I Hate Middle Class "Liberals" and "Socialists" (and here's why)

This is only the last in many murders and bombings, each celebrated by the anti-abortion crowd. In each case the killers and bombers were found to be fans of these two people, several having had personal contact with Neal Horsley. I posted the info about him because he is not so subtle about his desires to see people killed. The FBI seems to have a standing search warrant for him and his property, he even threatened Elton John.

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Forgive me, I was focusing on Operation Rescue and Randall Terry.
I should have made that clear.

You are putting them all in a homogeneous blob and suggest they all revel in the death of abortion Dr's - which is unfair.
"Each celebrated by the anti-abortion crowd" is an e.g of this.

I hadn't looked into that Horsley character, tbh.
His website was a little too chaotic to work through, but I'll have a second go today.

Briefly looking at the wiki page and articles entries are based on...he does sound like a nutter.
It also does seem information on his site was used by other nutters.
But he also seems like he is full of hot air.
Did his website inspire anybody to kill anybody or harm anybody?...
Well, with the information out there I'd still have to say no.
Again, a person who was already unhinged and had already decided to be a violent ani-abortionist did get some information from Horsley's website.
So, you could say Horsley helped facilitate somebody but inspired them to kill or harm? I'm still not convinced.

Imho, generally speaking, sites that inspire and foster violent actions we will not hear about.
Many will use extremist language but then will also have disclaimers on them.
These two e.gs are people who want the limelight and wish to promote themselves.
As soon as a genuinely violent person knocked on Horsley's door, he was straight to the media...and on another occasion tried to stop somebody being violent.


Like I have said, I can see where you are coming from...
I just don't accept it is as black and white as you suggest.
I know it is easier to say all these people are evil and they all want the death of every abortion Dr in the US...and when one does get killed they all revel in it.
I do not think that is fair.
I also do not think it is fair to say because, say, Operation Rescue has information relating to abortionists and they say it is against God etc etc this inspires people to go kill people.
With that kind of logic, I could argue wiki entries or Alex Jones do the same thing.

You can continue to try and convince me you are being fair, but I do think we should agree to disagree before we go around in circles.
I do accept I am viewing this a little naively and with not as much insight as you.
I have thought about it quite a lot, though.

 

I'll end with a short closing argument then.

A man named Jim Jones "inspired" 900 people not only to follow him to the jungles of South America, but to willingly end their own lives. History is replete with examples of people who inspire others, for bad and for good.

For my entire life I have been an observer of human nature and social trends and I've followed the anti-abortion movement since it's inception. I can't expect you to suddenly understand what I've studied for decades, especially from across the pond. The fact that you looked at my links, considered my position and see why I hold it, seems fair enough to me.

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I'm not so stupid as not to think a person can't inspire somebody and lead them into deeds, even as far as to take their own life.
I know it is possible and there are lots of e.gs of this (Charles manson et al).
I just think your two e.g's might be just not very good one's (looking further into your e.g's).
Both killers seem to have been already established extremists - associated with many other extremist groups (white supremacists / anti-Semites).

I did take your argument seriously, I just think we approach things differently.
I for e.g would not put the blame onto one particular person or group in these two cases.

 

Well I'm not going to get into a "left-versus-right" argument with ya, but the middle class liberals grind my gears for a different reason aside from just gentrification. I don't wanna pigeonhole myself by donning a label, but I believe we have plenty of evidence showing social democracy works wonders with the free market. I'm not saying social democracy is perfect, but it's better than the corporatism we have now.

Anyway, the gentrifiers and smug suburbanite Obama voters are, to me, just self-important jerkoffs who want to put band-aids on a broken system. If push came to shove and the working classes demanded a return of FDR-style socialism, the Democrats -- fashionably liberal white collar yuppies included -- would side with reactionary forces, no doubt. At their core, they've still benefited immensely under our system of corrupted faux-free market.

Regardless, your side is going to win, at least in the foreseeable future. I have absolutely no hope for a leftward turn in American politics at all. You might mention Obama, but he's a joke: His healthcare reform is basically a copy of what the Republicans offered years ago and the Wall Street Bill is, I believe, superficial at best. What's even better for your side, many working-class white folks who've watched conservatives (and I include Bill Clinton in that category) destroy their unions are so terrified of a black President that they've flocked to the far-right.

I still wonder what happened to sanity in America. Back when our businessmen could have their free market but the government at least pretended to give a shit about the working classes...shit, that era's long dead and will probably stay that way.

Reagan won!

 

This article makes me sick because of the stereotypes you're attempting to portray as facts about anyone who embraces progressive and socialist ideals without being in the low income socio-economic bracket.

My two parents make over 150k a year (combined income). I guess we're not entitled to be socialists because we make a decent wage. It doesn't matter that we're in debt because incompetent stock brokers destroyed my parent's retirement funds so that they're still working in their late 60s (mother) and 70s (father) and will have to work until they die. It doesn't matter that our debt is compounded by the fact my father has had to have multiple heart surgeries and my mother has had to have colon cancer removed, and despite "insurance" coverage, the pay out of pocket was nearly 20,000 dollars combined. I guess it doesn't matter that even though we'd want to help resolve our situation and move into a house with a smaller mortgage note, we can't because of 1. the collapse of the housing industry and 2. the fact that this 23 year old suburban house was built (unbeknownst to my parents until the last 5 years) with cheap materials and an inferior and crumbling foundation compared to classical homes that survive 100s of years with simple maintenance. No, we can't be socialists. We are middle-class so therefore we're not allowed into the 'club'.

Personally I've bought my own little dispatch jeep similar to what ice-cream salesmen use to extort the lower-income districts with over-priced goods. Instead I've gone in with my truck and used the money I have earned doing landscape work for my neighbors and distributed free beverages to those in the projects to raise morale. I've also spent time with the children there teaching them sportsmanship and helping them learn the ways to play football and baseball without having to be on some organized little-league team that costs quite a bit of money for many lower-income families to afford. I've also offered free tutoring to any of the residents of the projects who will allow me to work with their children and who's children are enthusiastic about learning. But let me guess... I shouldn't be invited... my family makes too much money, right? I guess the residents there should beat me up and then throw me into the glass of the nearest Starbucks since I'm nothing but a hypocrite right?

For your information I've never supported any of these cafes you mention. We don't even have them here. I have had bumper stickers, but only for our local Democratic candidates who are in dire need of support and deserve a fighting chance. For your information I AM an FDR-style socialist. FDR is my most admired former American president followed by a tie between Jimmy Carter and JFK.

Your characterizations do not apply to true "Liberals" or "Socialists". We are not determined by what socio-economic group we happen to fall into. We have lower class libs., middle class libs, and even extremely wealthy liberals. All who are truly fighting for the right's of the working class and the preservation / continuing fight for civil rights and liberties.

Your characterizations define "yuppies" for sure, but they do not define what is a Liberal / Progressive / Socialist... whatever you want to call it. It is NOT a club that requires you to be in poverty to be a member. That is ridiculous. May there be some "yuppies" who jump on the bandwagon? Sure. Is it really representative of ALL liberals who are not in the lowest income bracket? No. Absolutely not.

Your characterizations and attitude do nothing but help divide people in a movement that needs as much unity as possible. Great job!

 

Did you know that the Economist's most recent article about the Chinese Working class saving the world from recession is really a deliberate middle class justification for their "commodities" fraud at issue, that is , at issue over the demand to ignore culture for it's changes for the communist system (so called). Truly, the Chinese will not intend to serve the world's financial crisis. Only the climate change shall change the recession.

 

I've not heard of such a claim, but most of the leading economists are not part of the middle class, nor are they Communist.

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Doing a little back-reading, I just now found you'd posted this in reference to mine. Guess you took my sarcasm for a genuine opinion. I do the satire thing somewhat often. I find it more incisive sometimes.

 

Jesus Christ, calm down dude. I wrote the article in question and you seem to be missing the point of it.

My neighborhood (and countless other working-class/poor neighborhoods like it) has been invaded by upper middle class fashionably liberal scum. They are, at their core, hypocrites because they champion the working-classes while simultaneously breaking up our communities. Nevermind the fact that they kick guys like me (ya know, us toothless blue collar folks) out of their bars, coffee shops, book stores, etc. without provocation.

Do you fall into this generalization? If not, then calm the fuck down.

Edit: You'll be happy to know that there has been countless incidents regarding said "socialist and liberal" hypocrites having the SNOT BEAT OUTTA THEM by us natives. While I have yet to personally beat a yuppie in the head with a baseball bat, I'm gleefully eager to admit that many of my closest friends have. (These "socialists and liberals" are now complaining to the local media -- anonymously, of course -- about the violence and "stop snitching" attitude of us locals).

Excuse any spelling mistakes. Your post really fired me up.

 

I guess I still don't see your point. Going all the way back to the first post on this thread in which you started, and then reiterated in this post, I come from a small town in Wisconsin (5500 pop.) and the only thing I've seen in my almost 25 years of my life so far hasn't ever been an invasion of "upper middle-class fashionably liberal scum" taking over lower-middle class neighborhoods. And this goes for the nearest big city of 65,000 as well. Now, I guess I'm not sure whether you think upper middle-class liberals are going into your neighborhood, buying out your properties and creating nicer, newer homes...or if they are taking the same said neighborhood and creating "hipster" type shops and creating small "liberal" businesses out of them. Either way, I have never seen this happen in my life. Ever. Anywhere.

What I HAVE seen is a Wal-Mart buying out the property of a mobile home park so they can expand and create a Walmart Supercenter instead. I've never once seen some "hipster" buying out the same type of properties to create a hip-liberal coffeehouse or cafe. Where and when did you see this?? Cause all I've ever seen is huge CORPORATIONS (lead by conservative-capitalists) destroying neighborhoods...and of course it's the low-income neighborhoods cause the properties are cheap. The only time I have witnessed something different is our local town bought a few lots in which homes were literally falling apart in the early 90's and expanded the local pool into a bigger aquatic center which now takes up a whole city block vs the 1/2 block it used to.

Whenever I see some new Hipster shop, some upper-middle class business that's starting up, it's ALWAYS in a downtown setting. Considering the whole aspect of small-town downtown doesn't exist anymore, cause the corporations (walmart, home depot, footlocker etc) put them all out of business, upper middle-class liberals are actually trying to revitalize the "downtown" experience. And small rural towns are where you see lower-class people because they can't afford the big city living.

The hypocrisy of it all is, in the same small town, where people earn less, they also tend to be conservative and vote conservative cause of the idea of "less government" in their lives. And it's that same conservative government that helped feed the idea of big business and created the walmarts and the targets and the home depots. Which put them all out of business. Yet they continue to vote conservative. And could actually use tax breaks from the liberals (which they got), among other social programs for lower class citizens. Paid for by those which put them out of business. Cause they have the money to do so.

 

Quig
heiadn27

Where do you both live?

 

So you've never heard of gentrification of poor/working-class urban neighborhoods?

Because that's basically what you just implied.

EDIT: And you think a big city only has 65,000 people in it?

 

To start...Of course I don't think 65,000 is a big city...I've LIVED in Los Angeles and even London for a while. People think 65,000 is small. My point to the 65,000 is growing up in a 5500 pop town, the 65,000 pop city is where we went to see movies, go shopping etc. It's basically where everything was. When I was a kid, it seemed like a "big city" as did Madison, Appleton, Green Bay, etc. My basis for the angle of that "bigger city" was witnessing the huge corporations buying out properties to build their business.

And to answer your other question that I've never witnessed gentrification...if you're asking if I've personally seen a neighborhood that used to be alive and well 30-40 years ago, but since has turned into a extremely low-income and unsafe "ghetto" only to be torn down and rebuilt into something better?? Didn't I say I grew up in a town of 5500 people? Do you honestly think there's that kind of neighborhood in that town? Upgrade to Green Bay WI (125,000 pop.) to where I went to college and lived downtown, near the "ghetto" area one year...nothing was torn down. No houses for sure. The "gentrification" that has happened is more urban shops had opened within the past decade. Yes, sure, admittedly. BUT all to a former vacant and run-down "downtown" on Broadway street. Which used to be hoppin YEARS ago, spent a generation deteriorating, then rebuilt to newer, hipper shops. Now the whole area is alive and well again. Some of that same stretch even closes down on Wednesdays to have a farmers market.

And this "gentrification" is negative??? You want MORE shops to go on the outskirts of cities near fwys instead of keeping jobs downtown WITHIN a city? Or is it cause I need to live in Philly to understand.

What I think we differ on is that even if your version of gentrification has a negative impact upon you in a city of over 1.5 million...how many "cities" are there in this vast nation with populations of 25-100,000? Or even 100,000-500,000?? These don't even compare to your city that's in the top 10 for population. But this is where a LOT of America lives. And what I described is what we see. No poor neighborhoods being torn down creating a new "hipster" image. No. Just Walmarts and Wallgreen's and Best Buy's tearing down homes or buying property on the edge of a city and bringing the business away from Downtown and out to a suburb. Main Street doesn't exist anymore.

 

Quig,

Whoever the people were who bought and renovated your old neighborhood didn't do it by force. The people living there had to first sell the properties to them, including your parents. Have your parents said that they were "forced" to sell out and leave? In this whole thread you've not said how they feel about it. ie, did they get a good price for their property, were they able to buy a better home elsewhere? All you've talked about is how you feel about it, and I think you even mentioned that you were gone when this happened.

And I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you, If you live as long as I have you will see much, much more change coming. There's only one thing that remains constant, and that's change.

I moved to a small town in W. Ga. to get away from the big city, only to find a decade later that the small town was growing like hell. You can always do as I did and find a place that is not conducive to growth, but then, you might miss out on things like cable, high speed access and nearby shopping, and your friends might not want to visit as often, some not at all.

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with the money they have anything is possible. Plus they could allways grab a church or two to support them.

 

If I understand you correctly, I wasn't talking about political support.
I was talking about the notion conservatives putting up wal-marts and Liberals putting up independent retail shops. Conservatives=Bad Liberals=Good. All this talk about "gentrification" seems more like urban renewal. I'll bore you with my theory someday...

 

Of course they didn't move in by force. I wasn't saying that. And yeah, some neighborhood people who own their homes are putting them up for sale and walking away with good chunk of change. But I'm talking about several points here:

1. Property taxes are going up. This hurts working-class people on short budgets and older neighborhood people on fixed incomes.

2. Rent has skyrocketed. Which means a blue collar family who once paid 500 a month for rent now has to pay 1,000.

3. The 'standard of living' in the neighborhood is also going up too fast for poor/working folks to keep up with. Case in point: By and large, yuppies don't shop at neighborhood stores. And the yuppies have replaced working folks who used to shop at those stores. So those stores not only raise prices, many of them price gouge, because the remaining customers are either people on welfare, people who don't have reliable transportation and thus can't shop where prices are lower, and elderly people who can't make the longer trip.

My point isn't that the yuppies are being 'forced' into the neighborhood. My point is that these people decry free market and the exploitation of poor/working-class people. Yet they're hypocrites, because when the gentrify a neighborhood, they not only embrace free market principles but fuck over the very people they claim to care about in the process. It's just hypocrisy.

As I said in the article, I'd rather my neighborhood be gentrified by conservatives who blatantly don't give a fuck about us. At least then it would be honest, and we wouldn't have to suffer the gentrification brought on by quasi-liberals and "socialists" who justify their compliance with the free market by purchasing a fucking Obama bumper sticker.

 

I think bumper stickers are hard to come by nowadays. Cars without bumpers. That would be a great idea for the revolutionary middle class, aforesaid referred vainly to: maybe we would out of coming towards the real purpose of cars take care to drive slower and less often.

 

But I swear you are confused here sir. What you just described are conservative capitalists, and NOT yuppie-liberals. I guess maybe it's because I was born during the decade in which this term yuppie first surfaced. But according to the Urban Dictionary "yuppie" is a "term used to describe someone who is young, possibly just out of college, and who has a high-paying job and an affluent lifestyle."

Couple problems here. Yes, this term started in the 80's amd became popularized then and into the 90's. But this all started with the deregulation of wall street. Reaganites and the like. I graduated college in 2007. I honestly do not know of many, if not most of my peers who've graduated the latter half of this last decade who qualify as a "yuppie." We are all too far in debt (apparently "good" debt) from school, and the economy has rocked our lives so much that some of us went back to school for another major, or a graduate degree. Some of us can't find anything outside of min-wage jobs at the local corporate store cause we spent all our time studying in school and didn't gain much work experience outside of that same min-wage job. Some of us moved back home with parents until our latter 20's. Some of us live paycheck to paycheck cause we have too much pride to move home. And outside of the huge business schools, I don't see many of us 20-somethings with enough money or power to do much of anything. And the ones who COULD afford to go to the top business school or Ivy-league school were raised by a rich conservative who worked the system to his/her favor. And basically, by paying for their kids to go to the top schools like that, are further implanting the idea of capitalism/greed/money/power/get-rich-quick = good. Shit, I'd love to have graduated college debt-free with a Mercedes that was bought for me as a graduation gift.

These "yuppies" are few and far between. The yuppies you speak of are now in their 40's. There's one married couple I know around the age of 30 who could be considered "yuppie" by your standards. And they opened a fantastic urban-styled restaurant into what used to be a local mall but was vacant for almost 20 years. Now it's a hoppin place to go. But no poor neighborhood was torn down. Just a remodeling of a vacant space. And again, THIS is the gentrification I see. Especially to those I know are liberal-minded. The conservative-minded individuals are the ones tearing down your father's house to build a bank, or a Best Buy, or an office building.