Photographer
Paolo D Photography
Posts: 11502
San Francisco, California, US
63fotos wrote:
True. As long as the minions can shop at Walmart and buy Chinese made products. theres nothing more american than buying a chinese made product from walmart.
yee haw!
Photographer
John Silva Photography
Posts: 591
Fairfield, California, US
rick lesser wrote:
How sad you feel unconfortable and are worried about what others think. Fu@k them. Who are they? What have they done for this country? Do you think I am bothered by people staring and making comments that I don't wear a mask in public? No because no one has said anything. The second we didn't have to mask up I didn't. Maybe it's in your head? Be proud to raise that flag. Thnk about everyone who died so you can raise it. If someone dare tells you something different remind them that this is a free country and they need to go do some homework. Go to any American Legion and tell them how your feeling about displaying the flag. See what they tell you. Get a backbone, be proud. Rick "The second we didn't have to mask up I didn't".
Rick as we go into the 4th wave, in places like Missouri, Florida, Nevada and Arkansas I can't feel sorry for all those anti vacsers, since the ONLY ones dying now in this country are the unmasked and the un-vaccinated but they are usually one and the same.
But I do feel that Trump has done himself a very grave self-inflicted shot in the foot, as the only ones dying are his BASE!
You'd think he'd be out there begging the Red States to all get vaccinated and wear a mask since by the time the dust settles he'll have lost another half million votes!!! LoL
John
Photographer
John Silva Photography
Posts: 591
Fairfield, California, US
Bob Helm Photography wrote:
Sorry John but I couldn't disagree more.
First as to you last line that is a conclusion based on the one sided Left wing Progressive/Marist,CRT thinking and reporting on major news media.
I hear a number of folks embarrassed by American History of racism etc but IMO that is based on ignorance of WORLD HISTORY.
Would they be proud of their nations history if their country was Germany, Japan, China, Russia, Soviet Union, England, Italy( and the Roman Empire from which it came)? I would hope they would because they all had slavery in their past, were colonial powers long before the US existed and all committed atrocities in war.
During the Crusades the great Muslim warrior leader Sueiman of the Ottoman Empire Slaughtered 7000 POWs, because he couldn't feed them. So did the Christian leader King Richard the Lion Hearted. Both were praised in their own real and condemned by their enemies but the Geneva Convention didn't exist. The number was smaller for Santa Anna.
Can you name one Marxist country that didn't execute their political opposition? Besides starving their population through incompetence?
For the last 40 + years we have seen a war on traditional American values by a nihilistic left wing agenda and they followed the game plan Paul Harvey
People in historical times must be evaluated by the standards of their times not the impossible "Cancel Culture"of our times. Yes slavery is, was and always will be an evil institution and in this country we think of it in racial terms but worldwide over history pretty mush every group was both enslaved and held other in slavery ( Including native Americans long before the first European landed here)
I don't fly the flag on my pickup for two reasons. One I don't own a pickup. Second violent Left wing extremest tended to beat people up over wearing a MAGNA hat, I do not want to fuel their hate. I have never had a political sticker on any vehicle I have ever owned but my observation is that Left wingers have multiple sticker for every cause on their car/Truck
When I go camping I do proudly fly the flag over my Motor Home and have for years and there are always a lot of others doing the same.
Name one historic figure that would pass today's standards?
Math is racist, speaking proper English is racist, striving for excellence is racist and why we are condemning "Whiteness" I guess the memorial for MLK on the Mall must go to, after all it is WHITE marble. "Math is racist, speaking proper English is racist, striving for excellence is racist and why we are condemning "Whiteness" I guess the memorial for MLK on the Mall must go to, after all it is WHITE marble".
Bob you have a whole page of nothing but justifications that the racism, white supremacy or any other atrocity that happens today is OK because civilizations have done it for millennia!
It's NOT about making excuses for ourselves by the past but recognizing and correcting what's not right within our country right now.
As you said, all of the radical left gets its news from the left media but that can't possibly be worse than where the average right leaner gets their information..., which is Facebook? Now that's a great place to brush up on the right talking points and a healthy, chocking dose of Q.
I hope the sentence I quoted above is not what is going around intellectual right circles!!!
John
Photographer
David L. Stevens
Posts: 1130
Jacksonville, Florida, US
John Silva Photography wrote:
In the last four years the white supremacist, the racist, the militias, the homophobics and all the other ultra conservative groups have pretty much taken any past patriotic symbol and repurposed those symbols to represent and stand for their brand of conservative beliefs. Of all of our patriotic symbols non have been so abused as our national Stars and Stripes, the very flag that has represented American Democracy and American respect the world over.
Because of this, any large flag has become a symbol of representation of the ultra-conservative movement.
I don't need to get into what these movements represent but because of this hijacking of our American Flag to represent some of the most hateful movements this country has seen it has left me with a sense that to fly a large american flag is to buy into and represent and support these twisted conservative movements.
Before the past four years I had no problem with displaying a 3'x6' American flag. I don't mean strapping one to each side of my pick-up truck and cruising the strip with it, I mean just displaying it at my house. But now for fear of being associated with the skinheads and white supremacist which have all come crawling out from their mama's basements and out of their closets these last four years a large flag has taken on a completely new meaning in this country.
Just like Covid we'll get past this and back to normal but it may take a few years!
In the meantime, flying the Stars and Stripes probably won't happen for me, let alone get caught wearing a red hat!
Is it just me or do others feel the same way???
Hey, why don't you just move you hate this great country so much. I fly my flag proudly every day along with my thin blue line flag.
John
Photographer
John Silva Photography
Posts: 591
Fairfield, California, US
David L. Stevens wrote:
"Hey, why don't you just move you hate this great country so much. I fly my flag proudly every day along with my thin blue line flag".
Why does the right have so much trouble with comprehension? Don't they teach comprehension at FBU??
Show me WHERE I said I hate this country? Show me where anyone else participating has said they hate this country?
In fact I said it's the greatest country in the world. Yes it has all those bigoted, militia, lynching white hooded warts all over it but it will eventually be an even better place to live than it is now when all those bigots are gone.
But I will say, the lowest IQ'd response I ever hear to any patriotic discussion is, "if you hate it so much just leave"!!!
I for one have been sworn to protect my country from all enemies both foreign and domestic and I will always take my oath seriously and defend my country and currently the domestic threat is the greatest its ever been, even greater than during the time of the civil war since this threat is literally just an extension of that war!!!
John
Photographer
rfordphotos
Posts: 8866
Antioch, California, US
John Silva Photography wrote:
[...]
But I will say, the lowest IQ'd response I ever hear to any patriotic discussion is, "if you hate it so much just leave"!!!
I for one have been sworn to protect my country from all enemies both foreign and domestic and I will always take my oath seriously and defend my country and currently the domestic threat is the greatest its ever been, even greater than during the time of the civil war since this threat is literally just an extension of that war!!!
John +1
reminds me of the 60's--- " 'Murica, love it or leave it"
I too took that oath, wore the uniform for 8 years, proudly. I would gladly serve again if I was able. And rather than leave, I choose to try and right the wrongs of our past, not ignore them.
I hear that teaching the real history of our nation is "wrong". I have only one thought on that:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
--- George Santayana
Photographer
rfordphotos
Posts: 8866
Antioch, California, US
Lost Lives, Lost Culture: The Forgotten History of Indigenous Boarding Schools Thousands of Native American children attended U.S. boarding schools designed to “civilize the savage.” Many died. Many who lived are reclaiming their identity. By Rukmini Callimachi July 19, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET ---- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/us/u … hools.html DURANGO, Colo. — The last day Dzabahe remembers praying in the way of her ancestors was on the morning in the 1950s when she was taken to the boarding school. At first light, she grabbed a small pouch and ran out into the desert to a spot facing the rising sun to sprinkle the taa dih’deen — or corn pollen — to the four directions, offering honor for the new day. Within hours of arriving at the school, she was told not to speak her own Navajo language. The leather skirt her mother had sewn for her and the beaded moccasins were taken away and bundled in plastic, like garbage. She was given a dress to wear and her long hair was cut — something that is taboo in Navajo culture. Before she was sent to the dormitory, one more thing was taken: her name. “You have a belief system. You have a way of life you have already embraced,” said Bessie Smith, now 79, who continues to use the name given to her at the former boarding school in Arizona. Bessie Smith, 79, was forbidden from speaking her Navajo language once she began attending a federal boarding school and nearly forgot her native tongue. “It’s so casually taken away,” she said. “It’s like you are violated.” The recent discoveries of unmarked graves at government-run schools for Indigenous children in Canada — 215 graves in British Columbia, 750 more in Saskatchewan — surfaced like a long-forgotten nightmare. But for many Indigenous people in Canada and the United States, the nightmare was never forgotten. Instead the discoveries are a reminder of how many living Native Americans were products of an experiment in forcibly removing children from their families and culture. Many of them are still struggling to make sense of who they were and who they are. In the century and a half that the U.S. government ran boarding schools for Native Americans, hundreds of thousands of children were housed and educated in a network of institutions, created to “civilize the savage.” By the 1920s, one group estimates, nearly 83 percent of Native American school-age children were attending such schools. “When people do things to you when you’re growing up, it affects you spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally,” said Russell Box Sr., a member of the Southern Ute tribe who was 6 when he was sent to a boarding school in southwestern Colorado. “We couldn’t speak our language, we couldn’t sing our prayer songs,” he said. “To this day, maybe that’s why I can’t sing.” The discovery of the bodies in Canada led Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American to head the department that once ran the boarding schools in the United States — and herself the granddaughter of people forced to attend them — to announce that the government would search the grounds of former facilities to identify the remains of children. That many children died in the schools on this side of the border is not in question. Just last week, nine Lakota children who perished at the federal boarding school in Carlisle, Pa., were disinterred and buried in buffalo robes in a ceremony on a tribal reservation in South Dakota. Many of the deaths of former students have been recorded in federal archives and newspaper death notices. Based on what those records indicate, the search for bodies of other students is already underway at two former schools in Colorado: Grand Junction Indian School in central Colorado, which closed in 1911, and the Fort Lewis Indian School, which closed in 1910 and reopened in Durango as Fort Lewis College. “There were horrific things that happened at boarding schools,” said Tom Stritikus, the president of Fort Lewis College. “It’s important that we daylight that.” The idea of assimilating Native Americans through education dates back to the earliest history of the colonies. In 1775, the Continental Congress passed a bill appropriating $500 for the education of Native American youth. By the late 1800s, the number of students in boarding schools had risen from a handful to 24,000, and the amount appropriated had soared to $2.6 million. Throughout the decades that they were in existence, the schools were seen as both a cheaper and a more expedient way of dealing with the “Indian problem.” Carl Schurz, the secretary of the interior in the late 1800s, argued that it cost close to $1 million to kill a Native American in warfare, versus just $1,200 to give his child eight years of schooling, according to the account of the historian David Wallace Adams in “Education for Extinction.” “A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one,” Capt. Richard H. Pratt, the founder of one of the first boarding schools, wrote in 1892. “In a sense I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: That all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man.” Those who survived the schools described violence as routine. As punishment, Norman Lopez was made to sit in the corner for hours at the Ute Vocational School in southwestern Colorado where he was sent around age 6. When he tried to get up, a teacher picked him up and slammed him against the wall, he said. Then the teacher picked him up a second time and threw him headfirst to the ground, he said. “I thought that it was part of school,” said Mr. Lopez, now 78. “I didn’t think of it as abusive.” A less violent incident marked him more, he said. His grandfather taught him how to carve a flute out of the branch of a cedar. When the boy brought the flute to school, his teacher smashed it and threw it in the trash. He grasped even then how special the cedar flute and his native music were. “That’s what God is. God speaks through air,” he said, of the music his grandfather taught him. He said the lesson was clear, both in the need to comply and the need to resist. “I had to keep quiet. There’s plenty where it came from. Tree’s not going to give up,” he said of the cedar. “I’m not going to give up.” Decades later, Mr. Lopez has returned to the flute. He carves them and records in a homemade studio, set up in his home on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation in Towaoc, Colo. Russell Box Sr. spends his days at his home in Ignacio, Colo., painting images of Native-American symbols and ceremonies he was told to forget at the boarding school he attended as a child. In the same boarding school, Mr. Box was punished so severely for speaking Ute that he refused to teach his children the language, in an effort to shield them the pain he endured, his ex-wife, Pearl E. Casias, said. Years of alcoholism followed, he said. His marriage fell apart. It was not until middle age that he reached a fork in the road. “I had been yearning in here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “My spirit had been yearning in here to stand in the lodge,” he said, referring to the medicine lodge that dancers enter during the annual Sundance, one of the most important ceremonies of the Ute people. “Then one day I said to myself, ‘Now I’m going to stand.’ And when I said that inside of me, there was a little flame.” He went to the Sundance for the first time. He stopped drinking. This year, one of his daughters reached out to her mother, asking if she could teach her how to make beaded moccasins. But for many, the wounds just do not heal. Jacqueline Frost, 60, was raised by her Ute aunt, a matron at the boarding school who embraced the system and became its enforcer. Ms. Frost said she remembered the beatings. “I don’t know if it was a broom or a mop, I just remember the stick part, and my aunt swung it at me,” she said, adding: “There was belts. There was hangers. There was shoes. There was sticks, branches, wire.” She, too, turned to alcohol. “Even though I’ve gone to so much counseling,” she said, “I still would always say, ‘Why am I like this? Why do I have this ugly feeling inside me?’” By the turn of the century, a debate had erupted on whether it was better to “carry civilization to the Indian” by building schools on tribal land. In 1902, the government completed the construction of a boarding school on the Southern Ute reservation in Ignacio, Colo. — the school that Mr. Box and Mr. Lopez both attended. The impact of the school, which was shuttered decades ago, can be summed up in two statistics: In the 1800s, when federal agents were trawling the reservation for children, they complained that there were almost no adults who spoke English. Today, about 30 people out of a tribe of fewer than 1,500 people — only 2 percent — speak the Ute language fluently, said Lindsay J. Box, a tribal spokeswoman. (Mr. Box is her uncle). “There were horrific things that happened at boarding schools,” said Tom Stritikus, the president of Fort Lewis College. “It’s important that we daylight that.” For decades, Ms. Smith barely spoke Navajo. She thought she had forgotten it, until years later at the hospital in Denver where she worked as director of patient admissions, a Navajo couple came in with their dying baby and the language came tumbling back, she said. It marked a turn for her. She realized that the vocabulary she thought had been beaten out of her was still there. As she looked back, she recognized the small but meaningful ways in which she had resisted. From her first day in the dormitory, she never again practiced the morning prayer to the four directions. Unable to do it in physical form, she learned instead to do it internally: “I did it in my heart,” she said. In her old age, she now makes jewelry using traditional elements, like “ghost beads” made from the dried berries of the juniper tree. When she started selling online, she chose the domain: www.dzabahe.com. It is her birth name, the one that was taken from her at the boarding school, the one whose Navajo meaning endured: “woman who fights back.”
Photographer
JQuest
Posts: 2477
Syracuse, New York, US
Bob Helm Photography wrote:
As to CRT you do not fight racism by teaching racism and the US of today is vastly different than the US of the 1920 or 1960.
Continue in your self righteous flights of progressive fantasy, even though I am mostly retire I have neither the time of inclination to deal with someone whose mind is so closed.
BTW are we also responsible for what Canada Die? How about Mexico?
Good by If you actually, honestly believe that by teaching critical race theory which is only taught at the collegiate level, is the equivalent of teaching racism then you are sadly misinformed at best, and have willingly accepted the lies that have been espoused as the truth by manipulative alt right provocateurs. It's no ones job here to educate you, however most of what you post is ridiculous. Talk about a closed mind. If the the US of Today is so vastly different than the US of 1920 or 1960 why do you continue to cling to the same and long since shot down, debunked, deflated, exposed and trashed arguments?
You cannot overcome racism by limiting the discussions about racism.
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what- … ck/2021/05
Just what is critical race theory anyway?
Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others. Ask yourself why this concept has exploded in right wing media in the past six months? You're being played and you've bought right in to it.
Photographer
John Silva Photography
Posts: 591
Fairfield, California, US
Bob Helm Photography wrote:
63fotos wrote:
"but IMO that is based on ignorance of WORLD HISTORY".
From the beginning of the country the native Americas were considered separate Nations, that is why we had Treaties with them, treaties are between nations. Bob, I don't blame you for having that belief but I think its based a bit on your very own statement that I quoted above, IMO!
Yes I learned the same thing I grade school. Then I got to college, yes it was one of those liberal institutions, in fact one of the worst offenders in the chain of Ivory Tower liberal brainwashing institutions that conservatives just love to bash!! LoL
There I did some work with a guy named Denis Banks, probably best known for the occupations of Alcatraz and Wounded Knee. You might also read a bit on The Trail of Broken Treaties. There is not ONE treaty that was not broken!!
I also studied for two years under a guy named Robert F Heizer. Heizer spent a good amount of time flying around testifying at trials on broken treaties for Native American Tribes..., Nations as you're calling them. Yes the treaties are very romanticized in our white washed history. If that was so true and the tribes were so sovereign, we wouldn't need the BIA, now would we?
John
Artist/Painter
Hunter GWPB
Posts: 8260
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, US
David L. Stevens wrote:
"Hey, why don't you just move you hate this great country so much. I fly my flag proudly every day along with my thin blue line flag". John Silva Photography wrote:
Why does the right have so much trouble with comprehension? Don't they teach comprehension at FBU??
Show me WHERE I said I hate this country? Show me where anyone else participating has said they hate this country?
In fact I said it's the greatest country in the world. Yes it has all those bigoted, militia, lynching white hooded warts all over it but it will eventually be an even better place to live than it is now when all those bigots are gone.
But I will say, the lowest IQ'd response I ever hear to any patriotic discussion is, "if you hate it so much just leave"!!!
I for one have been sworn to protect my country from all enemies both foreign and domestic and I will always take my oath seriously and defend my country and currently the domestic threat is the greatest its ever been, even greater than during the time of the civil war since this threat is literally just an extension of that war!!!
John Sorry, John. But you don't get it. Having served your country doesn't mean anything unless you exhibit absolute fealty. Having a concern that the American flag is being used as a symbol of oppression and racism isn't legitimate. You must accept whatever anyone in the country does or you don't belong here. Unless, of course, those people doing the heinous things aren't white. Then you don't have to accept it and you can call for their ouster. Or if they commit ultimate sins like express their rights to free speech, petitioning the government for redress, kneel to the Star Spangled Banner, or face the flag instead of the veteran playing the anthem- then you must not love the country and must leave.
There has been one form of this or another since the beginning. Jeez, why do we even have a country? After all we were part of the monstrosity headed by King George. We shouldn't have declared Independence, we should have left the country (without taking it with us)! The Articles of Confederation should have been enough and we shouldn't have a Constitution where "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” They should have left. There should be no amendments to the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, because if people needed rights, they should have just left. Of course, some states did try that. Slavery was far important than the unity of the country so a bunch of states left. It didn't work out so well.
If you are in the country and you are black, brown, indigenous or female and you want that promise about the general welfare, justice, the blessings of liberty, happiness* and safety* (*Declaration of Independence), they aren't for you and all those people should leave.
At least that is the theory of those in the extreme right, which the poster that issued the childish clarion call surely must be. After all, he not only flies the American flag everyday, he flies that banner of division, the one with the thin blue line, that declares there is an "us vs them" mentality and the people of this country are nothing but a threat to law and order. It is completely unAmerican to call for justice or reform in policing. The police should be without constraints, the constitution says so, according to Scalia, anyway.
"Love it or leave it." Doesn't that sound just like a guy that abuses his spouse? He beats the snot out of her, says he is sorry and does it all over again, and again, and again. Doesn't it ring hollow when that guy says he loves his wife and yet still abuses her? Much like 'the right' that denies justice and the vote to some and cares not what harm comes to some as long as the chosen ones prosper. How can they love a country when they loath so many of the people? How does a man's family prosper if they live in fear of the head of the family? It is a definition of love that only the sick can embrace.
Regardless. Mr. Stevens has proven your point in your OP. The mindless minions of conservatism and of the far right have poisoned the American flag just as they have poisoned freedom, justice, happiness and safety and everything they touch. But, as has been pointed out, the flag means so much more to the rest of us. We cannot let the evil in the nation co-opt the flag into an expression of hate and oppression as they have with the Republican party, the justice system and the okay symbol. They can keep their confederate and nazis flags, and their thin blue lines. Our flag is ours.
Photographer
rxz
Posts: 1116
Glen Ellyn, Illinois, US
Paolo D Photography wrote:
why Sept 3rd? 3 September 1783 the U.S.A. was finally recognized by other countries as an actual independant country. And if the colonists didn't receive massive support from France and Spain to win the war with England, the colonists would have lost to England and those revolutionists in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress in the summer of 1776 would have been hung in England as terrorists.
For those flag flyers, on 3 September, thank France and Spain for your flag.
Photographer
John Silva Photography
Posts: 591
Fairfield, California, US
rxz wrote:
3 September 1783 the U.S.A. was finally recognized by other countries as an actual independant country. And if the colonists didn't receive massive support from France and Spain to win the war with England, the colonists would have lost to England and
"those revolutionists in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress in the summer of 1776 would have been hung in England as terrorists".
For those flag flyers, on 3 Sptember, thank France and Spain for your flag. Yes it could have turned out very different for the Patriots of the Revolutionary War.
By the grace and goodness of Lincoln, he could have rounded up Robert E Lee and everyone loyal to Lee and executed them as the terrorist and insurgents that they were. Lee was after-all, responsible for the deaths of 1000's of Americans and should have been executed for it. Instead we now have all these idiots running around today appropriating every national and Nazi symbol as there own and chanting things like, "Jews will not replace us".
It's too bad the Capital Police failed so miserably at protecting the Capital on January 6. They should have set up a machine gun at every entrance and used it.
It seems that other than the usual canned talking points, the conservatives here have said little of substance. It's pretty hard to argue against facts with fake Q talking points.
We will all continue to fly our flags of varying sizes in varying ways but the question still remains, what meaning will be attach to it!?
John
Photographer
Dave Gibson
Posts: 370
Altoona, Pennsylvania, US
John Silva Photography wrote:
We will all continue to fly our flags of varying sizes in varying ways but the question still remains, what meaning will be attach to it!?
John Fly the flag as you see fit and attach whatever meaning to it as you deem appropriate. Don't worry about what that other guy is doing. He is free to act according to his conscience and within the law, same as you. He has to respect your freedom and you have to respect his in return, whether or not his viewpoint differs from yours. Otherwise, freedom is meaningless.
Photographer
Paolo D Photography
Posts: 11502
San Francisco, California, US
Dave Gibson wrote:
Otherwise, freedom is meaningless. but what is freedom without oppression?
...damn thats deep yo!
Photographer
63fotos
Posts: 534
Flagstaff, Arizona, US
John Silva Photography wrote:
Yes it could have turned out very different for the Patriots of the Revolutionary War.
By the grace and goodness of Lincoln, he could have rounded up Robert E Lee and everyone loyal to Lee and executed them as the terrorist and insurgents that they were. Lee was after-all, responsible for the deaths of 1000's of Americans and should have been executed for it. Instead we now have all these idiots running around today appropriating every national and Nazi symbol as there own and chanting things like, "Jews will not replace us".
It's too bad the Capital Police failed so miserably at protecting the Capital on January 6. They should have set up a machine gun at every entrance and used it.
It seems that other than the usual canned talking points, the conservatives here have said little of substance. It's pretty hard to argue against facts with fake Q talking points.
We will all continue to fly our flags of varying sizes in varying ways but the question still remains, what meaning will be attach to it!?
John but unless you have an enormous flag hanging out of the back of your pickup truck, it don’t mean a thing, apparently.
Artist/Painter
Hunter GWPB
Posts: 8260
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, US
Why don't today's white victims of racism want CRT to be taught in today's schools? The truth is too much for them to handle. Nursing their hatred is so much easier. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions … r-history/ There is very little today that has changed. excerpts: (You will have to read the story to see who Butler was.) I thought of Butler recently when a group called Moms for Liberty tried to shut down the use of a curriculum in Williamson County, Tenn., that includes an autobiography by Ruby Bridges. As a 6-year-old in 1960, Bridges became an international symbol of the civil rights movement, and one of the first Black children to integrate New Orleans schools. The Tennessee Moms argue that her book, “Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story,” contains too many truths that cut too close to the bone. The mothers find the story objectionable, citing a description of a “large crowd of angry white people who didn’t want Black children in a white school.” They say that’s too negative a rendering of a moment that is well documented in books, film and photography. Have these mothers not seen the pictures from that year-long struggle over integration? Have they avoided the photographs of White women with their necks jutted out and the mouths screaming as though their world was coming to an end? One of the protesters from 1960 carried a sign that read: “All I want for Christmas is a clean white school.” The Moms for Liberty also complained that Bridges’s memoir offers no “redemption at its end.” We do our children no favors if we only feed them a steady diet of fairy tales that sidestep life’s complexities. We commit long-term harm as guardians when we sanitize our history in the name of protecting our kids from feeling bad about themselves. What’s really at work is adults trying to outrun a sense of shame. If those moms insist on an additional dose of uplift, they could remember Barbara Henry, the teacher who instructed Ruby day after day in a classroom with just the two of them — because all the other students had pulled out. They could remember the psychiatrist Robert Coles, who counseled Ruby’s parents amid death threats and helped provide clothes so Ruby would be spiffed up when walking past the cameras. But students should also learn that Bridges faced that crowd every day for a year, that she had to bring food from home every day because of fears for her safety, that her parents lost their jobs and relied on donations to get by, and that Ruby once sent a letter to Santa saying all she wanted for Christmas was for her father to get his job back. Students need to learn the full story — the haters and the helpers — and years from now, looking back on this moment too, they should know that a group of hesitant scolds tried to keep America’s schools from addressing the forces of racial bias and white supremacy that have shaped almost every aspect of American life. Their effort to sweep away an uncomfortable history is like trying to step out from under the sky. Go ahead and try. In the end, you can’t escape.
Model
peter vic
Posts: 57
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
America is the World's laughing stock. It doesn't look like that will change anytime soon. Too many cowards.
Photographer
Paolo D Photography
Posts: 11502
San Francisco, California, US
peter vic wrote:
America is the World's laughing stock. It doesn't look like that will change anytime soon. Too many cowards. um, no. the USA is a complex space of individuals with different agendas which are being directed towards the same goal.
the changes you perceive as uncomfortable situations placed on civilians in the last year is part of a plan to restructure things. theres a fuck ton of people and for the most part you're mindless, and easy to manipulate.
the process will only last a generation or two. with the point technology is at, now is the best time to hit hard to control a population and set a path for future design. america maybe more than any other nation needs to be reeled in.
if youre older, be glad you got to grow up in the time you did.
ignorance is bliss, and you wont be able to comprehend the changes ahead, but it wont matter because you'll die off soon.
my generation is a toss up, more flexible and therefore at this time dont need to be entirely written off as a generation which needs to have their knowledge discredited by the media in order to move the plan ahead. we're all relatively young and are the workforce still. we'll just suffer longest if we don't submit. our kids (generation) and the next are the ones who will no longer form thoughts for themselves. then population control can go into effect.
history is never correct anyways, we only believe the versions of what were taught to be true, so i could give a fuck less about that. its only purpose was a source of values and pride and some traditions.
it sucks having traditions along with everything else being scrutinized but its inevitable.
thats the current agenda.
thats why someone might be weary about the american flag as a symbol.
that feeling is a byproduct of the process to implement change.
you have to shock the public with something that seems unlikely, and then when that becomes the normal, then you can implement something more extreme without total chaos because everyone is still mindfucked from the first thing.
you can deny it, try to fight it or whatever, but its much easier to understand thats just the time were in, and a plan thats in motion and walk through it controlling the level of your own unwilling participation to the best of your ability.
if all that is depressing to think about, just know some great art could emerge and also know the universe will wipe us all out one day and have a relatively uncomplicated clean start.
Photographer
rxz
Posts: 1116
Glen Ellyn, Illinois, US
peter vic wrote:
America is the World's laughing stock. It doesn't look like that will change anytime soon. Too many cowards. All too true. But too many cowards? I don't think so. Too many morons. And too self-indulged, except when listening to other morons like themselves.
Some day another 30+ KM diameter rock will strike the planet and life will start over. But the human species we know will be long gone before that happens.
Artist/Painter
Hunter GWPB
Posts: 8260
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, US
peter vic wrote:
America is the World's laughing stock. It doesn't look like that will change anytime soon. Too many cowards. Is that relevant somehow? Your unsupported cheap shot and opinion is worth something? We should brush problems under the rug to save face, rather than work through them?
When a family is going through a difficult time, which many families and nations experience, should the families in the neighborhood that laugh at those struggling and working through their problems, be held in high esteem? Is schadenfreude somehow noble? Or is the humility of the perspective of, "There but by the grace of God, go I," a little more cognizant of the fact that shit happens?
Rain falls on good and evil alike.
Photographer
John Silva Photography
Posts: 591
Fairfield, California, US
peter vic wrote:
America is the World's laughing stock. Peter, sorry man but I think I'm gonna disagree with ya, BUT feel free to put a little more meaning and evidence into your hollow claim.
What countries did you hear that in? With your evidence maybe I may see that you're right.
I've been to 40 countries and I never seen or heard anybody laughing, in fact quit the opposite!? From Brazil to China and 38 other countries I never experienced your claim.
So Peter, feel free to show me the money!!??
John
Photographer
LightDreams
Posts: 4595
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
While I don't believe for a minute that the U.S. is "the world's laughing stock", there is no doubt (according to the international polls) that the world is generally very concerned about what's happening within the U.S. over the last 5 years. Issues like the handling of COVID and questions about the future of democracy in the U.S., etc. You all know the issues well...
- Gallop International Polling (116350) in 2021 on the world's current satisfaction with the condition / position of the U.S. in the world today.
in 2001: 71% satisfaction with how the U.S. was doing.
In 2021: 37% satisfaction with how the U.S. is doing.
P.S. Over the years, there were many stats that indicated that the U.S. generally "peaked" (in all sorts of different ways, both domestically and internationally), somewhere around the beginning of 2001.
Side note: Various international polls make clear that China is now regarded as the world's economic powerhouse (that does not mean "approval" or "disapproval", just the international view of how things are).
---
- Pew Research Global (Sept 15th, 2020)
"U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly"
Favorable view of the U.S. hit all time lows (in decades of polling) at 34%
Confidence in Trump hits 16%
---
Now for the good news...!
- Pew Research Global (June 10th, 2021)
"America’s Image Abroad Rebounds With Transition From Trump to Biden"
"U.S. favorability sees one of its steepest recoveries in years from 2020 to 2021"
61% have a favorable view of the U.S. (compared to 34% at the end of Trump's Presidency)
NOTE: The biggest remaining problem area:
"Most believe that the U.S. is no longer a good model of democracy"
Photographer
rfordphotos
Posts: 8866
Antioch, California, US
LightDreams wrote:
While I don't believe for a minute that the U.S. is "the world's laughing stock", there is no doubt (according to the international polls) that the world is generally very concerned about what's happening within the U.S. over the last 5 years. Issues like the handling of COVID and questions about the future of democracy in the U.S., etc. You all know the issues well...
- Gallop International Polling (116350) in 2021 on the world's current satisfaction with the condition / position of the U.S. in the world today.
in 2001: 71% satisfaction with how the U.S. was doing.
In 2021: 37% satisfaction with how the U.S. is doing.
P.S. Over the years, there were many stats that indicated that the U.S. generally "peaked" (in all sorts of different ways, both domestically and internationally), somewhere around the beginning of 2001.
Side note: Various international polls make clear that China is now regarded as the world's economic powerhouse (that does not mean "approval" or "disapproval", just the international view of how things are.
- Pew Research Global (Sept 15th, 2020)
"U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly"
Favorable view of the U.S. hit all time lows (in decades of polling) at 34%
Confidence in Trump hit 16%
Now for the good news...!
- Pew Research Global (June 10th, 2021)
"America’s Image Abroad Rebounds With Transition From Trump to Biden"
"U.S. favorability sees one of its steepest recoveries in years from 2020 to 2021"
61% have a favorable view of the U.S. (compared to 34% at the end of Trump's Presidency)
NOTE: One remaining problem area though...
"Most believe that the U.S. is no longer a good model of democracy" A good portion of getting along with our international partners was and is based on a degree of "predictability". Knowing how a country is likely to react is the first step towards a "trust" of sorts. Trump's arbitrary actions, disdain for the normal diplomacy among nations, hostility towards traditional partners like Germany and Canada destroyed decades of diplomatic trust. It is going to take a while to rebuild that trust. It wont happen in just one administration's term, it may well take decades for the fear of another flip flop of policy to fade.
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