It's Kamala!

[hollodero]

(08-16-2020, 11:47 PM)Dill Wrote: Yo, easy Hollo. Seems like I touched a nerve or two here. I was not at all implying that the view from Vienna is inherently ignorant or illogical. But I am implying that from that distance, while the numbers may be clear enough, they don't account for the way history and culture weigh differently on differing groups in US political discourse, and so on vp choices.

?? No, I am not offended in any way. Just to be clear about that. Also, while you say you don't see my views as Ignorant, you go on within the next sentence and describe a form of ignorance. But that is totally, 100% fair. I am ignorant of many things for sure, it's just that at times I feel the distance also gives me a different perspective, which at times can not be that disadvantageous. No offense, but at times I feel you're a bit too caught up with historical examples and drawing up connections that are a bit far fetched.

I believe historical context often is overrated. I also see the democratic party as indeed engaging in identity politics too much, too much for their own good that is. Like declaring poverty as a racial issue and then be all surprised that the poor white working class feels forgotten. Don't they check their privilege? Oh btw climate change is all about race too. And corona doesn't affect poor people especially, but black people especially, let's make this a black people issue too. I know many people don't do that, but in your media driven world the more nuanced voices often get outscreamed by oversimplified counters, and quite a lot of TV pundits do exactly what I described. Like saying no nunance, let's just call this racist and that racist and be all worked up and then be done with it.

(Kamala, imho, displayed an example of that when she attacked Biden on bussing. Hardly anyone seemed to even recognize that Biden actually had a response to that, where he tried to explain that it wasn't quite that easy and clear-cut as she just makes it out to be. She won the excahnge on mere simplicity though, no it is that easy, you lost, I destroyed you. Does that really help the black community, is it even considerate? I don't know. I think it's using race for a cheap sham attack.)

Too much is made out of race in word and symbolic deed, just way too much, that is just my perspective on it, sure without any context of what happened in the '60s. Probably too little is done in form of actual deed, that's probably true as well.

I also have a habit of more or less always being annoyed when an important post is to be filled and the first thing people say is "let's first decide to put in someone from this or that group and move on from there". It annoys me in my country as well, where we treat women's rights a bit similar. When we needed a surrogate chancellor in dire political times, folks just claimed it has to be a woman, it is the most important thing, and it would be sexist not to choose a woman, just look at how unfairly women were treated throughout history... - and I consider this approach quite wrong. That's maybe just me, but that's one of my main issues with the black female VP pick.
For one, I hate the underlying message of "if it's not a black person, this person can't do good by your community", or at least significantly less good, which is just not true. I also dislike it then when someone non-black would have been chosen, blacks would have been told that they somehow got victimized by that. I get annoyed when self-declared black leaders claim that Biden can either choose a black woman as VP or is a devil. What nonsense. Or all the hysteria of deep offense to a whole race, a slap in their collective faces and whatnot when no black person won an oscar... ah this leads too far now.

(08-16-2020, 11:47 PM)Dill Wrote: By that same token of distance, there is absolutely no reason to suppose you and your neighbors would raise the meritocratic standard to fight a "rear guard action" to defend a US status quo, especially one you, personally, have always been critical of. You've generally been a touchstone of rational clarity in this forum. My humble apologies if I have given you the impression I thought otherwise. My intent was to SEPARATE, not conflate,  your defense of meritocracy from that of Ingraham and others by emphasizing the difference in context.

Well, to be fair, you also lumped them together in the first place. Meritocratic arguments per se do not have any historic context, they just have a somewhat logical, well, merit. I am certain though without a dozen more examples that meritocratic arguments, as you put it, were used time and again to defend the racially unjust status quo throughout history and up to this day. But this approach also can lead to a killer argument, like saying "you believe the earth is round? You know who else believed that? Hitler." I'm not trying to say you do something akin to that, I'm saying that Laura Ingraham or other right-wing voices don't need to be part of this debate at all, and the existence of Laura Ingraham etc. etc. doesn't need to result in automatically refuting meritocratic arguments. This isn't about the right wing. What I could say about the right wing though is that it can be observed how they start to use the same racism arguments now - like Biden is a racist for saying blacks vote for him or they ain't black or that the hispanic vote is more diverse. No he's not a racist, he's just a bit dull at times. But the quality of the racist takedown is something the right wing learned by observation.

(08-16-2020, 11:47 PM)Dill Wrote: Since I don't think Dem "pandering" to Blacks (and other minorities) has left them as "marginalized as ever" over my life time

That's probably true. Doesn't mean all they do is not just pandering without leaving them as marginalized as before. It depends on what people do, it also depends on what Kamala Harris will do, it doesn't depend on what skin color or gender she is.