Thought for the Day

[filghy2]

Is there a difference between symbols and signs? I don’t know. But it seems to me there might be. The American flag has come to symbolize the country, it’s aspirations, it’s culture, it’s people, it’s laws, the etc. etc. etc. I don’t think I like symbols. They’re too big and too undefined and ultimately, it seems, too divisive. The symbol becomes more important than the actual ideals. We fetishize it. I like signs. It’s nice to know that ship sailing over there isn’t a threat (if you can trust the flag they’re flying isn’t false). We can't live without signs. I'm not sure we can live with symbols.

I don't think there is anything wrong with people as individuals wanting to respect the flag, anthem etc. The problem is when they threaten retribution against those who don't choose to observe the rituals in the prescribed way. I've never understood why taking the knee during the anthem was so bad anyway - it seemed to be a way of making a point without being unduly disrespectful.

I tend to be with Samuel Johnson on these things - patriotism is too often the last refuge of the scoundrel. Just as real smart people don't proclaim how smart they are, real patriots don't engage in ostentatious displays to proclaim how patriotic they are. Instead they demonstrate by their actions that they value their country and respect the principles on which it was founded.

Fortunately, in Australia we don't take all that stuff as seriously as Americans generally seem to. I only know the first few words to our national anthem. Parading the flag makes me cringe a bit because it's often associated with yobbish types - the sort of people who engaged in the Cronulla race riots many years ago.

[broncofan]

Is there a difference between symbols and signs? I don’t know. But it seems to me there might be. The American flag has come to symbolize the country, it’s aspirations, it’s culture, it’s people, it’s laws, the etc. etc. etc. I don’t think I like symbols. They’re too big and too undefined and ultimately, it seems, too divisive. The symbol becomes more important than the actual ideals. We fetishize it.

Over time the symbol never ends up representing the ideals it may have once embodied. A Mexican-American girl I knew used to call the American flag displayed in a pick-up truck "the white person flag". At the time I was either obtuse or pretended to be and said, "well that flag represents all of us." But in certain contexts its display is nationalistic and it looks like a claim of nativism. I probably don't have to say how illogical a claim of nativism in North America is for a white person, but that's what it can be.

The problem with symbols is their meaning is quickly perverted (perverted, erect, where are we going with this). We'd love our flag to embody our ideals, which would mean that everyone who honors it also honors every provision of our Constitution. What if flag-waving were correlated with literacy about what our Constitution says? That's not the world we live in and probably the opposite is the case.

[blackchubby38]

I can understand the basic principle you use to condemn the sins of the past while seeking to heal its wounds, for if the parties to a conflict never find a way to accomodate each other, there is no end to the conflict, whatever forms it takes.

The problem is that the history of your country is replete with a determination by some people, whether they are in organized groups or not, to deny Black people the place they deserve in the writing of that history, and I am not sure if the South, in some respects, has ever been reconciled with its defeat, even less the right of its Black citizens to be considered their equal.

It means that Americans, or anyone without proper tuition, live in ignorance of what Black Americans have achieved, when they achieved it, and why so often an 'Age of Achievement' was replaced by an 'Age of Failure'. It would be like the 45th President not only saying, as he has, that Black people are stupid and lazy, but adding, as if it were a generous concession, 'but they are good at sports and can play music very well'. But it becomes deeply problematic when the writing of history becomes an opportunity, not to record it, but to re-write it in order to eliminate people, ideas, movements that the historian doesn't like, to justify the present and those who benefit most from it. So many statues of men appear long afte they were dead, to honour them more for their present meaing rather than their past 'achievement', given that so many were in fact, like the Confederate Generals, losers. Indeed, are these statues not intended to reverse the historical record in some way? As with Robert. Lee in Richmond, so Oliver Cromwell outside Parliament, once the most hated regicide in England, erected in 1899 to remind 'us' of the moral superiority of the British Empire, opposed to the corrupt influence of Roman Catholicism on 'Home Rule' for Ireland.

Because Race in America is a state of mind as well as a state of fact, you have to go beyond Slavery and the Civil War to ask how the country dealt with the aftermath of those two processes. I argue that you find that from an initial fear, indeed, terror, that freed slaves were going to run rampage across the South in violent revenge on their former masters -the fear that led to the first Federal laws on gun control- you find that by the end of the century, Black Americans who had passed the National Civil Service Exam had become an integral part of the US Administration mostly but not solely empoyed in Washington DC, educated, responsible and utterly committed to the Republic.
Add in the cultural explosion of the early 20th century in the music of Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver, and you can see Black Americans not only proving themselves worthy as equal citizens, but shaping the destiny of popular music that would take American music across the world. Aside from the European classical tradition imported by immigrants, American music at one time was Black music, and Black music was American music.

Yet in the first two decades of the century, Roosevelt, Taft, and crucially, Woodrow Wilson, embarked on a sustained campaign to rid the US Administration of its educated and responsible Black employees. It had nothing to do wih efficiency, it wasn't budget cuts leading to job cuts, it was, in stark language, racism, and it came from the very same people who had defeated Slavery and won the Civil War. Thus-

"“Long ago we determined that the Negro never should be our master,” explained one of Wilson’s administrators, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John Skelton Williams. Williams vowed “stern, final, definite prohibition” of any “social or political equality.”
Wilson appointed white men to important executive positions usually held by leading black politicians, and racist bureaucrats went out of their way to humiliate, demote, and dismiss ordinary black clerks."
https://theconversation.com/how-the-...stration-52200

When I was an undergraudate, my first impressions of Wilson was of the President who brought the US into the First World War in 1917. It was a decisive move because it tilted the balance of power away from Germany, to the extent that the Germans were unable to reap any benefit from the Bolshevik Revolution and the end of the war with Russia in March 1918. Wilson went further and in his 13 Points offered an aternative 'World Order' to that of the European Empires which in some respects -National Self-Determination' for example- was not so different from what Lenin called for. So revered was Wilson that the first Chair in International Relations in a UK University was established at Aberystwyth in 1919, and it was not until years later that I discovered what an appalling racist this man was.

You might argue this is a good case for reconciling the good with the bad, but if it is also the case that he was reflecting the morals and politics of his age, is not also true he was only representing one trend of that age, that he was also repudiating the morals and the politics that had enabled Black Americans to improve their social and economic position while also contributing to the progress of the USA?

In this attempt at a balancing act, it is difficult to reach a moral conclusion about a man so morally compromised. He did not need to expel Black Americans from their positions, it was not a necessity -it was a choice. Indeed, one wonders if history is being re-written today, or if it is in fact, the same unbroken narrative of American history that has seen multiple and diverse people -freemen and slaves- make the US what it is today, but rarely appear in its history as the equal creators of that history, because of a need for a few privileged White folks to hang on to their High Command of that narrative.

And is there not a danger that this complex history of inclusion and exclusion, of grudging respect from some, sneering dismissal from others, breeds the resentment that provokes violence on both sides, locked in a monotone narrative of permanent victims?

It seems to me that the divisions that exist in the US run so deep that reconciliation is impossible right now because there is no common ground in the narrative that explains it, no common ground that can end it. Just as there are historians who interpret the Civil War, not as a fight for freedom from slavery, but the birth of the Imperial Presidency the Founding Fathers were opposed to, that Lincoln tolls the death-knell of the American Revolution, and individual liberty as a 'sacred' right.

To paraphrase Ophelia, 'We know what America is, but not what it might be' -history cannot answer the question, because you are still trying to define who you are, and who your country belongs to. On that level, so are all, in the UK, in France -but owing to your size, you are 'writ large' on the world stage. And a gripping, fascinating narrative it is too. I wish you well in your attemp to shape the future, but your past shakes it weary head.

Even with the 13 Points, I have no problems saying that Wilson is probably one of the worst presidents of all time. No only for his views on race which you can argue set back the advancement of black people in this country for decades, but I truly believe he was way in over his head at the Paris Peace Conference. Not to mention his stubbornness played a role in the United States not joining the League Of Nations.

I do think there is a balancing act that one must play when you look back on past events with modern day sensibilities. For example, I know a majority of the founding fathers owned slaves. That totally contradicts with ideals that they put forth when they wrote the Constitution and founded this nation. But I while may view those men as being flawed and a product of their time, I don't look at the ideals same way and they should be something that is striven for.

[Stavros]

Your verdict on Wilson is a key one -for an American.
Before I knew more about him, my impression was that Wilson was revered over here because he rescued Europe from one of its biggest mistakes, and that it set a precedent, followed not so long after 1918 by the urgent desire/need for the Americans to come to our rescue again in 1940, and indeed, at the end of the War when, having helped to rescue Europe from the Nazis, it rescued us from bankrupty by financing our economic recovery (while insinuating itself into European Cold War politics through the nascent CIA and the Gladio network).

The 'problem' of the slave-owning Revolutionaries can be dealt with by swerving from their private lives, to the 'Grand Project' which was America's Liberal Revolution, which I take to be one that created a free space for individuals within the State, rather than outside it. The decision to give people the freedom to make their own choices, was based, in part on a low level of taxation, but also on a laissez-faire attitude to social and personal relations. I made the point in a thread somewhere recently that in reality the Christian communities that de Tocquville noted in his study Democracy in America could, and did impose their own strict rules on people, but that to their Scarlet Letter(s) one can also offer the Call of the Wild.

It may seem contradictory to argue that Washington, Jefferson and the other Presidents down to Lincoln remained committed to the Liberal Project, when at the same time First Nations were being obliterated, and slavery embedded in the economy, but when the crisis came in 1861, it was Liberalism that prevailed. For all the critiiques of Lincoln then and now, the vexation over his (alleged) abuse of the Constitution, his provocation of the Slave States -if you like, his Presidential Style- must be set aside as the emancipation of the Slaves was entirely within the Liberal Project, giving Black people equal rights to freedom as everyone else, including the Jews, a small group the subject of the kind of nasty attacks Lincoln was opposed to, he being one of their most ardent supporters and defenders.

It seems to me that the Civil War has become the pivot on which so much of American politics has shifted, because Race is fundamental to an immigrant 'nation', and because so much of American politics has sought to either extend the historic, Liberal project that began in 1776, or re-define it to maintain the political, economic and social dominance of White Christians with a European lineage

Thus, Wilson's determination to expunge the Black professional classes from American government, is matched by the Liberal reforms of the Johnson admnistation in the 1960s, but what is stark, to me, is how the campaigns that have been mounted since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have had the intention, not of re-defining Liberalism, but opposing it. Whether it is the Religious movements, mostly 'Fundamentalist' or 'Evangelical Christians', Republicans and/or the Libertarians associated with the Koch Brothers and Rand Paul, the use of States Rights or State Sovereignty to refine/re-define the meaning of the law, has the clear intention of removing the right to vote from social groups assumed to be natural 'Democrat' voters.

The aggressive means that is being used to deny what the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gives in law, is a break with the Liberal Project of 1776, because what Lincoln argued, that every American must be equal under the Constitution and that Slavery was not and could not be justified, has been repudiated by the hair-splitting argument that, for example, Mr X cannot vote because he lacks the proof of identity the State requires, when this proof is not reasonable to ask for, and when it is a fact that all of those Mr and Mrs X's are Black, or from a minority non-white social group. It is transparent what is happening here: even the President has said it: the more people who are allowed to vote, the less successful his re-election will be. An election that ought to be about policy, is now about process.

But here is the additional dimension: on BBC Radio after the 2016 a Republican was asked what the priorities would be for the new administration: 'to reverse every decision Obama made. It will be as if Obama never happened'. Thus, to the war being waged against the Constitution and the Law, there is a struggle to re-write American history, even the one you have lived through as an adult. The anguish Obama represents is the age-old anguish that assumed freed slaves would seek revenge for slavery and its humiiation, even though freed slaves were more concerned to improve their lives -and many did so, even if it meant leaving the South for the North. The loyalties of those immigrants who arrives in waves after 1865 was not in doubt, be they from Italy or Poland, China or Japan, yet the same queries are raised with immigrants identified as 'Muslim' or 'Asian', as if Ilhan Omar cannot be a authentic American because she was born in Somalia, though no such query is made of the German called Trumpf when he settled in the USA.

For these reasons I see no accommodation between Democrats and Republicans that can heal the divisions, unless Republicans can re-discover and re-commit to the Liberal principles that used to guide their politics. It is no longer an argument about how extensive Federal and State Government should be, or what the levels of taxation best serve the citizen, but the fundamental core of Liberal politics -integrating the citizen into the State as equals, rather than excluding them on the basis of some trivial prejudice based on colour, creed or sexuality. That this basic right can be dismissed, for example in the case of Transgender Rights, as 'Virtue Signalling' is an example of how far from the core values of the US the Republicans have strayed.

It may be stark, so urgent, that you may now have only 130 days to save your Republic. For all his wild allegations of vote rigging by Democrats, what if the 45th President wins a second term on the basis of his own party's transparent, blatant vote rigging- what will the Democrats do?

[Stavros]

From the Speech delivered at Mount Rushmore (written, one assumes by Stephen Miller given that it is full of historical references the President knows nothing about)-

"Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive, but no, the American people are strong and proud and they will not allow our country and all of its values, history, and culture to be taken from them." (my bold)

-so are 'they' Americans?

Full speech is here-
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts...-of-july-event

I saw the video from Florida with the man in a golf cart shouting 'White Power' at protestors, but they were shouting back 'fucking Nazis' -showing how badly divided the US is at the moment, and how ugly it all is, and how one wonders if there can be any dialogue between such polarized communities.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...t-voters#img-1

Brexit has divided Britain, but I am not sure it has descended to the level we see in the US, assuming this polarization is widespread...

[KnightHawk 2.0]

From the Speech delivered at Mount Rushmore (written, one assumes by Stephen Miller given that it is full of historical references the President knows nothing about)-

"Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive, but no, the American people are strong and proud and they will not allow our country and all of its values, history, and culture to be taken from them." (my bold)

-so are 'they' Americans?

Full speech is here-
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts...-of-july-event

I saw the video from Florida with the man in a golf cart shouting 'White Power' at protestors, but they were shouting back 'fucking Nazis' -showing how badly divided the US is at the moment, and how ugly it all is, and how one wonders if there can be any dialogue between such polarized communities.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...t-voters#img-1

Brexit has divided Britain, but I am not sure it has descended to the level we see in the US, assuming this polarization is widespread...

Just another example from the Clueless Buffoon In Chief spreading propaganda at his so-called celebration yesterday,and it shows that him,his enablers and supporters want to keep things the way they are in the United States, and is upset because there is a movement in the country calling for change and they don't like it, and he's also the same one who called the Black Lives Matter Murial in front of his fifth avenue residence a symbol of hate,and calling confederate monuments magnificent. I also saw that video as well and agree that it shows how badly divided the US is at the moment,and how ugly it all is . No unfortunately there can't be any dialogue between such polarized communities, especially when the CBIC is stoking fear and division and attacking people on social media on the daily basis. and the enablers in congress and the senate refusing to do anything about it.

[broncofan]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1279555471750254592

[Yvonne183]

Thought for the Day:

Looks like Trump was a big disappointment, too much twittering nonsense and other stuff. But having Biden as the next president doesn't inspire confidence. It's like Don Dumb verses Joe Schmoe.

If I was a conspiracy person I might see something else. I think the election all depends on who Biden picks as VP. I think once Biden gets in there will be a campaign by the "woke" generation as well as the media to have Biden resign leaving the VP to take over. Cause Biden does have some baggage which can be used against him. That way the country will get their first woman president. Just a conspiracy thought I had.

Second thought of the day: I do hope things change where trans girls don't have to become sex workers just to survive. If they choose to, that's one thing but it's sad if they have no choice.

OK, that's all till next year or so. I think I will be heading back to the hospital for mental treatment, my head hurts being out in the open air, I need a locked room to survive. Good luck Starvos.

[Stavros]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1279555471750254592

'This tweet is unavailable'

[Stavros]

Thought for the Day:
Looks like Trump was a big disappointment, too much twittering nonsense and other stuff. But having Biden as the next president doesn't inspire confidence. It's like Don Dumb verses Joe Schmoe.

If I was a conspiracy person I might see something else. I think the election all depends on who Biden picks as VP. I think once Biden gets in there will be a campaign by the "woke" generation as well as the media to have Biden resign leaving the VP to take over. Cause Biden does have some baggage which can be used against him. That way the country will get their first woman president. Just a conspiracy thought I had.

Second thought of the day: I do hope things change where trans girls don't have to become sex workers just to survive. If they choose to, that's one thing but it's sad if they have no choice.

OK, that's all till next year or so. I think I will be heading back to the hospital for mental treatment, my head hurts being out in the open air, I need a locked room to survive. Good luck Starvos.

The fear -conspiracy theory-might be Biden snuffs it before the end of the first term, but I do think the VP choice this time has more resonance than it has had before, though for some to problem is that they don't want a re-run of McCain-?

Covid 19 has rammed a juggernaut through the economy at a time when AI was in the process of shredding jobs, one wonders at the corporate level if the health crisis will be used to 'modernize' work and that many 'on furlough' will have a job to return to. For sex workers, I think that other factors are relevant: the need for instant cash owing to homelessness, or rent; the absence of family support; disrupted education; substance abuse: those factors will persist- but in an urban context that may be more anarchic and dangerous than before.

Sorry to hear about your head, just make sure you keep it where it is and safe, as it's the only one you have- stay safe and well, and write again when you can.