Would you unfriend or blacklist someone over politics?

I liked the fairness doctrine. Whatever happened to that? Oh, Reagan.

 

I think I've acknowledged that if "white privilege" is taken to mean that, without controlling for SES, physical disabilities, etc., every white person is automatically advantaged over every non-white minority, that is a lie. Malia and Sasha Obama are privileged over some poor white kid from a pig farm in Appalachia. However, I haven't heard yet on twitter of many white guys being challenged for being present in the lobby of a motel or followed around a department store without doing anything suspicious.

The term "Third World" originated in the context of the Cold War--Third World countries being unaligned between NATO and the Soviet bloc Generally, the term is used today to refer to developing countries, South America being generally at the high end of that descriptor. But Venezuela still has an essentially extractive economy, and was unable successfully to diversify under Chavez. Specifically, it isn't an industrial or post-industrial economy. Like Saudi Arabia, it was a player when the oil money was rolling in, but that was then and this is now.

And yes, Corbyn would turn the UK into a 3rd world country the same way Emanuel Macron is turning France into a 3rd world country.[/quote][/QUOTE] Bad as Macron might be, France is far from being turned into a Third World country--except by the rhetoric of right wing propagandists. One could make the same claim about the U.S., under Trump.

 

Libertarianism and the non-aggression principle

It is hard to talk of libertarianism in an American context because most of the people in the US that call themselves ‘libertarian’ are actually right wing libertarians.

As I’ve pointed out on many occasions there are actually many forms of libertarianism. Now as I understand it left leaning libertarianism is all about helping others and so is very much in favour of types of equal, mutual and distributive societies, places where there is education and healthcare for all for example. It has an emphasis not only on individual freedom but also social equality.

For left wing libertarians it is about freedom from exploitation, freedom from suffering, and freedom from want.

Right wing libertarianism on the other seems to base its thinking more on Social Darwinist lines and is therefore more about helping one’s self, helping others is secondary at best or unimportant.

Individuals have to ‘fight for themselves’ and inequality along with the holding and accumulating of resources for purely individual usage is accepted if not encouraged. This also means that the exploitation and suffering of others who are less advantaged than others is also accepted in a system that would actually promote it.

And this is where we come to the non-aggression principle that is talked about right wing libertarian like 6 above.

This is basically the idea of doing no harm.

The problem to me with the non-aggression principle in relation to right wing libertarianism is that the ideology is all about doing harm to others.

It is basically about having access to resources - if you haven’t the access to resources or are unable to get them then you suffer even unto death.

Have no work then starve, don’t have the money for a cure then suffer and die and the ideology also makes it more difficult to get out of being disadvantaged by making access to education and training also linked to resources.

For right wing libertarians it is about freedom to be exploited, freedom to suffering, and freedom to want even unto death.

An individual right wing libertarian might not be directly causing another individual harm but would however like to cause that harm thought the ideology they follow.

So to me when such people talk of the non-aggression principle it comes across as a bit of a sick joke.

 

Who are Spooner and Tucker? Please cite your sources.

Secondly, your anarcho-communism you're going on about is a paradox. How the hell do you enforce redistribution policies without a governing body to forcefully take away other people's property? What do you do when people start getting greedy?

 

Anarchy is communal and cooperative. It really isn’t that difficult. In the very post you’re replying to he implored that you actually read it. Did you? There are lots of folks here with English as their second language who display a greater degree of reading comprehension.

 

Oh good you're starting to get it now. Wealth is privilege, not whiteness.

What the hell are you talking about? When I was a teenager who dressed like a punk, mall security and store owners would treat me with a lot more suspicion than they did when I dressed nicer, and especially after I became an adult.

How would you know the backstory of the department store workers as to why they find certain people suspicious? Maybe they've been robbed by a person of a certain race a month before. Maybe they're cautious of young teenage punks who fit the stereotypical profile of a trouble maker, more so than a well-dressed old lady.

Not every suspicion of store owners, has to do with racism.

 

But thats exactly where the concept of white privilege comes in. You aroused suspicion because of the way you dress, which is something you can change. Whereas if someone arouses suspicion because of their skin color, they cant exactly take that off on a whim

 

6

I believe that is Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker but the extract I posted above actually comes from a very good book that I’ve suggested to people many times here – Demanding the impossible: A History of Anarchy by Peter Marshall you can get a PDF copy online

Demanding the Impossible - A History of Anarchism

Sorry this comment seems to indicate you have never read anything about the actually philosophy and ideas of Communism or Anarchy?

Please read the book and you might be better informed – it is not a paradox, as you put it, is more about idealism, the idea being that there would be no need to ‘enforce’ fair distribution people would do it voluntarily because they saw it as the right and proper thing to do, people would not be greedy because that would be seen as wrong, abhorrent.

I’ve often said that such Anarchy would be fantastic but that human beings would need to evolve mentally to see any possibility of it happening (and I don’t see that happening any time soon), that is why I’m more of a Democratic Socialist than an Anarchist.

The thing about the right wing libertarian vision of ‘small government’ (that you seem to follow) is that all the protections and needed assistance that a governing body might give to the weak or disadvantaged would be removed but all the protections and unneeded assistance for the propertied classes, the powerful and advantaged would be retained. Such a system would need to be anti-democratic and need brutal enforcement to protect the advantaged from the disadvantaged, the few from the many.

 

6

And once again you show yourself to be ill informed and unquestioning your own ideas while been knowing you are totally unable to address the many outstanding criticisms levelled at them.

Oh and we all know you claim that you could address the criticisms but that well…..it’s just that…..you know….

Yes we know you are unable and unwilling to do so.

And please don’t say you have produced answers because we all know you haven’t because when actually asked to say where or when you have done this answering it’s back to….well….it’s just that….you know….

We know, you can’t because they don’t exist.

*

Have you actually read anything about the views you claim to support (beyond that is the bad sci-fi book, Atlas Shrugged)? I mean it has been commented before about how ill-informed you seem to be on many subjects but I would have thought you would have done some reading around the ideas you seem to hold?

I’m saying that because it seems to me that you would be a lot better at explaining and defending your ideas if you had actually read up on them (beyond bad sci-fi) and likewise you might be better at attacking opposing viewpoints if you had a bit more knowledge about you own position.

I mean I’m sorry but it often comes across as if those that are opposing your ideas know more about them than you do.

 

More like a class issue. LP fools still follow me around stores because I dress like a bum most of the time. When I'm wearing a suit, they don't notice me. I even had one follow me to my car and get my tag number, even though I didn't steal anything. Oh the horror.

Store personnel in loss prevention are a bunch of hacks who think they're cops. It's been that way as long as I remember.

And yes, I still think the term "white privilege" is pure racism. It sure as hell isn't "love" is it now.

 

Panic

Why?

I mean privilege basically means the advantage that a particular person or group have, yes that can apply to class but it doesn’t mean it excludes any racial connection. I mean if statistically a racial group is receiving an advantage in say getting jobs or in the judicial system then that racial group is more ‘privileged’ than others.


I mean there have been many studies that have shown that having a ‘white’ name means you are more likely to get a job interview and that black men get longer sentences for the same federal crime as white men.

*

Economists Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan study how race, ethnicity and racism affect hiring decisions. In their 2004 study, “Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal: A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” Bertrand and Mullainathan randomly assigned names and quality to resumes and sent them to over 1300 employment advertisements. “Their results revealed statistically significant differences in the number of callbacks each resume received based on whether the name sounded white or African American.”

 

In the past two years I quit FaceBook because of politics. And I won't have any friends who I know support Trump.

 

Not that it matters.. But, yes.

 

For me I guess it's according to how skewed their politics might be. If they use it to justify being an asshole, I have no use for them. If they can't have a civil discussion on the matter without calling people names, forget it.

But I won't "unfriend" someone JUST because of their party affiliation. Even though I think latching onto a political party is foolish. Neither one in the US fully represents my personal thinking. In fact, both are off quite a bit.

 

Haven't you already latched on to a political party if the thought of someone else latching to something else is worth ending a friendship? That doesn't make too much sense to me.

 

Now I'm confused! But no, I'm not beholding to any party. I'll vote for either and I've voted 3rd party a couple of times. But I won't label myself as either of the major polarizing parties we have in the US now.

As far as I'm concerned BOTH of the parties in the US have failed many times in my span of existence:

• I've been hearing about the problems at the border for my entire life. Neither party has a solution.
• Both parties keep the War on Drugs going.
• Both parties have allowed bureaucrats to waste our money and other resources for as long as I remember.
• Both parties play childish games in the name of politics with zero regard for how it affects citizens.
• Both parties salivate to gain control to undo what the other did, perpetuating the up and down nature of life in the US.
• Both parties have failed utterly with regard to our penal system.
• Both parties have allowed greed and graft to corrupt American politics.
• Both parties look the other way when "one of their own" fucks up.
• Both parties seem to be represented by some of the ugliest Americans around!

So the idea of sidling up to either is repugnant to me. But, like football, I like to see a good play go down. And I have to admit, both parties have done this on many occasions.

 

I have an uncle who is a full on red hat guy. He wears it in family pics and he repeats whatever Trump has said on Facebook. His wife my aunt is the son of Mexican immigrants who came during World War 2 to work the fields. All the strong white men were gone. When the war was over my aunt was the "anchor baby" and they never left.

So now he has kids and and grand kids who are the result of illegal immigration. This has done nothing to change him. I am told my cousin does not even allow him to see his grand-kids over this.

This story has happened all over America. His voters have isolated themselves and long after he's gone families will remember.

 

This will continue long after Trump. And that's something he loves. He has started a divide in this country as bad as, or worse than, the US Civil War.

 

I wonder........

.....if Michael Jackson would have unfriended Trump for running for president!