American electoral politics, I feel confident in saying that racism is a significant force within the American politic culture intertwined with but also existing separately from the economic conditions we've discussed. I think many examples of this are cataloged on this website even. As is discussed in Identity Crisis, economic conditions have caused the resurgence of more explicit racist narratives in society, but those narratives didn't come from nowhere. Instead, while there has been massive progress against racism in this country since the 1950s, a lot of the ideas do still exist, as evidenced by their recurrence in politics and the level of success that such politics has seen. AmericanSocialDemocrat (talk) 03:56, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I will say, about 80% of historically redlined communities were.. wait for it... not actually predominantly black communities. Since black people represent 13% of the population, there's obviously some disproportionality going on here, but what to make of the difference? And also, purely anecdotal from my experience being a white man in decidedly less than ideal place to have light skin (I've only heard cracker and honky a handful of times, and I cut enough of a figure that none of them have ever actually tried to fight me, but imagine the appropriate outrage if someone with darker skin ever had to hear someone yell "nigger" or "pavement ape"), what am I to make of the rather clearly non-white people (the surveillance footage clearly shows they're black) who've shot and killed my Hispanic coworker's son and pregnant step-niece? Am I supposed to grade that on a curve? Obviously they're horrific tragedies, are they somehow my fault for the crime of having Northern European ancestry? (My direct ancestors were kidnapped and trafficked by Indians, as a result literally everyone with the surname Phaneuf has some direct relation to me and I'm eligible for French citizenship if I ever feel like filling out the necessary paperwork; plus I'm of Potato Famine-era Irish descent, see how complicated this gets?) The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:42, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't dispute that bad things exist independently of racism. I'd even say classism and economic inequality are bigger part of what's wrong in society than systemic racism, and that systemic racism cannot be ended without large changes to those underlying structures. However, none of that undermines what most people who discuss systemic racism are talking about, and I don't think anyone but a handful of cranks would claim that you are somehow responsible for a murder because you're white. I'm definitely not claiming that. AmericanSocialDemocrat (talk) 05:02, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've heard the Nation of Islam types rant about... well something along those lines, it's hard to tell what exactly, but they're definitely fringe noise that's easily brushed off. Economic inequality definitely exacerbates things a lot, and to a degree they're clearly related. Education strikes me as a huge component of this too, I've seen a lot of talent get wasted just because the people who have it don't have the tools to use it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 12:28, 12 August 2021 (UTC)