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  1. #61
    Silver Poster fred41's Avatar
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    ...since laptops, kindles and tablets came out...I can't remember the last time I bought an actual book. I think it was a Home Depot DIY book...definitely more than eight years ago.



  2. #62
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvonne183 View Post
    Whether there is enough of any type of person to get Trump elected remains to be seen.

    What I tried to say in my comment is people seem to say bad things about Trump as if their words will change the minds of people who support him. Even if the words are true about Trump, people won't be swayed by what others say about Trump.

    I first came to this group thinking that my words could sway people to see things my way, all I learned is people are set in their ways and no amount of rhetoric will change their minds. Also I woke up and realized I don't know anyone here from Adam and why waste my time responding to people I honestly don't give two craps for,, but you are cool Starvos, I kinda like you.

    In a way people who like Trump won't be swayed just as people will vote for Hillary who is clearly a criminal. And just cause she wasn't indicted doesn't mean anything, Al Capone was never charged with being a murdering gangster. People are basically sheep and will follow a few certain candidates, just look at the web sites including this site, most people are aligned with one of two groups dems or repubs, very few independently thinking people out there.

    One reason I like Trump is cause of his stand against big business that want to close up shop and move out of the country. Whether he is actually able to do something remains to be seen but at least he talks about it, while Hillary takes as much money from said companies. Bernie Sanders comes close to this but he seems to just want to tax companies for the sake of getting money from them. Trump is a nationalist but I feel he might do something good, we've tried all the rest of the bozo's and none seem to have worked, maybe I have faith that Trump will be different. Also he is a New Yorker and for some reason people don't fully understand when a true New Yorker talks, there is a lot of grain of salt to be taken, one can't take everything said literally word for word. I just hope he's right on the things that matter.

    Also I am tired of the dynasties, like the Clintons, the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Coumos. I am tired of politics seeming like it's a royalty thing.

    Good day to you Starvos
    Yvonne, hundreds of people browse the forum and never post, so you might in fact say things people do agree with, only they don't post an acknowledgement to you. Your punk political anarchy apppeals to a lot of people who think all politicians are as you say in the US, 'Assholes'. And I think there are a lot of people who have opinions liberals don't like but feel timid in expressing themselves.

    In the matter of argument and changing what people think because of something said, I think Trump himself is such a liability he is more likely than Mrs Clinton to lose actual or potential voters because of something he says, even if he then claims he didn't mean it. Hillary Clinton probably clears all her public statements with her team before they are released, it is a machine and if it sounds like politics by photocopier, that is probably what it often is. I don't know about New Yorkers but I have found many Americans do not often understand the self-deprecating humour or sarcasm common in the UK, but I do think Trump too often lacks sincerity when forced to apologise or explain for something he said.

    Trump's position on business -which Mrs Clinton suggested she shared in her Convention speech- is a non-starter unless the Chinese and other states make it harder or less profitable for US firms to make things in their countries, and after all Trump himself off-shores production so he lacks sincerity on that issue. It is also too true that Presidents have to work with Congress, and when you have such a bitterly divided Congress real change is hard if not impossible.

    Real change tends to happen slowly and in small ways, not with grand gestures of the sort Trump talks about, which sound good on tv but are close to impossible to implement in reality. Trump may be expressing frustration with the way the system works, but you may need to change the system and a President cannot do that.

    Dynasties are not good, but in the age of social media and a MacDonaldized society, brand recognition is often seen as an instant entry into the field. Nobody needed to ask Who is Hillary? Who is this Trump guy? They have facial and name recognition worth, say, a million votes just by being seen and named. I think this is why candidates with no experience of politics can do better than in the past -would George Clooney had done as well as Trump if he had made a serious bid for the job? This begs the question, is there nobody else? This in turn raises the question do the best people choose politics as a career? I think we are coming to an end to dynasties in the US (but not abroad), from the Daley family in Chicago to those you mentioned and it may be in particular that the Republican Party is facing a major crisis of identity that they need to sort out over the next 4 years because otherwise you will have Democrats in the White House into the third decade of the century and that cannot be a good thing for democracy or the USA.


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  3. #63
    Rude Gurl Professional Poster Yvonne183's Avatar
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    Thanks Starvos for your thoughts, I appreciate you taking time to write back.

    Well, time for me to go now, maybe I'll come back next year,,,, maybe not, I fear the reaper is near.

    Take care Starvos, I can't help but think of Kojak when I hear your name. bye



  4. #64
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvonne183 View Post
    Thanks Starvos for your thoughts, I appreciate you taking time to write back.
    Well, time for me to go now, maybe I'll come back next year,,,, maybe not, I fear the reaper is near.
    Take care Starvos, I can't help but think of Kojak when I hear your name. bye
    The 'reaper' comes for us all, that is certain, we do not need to dwell upon it much as we do not constantly yearn for the bathroom until the moment comes. Or to paraphrase Proust, tell people you will be travelling abroad but don't know when you will return. And as long as your name is mentioned, you will always be alive.



  5. #65
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    Prussian Blue : when art ,science and medicine intersect.Ain't it nice when things sort of come together. In 1706 it was Prussian Blue . The first synthetic pigment ; influenced Japanese Ukiyo-e wood block prints , Vincent Van Gogh , was later discovered to be an antidote in radiation poisoning and found a host of uses in science and industry.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_blue
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  6. #66
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    What might a 'post-political correctness' Britain allow? What would it look like?
    Bill Etheridge, who is campaigning to succeed Nigel Farage as the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party [UKIP] published this pamphlet in 2011, indicating, perhaps, the direction in which he would like to take the UK.

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  7. #67
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    I’ve been following the recent discussion at http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...irls-in-London . I am not a British Citizen, nor a citizen of an EU nation, nor do I feel adequate to add much of significance to that discussion. I do notice quite a number of references there to Political Correctness, which may mean something different in Britain than it does here.

    Most of the definitions I have found, though, comport with my understanding: the avoidance of language that offends or excludes minority or disadvantaged social, ethnic or religious groups. When applied in ordinary speech it sounds to me like nothing more than a self-imposed species of etiquette; political politeness - ordinary politeness exhibited toward the otherwise habitually disenfranchised.

    It puzzles me how a self-imposed politeness could be the cause of so much political distress, except to those who take its widespread practice to be indicative of a decline in their particular monocultural advantage.

    It is, I think, a term invented by the right to denigrate such practices. Why is the right so offended by political politeness? It could be that they dislike the social pressure they feel these days when they themselves speak disrespectfully of their fellow citizens; i.e. they can’t say what they feel about minorities in public without getting called out for the inappropriateness of those feelings. Of course those who ‘disrespect’ and those who ‘call out’ (in the USA) are both within their legal rights, protected by the First Amendment. I do not see how Trump (for example) is going to end the practice of political politeness and not stray from our First Amendment liberties.

    The right is of course more upset when political politeness gets codified. For example, many businesses (from the small shops to large corporations) will fire workers, managers, executives etc. who use offensive language when at work or while representing the company. This is not because CEOs are radical ‘libtards’, but because it’s simply good business practice not to offend clientele, or others with whom the company needs to deal. In the same way colleges and universities have codified certain aspects of political politeness in order to maintain a public face and to stay scandals that would push away the best minority students, athletes, coaches and professors. For some strange reason, what the right finds scandalous is the existence of such codes of conduct.

    The right is more upset with the notion of Hate Crime which they sometimes conflate with political correctness. In the US intent has always been a large consideration when deciding how to charge a criminal wrongdoer. An assault resulting in injury committed out of, say to be specific, hatred for Mormons will get you more time than an assault and an injury that resulted from flaring tempers over, say, a traffic accident. This I think is an appropriate use of intent that, first and foremost, justly serves the victim and secondly serves to protect religious groups in locales where they are not readily accepted.

    Whether a person is polite or not is their choice. In the US, there is no law forcing right wingers to remain quiet and inoffensive in the presence of minorities or their supporters. The only restriction they feel is the judgment against them in the eyes of the public, and constriction of their own guilty consciences. Against that they whine, complain and applaud demagogues who have no consciences.


    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  8. #68
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    Trish, I think that re-labelling political correctness as a form of political politeness sidesteps some of the important issues as they have arisen here in the UK, that concern multi-culturalism, Islamophobia, and the 'white male anxiety' over the 'ascendancy' of women in positions of authority. All three have their counterparts in the US but have a different context here, at least in part.

    If you begin with the concept of 'diversity and inclusion' PC is a response in the media, and also in business, to what used to be a predominantly white, male visual and employment culture. For example, women on tv were there for decoration unless they were skilled, which usually meant tv cooks, entertainers, or sportswomen. When the first women were given the job of reading the news, newspapers -Rupert Murdoch's The Sun, for example- judged them not by their skills as journalists but whether or not they were attractive to men. When tv began to break down this wall it did so by being more inclusive, of Black people in particular but in the 1970s Black people were on tv either to make people laugh in situation comedies, because they could sing and dance, or were good at sport.

    It has taken over 40 years for television in the UK to give jobs to ethnic minorities and women on the basis of their ability to do those jobs, but has also been part of a deliberate policy by the BBC and other broadcasters to reflect the reality of multi-cultural Britain, and this is where the rage sets in for those who see the most common forms of news and entertainment being 'taken over' by non-white people.
    To people such as Bill Etheridge, the BBC's promotion of diversity and inclusion means by default that as more and more Black and Asian, and assertive women and gay people appear on tv, so they see a demotion of the white man. Add in to that a view that behind this 'diversity and inclusion' is a form of Marxism that is associated with Antonio Gramsci and a deliberate 'culture' campaign that aims to feed 'leftist' ideas into the public mind through education and the media, sometimes called Common Purpose.

    Political correctness thus becomes transformed from something passive, to something active. What began as the censorship of offensive words used to describe Black people, homosexuals and the disabled, has become part of a conspiracy to degrade the 'British' by 'ramming multi-culturalism down our throats' in spite of the fact that visibility for minorities actually reflects the fact that 'they' are 'here' and 'they' (or we) are going to stay.

    If there is a difference between the UK and the US it rests on immigration which is not seen as a fundamental part of what has shaped this country over the last 950 years (ie, since the Battle of Hastings in 1066) in the way that it has shaped the US.

    For many white people who identify themselves as 'British' or 'English' their version of national pride finds it hard to accept that Black people truly belong here. These feelings at various times have also extended to the Irish, the Italians, the Jews and most recently Afro-Caribbeans and the various religious groups from the Indian sub-continent. Whatever role immigrants have played in the positive development of British society and the economy is not accepted by a hard core who see multi-culturalism as literally 'the death of Britain'.

    A cogent example was provided recently by the former editor of The Sun, Kelvin Mackenzie. He believes the BBC and Channel 4 news are left-wing broadcasters, and 'unusually' for him he watched a broadcast of Channel 4 News in which one of their journalists (Fatima Manji) reported on the massacre in Nice. He wrote:
    Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim? “Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male- dominated and clearly violent religion?”
    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entr...b019ee5fd82da0

    This is the kind of Un-PC language and narrative that some 'white British' feel they must own in order to fight against what they see as a conspiracy to demote and degrade 'our heritage' in favour of a multi-cultural fantasy which has the effect of replacing what is British with something else, and if you believe that Muslims are breeding more children than anyone else and at heart are all yearning for Shari'a law, the argument is set for a 'clash of civilizations' based, in fact, on little more than paranoia and prejudice. It is the kind of language that Nigel Farage sought to reclaim for the political sphere during both the General Election and the EU Referendum campaigns, so it goes far beyond being 'polite' and is in my view a campaign to make respectable what amounts to a form of loathing that itself comes from a crisis of identity and resentment, a feeling that the white British have a 'birthright' that is being taken away from them and being 'given' to Muslims. I think this is also part of the Trump campaign that believes it is 'finally' saying in public what many Americans have been saying in private or were too afraid to say in public for fear of being ostracised by the 'multi-culturalist elite'.

    It is also part of the narrative of the 'white male' who no longer walks into a job from school that enables him to become the main breadwinner of the family, to be the head man, as it were. Because the decline of labour-intensive heavy industry has hit the working class hardest, there is a view that men have not only lost their place at the head of the economic unit at the heart of capitalist society -the family- but they have lost their virility. That men must now temper their language and behaviour and be deferential to minorities adds to the anxiety complex that feeds the theory that Marxism -which is what this all is- is destroying the family. On top of this as work changes many more women not only work theyhave become the main breadwinner, it is as if men have become useless and redundant. Perhaps the greatest irony of this argument is that it forms one part of the critique of western society provided by a guru to violent Salafist Muslims. In Signposts, Sayed Qutb says that capitalism is a 'Jewish plot' to 'destroy the family', thus as arguments go, members of UKIP and the English Defence League have an unusual ally on their side, if they only knew it.

    Political Correctness thus sets itself against all of the major trends that have taken place in our society but does so with a language that is angry and resentful, and whose political hostility to dominant political parties and institutions has created divisions which are exploited by financial crises, acts of terrorism and most recently the immigration crisis in Europe. The problem is that either the proposed solutions to 'the crisis' are not popular enough to attract votes -in the case of UKIP- or they have in the EU Referendum vote established an as yet incoherent agenda of change that is unlikely to address the alternative to Political Correctness for its opponents, who want an end to immigration as a first step to be followed by repatriation (initially of Muslims) and one assumes the return to the days when A can refuse services to B if B is Black, Gay, Muslim, Jewish -whatever.

    Political correctness is anything but polite, it is an aggressive attack on the multi-cultural reality of modern Britain and with its language of fear and violence, is a threat to our way of life.



  9. #69
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    I realized after the fact that political politeness doesn’t characterize all aspects of what I want to capture. But in the US, I don’t see PC as being as active a force as the anti-equalitarian reaction against it. Early on recording studios and then later radio and then even later television networks provided diverse products and programming, yes...but I think only in response to sells and ratings for that kind product. It wasn’t a political decision on the part of the record industry or radio and television networks.

    I do think diversity in television and in television ads (I want to teach the world the sing) had a great deal of influence on the American mindset, but again I have to think it was more marketing than politics.

    I need to take the time to reread your post more carefully before I respond more fully. Thanks for the response and thanks for the thoughtful dialog in the Brexit thread.


    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  10. #70
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    Default Re: Thought for the Day

    "Political Correctness thus sets itself against all of the major trends that have taken place in our society.."
    -Just to clarify I mean, of course, the campaign against political correctness, although I think the argument overall was clear enough.



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