What's new
By:

The Caravan

Stoked said:
Please correct me if I’m wrong. But isn’t pretty much every society tainted to some degree by slavery? Some more than others obviously but it had roots everywhere. Then was slowly abolished.
Click to expand...
Yes. African nations enslaved each other A decent number of slave in the British colonies were purchased from African slave traders. It is a stain on the world. There were places where slaves had it much worse than in the US but we were just about the only country to basically go industrial with it. Plantations required almost unheard-of numbers of slaves under a single owner. In lots of places, like Brittain, most slaves were household servants and did undesirable jobs. Pretty much only in the US, and some European colonies, were they more or less considered not much above cattle.
 
Stars Fan said:
I can't cover all the ground I would like to typing on my phone so let me be brief. Madison, one of the key framers of the U.S. constitution, was a slave owner. Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Monroe were all slave owners. So 4 of the first 5 presidents were slave owners. Madison and Jefferson advocated for governmental power to be concentrated in the states with a weak central government, in large part to preserve their slave ownership rights. Hamilton, one the other key framers of the constitution, anchored the federalists who wanted a stronger central government. Washington was also a federalist due, in large part, to his experience with the dysfunctional continental congress during the war. The Republicans and the Federalists compromised over slavery when writing the constitution.

Every territory added to the nation as a state after independence was bitterly fought over to preserve a balance of slave owning and "free" states. The compromise of 1820 was followed by the compromise of 1850. Read up on "bleeding Kansas" to see how bitter it got. A prelude to the civil war was fought out over the issue.

Then, of course, the civil war which is still the bloodiest war in USA history was fought to keep the South in the union. Slavery was the core issue in the succession movement. And after that we had carpet baggers and failed reconstruction, Jim crow, the kkk, red lining, segregation, pole taxes, open and covert bigotry, and white supremacy.

There may be other nations that are tainted by the despicable institution that was slavery, but I think we would be hard put to match that level of psychological and sociological damage.

Why is this important today? Because the hypocrisy required to accept slavery as a way of life lives on in the hearts of many. Jefferson, the man who wrote "all men are created equal, that they endowed by their maker with certain inalienable rights..." not only owned men, fathered children on at least one of his slaves, but also fought Hamilton to ensure slavery was protected from the abolitionists. That same hypocrisy is echoed in the kkk brothers who would go to church on the sabbath and have no problem hating, persecuting, and lynching their black neighbors. How was that possible on a societal level if not through socialized hypocrisy?

I see echoes of that same hypocrisy today in the MAGA chest thumpers who have no problem calling for due process for Kavanaugh while chanting "lock her up". Confederate flag waving Trump supporters who applaud 45 calling himself a nationalist. These same people revile anything associated with the previous president. The birthers, and haters who claimed Obama was not American, or was gay or Muslim, or socialist, etc.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using JazzFanz mobile app
Click to expand...

Who is 45 and why is he called that?
 
idestroyedthetoilet said:
Are you going to respond to stoked or were you quoting him for a platform?
Click to expand...
WhaaChoo tawkin bout willis?

1. I did respond to @Stoked. I buried the lead. But, I directly responded to his posted question.

2. Of course I used it to spout my cockamamie ideas, my platform, as you put it. This is the Jazzfanz general discussion board. Is that somehow inappropriate in your opinion? I got a little more long winded than I intended, but it was late and MAGA got me all riled up.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using JazzFanz mobile app
 
Stoked said:
@Red I don’t discount anything you’ve said.

I’m just saying that the “America was founded on racism” argument holds little weight with me. Simply because EVERYONE was.

Random thoughts:

Also brief hahahahaha. Funny. Longer post than I have ever made.

**** MAGA. We’ve always been great but have miles and miles and miles to go. So far to go that the goal isn’t even visible. But we have come far as ****. So many have been short changes in so many ways.
Click to expand...
I did get long winded... more than I thought when I started, lol.

I'm not saying America was founded solely on slavery, just that we don't pay enough attention to the big role it did play.

And as flawed as we are, we are great and have been from the start. I agree with you on that.





Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using JazzFanz mobile app
 
Last edited:
str8line said:
What a great explanation of what it means to compare Trump to Hitler, thanks Red.
Click to expand...

Stars Fan said:
Ditto
Click to expand...

I think, in addition to drawing lessons from authoritarian movements in past democracies, it's revealing to understand the rise of an authoritarianism in present day democracies. In reading about the upcoming election in Brazil, for example, the front runner reads like a Trump 2.0. These threats to democracy are not confined to the United States. There appears to be a movement much broader in nature:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...bolsonaro-fascist_us_5bd1f3ece4b0a8f17ef57eee

And in the United States, this trend toward authoritarianism is aided by a political party complicit, for its own goals and ends, but just as dangerous, IMHO:

“The less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are generally unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
 
Trump has been a master at controlling what the media will elevate to "front page" coverage. His presidency is a reality tv show, basically. Thus, it's no surprise to learn that he must find it frustrating to see the MAGA Bomber story replacing his emphasis on the "dangers" represented by the caravan as the most covered story. He does not want the bomber knocking his reality show out of first place in the ratings:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump...th-his-nightmare-a-news-cycle-he-cant-control
 
“Politicians in our times feed their clichés to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. Television purports to challenge political language by conveying images, but the succession from one frame to another can hinder a sense of resolution. Everything happens fast, but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is ”breaking” until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.

The effort to define the shape and significance of events requires words and concepts that elude us when we are entranced by visual stimuli. Watching televised news is sometimes little more than looking at someone who is also looking at a picture. We take this collective trance to be normal. We have slowly fallen into it.

More than half a century ago, the classic novels of totalitarianism warned of the domination of screens, the suppression of books, the narrowing of vocabularies, and the associated difficulties of thought. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, firemen find and burn books while most citizens watch interactive television. In George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, books are banned and television is two-way, allowing the government to observe citizens at all times. In 1984, the language of visual media is highly constrained, to starve the public of the concepts needed to think about the present, remember the past, and consider the future. One of the regime’s projects is to limit the language further by eliminating ever more words with each edition of the official dictionary.

Staring at screens is perhaps unavoidable, but the two-dimensional world makes little sense unless we can draw upon a mental armory that we have developed somewhere else. When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell’s and Bradbury’s books could not do this—but we still can.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page
Back
Top