Countdown to a race war?

[Grigoris]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... 1588933318

"Armed black citizens escort Michigan lawmaker to capitol after volatile rightwing protest

State representative Sarah Anthony says she wanted to highlight failure of policing after armed white protesters demonstrated.

A black lawmaker came to Michigan’s capitol with an escort of armed black citizens on Wednesday, days after white protesters with guns staged a volatile protest inside the state house, comparing the Democratic governor’s public health orders to “tyranny”."

[Malcolm]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3zm ... n-protests

The younger, shitposting face of the armed far-right — often called “boogaloo bois” — have been showing up at anti-lockdown protests across the U.S., toting AR-style rifles and wearing their trademark Hawaiian shirts and leis.

[tkp67]

Interesting what it looks from the outside

there seems to be a normalization rationale to show whatever white America can do black America is LEGALLY able to respond in like kind

A display of equanimity is just that and should be welcome, especially in America

perhaps that is the subtle point

[Tiago Simões]

Every time I look at the US it's as if I'm watching Game of thrones. The plot just gets worse and worse.

[Tlalok]

Uh oh, black folk are using the 2nd amendment. Watch the Republicans change their tune come out in favour of gun control now just like last time.

I'd also say that America has been in a race war since at least 1861, it's just flaring up into more open hostilities now.

[tingdzin]

A display of equanimity is just that and should be welcome, especially in America

Hogwash. In the first place, there is no "equanimity" being exhibited here -- it is emotionally unbalanced people on both sides completely fallen under the power of conflicting emotion.

Secondly, if you mean "equality", it might not be a bad thing for black people to show that the right-wing nuts don't have all the guns. But on the other hand, two opposing camps of idiots drowning out rationality should never be considered welcome by Buddhists, or Americans for that matter. The whole country is headed towards polarized mob rule, and the IQ of a mob is that of its most ignorant member multiplied by the number of people in the mob.

Thirdly, why "especially in America"? Do you think that other countries are free from ethnic conflict, which in many cases makes that in America look tame?

Every time I look at the US it's as if I'm watching Game of thrones. The plot just gets worse and worse.

Isn't it the truth? Meanwhile, our former friends and allies are looking the other way and clearing their throats in embarrassment, and Russia and China are rubbing their hands together in glee.

'd also say that America has been in a race war since at least 1861,

Fringe leftist hyperbole. If you think that America is engaged in a war, you have never been within anywhere near a real one.

[PeterC]

Every time I look at the US it's as if I'm watching Game of thrones. The plot just gets worse and worse.

We’ve just entered season 8

[Malcolm]

'd also say that America has been in a race war since at least 1861,

Fringe leftist hyperbole. If you think that America is engaged in a war, you have never been within anywhere near a real one.

In fairness, you should read Heather Cox Richardson's How the South Won the Civil War:

While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies. The South and West equally depended on extractive industries-cotton in the former and mining, cattle, and oil in the latter-giving rise a new birth of white male oligarchy, despite the guarantees provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the economic opportunities afforded by expansion.

To reveal why this happened, How the South Won the Civil War traces the story of the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and subordination woven into the nation's fabric and identity. At the nation's founding, it was the Eastern "yeoman farmer" who galvanized and symbolized the American Revolution. After the Civil War, that mantle was assumed by the Western cowboy, singlehandedly defending his land against barbarians and savages as well as from a rapacious government. New states entered the Union in the late nineteenth century and western and southern leaders found yet more common ground. As resources and people streamed into the West during the New Deal and World War II, the region's influence grew. "Movement Conservatives," led by westerners Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, claimed to embody cowboy individualism and worked with Dixiecrats to embrace the ideology of the Confederacy.

Richardson's searing book seizes upon the soul of the country and its ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunity to all. Debunking the myth that the Civil War released the nation from the grip of oligarchy, expunging the sins of the Founding, it reveals how and why the Old South not only survived in the West, but thrived.

Richardson is a professor of American History at Boston University. She writes daily letters which are really amazing, to be perfectly honest. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com.


And Democracy in Chains by Nancy Maclean:

Nancy MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, and the award-winning author of several books. Her scholarship has received more than a dozen major prizes and awards, and has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowships Foundation.

Her most recent book is Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” The Guardian said: “It’s the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century.”

A New York Times bestseller, Democracy in Chains was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Current Affairs, the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award. The Nation magazine named it the “Most Valuable Book” of the year.

[Grigoris]

Secondly, if you mean "equality", it might not be a bad thing for black people to show that the right-wing nuts don't have all the guns. But on the other hand, two opposing camps of idiots drowning out rationality should never be considered welcome by Buddhists, or Americans for that matter. The whole country is headed towards polarized mob rule, and the IQ of a mob is that of its most ignorant member multiplied by the number of people in the mob.

In Greece we refer to this line of thinking as "the theory of the two extremes".

Somehow we are meant to believe (as you seem to) that Blacks with guns and Whites with guns (in the Amerikan case, far-Left and far-Right groups in Greece) are two equal and opposite extremes that pose the same level of threat to society.

Generally this line of thinking is used by establishment conservatives, in Greece, in order to justify state action against far-left groups, while ignoring and secretly supporting the actions of far-right groups.

Does this sound familiar?

If Black (or Brown) activists with guns stormed a democratically elected state representative's office in the U$, do you think they would be treated in the same way as the White goons were? Have you asked yourself "Why not?"

Do armed Black and Brown activists have the same level of support by the establishment in the U$, as White activists?

Do you now understand why what you are saying is actually nonsense?

Do you understand why it nonsense to put the armed people GUARDING the democratically elected senator, in the same bag as the idiots that stormed her office?

Yes, there is delusion and ego at play in both instances, but the type and level of delusion and ego is not the same.

Why would it not be "equanimous" to say that the senator should be guarded? This only happened because the state forces did not guard her properly.

[Tlalok]

I'd also say that America has been in a race war since at least 1861, it's just flaring up into more open hostilities now.

Fringe leftist hyperbole. If you think that America is engaged in a war, you have never been within anywhere near a real one.

Cool mangling of my words.

The U.S. Army's definition of a Low-Intensity Conflict (LIC):

... a political-military confrontation between contending states or groups below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition among states. It frequently involves protracted struggles of competing principles and ideologies. Low-intensity conflict ranges from subversion to the use of the armed forces. is waged by a combination of means, employing political, economic, informational, and military instruments. Low-intensity conflicts are often localized, generally in the Third World, but contain regional and global security implications.

The situation of racial violence in the US absolutely meets this definition.

Also America is engaged in like 30 wars at any given moment lol, they're just terrible at it.

[Malcolm]

The U.S. Army's definition of a Low-Intensity Conflict (LIC):

... a political-military confrontation between contending states or groups below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition among states. It frequently involves protracted struggles of competing principles and ideologies. Low-intensity conflict ranges from subversion to the use of the armed forces. is waged by a combination of means, employing political, economic, informational, and military instruments. Low-intensity conflicts are often localized, generally in the Third World, but contain regional and global security implications.

The situation of racial violence in the US absolutely meets this definition.

Also America is engaged in like 30 wars at any given moment lol, they're just terrible at it.

Under this definition, the President of the United States is waging a LIC against America.

[DewachenVagabond]

In Greece we refer to this line of thinking as "the theory of the two extremes".

Also known as horseshoe theory.

[Kim O'Hara]

... the IQ of a mob is that of its most ignorant member multiplied by the number of people in the mob...

Not quite. The IQ of a mob is that of its most ignorant member divided by the number of people in the mob.


Kim

[tingdzin]

Not quite. The IQ of a mob is that of its most ignorant member divided by the number of people in the mob.

Yes, I stand corrected.

[Wayfarer]

It seems a stunt to me. Maybe it would be a real news item if shooting broke out.

[Malcolm]

It seems a stunt to me. Maybe it would be a real news item if shooting broke out.

It wasn’t a stunt. I don’t think you grok racial relations in the US.

[Rinchen Dorje]

Uh oh, black folk are using the 2nd amendment. Watch the Republicans change their tune come out in favour of gun control now just like last time.

I'd also say that America has been in a race war since at least 1861, it's just flaring up into more open hostilities now.

Apparently you are not familiar with US history. It was the republicans that freed the slaves, and the democrats that started the civil war, the KKK and also attempted to ban blacks from having 2nd amendment rights. This was going on up until the 60's when they tried to shut down various civil rights movements.

[Grigoris]

Apparently you are not familiar with US history.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with the present.

[PeterC]

Uh oh, black folk are using the 2nd amendment. Watch the Republicans change their tune come out in favour of gun control now just like last time.

I'd also say that America has been in a race war since at least 1861, it's just flaring up into more open hostilities now.

Apparently you are not familiar with US history. It was the republicans that freed the slaves, and the democrats that started the civil war, the KKK and also attempted to ban blacks from having 2nd amendment rights. This was going on up until the 60's when they tried to shut down various civil rights movements.

It's very clear that the parties at the time of the civil war bear very little resemblance to the parties today. By way of illustration, consider the career of Strom Thurmond, who was until the day he died pro-segregation, anti-miscegenation (despite having fathered a child with a fifteen-year-old black maid in his household), and anti-civil rights legislation. He even opposed anti-lynching legislation when it was first suggested. By the 60s he realized that the Democrats had moved on and would not support the status quo in the South, so he switched to the Republicans, who were and continue to be completely ok with that.

[tingdzin]

Gee, I wonder what would happen if I claimed to be an expert on the Greek political situation?