Vacci-Nation [CLOSED DUE TO DISRESPECTFUL, INSULTING, POLITICAL POSTS

[Atmo]

Originally Posted by cjd

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with the first bit. With the second bit you're over the line and repeating talking points intended to quash progress and enforce the status quo if not regress. It does not rewrite history: that's a straight-up falsehood. And it shines a light on the demons; it does not creat them.

CRT, related to the discredited 1619 Project, is racist on it's face. It legitimizes and institutionalizes a new type of equally disgusting and destructive racism and has already been banned outright or has statehouse bills in progress in a couple dozen states to ban it. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by soundman98

the implication of the data/graph as they present it says that 'x' isn't getting vaccinated because they do 'y'. but neither is inclusive. there's no definitive correlation-- if there were, the voting record for the last election should line up closer with the vaccination rate for the parties. and it doesn't.

I think I understand. The authors are comparing counties with respect to voting behavior (Trump - not Trump) and vaccination rates. So you have county by county measures of voting behavior and county by county measures of vaccination rates. As long as your units of analysis are the same and your observations are of the same subject, you're generally ok. It's done a lot studying both aggregate and, in some situations, individual level data. In this case both sets of data are aggregate population data. Given that, it's reasonable to combine them.

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by Atmo

CRT, related to the discredited 1619 Project, is racist on it's face. It legitimizes and institutionalizes a new type of equally disgusting and destructive racism and has already been banned outright or has statehouse bills in progress in a couple dozen states to ban it. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Discredited by whom?


What makes it racist on its face?


Which states are banning it and why?

[Atmo]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

Discredited by whom?


What makes it racist on its face?


Which states are banning it and why?

The first and last questions are easily answered with a simple search.

I've read the outline of CRT as presented to K-12 public school teachers and it's clearly racist. It rejects the notion of the individual, instead defining people as members of groups whose thoughts, actions, behaviors, attitudes and other characteristics are predetermined by their skin color then further defining those of certain color as oppressor and oppressed.

I haven't seen outlines for CRT used in government, military, or corporate "instruction" (indoctrination, really) but expect them to be similar. It looks like an ideological theory meant to suppress individual thought and opinion under threat of being canceled and all that would follow. How that improves society and the lot of anyone escapes me.

[cjd]

Originally Posted by Atmo

CRT, related to the discredited 1619 Project, is racist on it's face. It legitimizes and institutionalizes a new type of equally disgusting and destructive racism and has already been banned outright or has statehouse bills in progress in a couple dozen states to ban it. Two wrongs don't make a right.

That sounds like the talking points I've heard by people afraid to lose power to oppress as they see fit.

CRT is not what everyone says it is and there is a massive game afoot trying to change the meaning of the movement so they can squash it. Top of the playbook... Gaslight everyone. Misdirect the conversation to something that may have a similarity, but which is a problem. Then discredit the new thing and hope no one notices you're not actually talking about the other thing.
Fundamentally it suggests were failing to teach a lot of history, and the gaps are significantly skewed based on skin color. And many of those things are the foundations of problems we have today. We are a racist nation. Nations really, its not isolated. If we don't understand that, or what has happened as a result, we can't begin to change.


Differences in access are rooted in redlining - a lack of hospitals and care centers. Lack of trust is rooted in other historic events. This the history that shapes where we are today. Yet gaps in our protective shell result in variations, mutations - they put us ALL at risk. But you can't overcome the challenges if you don't understand why they're there.

[MuseChaser]

I believe that the value of a human life has nothing to do with the color of one's skin.
I stand in 100% support of Dr. Martin Luther King's desire to one day have all people judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
I believe that the color of one's skin has nothing to do with how one decides to conduct one's self.

Now... two questions.

1. How can anyone disagree with any of those three statements, and not be racist?

2. How can Critical Race theory, which clearly argues against at least two of those three statements, be anything BUT racist?

And ... a few more bonus questions..

3. How, in a supposedly racist country, did a black person become president of our country and arguably the "leader of the free world?" Keep in mind that black people account for approximately 13% of the American population.

4. How, in a supposedly racist country, do we have so many members of virtually every minority demographic represented in every "high-level" profession... doctors, lawyers, engineers, CEOs, LEOs, elected officials at every level of government, professors....?

We are rapidly DEVOLVING into a racist country, I will grant you, but it's because we are being taught to see race, and not see individuals. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and can 100% affirm that we were taught history. Slavery was NOT glossed over in any way, shape, or form, nor were civil rights movements, terrible tragedies, injustices, presidents who owned slaves, bad traits of people who still did great things, the plight of Native Americans as Europeans gradually made North America their new home. We were taught to see flawed individuals struggling to make great discoveries, enduring tremendous hardships and, yes, creating tremendous hardships for others in the process.

The idea that these things were NOT taught is completely fallacious. It is also completely fallacious to state that the 1619 project and CRT are even close to objective, factual approaches to history and the founding of our nation. One of the oft-stated goals of CRT is to "disrupt whiteness." How, in any way, shape, or form, is that not a racist goal? Is it equally welcome to suggest that "disrupting blackness" would also be an admirable goal to us becoming unified? Of course not.

There will always be a handful of racist individuals. There always have been, and there always will be. A handful of ignorant individuals does NOT mean that a nation is racist. We are NOT a racist nation and systemic racism is a myth created to further divide us. There are plenty of prominent as well as "average" black men and women who agree with that statement, and plenty of black men and women who are insulted by the idea that people in our government think that they are unable or incapable of getting identification to vote.

It is amazing to me that we have come SO far since slavery, then segregation, then the late 1950s/early 60s, to a place where we all were truly living in Dr. King's America, only to have all of that progress wiped out in a matter of years by powers that seek to divide us for their own benefit.

I could write about this FOREVER, but I know I can't undo in twenty paragraphs what the media and academia has done to our younger generations in a matter of years. Also, there's really no way to avoid politics and yes, religion, in the discussion. Of course, that forum rule seems to be fairly flexible depending upon viewpoint being expressed.

[Atmo]

Originally Posted by cjd

That sounds like the talking points I've heard by people afraid to lose power to oppress as they see fit...

Your post reads like a generic horoscope. I was hoping to learn something.

You've read about the Civil War, right? The Civil Rights Act? Having traveled a good bit of the world, I can't think of another nation so liberal and accommodating to everyone as America. Obviously, based on legal immigration numbers, the rest of the world knows it too.

This debate reminds me of my youth, fresh out of undergrad school. I wanted to "make a difference" so volunteered to teach in inner city Hartford, a world away from Storrs where everyone was all talk but headed to the wealthy suburbs when they had a chance.

I and my lead instructor were the only white teachers in the school. There were no white students, 58 were black, 2 Hispanic. I was shocked to find that about 20% couldn't read so with my lead's approval formed a reading group, went across the street to the 1st grade to get a bunch of "See Spot Run" books and do what I could. Many learned to read in a couple of months with daily immersion. It was one of the most rewarding times in my life.

If the same conditions exist today, I don't see how CRT indoctrination would help those same kids succeed in life when some can't read but are socially promoted anyway.

Despite being offered a contract, I quit the teaching business at the end of the first year after realizing that the goals of the powerful teacher's union weren't consistent with actually educating children. CRT will be yet another distraction from teaching marketable skills to those most in need.

[MuseChaser]

Originally Posted by Atmo

Your post reads like a generic horoscope. I was hoping to learn something.

You've read about the Civil War, right? The Civil Rights Act? Having traveled a good bit of the world, I can't think of another nation so liberal and accommodating to everyone as America. Obviously, based on legal immigration numbers, the rest of the world knows it too.

This debate reminds me of my youth, fresh out of undergrad school. I wanted to "make a difference" so volunteered to teach in inner city Hartford, a world away from Storrs where everyone was all talk but headed to the wealthy suburbs when they had a chance.

I and my lead instructor were the only white teachers in the school. There were no white students, 58 were black, 2 Hispanic. I was shocked to find that about 20% couldn't read so with my lead's approval formed a reading group, went across the street to the 1st grade to get a bunch of "See Spot Run" books and do what I could. Many learned to read in a couple of months with daily immersion. It was one of the most rewarding times in my life.

If the same conditions exist today, I don't see how CRT indoctrination would help those same kids succeed in life when some can't read but are socially promoted anyway.

Despite being offered a contract, I quit the teaching business at the end of the first year after realizing that the goals of the powerful teacher's union weren't consistent with actually educating children. CRT will be yet another distraction from teaching marketable skills to those most in need.

I wish I could like/love this more than once. This is the voice of someone who has lived and experienced, rather than the voice of one who has read and been led.

Exactly what I'm talking about, except that I DID teach for 31 years in public schools and also at the university level, and was forced to either join the union or pay "agency fee," which coincidentally is the same amount as union dues. No matter what, I was forced to financially support a union that had goals to which I was frequently diametrically opposed. I paid agency fee rather than join until the last ten years, at which time I figured I might as well join so I at least had a voice, and I used it, serving on local committees and writing letters and emails to the state and national representatives. It did absolutely no good, but at least I tried.

Atmo, it's too bad you didn't stick with it... you sound like you were, and would have continued to be, a great teacher. It was a long 31 years for me, but very rewarding; I look back on a LOT of great kids, a handful of not-so-great ones, and the knowledge that, hopefully, I was able to give a lot of kids from all walks of life some experiences (I taught orchestral music, primarily) they would not have had. Some of my most cherished possessions are heartfelt thank you letters from some of my hard-case kids after they graduated.

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by Atmo

The first and last questions are easily answered with a simple search.

Of course I could do a search. But that's not the point. I'm asking you where YOU read whatever you read that led you to that conclusion and why. A lot of haters out there spread BS about a lot of things. Places like the Heritage Foundation have been claiming CRT does all sorts of things it doesn't do and that 1619 teaches all kinds of things it does not seem to teach.

The litany of states banning 1619 and CRT has, I bet you, a near perfect correlation with the low vaccination rates we discussed earlier and, I suspect for the same ideological reasons.

The effect of the bans is to enshrine the very points CRT and 1619 are making into law. They are attempts by white people to enshrine white ness as an inviolable precept. They are attempts to whitewash history in a number of senses of the word and in doing so are committing the very acts that provide the grist for the CRT/1619 mills.

Originally Posted by Atmo

I've read the outline of CRT as presented to K-12 public school teachers and it's clearly racist. It rejects the notion of the individual, instead defining people as members of groups whose thoughts, actions, behaviors, attitudes and other characteristics are predetermined by their skin color then further defining those of certain color as oppressor and oppressed.

I haven't seen outlines for CRT used in government, military, or corporate "instruction" (indoctrination, really) but expect them to be similar. It looks like an ideological theory meant to suppress individual thought and opinion under threat of being canceled and all that would follow. How that improves society and the lot of anyone escapes me.

The whole "critical theory" movement began when I was in grad school. I found it then, and find it now, somewhat repetitive and tedious. But, having watched it grow (after a fashion) I have some familiarity with it. Critical theory evolved as an attempt to explain the pervasive and persistent inequalities that exist in American (and other) society. It includes a family of sub-theories - Critical Race Theory, Critical Gender Theory and its close cousin feminist epistemology, Critical Environmental Theory and I'm sure others I can't recall.

The basic idea is that concepts like race, gender, and class are inventions created by people with power and wealth for the sole purpose of staying in power and expanding their wealth. The powerful use tools like law, and racial and gender distinctions and such as instruments of social control. They are intended to keep the rich rich and the powerful powerful (and the weak weak and the poor poor). It is actually a pretty clean way of explain the persistence and brutality of American capitalism. So, it's very Marxist in it's underpinnings. And most people who actually read Marx come away realizing he was on to something.

I take you are not a fan of identity politics. The truth is there is no other kind. The notion of the sturdy individual, thinking and creating a life for themselves with their own hands is a myth. It is THE myth that perpetuates the rule of <1%. As Warren Buffett once said and I paraphrase, "I don't know why people keep whining about the creation of class warfare. There's been a class war going on for years, and my class won."

[Atmo]

I've read some of Herbert Marcuse, said to be the fabricator of Critical Theory, and his 1965 "Repressive Tolerance" paper that goes into more detail about what you wrote.

I took it to be pure propaganda to incite violence referred to as liberation.

[cjd]

Originally Posted by Atmo

Your post reads like a generic horoscope. I was hoping to learn something.

You've read about the Civil War, right? The Civil Rights Act? Having traveled a good bit of the world, I can't think of another nation so liberal and accommodating to everyone as America. Obviously, based on legal immigration numbers, the rest of the world knows it too.

This debate reminds me of my youth, fresh out of undergrad school. I wanted to "make a difference" so volunteered to teach in inner city Hartford, a world away from Storrs where everyone was all talk but headed to the wealthy suburbs when they had a chance.

I and my lead instructor were the only white teachers in the school. There were no white students, 58 were black, 2 Hispanic. I was shocked to find that about 20% couldn't read so with my lead's approval formed a reading group, went across the street to the 1st grade to get a bunch of "See Spot Run" books and do what I could. Many learned to read in a couple of months with daily immersion. It was one of the most rewarding times in my life.

If the same conditions exist today, I don't see how CRT indoctrination would help those same kids succeed in life when some can't read but are socially promoted anyway.

Despite being offered a contract, I quit the teaching business at the end of the first year after realizing that the goals of the powerful teacher's union weren't consistent with actually educating children. CRT will be yet another distraction from teaching marketable skills to those most in need.

Ahh, lead with the personal attack. I think that's on page two of the handbook.
All the rest has fixed everything then, has it? Not to mention being everything worth learning about our history? No need to talk about Tuskagee study or redlining or ... well, it's a long list and I don't actually know most of it - I'm just learning about some of this stuff now. But these two are directly causal to vaccine availability and uptake among certain groups.

You sound like someone who is earnest about not being racist. You're also repeating arguments from the "how to keep racism covered up so we can keep doing it" playbook.
Are things better than they were? Depends on the point in history, since they're also worse than they have been. And things have been a lot worse than many of us know. On that same token, they still are.

[Lantanafrs2]

I like being white.

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by Atmo

I've read some of Herbert Marcuse, said to be the fabricator of Critical Theory, and his 1965 "Repressive Tolerance" paper that goes into more detail about what you wrote.

I took it to be pure propaganda to incite violence referred to as liberation.

I had not read the "Repressive Tolerance" paper so I took a look at. I confess I cannot for the life of me understand where you came to that conclusion. Remember, Marcuse is part of a movement trying to disentangle the core of Marx from Lenin's and Stalin's perversion of it. In this particular paper, he's asking a question that has challenged civil libertarians for decades. Pluralist Democracy (basically the sort practiced today) is grounded on political and social tolerance. That is, on the right of all opinions to be aired and on the ability of the individual to rationally evaluate each and to make the correct choice.

What Marcuse is asking is a really difficult question. Must a democratic society tolerate those whose goal is to destroy democracy and impose authoritarianism? In a lot of ways it's exactly what we're witnessing now. Many voices are clamoring for the right to air messages that represent a fundamental assault on the liberty and happiness of others (individuals or groups). In short they seek to use the tools of liberty to destroy it.

John Stewart Mill came up with the idea of a "marketplace of ideas." That was adopted by people like Oliver Wendell Holmes and others as a rationale for tolerating ANY idea. But, Marcuse asks, what if the idea is demonstrably bad. What if the idea is an outright lie? Should we all allow that into the marketplace? Should we protect the speakers right to say it?

If humans were truly rational and independent thinkers the answer would seem to be yes. But, are people truly rational and independent? I would argue no. Think of the "Q" phenomenon. Some mysterious, nameless (for the most part), anonymous "person" begins to float outrageous lies that any thinking person should be able to see through. But, they don't. Huge numbers of people appear to have been taken in by the nonsense and were clamoring for the wholesale arrest and execution of their political opponents.

So, given that such a large portion of the population was so easily taken in by these charlatans and liars, should a democracy tolerate them? Plato would have said, "I told you so!!" Our current state of affairs is exactly why he was so intensely skeptical of democracy and favored rule by philosopher kings. Marcuse would say democracies should be selectively tolerant." Accepting ideas that promote the positive development of humans and repressing those that are "regressive."

Now as to violence - I don't see him promoting it per se. What he does ask is should either side (progressive or regressive) have a monopoly on violence? If the powers that be have a monopoly on violence and are willing to use it to maintain a regressive hegemony, is progress possible. It's even more difficult when they are able to summon the weak minded and easily deluded to do their dirty work. So, in cases like this, is violence in the name of progress acceptable?

[Atmo]

Originally Posted by cjd

Ahh, lead with the personal attack.

Rich, considering your post preceding mine where you said:

"That sounds like the talking points I've heard by people afraid to lose power to oppress as they see fit."

That's OK, we're awash in what's called misinformation/disinformation from all sides.

Glad you're interested in reading up on CT/CRT. It's pretty easy, there are more books out there about those topics than ever. I've read some of the writing of popular proponents of CRT and found a few common threads among them that have been in play for years.

If you can, check out Herbert Marcuse, Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kenchi and Derrick Bell, all strong advocates for CRT who are often quoted by media.

I think those writings have created in part a groundswell in parents questioning the role of school boards and the increase in home, private and parochial schooling with many of those having admission wait lists.