General Trump hilarity free-for-all thread

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Hey now Roger, it's not like current day wealth disparities can be directly traced to slavery or anything.  Black people just need to whine less.

But how is anyone that is still alive in any way accountable for that? That's the part that bugs me. Even if people are still being very indirectly victimized it's not like any of the people responsible for it are still around to extract compensation from. Slavery has already ended, and the people responsible for it are all long dead. It may be true that black people are poor because their ancestors were poor because their ancestors' ancestors were slaves, but dwelling on the instigating factor that started it isn't going to do a damn thing to end the cycle of poverty. Dwelling on slavery is a distraction from ongoing problems like the discriminatory hiring and housing policies mentioned later in that same article and, most importantly of all, the general lack of upward economic mobility for the poor

Because black people aren't just poor because of slavery, rich white people are rich because of it too.

None of the rich people that are around today were actually a part of it even if it benefited them indirectly. Their hands are clean (on this matter at any rate, I'm sure most of them have done other highly unethical things, but that's entirely beside the point). How can someone be accountable for something that happened before they were born? That's like trashing jewish and/or italian people for the death of jesus. That's like saying that the christian doctrine of original sin isn't flagrant bullshit. That's like saying that Dennis Rader's children are complicit in the BTK murders. That's like saying that the dead aren't dead.

[Doktor Howl]

Let's chop PDS's wank hand off then tell every doctor he can go to that that hand is his wank hand and he likes to spank it to deformed squirrels falling out of trees, so that his wank hand is impossible for him to replace with a prosthetic.

Let's get it put into law that PDS and his descendants can not replace a lost wank hand, because they're degenerates and can't be trusted with that power.

Then since he lacks one hand, even if it is his disgusting private time hand, he'll end up forced into working jobs where hand loss is common, since he's already gotten one to go missing, where's the harm, right?

His descendants will join the family business of chainsaw catching for loggers in the Amazon, and each of them will in turn lose their wank hands before they so much as get a chance to use them. It is illegal for them to replace them, so just as soon as they learn that maybe dear ol dad's career fucking sucks, they end up locked into it.

One hundred years from now, when all the perpetrators of this hilarity are long since dead, PDS would prefer we don't worry about the new, equality focused version of the law, whereby loss of wank hand is simply made illegal for everyone, and you must spend a token amount on a simple prosthetic.

Even though his kids can't afford it because they've all been catching chainsaws for peanuts in the tropical wilderness and had to spend their life savings getting the guinea worm and screwfly infestations dealt with, so they're unable to buy a prosthetic or even just make a new wank hand out of rusty wire, foam padding and duct tape, its not discriminatory anymore and everyone responsible for it is dead anyway so it's all just fine.

I wish this would fit in Newsfeed. 

[Doktor Howl]

Hey now Roger, it's not like current day wealth disparities can be directly traced to slavery or anything.  Black people just need to whine less.

But how is anyone that is still alive in any way accountable for that? That's the part that bugs me. Even if people are still being very indirectly victimized it's not like any of the people responsible for it are still around to extract compensation from. Slavery has already ended, and the people responsible for it are all long dead. It may be true that black people are poor because their ancestors were poor because their ancestors' ancestors were slaves, but dwelling on the instigating factor that started it isn't going to do a damn thing to end the cycle of poverty. Dwelling on slavery is a distraction from ongoing problems like the discriminatory hiring and housing policies mentioned later in that same article and, most importantly of all, the general lack of upward economic mobility for the poor

Because black people aren't just poor because of slavery, rich white people are rich because of it too.

None of the rich people that are around today were actually a part of it even if it benefited them indirectly. Their hands are clean (on this matter at any rate, I'm sure most of them have done other highly unethical things, but that's entirely beside the point). How can someone be accountable for something that happened before they were born? That's like trashing jewish and/or italian people for the death of jesus. That's like saying that the christian doctrine of original sin isn't flagrant bullshit. That's like saying that Dennis Rader's children are complicit in the BTK murders. That's like saying that the dead aren't dead.

You should probably stop.

But you won't.

Keep screeching.

[The Johnny]

Hey now Roger, it's not like current day wealth disparities can be directly traced to slavery or anything.  Black people just need to whine less.

But how is anyone that is still alive in any way accountable for that? That's the part that bugs me. Even if people are still being very indirectly victimized it's not like any of the people responsible for it are still around to extract compensation from. Slavery has already ended, and the people responsible for it are all long dead. It may be true that black people are poor because their ancestors were poor because their ancestors' ancestors were slaves, but dwelling on the instigating factor that started it isn't going to do a damn thing to end the cycle of poverty. Dwelling on slavery is a distraction from ongoing problems like the discriminatory hiring and housing policies mentioned later in that same article and, most importantly of all, the general lack of upward economic mobility for the poor

Because black people aren't just poor because of slavery, rich white people are rich because of it too.

None of the rich people that are around today were actually a part of it even if it benefited them indirectly. Their hands are clean (on this matter at any rate, I'm sure most of them have done other highly unethical things, but that's entirely beside the point). How can someone be accountable for something that happened before they were born? That's like trashing jewish and/or italian people for the death of jesus. That's like saying that the christian doctrine of original sin isn't flagrant bullshit. That's like saying that Dennis Rader's children are complicit in the BTK murders. That's like saying that the dead aren't dead.

So if say, i steal all your money, open a bank account for my (hypothetical) son, deposit all the stolen money in my son's bank account... then immediately after its done, i off myself off of this planet, my son should be able to keep all the money i took away from you?

[MMIX]

Not to strawman or anything, but PDS: did you protest when gay people said they didn't want to be called "faggot" anymore?

Just a quick observation about the vagaries of language and the ease with which your meaning can get inadvertently screwed:
gay person here, but I've never, ever, been called a faggot, though a neighbour did once call me a rug-muncher to my face. It made me laugh.

[altered]

Trans women regardless of sexuality tend to have some personal experience with that term as well.

[MMIX]

Trans women regardless of sexuality tend to have some personal experience with that term as well.

Faggot or rug-muncher?

[altered]

The first. Trans lesbians may have experience with both, which is just an exciting future in store for me.

[MMIX]

The first. Trans lesbians may have experience with both, which is just an exciting future in store for me.

Aah, thanks for clarifying.

[chaotic neutral observer]

There's definitely still various forms of race discrimination and mistreatment out there but chattel slavery is not one of them and it hasn't been one of them for 150 years. They passed a constitutional amendment banning it, that's the strongest thing that the government can do.

I don't think that "150 years" is quite right.  Convict leasing continued into the 1920s.  It wasn't technically slavery, but there was little practical difference.

The Jim Crow segregation laws were enforced until 1965.  That would be an example of the government actively maintaining black people's status as second class citizens.

[altered]

There's definitely still various forms of race discrimination and mistreatment out there but chattel slavery is not one of them and it hasn't been one of them for 150 years. They passed a constitutional amendment banning it, that's the strongest thing that the government can do.

I don't think that "150 years" is quite right.  Convict leasing continued into the 1920s.  It wasn't technically slavery, but there was little practical difference.

The Jim Crow segregation laws were enforced until 1965.  That would be an example of the government actively maintaining black people's status as second class citizens.

Fuck convict leasing, prison slavery is a thing to this day. https://mobile.twitter.com/i/moments/866583376265977856?lang=en

[altered]

Even though his kids can't afford it because they've all been catching chainsaws for peanuts in the tropical wilderness and had to spend their life savings getting the guinea worm and screwfly infestations dealt with, so they're unable to buy a prosthetic or even just make a new wank hand out of rusty wire, foam padding and duct tape, its not discriminatory anymore and everyone responsible for it is dead anyway so it's all just fine.

I wish this would fit in Newsfeed. 

It's long, but that last paragraph hits most of the high points, I think.

[altered]

There's definitely still various forms of race discrimination and mistreatment out there but chattel slavery is not one of them and it hasn't been one of them for 150 years. They passed a constitutional amendment banning it, that's the strongest thing that the government can do.

I don't think that "150 years" is quite right.  Convict leasing continued into the 1920s.  It wasn't technically slavery, but there was little practical difference.

The Jim Crow segregation laws were enforced until 1965.  That would be an example of the government actively maintaining black people's status as second class citizens.

Fuck convict leasing, prison slavery is a thing to this day. https://mobile.twitter.com/i/moments/866583376265977856?lang=en

https://www.thenation.com/article/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor/

But slavery is over you guys!!! Not the same at all!!!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries

Equality! So it isn't racist!

http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/FT_18.01.10_PrisonRaceGaps_2.png


FUCK


PDS can eat my entire ass and choke on it.

[altered]

And let's not even get into how drug laws were fucking invented to keep minorities under the control of whites, or how the vast majority of non-white convicts landed themselves a stint in jail for non-violent drug offenses, or how criminal sentences land heavier on people of color on average, or or or...

Fuck this colorblind "racism is over and slavery is ancient history" privileged whitebread bullshit.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

The usual bullshit. Talking about slavery as if it had happened to them rather than having ended 30 or 40 years before the oldest people in the world were born. Blaming the continued existence of racism and sexism on people talking the wrong way

the continued existence of racism and sexism is about people thinking the wrong way. Better language is one way of addressing it.

but we also live in a world where speech is a form of action

It's hard to visualize a world where racism has ended but people still use racist language. Combatting racist language is one form of making the world less racist.

And yet the continued need for new terms shows that this approach doesn't work. One year's politically correct term is the next year's racist term.

So why would we stick with a word that's innaccurate and makes people feel bad? Is it so bad to say a few extra words? Everybody who's "anti-PC" has this "Hard Truth tellin" vibe to their arguments .. but isn't the deeper truth that they don't actually care how those people feel?

How ANY people feel. I don't care how ANY people feel.

And a person who did care how people feel would be a poor choice to depend on for the truth. (Imagime, for example, a world where serious people of learning cared about the sense of comfort and belonging that people get from believing in a higher power.)

Also, never forget sometimes the best way to get someone's attention is to be fucking obnoxious. Obnoxiousness is a skill to be honed for maximum utility. It is probably the first skill an agitator should learn, no matter their cause.

Well excuse me for not being swayed by people using the same debate tactics as Donald Trump. I'm sure you're all very stable geniuses.