The other night on facebook, I found myself in a weird argument with someone who thought there really was white privilege because “you can go anywhere and be treated like a human being.”
I’m not 100% sure what he means by “being treated like a human being” because casting a long eye to history and how human beings who ain’t from around here are treated, I’m glad to say I’ve never been — on the mild side — run out of town or killed and thrown in an acid pit.
The “ain’t from around here” is operational here, as is the concept of “fitting in” which is how you earn not getting the “ain’t from around here” treatment.
Does it have to do with skin color? Maybe. Sometimes. If one area is uniformly one color, of course you’re going to stick out if you aren’t. As in, try being a Scandinavian in Portugal when I was growing up and it wasn’t as touristy. If you had moved in, your surname of use would officially become “The blonds” because no one would know your real name. And that’s if you were lucky and it didn’t become “Bleached” or “Raw milk” or something equally weird.
And no, even in the US, that “you belong” treatment is not bestowed on whites universally. For one because, as a (appears white) friend who grew up in a black-majority area, yeah, black people are human too and give outsiders the weather eye. Second because there are things you can do to mitigate that.
My sons don’t appear black (well, the younger if he’s tanned, looks half way there, partly because his hair grows upward) but they appear “mixed race” (Human race. We think. Most of the time.) and are both large, swarthy and male. By the time they were in their mid-teens they found that total strangers skeedaddled away from them backwards. Or — poor older son — that they had to argue for hours to get the “honors cords” for their graduation gowns. Or that their departmental honors and second degree wouldn’t be called out at graduation (while the “honors” of the tiny, bespectacled guys and chicks graduating from studies were.” Or that, when found in an area of school/college reserved for serious pursuits, they were questions and in one case told that “you jocks don’t know this.”
What have they done? They’ve mitigated by dressing in slightly old fashioned ways, wearing their hair short, and talking with old-fashioned courtesy.
White privilege? Well, hell no. “Insider privilege.” And you can fake it.
I look white-ish, particularly if I’m ill (I don’t like my look in the mirror these days.) But I open my mouth, and I don’t belong (It would probably not be a problem if I’d stayed first time I came out. If you immigrate before 18 you mostly lose your accent.)
So, coming in late into a Shakespeare panel (conferences put me on them for years after that series was out of print) at world fantasy, where I not only am the chick with the accent, but I’m also the one who isn’t a college professor? I belonged in ten minutes. In fact I over-belonged, as I started correcting their fallacious spit-balling. I was the one people clustered around as the panel ended. Mostly because — signs of a misspent youth — of an overgrown vocabulary and knowing way too much about good old Will Waggstaff. (I used to, I did.)
Usually the reaction the left misunderstands as prejudice is “Human reaction to outsiders” which again, looking at history, mostly comes down to “common sense, and don’t want to die.”
The last century in the US has been relatively law-abiding. Taking the ability to move about freely and not be killed and thrown in an acid pit for granted or for belonging to a skin color is not the brightest thing to do.
But it is a symptom of the left’s persistent inability to confuse the wrapper with the gift.
“People in majority white areas are more likely to be okay with white people coming in. Reeee.White privilege.” Or, perhaps, the reasonable assumption that you know, a white person is someone’s cousin or otherwise lost family member.
And btw, this doesn’t apply to every white person in a white area, either. I don’t know if it was here or over on sosh media, but some idiot tried to tell me my objection to homeless everywhere downtown Denver is that I was racist, and my reaction was ‘what?? Against whites? No. I got over being scared of blond people because they were blond by six.” Because Denver is a mostly white city and yeah, there is the occasional black homeless person, but 99% of the feral crackheads are white. Privilege? Well, we haven’t dissolved them in acid pits. No bets on it if society breaks down completely, though.
Again, a lot of it can be mitigated by how you dress, where you go, etc.
And note here that I’m the first one to say when shopping for #1 son’s first apartment we paid about $400 more than needed to get him in a “Safe area” because you know what? In a bad light, he can look Latin or black or “undefinable” (with mask he might look undefinable Asian, because he has anime-eyes.) You see the cheaper apartments were in an area where there were routine fire fights between black and Latin gangs. Because of what he was studying, he kept late hours. Stepping out of his car, bleary eyed, in the wee hours, he might move wrong/go to the wrong place. I didn’t want him shot.
OTOH I probably would have done the same had he been blond (you have no idea what all fell into the ketchup! Let’s say it was a possibility) because he’d have stuck out like a sore thumb and been taken for a police informer. On yet the third paw, the problem wasn’t lack of privilege, the problem was that the local communities “of color” (Thank heavens that’s not racist, unlike “colored”) have an history of violence and criminality and that’s where his school was.
So, there are things you can do to earn that “won’t get dirty looks/thrown in an acid pit” and 90% of it is how you dress/behave.
Think about it, if a young black guy in tats and ripped/dirty clothes comes to the door, you’re not going to react the same as if a young black guy in a shirt, dark suit and tie comes to the door (in which case you hide behind the sofa while the nice black Mormon missionary shouts earnestly at you through the letter flap.)
This morning it occurred to me this is related to the notion of respect, and how it changed between my kids and I.
In my generation, with the older boomers and their attempts at being hip just having become teachers, I knew it was a bad, bad sign when I came into the class room and the teacher, instead of being referred to as Doctor so and so (It’s complicated. Technically school teachers have a licentiate, not a doctorate. Also traditionally, they’re called “doctor”. Probably some medieval thing.) they started in with “Call me Manuel/Maria/whatever.”
Because they had respect — “doctor so and so” — because getting into college, much less graduating was difficult and earned through exams. But they wanted to subvert that and be “one of you.” I always knew these people would suck at teaching AND try to raise my consciousness, or whatever
Meanwhile, when my kids went to school, the danger sign was “you have to respect me, because I’m a teacher.” We got this from illiterate morons (to be fair, some were half wits) who didn’t know their subject and were trying to browbeat the kids into believing stuff that was never so. “We” because I got some idiot children on my blog telling me I had to respect one of these morons because “she’s a teacher.” Oh, reeeeeely? I’m better educated, I’m smarter, and she’s doing strange crap to the subject I actually have a degree in.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is “a brief history of the left.” First, subvert the legitimate reasons for respecting someone. Then demand respect based on irrelevant, incidental or outright stupid reasons.
Hence their current war on meritocracy: i.e. what people earned. And their demand that you extend “equity” i.e. benes based on people looking vaguely like other people who might have been oppressed some places by people who maybe (in my case, very maybe, depending on the day) look somewhat like you.
Oh, and their demand you get treated like a human being even though they’ve made war on the fact that everyone should be considered human until proven otherwise, and on the greatest leveler of the human race and reason not to throw strangers in an acid pit: Judeo-Christian culture and beliefs.
Most of the time, the only safe thing when the left demands something is to tell them “No. Go fish.”
Because in the end what they aim for is always graft for them and their buddies. Because they’ll be the arbiter of “who will serve and who will eat” regardless of what they say. And in the end they and their buddies (If you didn’t vote for Biden, you ain’t black, after all) are always the ones who eat.
Liberal privilege by any other name.
According To Hoyt 
“Think about it, if a young black guy in tats and ripped/dirty clothes comes to the door, you’re not going to react the same as if a young black guy in a shirt, dark suit and tie comes to the door (in which case you hide behind the sofa while the nice black Mormon missionary shouts earnestly at you through the letter flap.)”
Or maybe it’s Obama :>)
Obama’s not young. Have you seen the grey head of hair he’s been sporting since late in his term?
That would mean there were white Secret Service guys with him.
not when he wasn’t campaigning.
Did Obama ever do anything but campaign?
Yes. He was a member of the Choom gang….
Good point.
I hide behind the sofa for Jehovah’s Witnesses (in my opinion, however they are dressed, it is likely that they aren’t all that tightly wrapped…).
Mormon kids I answer the door, find out if they still have enough water with them, give them a couple of bottles from my fridge if not. I do tell them that, yes, I already have the Book of Mormon, yes, I have read it (some half dozen times), no, I am not interested in joining the Saved, thank you.
Two reasons for that. First is that the next door neighbors when I was growing up were a wonderful Mormon couple, essentially my “other pair of grandparents.” (They also took ribbing just like members of the family – like the time that she raided my Mom’s Lucky Strikes while Mom was, I think, back in Pennsylvania. (Poultice for a scorpion sting, but we we never let her forget that she looted Mom’s tobacco.))
Second, it was two missionaries back in Connecticut that essentially saved the MIL from a very nasty and lingering death when they knocked, heard a strange noise, looked in the front window, and saw her legs sticking out. She was that close to gone from dehydration after falling.
Never had a bad experience with Mormons, myself. Nice bunch, great authors (H/T Larry). The best was when we were moving into our new place, and I got a text from my wife saying “Mormons are moving your booze”. Apparently one of the neighbours had sent a couple missionaries who were staying with her to come help haul stuff.
There are *sect* Mormons who are rather bad– and I wouldn’t even say all of them, at that.
Some areas of NorCal, Oregon and Washington had a nasty issue with Mormons who were *very carefully* a long way from the nearest Temple, because they were less Mormon than a-hole.
The stories my mom can tell….
Maybe I should play this over my sound system with the bass turned up high whenever unwelcome proselytizers show up:
Nothing like a Reaper to send them packing, all right. Funny, I was thinking of revisiting Mass Effect recently. Not sure if I want to do it with Legendary Edition or not, though.
The year before I joined the Navy, I lived in the suburbs if DC. I walked to work (8 miles) at a restaurant, where I earned minimum wage. One day I told my boss I needed time off to catch a bus into DC to visit a government office. The senior-most cook was there, and he spoke up.
” That’s in Anacostia. You ain’t taking a bus there. Wait till Friday, and I’ll drive you.”
“Why? What’s the difference?”
“It’s Anacostia. Same as when I was in Nam. You don’t look like them. And you’re too nice to handle what might happen on your own. I’ll drive you.”
Good man.
Quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever done was to nearly run out of gas in DC and have to go to Anacostia after midnight on Black Friday because it was the only open gas station in range.
On the plus side, I think people were so bemused by a white woman confidently going about her business that it out them off guard until I could get out.
I think I’ve told the story of being robbed in our home and the reaction of our various neighbors in the majority-black neighborhood. (Short form: all our black neighbors either expressed sympathy and support or kept an eye on the house for us; our only white neighbors shrugged it off). We apparently found the way to fit in, which was basically being good neighbors. (It was a solidly middle-class neighborhood on the border of a lower-class area, so there might have been an element of, “we’re all bourgeois here together,” too).
Dan’s and my first home was in a mostly black neighborhood in NC.
Nowadays (we drove by) seems to be a gay neighborhood. Go figure.
Harlem used to be the big Jewish neighborhood of Manhattan.
And weirdly Colfax in Denver also used to be the big Jewish neighborhood.
There are urban legends about this going back to when the Grand Concourse in the Bronx turned over. it was all about susceptibility to “blockbusting.” The Jewish neighborhoods would go first, followed by the Irish, and lastly the Italians. Harlem was very Italian through the sixties. Knowing how this actually played out lends a certain amount of validity since that is actually the way it played out but correlation is not causality as they too often say.
It really came down to the way the housing projects were allocated, the damage done when Robert Moses drove highways through the middle of neighborhoods, and the building of suburbs. Why stay in a dumbbell tenement in the South Bronx when you could live in a three bedroom house with a lawn in Rockland County? This coincided with the great migration North.
Anyone who could get out did, the Grand Concourse, which was considered a Jewish place, was fairly affluent so they went first. The working class people of all denominations took the GI Bill and got an education and VA mortgage in Long Island or Rockland County. Black people did more or less the same but their move was to the northern cities.
The Hispanics followed later and then the grandchildren of the old NYC working class started to move back. WuFlu probably ended that.
At least in NJ, several areas that had been Irish/Italian are now Portuguese, from the Azores mostly, and South and Central Americans are the majority in many towns. they dominate the building trades at the moment, all the stonemasons are Portuguese now that the Italians have died out. I find it fascinating and delicious since the immigrants have brought their food with them. These groups seem to be going through the standard American experience and, since they’re often RC, I’m seeing their children starting to marry into the older immigrant strata with no real comment about it. It seems religion is more important than ability to tan.
It seems religion is more important than ability to tan.
Unless said ability (and milking it) *is* one’s religion: oh yes. A concept both left and right seem to struggle with.
Also Spanish
Once upon a time (and I want to do this experiment myself), a photographer did a set of shots of people-men and women-and the only thing she did was change their clothing. The one image that stuck with me, more than anything else, was of this young black man, in his late 20’s or so, and the photographer took a photo of him in a gang outfit and the other one in a three piece suit. And, he clearly had ink.
Remember, everything else was the same-lighting, poise, makeup, everything but what he was wearing.
They looked like two completely different people. The black gang-banger looked scary, the black guy in the suit looked like a lawyer or bagman (and maybe was even scarier).
And, yes, there are cultural things going on. I’ve had female friends tell me stories of getting in trouble somewhere and it was usually Hispanic/Latino guys that would bail them out (around where they were). Don’t trust black guys, because the guys in that stratum would bang anything that moves that has the right hips. White guys go in two categories-really good and really bad. And, anybody that looks Islamic, stay away!
Is it stereotyping? Most likely. But, as a friend put it, “Don’t believe in stereotypes, but do pay attention to them, because most have this uncomfortable core of truth in the center.”
Even these fools that try to claim that they are “not stereotyping people” have their own stereotypes, often built up on Marxist class theory. Which they use to gain power by skinning things that are actually respectable and wearing it like something out a horror movie.
Sociology student roommates — one black, one white — did an experiment. They made two “shopping trips” to a tony ladies clothing shop, first dressed in “ethnic” — the white girl “preppy” and the black, “ghetto.” The employees followed the black girl around the store, ignoring the white girl. Then they exchanged clothes and returned another day. As you already guessed, the white girl was closely scrutinized while the black girl was ignored. They confirmed the unpopular theory that it’s class, not race, behind the profiling.
Of course it’s unpopular. Do you realize how many race hustlers would be out of work if people realized this?
They’ve gotta protect their phony baloney jobs, after all… Harrumph!
Sort of like tax lawyers and preparation firms-if the tax code isn’t complicated, they don’t have work…
My husband is a tax accountant. He favors a flat tax. As he puts it, if the tax return was put on a postcard, people would still pay him to fill out the card.
Hey, if it makes him money…
Back in the 70s I had an introductory business class and the instructor referred to all tax reform laws as “The Lawyers and Accountants Relief Bill of 19XX” When asked he replied that after a few years most people and businesses can just file the same return with different figures for the new year so the rules have to change so they need professional help once again.
Harumph!
That reminds me, at some point I need to fully write out that idea for Warhammer 40k dwarves and send it in.
(The Death Seekers were highly effective against the Necroid Skinflayers)
I suspect if Games Workshop took the time to read your idea, they’d just Squat it.
/rimshot
Probably, but it would still be fun 🙂 I mean who wouldn’t want to play as an angry tree?
That was the thing that clicked about them. Just like the Orks are fungus, the Dwarves are ents. They’ve just been at war with the Orks for so long that almost none of their true ancestors still live, and all that remains of their once proud race are the stunted splinters of old wars.
Yes, they can reproduce by cutting. And the splinter retains as least some of their ancestral memories. Not much, and sometimes just who they were and who killed them.
There is an legend of a foolish noble who once had a dwarf who offended him riven into stakes for his many horses. His descends would rue his foolishness…
Their beards are their true fruiting bodies. Unfortunately few dwarfs now love long enough to reach that maturity. Those that do are treasures of their clans, and sources of great wisdom and skill.
Because they are plants, they are still able to photosynthesize, and while this can provide enough energy to survive, it is generally not enough to support a vigorous lifestyle, so they often grow and consume other foodstuffs to fuel their activity.
That said, a dwarf in survival situations is able to plant themselves and go into a tree like hibernation until they’ve either stored up enough energy for more active measures of conditions otherwise change. Just as drawing and quartering one just gives you more problems, imprisoning dwarves just makes them angrier, and they may well run a tap root through your dungeon while they’re at it.
As they are trees they prefer to live on forested worlds, and their bases are often impossible to spot by outsiders. They may not be the quickest of the known sentient races, but they are master ambushers and trackers.
They don’t use the warp to travel, instead using their runic manipulation to directly shift between compatible worlds. It is possible that the Eldar web way system is derived or inspired by their technology, but that is not known at this time. It is known that they regard all warp using races, such as the humans and Eldar as reckless and undisciplined.
Aside from death by orky there is no known natural limit to a dwarf’s livespan. They just continue to grow as they age, and sufficient energy is supplied, and there are rumors that at least a few ancients still love who reached to stature of the ents of old, rivaling even the legendary Mork on Ork themselves…
Erm…
There already were 40K space dwarves. Thry were known as “Squats”. Thus my joke about “squatting” them (GW decided that they were silly, and removed them from the setting; they’ve sort of been added back as the occasional one-off individual).
Yeah. I’d completely forgot about them, actually.
I think part of their problem was they clashed with the WH40K theme. Everyone hates everyone and is trying to kill them, so you can’t have a human/dwarf alliance, even if it would be in their best interests.
That’s one of the reasons, I think mixing the Dwarves mindset with space wants would end up being much more fun; they’re basically at war with everyone, in a long slow decline because of it, yet so stupidly resilient that you can never really kill them. Basically like Orks, but without being really bent on killing everything.
It also lets them sweep up some of the militant greens things the Eldar had to drop when they became techno-space elves, and in a way that’s not also blatantly suicidal the way modern greenies are too.
Very true. Race was fading out as an automatic factor until 2008; but Democrat racial campaigning combined with more recent police antipathy have set back the safety of many cities. My own has sharply rising shootings and killings that, bluntly put, have a racial basis. I long thought I’d retire into the city, now the opposite.
Progress is safety without having to judge the safety of people or places. Progress has ended.
Obama set race relations back at least 30 years. Maybe more.
He did so with malice aforethought. Obama is a Marxist revolutionary. Class warfare wasn’t working to bring about a Marxist society so race warfare was substituted instead. The goal is the same, to turn the USA into the People’s Republic of America/Soviet Socialist States of America. Period. Everything else is merely window dressing.
It seems to be moving both ways, actually, with the direction in any given instance depending on who the individual is. Yes, there’s a lot of violence over seeming race-based abuses. However, there also seems to be a *massive* pushback against things like CRT even among many blacks (who in theory would stand the most to gain from it). This hasn’t been isolated.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream of a colorblind society is still viewed by many as the ultimate goal of race relations, which is why the Left is being forced to hide what CRT is from the average member of the public. Instead of talking about what it actually is, it’s referred to as “remembering the history of slavery in the US”, and other terms that most US citizens would be open to.
Many years ago I read an article that was a bunch of academics bewailing the fact that today’s children were growing up “colorblind.” To them this was a bad thing, and the point of the article was to discuss how this could be reversed. I think it was late 90’s, early 00’s. Their goal was segregation and racial hatred.
“90% of it is how you dress”
I’m seeing this play out in real life by going into California stores not dressed in a mask – talk about dirty looks. It’s definitely a fear of harm from me … not physical harm, but viral harm.
After being scolded multiple times in the past 15 months for touching surfaces, having my nose slip out of a mask, and standing less than six feet close to someone, well, they say payback is a b-tch, but I’m finding it enjoyable.
Nobody’s really complained when I went into several places without my mask today. At the very least, I’m NOT having to wear that damned thing everywhere…
Went to some Free Or Very Inexpensive edutainment at a college today (no details because I don’t want to put anyone at risk from twerps) and while there were SMALL signs all over that said the campus policy is mask if not vaccinated, nobody hassled us.
Since the CDC already stated that yes, having had it gives equal or better resistance than the vaccines, we’re even holding to the spirit of the rules– but got nothing but smiles. There were a handful of young folks with masks, but the ones I made eye contact with all smiled, so I figure they either 1) trusted the system or 2) were dealing with someone they knew would give them trouble and didn’t want to hassle it.
I’m just glad that we’re not being forced to wear those things anymore.
I really learned this lesson back in the 70s when I grew my hair long while living in Beaumont Texas…. it was an education…
Living as a hermit in the Kentucky hills, I let hair and beard grow naturally for 5 years. As time went on the hillbillies became more friendly towards me. I even got public complements on my mountain man beard in Kroger!
In 1972 I was in the Navy and proudly sported a somewhat scraggly beard (Zumwalt era). My car died completely in Balmorhea, TX while driving through. I was waiting for a bus, outside the general store when I noticed people driving by giving me a hard stare. It spooked me so much I went back in and got my full sea bag to set it next to me on the porch as if to advertise that I’m one of you.
I was seven in 1972, and I clearly remember my mother in the couple years before them telling me that I should absolutely not be wary of black people even if they looked different. (Anchorage has never had very many blacks.)
On the other hand, I should definitely be wary of hippies. Because they might be on drugs and therefore would be unpredictable and possibly dangerous. 😀
90% of it is how you dress
A few years ago, I decided I wanted to expand my character descriptions beyond the typical eye color/hair color that’s so common, so I sat in the lobby of a large hotel and watched people, writing down descriptions of them based on the order that I noticed things. I found that in virtually all cases, the first thing I noticed was clothing. As a survival strategy, it makes sense; your skin may show the tribe you were born in, but your clothes show the tribe that you’ve chosen.
Yup – this, exactly. Your clothing and demeanor shows very clearly what tribe you belong to. Skin color/ethnic background is not irrelevant, but not nearly as clear a marker.
So how many missionaries have ended up dead even white because they went to strange places… lol so yea– treated like human beings? Seriously the folks that are saying that are either not well-traveled or are plain lying.
Early missionaries to Africa mostly died from malaria. They packed their luggage in wooden coffins.
Yellow Fever is a disease that attacks Europeans the way the European diseases attacked New World native populations – the initial Yellow Fever wave in Barbados in fall 1647 had a reported 75% fatality rate among Europeans (and notably killed caucasian men in a 10-to-1 ration to caucasian women). Total population of British Barbados and the French West Indies in 1647-49 fell by one third, and the British military units posted to Barbados (four regiments of foot and eight troops of horse) lost one half of their troop strength in that period.
Prior to the 1647 Yellow Fever initial outbreak the moneyed classes in Barbados preferred caucasian indentured servants. From Fall 1647-49 those caucasian indents, the men at least and so mostly the field workers, pretty much all died, where the initially few African slaves, many having been previously exposed to Yellow Fever in Africa, pretty much all survived, so after 1650 the (surviving) local British landowners shifted to preferring African slave servants purchased from the Portuguese slavers.
Any European venturing into Africa, where Yellow Fever originated, would face Yellow Fever, Malaria, and the rest of the tropical diseases. And with survival rates on first exposure around 25% just from Yellow Fever I can see why they brought their own coffins.
Slavers arriving on the coast had a life expectancy measured in hours.
(Which is why they had to rely on the natives to do the slave hunting.)
Buddy of mine went to Africa (Ivory Coast) on a contract (ironically with the WHO fighting onchocersiasis (?)) and got badly ill. Docs couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him from his symptoms and he nearly died. In time, they realized he had contracted malaria *and* yellow fever . . .
lol so yea– treated like human beings? Seriously the folks that are saying that are either not well-traveled or are plain lying.
Or they have some bizarre notion of “human being” that doesn’t include anyone that holds sufficiently differing political views. I mean, look at some of the things said about “right wingers”, only replace “right wingers” with some of the more traditional ethnic slurs directed at those who historically were actually oppressed, and anyone with any awareness of Nazi Germany propaganda will find an uncomfortable similarity in message.
Yep
Given that their ideology is racial group socialism, their echoing of Nazi propaganda should surprise no-one. Other than the fact that they are global/international socialists, rather than national socialists, their societal model is remarkably similar to Nazi Germany’s Of course they share the same hatred of Jews, and have no problem with expressing antisemitic propaganda actually used by the Nazis to demonize Jews, and then attacking those who point out that they are antisemites.
They WILL seek a “final solution” as to those they disparage, the same way their ideological forbears did.
Sometime in the 50s, my Italian father and his brothers and sisters chose to alter the spelling of their surname. My best guess as to why was to seem less “ethnic,” although in their case, it would have been difficult to take them for any other ethnicity BUT Italian or Sicilian or even Greek. I also think it might have been because my father taught at a couple universities and apparently, it was still very much a WASPish environment. Growing up, I was the “nice Italian girl,” but then again, Italians made up about a third of the small town where I was raised, so no one batted an eye.
One thing people who grew up mostly in the US don’t notice- the rest of the world, even Europe, is far more tribal. There were a lot of Italians, as in Italian descent, where I graduated HS- but if they didn’t tell you you wouldn’t know. Because Irish and Italians are both Catholic- a lot of mixed Irish-Italian. In Great Britain, the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh can all tell which one you are pretty accurately by looking. And if they live near Cornwall, the Cornish. And they don’t intermarry much. In Italy, North Italians, South Italians, and Sicilians all recognize each other. In Belgium it’s the Flemish and the Walloons. Here in the USA? They’re all white, and none of us can differentiate them. We don’t look for the differences, and aren’t conscious of them. If someone from Britain, Australia, new Zealand, or elsewhere come here, we don’t recognize them as foreigners until they speak. I’ve been told that anywhere in Europe that can tell who Americans are, not by how they dress or talk or look, but by how they carry themselves and walk. We apparently look at everyone, don’t look the other way of they seem to be of a higher class, and smile a lot. Talking gives it away, but there’s much more than that.
Where I live now, I’ve learned that if I scrutinize a person’s face, if they have a Roman nose, they’re likely of Italian descent. But busts of old Welsh leaders exhibit that same nose….
If you look up “most diverse countries” on google- or the search engine of your choice, you’ll find most of them are in Africa. And if you go the CIA factbook, you’ll find these “diverse countries” mostly black- but of many tribes- that we cannot tell apart. Yet, Britain with 4 major ethnic groups- or tribes, and the Cornish and Channel Islanders and others, like Pakistanis and Indians, is not nearly as diverse- because everyone is white….
There used to be an ability to differentiate. But it was primarily aimed at groups that had lots of recent immigrants.
“No Irish need apply”
When you come to America, you get labeled by your native country, which tends to produce a homogenizing effect even on its own. It gets doubled by the effect of having to congregate together to find people who speak your language and sell the goods you want.
When I went to Germany most people couldn’t tell I was American until I opened my mouth–I didn’t dress or act like a stupid American tourist, although several times men seemed offended when I met their eyes. One of my instructors said that by meeting their eyes I was acting like a hooker.
“don’t look the other way of they seem to be of a higher class,”
A large part of that is because many Americans don’t pay nearly as much attention to ‘class’ as the Europeans did and still do. If someone is wearing clothes a lot more expensive than mine, I don’t assume they are ‘of a higher class’, I assume they have more money than sense, or have a higher paying job, or saved up and are going somewhere they can enjoy being dressed up. I don’t assume higher paid is the same as higher class.
In fact, I’m fairly certain that the Leftists biggest regret is that the European class system didn’t survive the civil war and that they can’t all be landed aristocrats with their servants and slaves.
In fact, in the US there’s an anti-appearance-equals-class esthetic. Steve Jobs wore black turtlenecks made of cashmere that cost $450, but were visually indistinguishable from the $30 model at The Gap.
What does ‘treated like a human being’ even mean?
I take certain human lives lightly, but it seems like I treat just about every human life lightly. (A conviction is weakly held if one is not willing to expend one’s own life while pursuing that ideal.)
Behavior by humans towards other humans is rather widely varied, especially in comprehensive theory.
If you go to violent felons, there is a good chance that you will be roughly and criminally mistreated.
If you go to woke race nutjobs, you will be treated as a symbol. You may be treated as a symbol for social signalling for the sake of group standing. You may be treated as a symbol for magical thinking that attempts to dictate to reality.
Real groups are often mixtures of types of people. And the places you go have groups of people in them. Place can be chosen, but for a choice of place, if enough people are there, the behavior towards an individual is not something that individual can control. The diversity, the individual variation and choices freely made, result in a range of behavior.
‘Man is a wolf to his fellow man’ covers a bunch of very different qualities that wolves and men can have in common.
Well, I have been told on more than occasion that I am “not fully human” because I prefer to live in areas which are not necessarily close to either the Atlantic or Pacific coasts (by hard-core red diaper babies, naturally). So I do actually insist on being treated as a human being–which means acknowledging me as an individual (whether that is with love, hate, or indifference).
What does ‘treated like a human being’ even mean?
They use the Long Pig recipe and seasoning instead of the standard wild game settings on the grill.
I remember when my family moved to North Carolina I reported to 5th grade at the local school. My white privilege felt mighty thin even though they still had segregated schools. First day big lesson for me was that DamnYankee was one word.
Yup, there are a lot of places where white people don’t get treated like human beings. Such as press conferences with that Chicago mayor. 😛
Seriously, though, talk about the Uncanny Valley — she must have been born and raised in the deepest part of it.
Any monkey that doesn’t look and act like all the other monkeys is always in trouble. Civilization has at least reduced that trouble to dirty looks, social snubbing and insults rather than torture and murder.
Civilization is being ‘progressively’ broken down. What will those idiots fainting over ‘microaggressions’ do when they encounter real, violent aggression? They’re going the right way to find out.
———————————
You can’t have the government take away the freedom of only the people you hate.
“As long as no train is coming, the first rail is safe.”
“As long as no train is coming, the second rail is safe.”
“No train is coming. That third rail must also be safe.”
The third rail IS safe, as long as you don’t touch anything else that’s at a different voltage.
Always makes me think of the original ‘Taking Of Pelham 123’ when Jack Pallance put one foot on the third rail, one on a regular rail, and started smoking.
But we all know who and what are dealing with.
Like bugs to a zapper…
> Hence their current war on meritocracy: i.e. what people earned.
And the death of the SAT and other tests. “Now we can ignore those racist scores and select by MERIT!”
Except ‘MERIT!!’ equates to Victim Privilege and Virtue Signaling, both of which are useless where actual competence is required.
I suspect “merit” has always meant that, in most places…
No. TRULY no. This is what the idiots saying meritocracy bad are trying to push. “You just can do these things because you have privilege. Privilege, I tell you. You didn’t build that!”
Their use of the word privilege annoys me. Privilege is something granted, usually by a sovereign. We are the sovereign. No one granted us anything.
Yep.
They are elitists who believe that the masses are too dumb and incapable of achieving anything on their own, and thus any achievement must have been due to being granted privilege and that lack of achievement is due to not having been granted privilege.
Nah, that’s only recent. What gets you the nod has varied a lot.
From the now-silenced Second City Cop I gathered that in Chicago “merit” meant you knew somebody who had clout.
Actually I suspect that MERIT! means “the idiot children of the powerful and well-connected.” Those who have parents who can get them in the right lessons and the right volunteer opportunities, who’s teachers will be under pressure to give them at least a gentleman’s B+, who’s essays will be “edited” within an inch of their lives, but who, given an SAT exam and three hours, will be lucky if they figure out how to put their name on the thing.
Basically, it’s a bonus to the elites by getting rid of the one place where they have to compete on more or less an equal footing with everyone else. I know the “SAT optional” people try to sell it as benefitting some hard-working, reasonably intelligent kid who “doesn’t test well” and who’s parents can’t afford test prep classes. In reality, it’ll benefit people like Lori Loughlin’s daughter.
“Meritocracy” has been imperceptibly shading into oligarchy for some time, it’s just that the oligarch class now partly selects from the lower classes to perpetuate the illusion of social mobility.
There was an article about how difficult the upper-class and well-connected author had found the SAT and oh,how much worse for the poor– unless you pondered whether she was just using them as a stalking horse for her own difficulties.
They want to get rid of the SAT because it’s an objective way to show they’re breaking the law. They’re not going to do anything they weren’t already doing, they’re just making it impossible to hold them to account.
THIS.
Since Portland SWAT wasn’t allowed to deal with arsonsists, murderers, muggers, thieves, squatters, kidnappers, or parking violations, they were pretty much redundant.
Acid may be evocative, but if you really want to deal with things biological, bases are called for. But, of course, the writer of Dyce knows about lye vats.
My mother in law spent here last days in a nursing home on 106th Street and 5th. My wife went to visit her and was walking down 106th street from the bus. Those who know the ethno geography of NYC know that this is right on the border of Harlem, As she was walking down the street to see her dying mother, she was challenged by a large person shouting “what you doin here white girl?” He followed her all shouting the way down the block, and these are what we call “long blocks”. Not one person, and there were many, came to her aid.
This is the great lie. the simple fact is that the situation described by politicians and the media, is precisely the opposite from what actually occurs. Everybody actually knows this. Much as Trump needed to go because he pointed out an uncomfortable truth about women and powerful me, all the rest of us have to go because we know an uncomfortable truth about race relations in the USA. It’s gaslighting all the way down.
This is more typo ridden than even my normal fare. Sorry, I’m still furious about it 20 years on.
When I was in the Air Force, I briefly fell in with bad companions. On one ill-advised Friday night/Saturday morning, I went with a Black Hispanic to an “after hours” party. Nice-looking people of melanin dancing, talking, drinking, etc. And as soon as I entered, the music, etc. stopped and it was suggested I leave right away.
Had similar experiences in civilian life with Arabs, Greeks, Koreans, Native Americans, Mexicans, and various other Americans and Europeans.
And also the opposite experience with many of those same groups after being introduced by someone they trusted.
It is precisely the “insider privilege,” not based on outward characteristics at all.
” And as soon as I entered, the music, etc. stopped and it was suggested I leave right away.”
I’ve lived much of my life with people “not like me.” Eg, the teenage drummer in R&B bands — often the only white man at the party. Gringo in S America.
Latest was when I attended a Vietnamese family celebration with folks from the North. The men, seated at a large table, glowered at my arrival. After observing me interacting with the family (whom I knew well) they invited me to share shots of rice vodka laced with turtle blood, and within a half hour we were all old friends!
I spent a large portion of my working life in Asia, and not Asia light either: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China proper. People would stare. It wasn’t necessarily hostile, I was different and they were either just curious or seeing if I was a threat so I’m aware of the difference What happened to my wife was just hostile it was No white people allowed on this block. My wife at 5’3” was no conceivable threat to the 280 lbs man chasing her down the street as she went to visit her dying mother. They tell us that black people cant be racist, just prejudiced. BS, it’s gaslighting all the way down.
Last I checked- and it’s probably still true, the majority of blacks think they’re more than half the population- because they live in cities where they’re more than that, and quite honestly, most rarely venture outside them. And from what I’ve read, the vast majority of Europeans thing the same thing because of American television and movies. Actually looking at real numbers seems to be beyond most people.
But travelling outside of where you live I have found is actually unusual. I now live 2 hours from Niagara Falls I have been reliably informed by all my children that very few of their local friends have ever been there.
Neither my wife nor I, native New Yorkers both, have ever been to the Statue of Liberty. I only went up in the Empire State Building and World Trade Center because I was working there, she’s never been. I have cousins from all over the world who’ve been to these place but a I never seemed to get there.
I was discussing population proportions with the wife yesterday. If you watch television you’d think that all marriages are mixed race, and half the country is gay. Of course, both of these populations are very small. the number of actual transsexuals is infinitesimal.
Infinitesimal, but includes 2 MTF distant cousins of mine that I’m DNA connected to. Which leaves me to wonder- why are they tracing their distant relatives? Why did they submit their DNA for testing? They’re not leaving any descendants behind. They’re not descended from a long line of MTFs…(or FTMs for that matter…) Maybe they think of genealogy as huge crossword puzzle as I do, with misleading and ambiguous clues. And do it purely for fun and games. DNA has helped connect many in my tree.
I have them recorded as male in my own tree. Which neither they nor anyone else I don’t invite to the tree can see.
My wife is the television viewer in the household and actually created a drinking game based on the demographics of the actors in commercials…
A game app I use on my phone has been pushing ACA plans, now bolstered by covid relief funds. “4 out of 5 customers can find plans for under $10/month, with financial help” “You can pay less.” Every actor used in the series of ads, is a POC. Unfortunately, the ad campaign writers didn’t realize that by hiring people of all one skin tone and not mixing it up, they are implying that the people of that skin tone are more likely to be poor, unable to provide something for even $10/mo without financial aid.
What really concerns me is that before we reach the breaking point and grownups retake control the idjits currently in charge are going to screw things up so badly that a lot of folks are going to get hungry and cold. People who are hungry and cold, and especially men who’s families are hungry and cold, quickly lose that soft comforting veneer of civilization.
When everyone has enough mostly we don’t pitch a fit. (Yeah some greedy slugs are never happy, but until recently those sorts were always far from mainstream.)
But when the common folk have to do without while watching our betters still live high, it’s only a matter of time.
Saw part of an interview with a North Korean refugee recently. She told how while in NK everyone “knew” that the Supreme Leader was going hungry at night just like they were, their media such as it was said so. It wasn’t until her family escaped and she watched some videos that it suddenly struck her that said Leader was in fact morbidly obese. So, enough targeted propaganda and people get conditioned to not believer their lying eyes.
But that was NORK and we here ain’t them in spite of a media mostly in the pocket of our own Supreme Leaders (barf, gag, spit). Their cover is unraveling and doing so at an ever increasing pace as more and more of their lies become probably false.
How it ends, who knows. But end it will, one way or another.
I know people who will happily comment on how nice it is to again have a President who isn’t stupid like Trump–they will actually say this while watching video of Joe Biden sundowning.
Those people you know are idiots, fools, or both. Trump was a brash, uncouth, egotistical blowhard; but he recognized what the ocuntry needed, and like any bare knuckles contractor he knew which buttons to push to make things happen.
Biden is a good old boy wardheeler who has spent his whole live with his nose burried deep in the behinds of his bosses to ensure they don’t begrudge him taking a cut from every deal he or his family can get their hooks into. He’s a figurehead, and at his best not very smart, and anyone with eyes in their heads can see he is well into senior decline. His obvious minders are BHO and Commielah, but they are just distractions, the real power stays buried much deeper and out of sight of any honest reporting.
You omitted “knaves” from that list. Too many Democrats to deal with know they’re spouting lies and don’t care.
They’ve also been told for four years, every day, how “stupid,” “dishonest,” and generally unfit Trump was and if they were exposed to evidence otherwise it was immediately labeled “racist,” or some other term boiled down to, “someone no respectable person could possibly support.” Now, all the news praises Biden, with not a lot of criticism. They just accept what their authority figures have told them.
Yes, but there’s a hard edge to their idea of being “respectable”. It’s not an internally coherent concept, it’s a standard of respectability defined solely by the idea that “I’m not like those people”.
I wish it wasn’t so, but I believe the states of CA and NY have passed the point of no return with regard to experiencing hunger and (in the case of NY) cold. I expect people in upstate NY will freeze in the dark within the next three years and those in SoCal will get mighty thirsty when the power goes off (it is a desert after all). They have lashed themselves to the mast of green energy and have passed the point that they can reverse the process without suffering.
When I was a child in a small town, we didn’t have any blacks, but we had a few hispanic/mexicans, a few Native Americans, and a dark-skinned Polynesian who some thought was black. And, in spite of being white, for three or four reasons I didn’t “fit in” well with those my own age. Some of those others did better that I did.
By the time I moved to a much larger high school in a much larger city, there was greater variety, but less actual interaction, because my associates were the nerds and the geeks…the ones who took math and science and advanced English and played chess, while the blacks and the hispanics generally didn’t. Birds of a feather, as the proverb has it. Not that I assumed there was anything wrong with their intelligence or their morals. If a crowd is speaking Spanish, or Ebonics, or football, or drugs…then yeah, I’m going to feel out of place.
In my life experience Lithuanians and Koreans are not friendly to strangers. Perhaps their experience as peoples conquered by a more powerful but otherwise similar ethnic group (Russians, Japanese) is a factor.
As an experiment students in Lithuania cheerfully greeted strangers on the streets of Klaipėda. They reported that about 1/3 of the strangers returned the greeting, 1/3 ignored them, and 1/3 cussed them out.
Don’t know about Koreans in the USA, but in Korea had many friendly talks and interactions with complete strangers on railways cars and the streets. Many with young people who just wanted to practice their English for college.
Same here – I found that the Koreans generally were rather jolly and friendly – and many of them did want to strike up a conversation with an obvious westerner, to practice English. One of my memories of Seoul was of waiting in a subway station for the next train (I had a voice job to go to, or something) and there was a young Korean man waiting near me – and two obvious Westerners, a man and woman having a very loud and contentious argument in a foreign language. They were practically screaming at each other – and the young Korean man caught my eye as we glanced at the arguing couple. He formed the word “American?” at me, and I shook my head and formed back the words, “No – Russian.”
I liked Koreans, generally – they have often been described as the Irish of Asia. Also the most snappy and well-dressed: every middle-class Korean man I ever saw in Seoul was turned out like the cover of GQ.
Scots-Irish anyway. They like whiskey, everyone dumped on them for centuries but they’re still themselves, and they seem to have a lot of Presbyterians.
(in which case you hide behind the sofa while the nice black Mormon missionary shouts earnestly at you through the letter flap.)
A story which I must share (wasn’t me, I SWEAR):
My mother was friends with a couple of traveling craft-show artisans. One of them carried a fairly impressive Protection Device, as one does when carrying absurd amounts of cash around on a Saturday night. They were glad of it when they checked in at an Alabama hotel just in time to see a local youth running hell-for-leather across the parking lot with three cops in hot pursuit. Iffy hotel, iffy neighborhood, tensions were already high, now they were higher.
So the two of them (one, in fact, named Karen) barricaded themselves in their hotel room and all was well for an hour, until there was a booming knock on the door. Peeked through peephole, and LOOMING through the fisheye lens was a young black man.
Silence. Knock. More silence. More knock.
After two knocks, he went away, and the girls were juuuuust starting to relax when KNOCK. Karen flattened herself against the wall with Device in hand while her friend went to answer the door. Another peephole check revealed young black man, still looming, with his equally looming but grey-haired and impeccably dressed grandparents behind him. And in the tiniest, squeakiest voice, he announces “Ma’am? Ma’am? You left your key in your door.”
At which point they remembered 1) the key and 2) the distorting effects of fisheye lenses. The Loomer was early teens at best and about 5’3″. They thanked the family profusely and Karen flung herself into the pillow with cries of “I have white woman guilt!!”
Anyway. I have always been impressed with the Loomer for having the kindness and persistence to notice the keys, the brains to go get Grandma and Grandpa for bona fides, and the common sense to realize that women in their situation might be just a tad bit nervous.
smart guy– and I would have done the same as the girls
Tucker Carlson is being condemned for spreading ‘conspiracy theories’ again. This time, it’s speculation, backed by some evidence, that some of the provocateurs in the crowd on January 6 were associated with the Fibbies.
I could only laugh, and say, “Well, we need some new conspiracy theories. All the old ones have come true!”
———————————
The Capitol building is OUR house. Congresscritters are just the help.
And, these days, it is SO hard to find good help.
It would hardly be the first time
I read the Revolver report Tucker’s piece was based on. Not definitive proof, but pretty damned convincing. OTOH, somebody at RedState tried to debunk the report–I gave up after the first couple of bald assertions, but I gather the RS article was not well received.
There’s been a history of “hey, get this “bomb” so we can bust you for terrorism” amongst the FBI. Can’t remember which agency was handling the jihadis who tried to shoot up the Mohammed artwork show in Garland Texas, but there sure as hell weren’t clean hands on the part of the feds.
Thinking also of ATF and Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Q: What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and reality?
A: Right now, about 6 to 12 months.
There was an old adage among both the KKK and the Communists that the guy agitating for violent activity was probably the FBI mole.
Then there was the ‘White Supremacist Terrorist’ cell that, when they were busted, turned out to consist entirely of FBI, DEA and ATF ‘assets’ and they had spent years just informing on each other.
I suppose it kept them from causing any worse trouble.
———————————
There are no limitations on the stupidity of government.
“If you’re at a poker game and can’t figure out who’s the mark, you’re it.” Similar rules apply.
The Revolver Report went into the “conspiracy” to kidnap Whitless. At *least* a quarter of the “conspirators” were either undercover agents or informants, with no surprise, the so-called leader being a dimwit, likely set up as the fall guy by the loudmouth
agentsmembers. The trip to get explosives involved 5 people, two readily identified as agents, with a third hidden from everybody else until he outed himself as an agent. 60% glow-in-the-dark feds on a trip to get explosives for the conspiracy. Hmm…This so-called conspiracy garnishes more attention when the hero of the day, the FBI Agent in Charge (and the guy who likely set up the scam/conspiracy) was promoted to a rather similar position in DC just before the Jan 6th Capitol Walking Tour with made-to-order rioting.
Note that after ABSCAM Congress passed a specific law prohibiting entrapment of Congressmen. Still okey-dokey to do it to the constituent schmucks, though.
Obviously the demand for actual conspiracies far outstrips the supply.
From what I’ve heard, the FBI’s response to Tucker’s request for info about that didn’t help, and was pretty much a “Don’t ask us about the informants who definitely weren’t in that crowd because you’re putting them in potential danger!” sort of response.
” Can’t remember which agency was handling the jihadis who tried to shoot up the Mohammed artwork show in Garland Texas, but there sure as hell weren’t clean hands on the part of the feds.”
FBI. Either a leak or an investigation found out that one of the shooters was an FBI informant whose handler escorted him to the parking lot.
Addendum to your sigline – Reality is far more over the top than the conspiracy theory
Not really conspiracy theories..”Ashli Babbitt” was and is an Air Force Intelligence officer, her real name being Ashli Witthoef per a New York Magazine article, and the video of the shooting clearly shows that the shooter aimed away and she was not hit…the “Viking” also has close ties to the military, etc…
The only bits I saw on that came from people who also have conspiracy theories about Vanderbilts and how the joooooos run the world.
And none of that shit even makes sense, okay?
Indeed! Those are just distractions put out by the anti-gravity pyramid aliens in league with the Masons!
They’re just a distrqaction from the folks inside the hollow earth, that are causing energy shortages by sucking the oil *down* for themselves, and venting the exhaust at the poles, which is melting the polar ice caps…
Bah, you’re all fools. Quit looking at the shiny conspiracy theories and focus on the orbital mind control satellites! They’re the real threat!
Witthoef is her maiden name. Most married women have one that’s different then their married name. Although there are several Palmore-Palmore marriages in my family tree, and just yesterday I ran into an Adams-Adams.
And she was a RETIRED intelligence officer. Geesh.
On the gripping hand, I have to point out that two of the leading suppositions being decried by our media as just wild conspiracy theories are a) that a perfectly honest and fair election last year was somehow illegitimate, and b) that the naturally occurring Corona virus may in fact have been produced in a Chinese bio weapons lab and either accidentally or purposefully released to the public.
Or for that matter c) that Joe and the Ho are the absolutely best and brightest elected officials evvah!
And Confederate Flag Dude was a left-wing agitator observed in riots all over the country. It was literally a false-flag operation.
Traveling all around the U.S.A. costs a lot of money, even if they’re taking the bus. Who’s paying for all this riot tourism? Why is nobody tracking down the money? Are the Fibbies too busy instigating ‘White Supremacist Extremism’?
———————————
Elections are far too important to be left up to a bunch of uncontrolled voters. The Party MUST exercise oversight and management to prevent mere voters from electing the wrong candidates!
“Who’s paying for all this riot tourism? Why is nobody tracking down the money? ”
Same ones who have been all along.
I’ve noticed that in more of a few of the images of Nazi/Confederate flags progs post to “prove” the people they hate are Teh Evulz the flags look like they were recently unfolded from some package. Kind of makes me go “Hmm…”
Confederate Flag Dude has been identified as a known left-wing agitator.
Have they sent agitators disguised as Trump supporters to start fights with the undisguised agitators?
The other thing I’ve noticed is it’s always one little picture of one to three guys with the Bad Flags… one’d think if Nazis and Confederates were soooooo popular to the “MAGA” types then there’d be a crowd of flags.
“Who pays?”
The left has had more than 100 years to figure out how to organize and game the system. There is a whole network of folks that take care of the leftish foot soldiers. From transportation, pocket money, salaries, bail and legal protection. Much of it can be traced to the usual suspects, but it has been washed through multiple groups to protect them. The media, the legal system and spooks provide the cover.
And if you question any of it, the “conspiracy theory” card gets played.
In China, that’s considered incest.
Yup in doing genealogy work on my family I found that in one branch (Kelsey) had at least 3 times that a Kelsey married a Kelsey. Most of those were 2nd and 3rd cousins. And plenty of those where the Kelsey descent was through the matrilineal line marrying back in, but of course no Kelsey name any more. But in one early case it looks like they were 1st cousins (hard to tell lots of the same odd Biblical names for the females so I could have things confused). Not surprising, the number of folks in the Kenilworth/Hommenascit colony in CT was small. At least 1st cousin wasn’t the standard like it seems to be in some parts of the world.
*waves in Kansas Kelsey that went to Oregon*
Met a chief in the Navy where we stopped chatting about family after we figured out we were both Kelseys.
French Canadian from three great-grandparents back to the earliest settlers. (Mayflower? Johnny come latelies.) I got a lot of pedigree collapse. Only one as close as second cousins.
We’re Johnny-Come-Latelies, as far as the Mayflower is concerned, but sometime between there and the American Revolution. We are descended from a young brother who was parked as one of Washington’s young camp aides “to keep him safe” while 4 older brothers served on the front lines (no one else to leave him with and too young to work the farm). Or so the story goes (dad’s side). Mom’s side too goes back to and before the revolutionary war, fighting on colonists side. There have been injection of more recent emigrants, g-grandpa came to America from Scotland via Nova Scotia and across Canada before crossing the border in the PNW.
Dad does have cousins who married 2nd cousins. But then (more influx after WWII and now), just about everyone they went to school with, was a cousin, one degree or another.
“the “Viking” also has close ties to the military, etc…”
Huh, there couldn’t be any possible explanation for a large overlap between Trump supporters and the military that voted for Trump nearly 2-1 in 2016 other than a false flag operation.
Also for the record, killing someone and then trying desperately to cover it up is a good operation to….. I don’t know?
Cheese, Penguins, the joos. Whatevs.
Seriously. Not making any sense is a problem for any conspiracy theory.
The green penguins would do a better job than this.
“What is is, Johnson?”
“Sir, we have a problem. A lot of people have seen our efforts to steal the election and they’re plenty mad about it. But I think I have a plan.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, they’re going to have a rally in DC, Trump’s going to be there. I think we can plant some people in the crowd to make sure it turns unruly. Probably not as bad as our operatives could do in Portland and Chicago, but bad enough the media can hype it to the gullible morons who still believe we’re Americans.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Well, I was thinking we could fake killing one of those operatives.”
“Fake…killing? Why?”
“Well, it’s sure to get those deplorables riled up and angry. They’ll be using her name for the bloody shirt. Then, when the time is right, we can reveal that we lied about killing her and it will totally discredit them.”
“Johnson.”
“Sir?”
“You think that if we announce that we lied it will discredit them?”
“Yes sir, because they’ll have repeated the things that we’ve revealed were lies.”
“Because we lied in the first place.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Johnson.”
“Sir.”
“Get out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Johnson.”
“Sir?”
“Not that door.”
“Oh.”
Johnson, might want to be prudent like this fellow:
I was thinking more Vetinari’s office than BOFH’s.
–
It’s a problem for a lot of real conspiracies, too. 😛
Yes, but there’s a special way of not making sense, that DOES make a sense for idiotic leftists.
Take Fast and Furious. They were supposed to find American guns at Mexican murders. This would be in the news, and then the right would fold on gun rights like a wet umbrella, because they’d feel GUILTY and not want to be shunned.
It would work on leftists!
They DO find American guns at Mexican murders. The ones we sell to the Mexican army and the Federales.
Some of ’em are stolen.
all the old ones have come true– yep lol and he may be right
Well, it’s contagious… Louie Gomhert (R-TX) just stood up in front of the House and …explored… the idea that most of these ops are full of Feds, including the purported kidnapping of Governor NittWitt. (It’s on Forbes Breaking News YT channel, dated 6-17..)
Here:
The Revolver Report got into the Whitless Kidnapping scenario at length. I recommend a comfortable chair. Drinking anything should be done with caution.
https://www.revolver.news/2021/06/federal-foreknowledge-jan-6-unindicted-co-conspirators-raise-disturbing-questions/
This reminds me of a particularly stupid advertisement from the late 60s/early 70s time frame.
They showed two pictures of a young man. One picture showed him neatly dressed in a coat and tie, hair combed, and altogether well groomed. The other picture showed him with long stringy hair, unshaven, grubby clothes, and looking altogether like someone that I would avoid on the street.
The point that they were trying to make was that I was a bad person because the two pictures were of the same person and I was judging by superficial stuff.
No….I was judging by life choices.
There was a video clip circulating around some of the motorcycle forums a decade ago. Some group of fake-Hell’s-Angels with all their Sharper Image garb and designer choppers. One of them ran off the road and was hurt, and they were trying to flag down a car to take him to the hospital. People were veering off onto the shoulder and around the gesticulating bikers and rolling past the scene.
The general reaction was “wasn’t that TERRIBLE how people could do that.” I figured, if they wanted to look like outlaws, they shouldn’t complain if people treated them as such.
And the sign said “Long-haired freaky people need not apply”/
So I tucked my hair up under my hat/
And I went in to ask him why/
He said, “You look like a fine upstanding’ young man. I think you’ll do”/
So I took off my hat and said, “Imagine that.”/
Huh, me workin’ for you”/
– Signs by the Five Man Electrical Band (1971)
> (It’s complicated. Technically school teachers have a licentiate, not a doctorate. Also traditionally, they’re called “doctor”. Probably some medieval thing.)
Thing is, for some considerable time between the medievals and now, Doctor was used much in the same sense as “Sensei” is now — a thoroughly accomplished person who is capable of teaching one something useful.
Personally, think that definition would disqualify a very large proportion of those who hold “Doctorate” degrees.
Huh. I’m a high school teacher and I’ve never heard of teachers being called “Doctor”. Unless, of course, they have a doctorate. Even then it’s usually in some Education speciality so I’m not convinced it should count.
Aside: the dictionary didn’t recognize “speciality”. Which is odd. Do Americans use specialty instead?
A Portuguese thing, maybe?
Yes.
I know that a lot of doctors in the west hadn’t had doctorates– and I seem to remember college type teachers being called doctor in the older English lit, like how you’d call someone Professor.
Portugal
I shall stick my unwelcome nose in and point out that doctor is just the Latin word for ‘teacher’. So the Portuguese have a point.
Re: aside. My 1971 Webster’s has both words in it, though “ity” seems to have fallen out of favor over the years.
Nor have I, with 20 years of experience in the schools…
Not to be ornery, but 20 years of experience in schools doesn’t even get to when I was in school (it’d be after I graduated, now…. Argh, who else goes “20 years ago” and thinks “the 80s”?) — we’d have a better chance of finding someone who is at least 60 or 70 who happened to talk to a teacher that was old when they were a kid, to find someone using similar a-hole-ery. That’s the kind of thing that might have been around in the US 100 years ago, but the title of doctor got very picky around that time.
It’s possible it’s a Catholic, or more Latin influenced language thing, as well. Both of which would hit Portugal, but not the US.
Raises hand. Nope. Didn’t happen for me. Not even with Miss G, who was likely in her late-50s to early-60s in 1960.
Which means that if it was a thing in the US, it would’ve been when she was in grammer school at the latest.
‘Argh, who else goes “20 years ago” and thinks “the 80s”?’
That’d be me. I tend to forget sometimes. Not the yeast I need to get, not the bills that need paying or where I parked the truck. But forgetting “twenty years ago” *doesn’t* mean 1985? Yep.
About 11 AM today:
“Wow, Castlevania, that’s like 20-some years old now, isn’t it?”
*thinks* “….closer to 40….”
“…thanks, dear, I now feel old.”
“So take your hand off my arm.”
M*A*S*H is closer to 50 years old now… The Ramones started around the same time (the music of my youth is now *classic rock.* I is an old fart). TMNT is around forty years old. Classic MTV started in ’81- forty years ago. Lotro is *fourteen* years old. Yeesh. Evercrack is about twenty years old. *Skateboards* started getting around in the 70s- fifty years ago (though they might’ve been around in California before that, I think). CDs started in the early 80s, about forty years ago. I haven’t seen a portable CD player in forever now. I think the NES started around that time, too. TRON is about forty, the original Star Wars is forty-four.
Heck, my high school diploma is about old enough to run for president. I drive a truck that’s older than AOC. I have comfy jeans and old shirts with more mileage on them than kids old enough to drink. I live in a house that was built when travel by train was common, and hitching posts weren’t an unusual sight around here. The wood frame is built of local red oak, trees that started growing back when the War Between the States was a thing.
Maybe we got old, but by thunder we *survived.* We survived the Cold War, Global Cooling, SARS, MERSA, swine flu, bird flu, the Clinton years, Obama’s traveling surrender circus, the Summer of Recovery parts I-XI so far, the Great Recession, the dot com bubble, stupid wars Over There, rioting little idiots at home, the fundamental transformation of America, scandals by the score, quisling politicians on one side and eager Reformers on the other. We lived through 2020. And the four years before that.
We survived lawn darts and playing outside. We didn’t get killed by all the harmful germs and bugs we must have eaten riding in the back of pickup trucks. We stepped off buildings on skateboards, road bikes on main roads after dark, and ate raw cookie dough. Despite benign neglect by today’s standards, we didn’t, by and large, turn into grown up versions of little goblins but instead became upright, moral people with principles and dignity intact (shush you, we’s got dignity in spades even when we wake up with frizzy hair and in need of coffee). We didn’t turn into fragile freak out kind of people, despite all the micro (and macro, and mega super kilo mahoosive) aggressions committed against us.
I’d say we’re doing alright for old farts. But that’s just my opinion.
om
M*A*S*H is closer to 50 years old now… The Ramones started around the same time (the music of my youth is now *classic rock.*
:sings: When did Motley Crew become classic rock?
(1985, the song)
That said, the Turtles thing hits closest. 😀 My kids like peperoni and have no idea why it’s the automatic choice……
Wish I could post a picture of the Contessa, she is WINNING in the “fuzzy hair and gah give me coffee I don’t care that I’m two” olympics.
When ‘Oldies’ are what used to annoy your parents… 😀
When we were in school, there WERE no calculators.
No cell phones.
No E-mail.
The Walkman hadn’t been invented yet.
Most TVs used vacuum tubes, BESIDES the picture tube.
Computers were behemoths constantly tended by
acolytesengineers.Hey, one of my favorite memories is my dad talking about when he was riding up on the most remote range they used of the Forest area, and he got a phone call from a random number.
Answered it, because he had two kids in the Navy, and they worry.
…it was my brother. In the middle of monday friday Afghanistan.
That was the number that he could call up from memory that would probably be answered. (Fig leaf over “awesome opportunity for tech guy” here.)
So guy on horse in middle of BFN Washington talking to kid in desert of BFN Afghanistan. 😀
Seatbelts were a parent throwing an arm up above the backseat to keep kids in the backseat from propelling into the front seat when slamming on breaks.
The baby seat was the bed made in the foot well either in front of the backseat, or in front of the passenger seat and older siblings were told not to step on the baby. Gee, my parents were actually fancy, they had a car bed, to put in the foot well.
And I could safely ride my bike all around San Diego goofing off. Fix my car myself — no computerized electronic gadgets. Listen to Little Richard and Chuck Berry 45’s on my portable record player. Hang out in Logan Heights (ghetto) without race tension. Have my new hubcaps stolen. Cut high school afternoons, walk down to the sailor entertainment district, watch sensational awful movies like Reefer Madness, drink near beer and play pool. Drive my lowered 52 Hudson Wasp without a muffler. (Did this in Deadwood SD for my driving test — the examiner complained but I still got a license!)
Whoops — got carried away there…..
Now my brain is going to spend the rest of the day trying to make R-E-S-P-E-C-T (and much of the first couple paragraphs) fit into this:
(…do NOT turn up your speakers … you have been warned…)
Oh, I know that song. 🙂 On vinyl and waiting for the round-tuit to dub it to MP3.
I’ll pass on his “Funky Western Civilization”.
Oh yeah… not a fan of his performance style but he’s a damned clever songwriter. (Name me another who has penned hits for both Burt Bacharach and the Sex Pistols…)
Knew someone who DJ’d for an easy listening station. Station was in flux, new corporate overlords having decided to change format from 100% live to 100% canned. Not sure if he got fired first and retaliated, or was fired for playing Tonio K’s “Merzsuite” at 3 in the afternoon….
New owners deserved any blowback that got them. When they made the change, they TOOK TO THE DUMP a massive vinyl library going back about 40 years, with numerous unreleased one-offs in the collection.
When the 1980s off-the-wall progressive country station (KFAT in Gilroy, CA) changed hands, one of the staff stole the records so they wouldn”t get tossed. Got caught, but the station stayed with the same format until the new owner passed away. Not sure what happened to the records then, but one or two descendent stations were on the air later on. (One was KPIG, IIRC, in Freedom, CA).
Dumping good vinyl. Where’s a bullwhip?
Death by centrifuge with needles is too good for those who destroy old music….
c4c
“You… how… why… s/he… wha…?”
“You human. They human. Same.”
“But.. but… b u….”
“Humans… all look alike.”
20+ years military. I don’t care about race, creed, or color. We are ALL pink on the inside, trust me, I’ve seen enough to know. The wrapper means nothing. It is the PERSON that I respect. I just wonder what MLK would be thinking if he were alive right now.
Nor have I, with 20 years of experience in the schools…
He’d say, “I told them what to do, showed them the way, they were almost there, and now they’re SCREWING IT ALL UP!!”
Twenty years ago, racism was quietly fading away to its well-deserved ignominious end. Today, it’s being shoved in everybody’s faces. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have much to answer for. Sort of like Mad Emperor Yuri.
———————————
The world is full of self-important, self-righteous, obsessed assholes, tormented by the conviction that Somebody, Somewhere is Doing Something they don’t approve of, and driven by a compulsion to Do Something About It at any cost.
It has been institutionalized. The Fed has threaded racial identity through the bureaucracy “to ensure equity.”
And in the Navy- emphasized in boot camp (in the 1970s, apparently not now) we were all Navy Blue- and Marines were Marine Green.
When I moved into Deep Southern Maryland, I was regarded as an outsider. Race didn’t matter…the fact that neither my parents nor myself came from the area DID matter. Very much.
Personally, I think the race-and-gender baiters grossly misread (accidentally or deliberately) what it’s really like being a white male American. We’re the last line – no excuses for us. Do or die.
There is a reason that that is a trope in many mysteries, especially ones set in small towns. Outsiders might be considered insiders by the 3rd or 4th generation but the house might still be known as “The Old Smith Place” even if Smiths haven’t lived there for decades.
I’ve heard of people who moved to a town, bought the Smiths’ place, and later bought a new home, just built, to remain, “The family that used to live at the Smiths’ place.”
yep.. Lived twenty years in small town Utah– still considered newbies that just moved in
My mother’s ancestors immigrated from Bohemia (current Czech Republic) in the 1880’s.
My brother traveled to the town about a decade ago and asked if they knew where the family had lived back then.
Of course they did, still knew it by that name (though other families had lived there for over a century) and led him there.
“If you didn’t vote for Biden, you ain’t black, after all”
Whereas the truth is know if you did vote for Biden, you ain’t human.
He certainly nailed down the voting machine algo vote!
It’s not just him, It is pretty much the entire Democratic Party that for years has denounced anyone who doesn’t vote for them as being a racist bigot who is an outright white nationalist/Nazi. They seem to really think that they can get people to vote for them by calling them deplorable.
Nah. Just a kind of human that failed. Lot of us going around.
Well, Sarah, this should stimulate your circulation
“Here in Colorado we are considered the safest state in which to cast a ballot, ”
https://news.grabien.com/story-co-secretary-state-fraudits-have-no-place-colorado
Nothing inspires confidence in an election like a prohibition into investigating it. The blowback looks impressive.
And note the remarkable consistency by Democrats on this issue-NOT:
The same Democrats who denounce verifying signatures and voter ID and are attacking the Arizona audits sued in California to enforce signature verification and identification requirements for the Newsom recall petition. Because of course they did.
Absolutely! It’s perfectly safe that the ballot you cast will be counted for the proper candidate, even if it wasn’t the candidate you marked. Because like Dr. Science, ‘we know more than you do’.
/sarc, just in case
Sure it’s safe to vote – It would be a waste of effort to intimidate voters at the polls in locales where ballots cast have no connection to the final vote tally.
Sure. It’s safe. No matter who I vote for, the communists win.
Also note the passive voice.
Dude, are you *trying* to get her to berserk?
Do not pitch your expectations too high. Surely safety is enough.
c4c