Almalieque wrote:
So, you're admitting that Republicans use "appeal to popularity" and "fear of reprisal" dealing with personal actions?
No. When dealing with
political actions. That's the point of "RINO". It's applied to elected representatives, not to voters. There's a massive difference between expecting a politician to take political actions that are in alignment with the views of the party he is a member of, and expecting a black person (all black people) to hold social positions and vote in alignment with a single political party. I've explained this several times now. Seriously. What part of this don't you understand?
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Something meant to be temporary is not a cost. Being on welfare does not in any way, shape or form prevent an individual from progressing in life unless you choose not to do better. So even if I were to accept your flawed definition of it being a "cost", that "cost" has zero impact on being successful which contradicts your claim of it being designed to hold blacks back.
And we go back around in circles again with you repeating an assertion I already responded to as though I never responded. I've
already answered this. It does not "prevent" anything. What it does is make it harder to be successful. What is up with you and absolutes? It's about statistical outcomes. And in that context every single thing has an effect. Welfare acts to shield the poor from the consequences of poverty. But this also acts to reduce the incentive to get oneself out of poverty by blunting the benefits gained along the way.
Once again, I can only explain things to you. I can't make you understand them. The concept of welfare acting as an economic trap is well discussed and well understood. If you honestly don't understand this, why not just google a few terms and start reading? You'll find article after article written on this very subject. You're free to disagree in terms of how to deal with the problem, but it's ridiculous for you to just deny that it even exists.
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Of course there is some pandering. However, that pandering is aligned with their fundamental beliefs as opposed to Cruz's pandering of how he became a fan of Country music after September 11.
Striking out the derail. Since when is being black or a woman a "fundamental belief"? It's an identity. You're saying "if you are black you should vote Democrat". Why?
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As for the "Republicans hate you" tactic, I can't speak on what specific reasons why black people vote for Democrats, but I can tell you why so many don't vote Republican.
Then do so. And not in "because they don't like them" or "because they have policies that hurt them". Be specific. See, the problem I'm having here is that I'm arguing that Republican policies are not actually bad for blacks, but Dem policies are, and that the Dems use labels and repeated claims to the contrary to convince people that it's the other way around. So you repeating those same claims doesn't hold any weight here. It's circular. I'm saying that people only think GOP policies are bad for blacks because Liberals and Democrats keep saying it. And your response is to just say that their policies are bad for black people. All you're doing is repeating the claim I'm refuting. If you really think that claim is true, then explain why. And be specific.
I'll also point out the irony of me pointing out how people fail to argue why blacks for *for* Democrats but instead why they vote *against* Republicans, and you proceed to do that exact same thing. Shouldn't you vote for a party because you agree with their positions? Aren't you the least bit concerned that maybe the reason the Dems want you focused on why you should dislike the GOP is because they're afraid that if you actually look at their own positions, platform, and past actions you might discover that you dislike them even more? Just a thought.
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The reality is, the average person, of any party, doesn't follow politics and is more likely to be like their surroundings. I would argue that the average person votes based on limited or superficial reasons without really knowing the entire picture. So, to yet again pretend that this only applies to Democrats is misleading.
Ok. I buy that actually. But for those of us who do follow politics, shouldn't we actually look at the underlying positions and make a decision that way? Your argument is like saying the doctor giving a child a lollipop as a means of encouraging him to comply with an examination and a child molester using a lollypop to entice the same child into his van are similarly right or wrong because both are "pandering". And just as with the example above, I'm willing to overlook pandering if I've examined the underlying objectives and agree with them and am not when I don't.
And, as I mentioned above (and you failed to respond) my issue is that it seems as though the Left has abandoned even the pretense of ideology or principles on which they act. They just pander to groups to gain political support and then go off on their own agenda once they have sufficient power to do so. It's how a party given the presidency, both houses of congress, and a supermajority in the Senate have as their primary success with that power the passage of a health care bill that consistently polled at 55-60% opposed. They clearly didn't use the power they were granted to do what "the people" wanted. Which suggests to me that they gained power, not by running on their agenda, but by running on an identity based campaign. Vote for me cause I don't hate you! Um... That's great, but what are you going to do once you are in office?
Do Dem voters even ask that question anymore? Or do they just vote for the guy because he doesn't hate <insert identity group here>? Isn't that kinda important?
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This is so absurd, that I had to break this into two. Your response was that white people left because they could afford to leave, when in fact white flight has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to afford anything. They leave because they feel more comfortable around their own kind. You for some reason are focused on poor.
Wrong. I said
people who could afford to leave the rapidly increasing poverty of the inner cities did. You're the one who inserted "white" in there. Wealthy black people moved out of those neighborhoods too. As did wealthy Asians. And wealthy Latinos. And not even "wealthy". Just "able to afford to leave". As those neighborhoods became more poor, people who could afford to leave left. In many cases this meant lots of white people, but as we have gone around in circles several times over, white people make up a majority of the population, so saying it was "mostly white people" who left these neighborhoods isn't really saying anything.
Let me also remind you that I'm specifically speaking of the post civil rights era (say mid 60s and on). When we look at that time period, we see that the motivations for people's movements in and out of most areas is economic, not racially driven. Well, except for the black power movement, which was decidedly racially motivated and driven by the specific intention of building neighborhoods with high black populations so as to increase black representation in politics. You really can't blame "white flight" on that at all.
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Read above. White flight has nothing to do with finances.
Read what above? Just repeating the same assertion over and over isn't an argument. I'm telling you that what is labeled as "white flight" is really a combination of factors, very little of which had to do with racial considerations by white people.
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If you're going to create conspiracy theories, you should at least know your terms.
My whole point is refuting your use of the label "white flight". I don't like that term, and have never liked it because it suggests that it was all about white people making choices (with the assumption being they are "fleeing" black people out of some kind of fear or whatnot). Which is an incredibly unfair way to view the issue. The choices were made by a host of people across all racial groups, and almost entirely had to do with economics. People move in and out of neighborhoods for a variety of reasons. Race is rarely the reason, despite far too many people obsessing over it.
The problem, as I've been trying to explain all along is that there is already a strong correlation between race and crime. Heavily black neighborhoods tend to have high crime rates. Not because they are black, but because they are poor. Similarly, people move out of the area, not because it's full of black people, but because it's full of poor people. And where poverty goes, crime goes. You're making the same mistake of assuming that people move out of those neighborhoods because they don't want to live near black people as you did when assuming that cops pull over black people more often because they are black. No. They do so because black people are more likely to be poor, and crime is higher in poor neighborhoods, therefore black people will be pulled over at a higher rate than white people.
It's all related to the same freaking thing. The same thing you steadfastly refuse to even acknowledge may exist. But as long as you stick to that denial, you can never understand what's really going on. You'll continue to blame all of these problems on racism when that's not what is causing them. As I have said many times
it's poverty that is the problem.
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Which reminds me, you never answered how you can create racial conspiracies but everyone else are obsessed with race when they do it. I'm specifically referring to the design of social programs to hold blacks down as an extension of Jim Crow, not the belief that social progrmas are not beneficial.
I answered this several times. I'll do it again, because apparently I'm a glutton for punishment.
Pointing out that someone else is obsessed with race doesn't make me obsessed with race. Get it? The Left is obsessed with race. I'm pointing it out. That's it. The conspiracy I'm talking about is also me pointing out an obsession with race by another group (also part of the Left, or at least Democrat). The first obsession is about defining everything in racial context and using that context to gain political power/support. The second obsession is by racists who realized that they could use this process to introduce government action that would harm people they don't like (in this case black people). Both groups are liberal. Both view issues in the context of race.
The first uses racial inequity to create support for government action, while the second uses government action to create and perpetuate racial inequity. They feed off each other. And it works largely because the members of the first group are generally unwilling to examine the effects of their actions after they are done. They're too busy moving on to the next thing, too sure of the rightness of their cause, and too afraid to look at the truth of things and risk discovering that they might have contributed to something "bad" to risk challenging their hard held beliefs by actually assessing their effects. They assume that welfare helps the poor so firmly that they see no reason to examine the long term effects of welfare on the poor. Examining those effects can only create a risk that they were wrong and they don't want to believe they could be wrong. So they don't do it. And not only do they not do it, but they harshly attack anyone who suggests otherwise. Thus perpetuating the problem.
Sure. It's a theory. But whether you believe it isn't really the point. The point is that many of the actions your "side" has taken have had the effect of creating or perpetuating the very problems that your "side" claims to be fighting against. That alone should make you at least question what the heck is going on. Shouldn't it?
Edited, Apr 3rd 2015 9:12pm by gbaji