Year after year, leaders have stood on this stage to discuss what we can do together to protect our heritage, to promote our culture, and to defend our freedom.Here's what I said out loud (to my audience of one): "That's a dog whistle. White power." Questioned, I said, "heritage... culture... freedom..." Even freedom? "Yes, in context with our heritage, our culture, and then our freedom. Our freedom."
I switched to the transcript (here, at Vox). I'll live-blog my reading of it, with excerpts and commentary. Trump forefronts his judicial appointments, presumably because this is the place where he can claim and successfully vaunt* conservative credentials:
We have confirmed a record number, so important, of circuit court judges and we’re going to be putting in a lot more. And they will interpret the law as written and we have confirmed an incredible new Supreme Court justice, a great man, Neil Gorsuch. Right.He admits no doubt here. Conservative = doing it right = Gorsuch. I won't slow this post down to lawprofsplain what's specious about all that.
Trump himself swiftly moves on to his second-best accomplishment, taxes:
We have passed massive, biggest in history, tax cuts and reforms. I don’t use the word reform...I didn't just say what I said.
... there was a lot of reform too, very positive — I don’t use it. And when we were first doing it I told everybody, everybody gathered, I said, just talk about tax cuts. People don’t know what reform means. They think reform might mean it is going up. And I said, do tax cuts....So, he lets doubt leak in all over the place there, but he needs them to believe he's a tax cuts guy. Despite all the "reform" talk. Ah, it's just a word, "reform." People don't even know what it means, he says.
To say that less crudely, that is, to use a Democrat's words, he's chattering about "framing." Republicans want to say "cuts" (even when some taxpayers may pay more) and Democrats want to say "reform" (to assure you that the right people will have to pay more — their fair share — and the good people will get relief). But even though they bandied the word "reform" about...
We didn’t have one Democrat vote and I think that’s going to cost them in the midterms. I know that whoever wins the presidency has a disadvantage for whatever reason in the midterms. You know what happens? I’m trying to figure it out. Historically, if you win the presidency, you don’t do well two years later. And you know what, we can’t let that happen and I know what happens. Finally figured it out. Nobody has been able to explain it. It just happens.That's some fantastic Trumperish — Trump jibberish. Has he figured it out or does nobody know why it happens? It sounds nonsensical, and it's said so simply that you feel he's just jabbering without thinking, but he does make sense of it:
Statistically, almost all of the time, for many years, what happens is you fight so hard to win the presidency. You fight, fight, fight. And now only two years, that’s a very short period and by the time you start campaigning, it is a year. And now you got to go and fight again. But you just won. So nobody has that same drive that they had. So you end up not doing that well, because the other side is going — they’re crazed, and, by the way, they’re crazed anyway, these people. They are really crazed. Right.He figured it out: The other side has more motivation to fight. The losers maintain their drive.
So I kept trying to say, why is this? But it is just there. So the great enthusiasm, you know, you’re sitting back, you’re watching television...You're like him, lying around watching TV.
... maybe I don’t have to vote today, we just won the presidency, and then we get clobbered and we can’t let that happen. We get clobbered in ’18, and we can’t let that happen.I'm sure that works better in the audio version, that adherence to the present tense: "We get clobbered in ’18."
Only because we are so happy, we pass so many things, honestly, and I’ll say — I’ll use the word, my administration as opposed to me, my administration, I think, has had the most successful first year in the history of the presidency. I really believe that. I really believe it. I really believe it....He really believes it.
See the word really is complacent. People get complacent. It is a natural instinct. You just won, and now you’re happy and you’re complacent. Don’t be complacent. Don’t be complacent....Get the message? Don't be complacent.
If they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts, they will put judges in that you wouldn’t believe, they’ll take away your Second Amendment, which we will never allow to happen, they’ll take away your Second Amendment. Remember that. They will take away — thank you. They will take away those massive tax cuts, and they will take away your Second Amendment. By the way, if you only had a choice of one, what would you rather have, the second amendment or tax cuts? Second Amendment, tax cuts? Second Amendment? I’m going to leave it at the Second Amendment. I don’t want to get into that battle. All right.Man, he is a repetition machine. So soon after that school-shooting empathy theater and his seeming openness to gun control, he's scaring people about losing the right to bear arms. Note the locution: your Second Amendment.
Trump denounces the "very crooked media... very, very crooked media." They won't give him credit for his accomplishments.
He moves on to the subject of health care:
Obamacare is just being wiped out. The individual mandate essentially wipes it out. I think we may be better off. And people are getting great health care plans and we’re not finished yet. But, remember, one person walked into a room, when he was supposed to go this way, and he said he was going this way, and he walked in and he went this way and everyone said, what happened? What was that all about? Boy, oh, boy, who was that? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to be controversial, so I won’t use his name. Okay. What a mess....Mmm. I don't know. Maybe prepare your speech? Man, that got me thinking of a song I hadn't thought of in 50 years, "Did You Ever See a Lassie?" ("Go this way and that way/Go this way and that way/Did you ever see a lassie/Go this way and that?")
So, you know, the fake news always — if I say something a little off, next day headline, he misrepresented — I have to be careful. But in the history of presidents, no president, and I’m saying no president, maybe they’ll find if I was off by two, but we’re here one year, no president, I read it in lots of good papers, actually, but they’ll change the story when I say it. No president has ever cut so many regulations in their entire term. Okay.The news is fake because they point out errors that, in his view, are really no big deal. That's not fake. That's just picky. And — to the extent that they weren't equally picky about Obama (when Obama was equally unpicky about accuracy) — biased.
We have ended the war on American energy... [I]t is amazing how many people understood the Paris accord because it sounds so good. It is like some of the environmental regulations that I cut. They have the most beautiful titles. And sometimes that’s — look, I’m going to close my eyes and sign this, because, you know what, I’m going to get killed on this one. I get so much thanks. The country knows what I’m doing....In other words, the things he's signing may look bad — even as the things with "the most beautiful titles" looked good — but people know it's for the best.
We couldn’t build, we couldn’t farm. If you had a puddle on your land, they called it a lake for the purposes of environmentals. It is crazy. It is crazy. And I signed certain bills, I would have farmers behind me and have house builders, home builders behind me.... They couldn’t do what they had to do. We gave them their property back, we gave them their dignity back. By the way, you don’t mind if I go off script a little bit? It is sort of boring. It is a little boring.Heh. "Dignity." Booorrringg!
Beautiful speech, everything is wonderful. But a little boring. We have to, you know — but we gave them their dignity back. And that’s why our country is doing record business. We’re doing record business. We’re doing business and you have to look at the fundamentals. Companies are pouring back into this country, pouring back.....Dignity is boring. He wants to talk about business business business. Pouring pouring pouring.
I used to get the greatest publicity.Uh oh. Back to the fight with the media.
Friend of mine said, you used to be the king of getting great publicity. What happened?....We know what happened. It's a rhetorical question.
So, thank you, everybody. You’ve been amazing. You’ve been amazing....That sounds like he's coming in for a landing. But there's much much more. Even though he just expressed his concern about being boring. He reminisces about the time he gave a CPAC speech in 2011. Then it's on to the story of how he won the election.
You need the electoral college, which, by the way, is much tougher than the popular vote. The popular vote would be so much easier. You go to three or four states and you just go and you just do a great job. Hillary forgot that, you know. She went to the states. What is she doing? Why does she keep going back to California? Crazy....He gets around to the military ("Our military was going to hell") and foreign policy ("Kerry may be the worst negotiator I’ve ever seen") and Israel ("Every president campaigned on we’re going to recognize Jerusalem as a capital of Israel... every other president really lied....") and the vets ("We have been doing a good job on the vets") and foreign aid ("We rebuild other nations, and give a lot of money. And we don’t ever say, hey, you got to help") and infrastructure ("we’re rebuilding our nation") and values ("all of us here today are united by the same timeless values") and the police ("We support the incredible men and women of law enforcement") and... has he forgotten anything?
You’re getting the wall. Don’t worry. I heard some — getting the wall.I hear you. It's like he only brought up the wall because someone yelled it out as he was going through a laundry list. He says "we’re going to have the wall," but "We have a problem. We need more Republicans." The Democrats "always vote in a bloc," and the next election is coming. He's off the subject of the wall as fast as he can, and without going through the usual words about illegal immigration. Having begun the speech with abstract words that triggered my aversion to xenophobia, he's completely avoiding any specifics in the zone of xenophobia. [ADDED: so far!!] He gets right back to his favorite topic, business:
You saw Apple just brought $350 billion in, Exxon brought in $50 billion. So we’re going to be fighting. We need more Republicans to vote. We want to get our agenda... We need more Republicans. That’s why you have to get out and you have to fight for 18, you have to do it.Business and the next election. And that sounds too down and dirty, so let's launch abruptly to the heights:
We salute our great American flag, we put our hands on our hearts for the pledge of allegiance. And we all proudly stand for the national anthem.But what about those immigrants? We're not talking about the immigrants. Look! The flag! Quick! Put your hand on your heart! Stand up! Proudly! There's only an implication of disrespect for those people — those black people — who don't want to stand for the national anthem.
More loftiness needed. Take us higher:
Above all else, we know that faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, are at the center of American life. We know that. Because in America we don’t worship government, we worship God.God!!!!
Our nation’s motto is “In God we trust.” This week, our nation lost an incredible leader. Who devoted his life to helping us understand what those words really mean. Leader. He was a leader, a great man. We will never forget the historic crowds, that voice, the energy, and the profound faith of a preacher named Billy Graham....Oh, my, I'm just seeing that Billy Graham will lie in state in the Capitol rotunda. He will be the 4th private citizen given this honor. The last one was Rosa Parks.
Trump goes on to "the evil massacre" in Parkland, Florida. The families "have suffered beyond anything that I have ever witnessed." He frames the problem in terms of mental illness — "this was a sick person. Very sick. And we had a lot of warning about him being sick." And the solution is mostly better defense of the schools:
Well trained, gun adept teachers and coaches and people that work in those buildings, people that were in the Marines for 20 years, and retired, people in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, people that are adept, adept with weaponry, and with guns, they teach.Not the inept. Not cowards like that one guard who "turned out to be not good." And not making the place look all militarized:
I mean, I don’t want to have 100 guards standing with rifles all over the school. You do a conceal carry permit. And this would be a major deterrent, because these people are inherently cowards. If they thought like if this guy thought that other people would be shooting bullets back at him, he wouldn’t have gone to that school. He wouldn’t have gone there....This goes on for quite a while, and then he is on to the subject of illegal immigration I'd said he was avoiding:
I’ll tell you what, when you deal with ms-13, the only thing they understand is toughness. They don’t want anything. All they understand is toughness. If that ICE agent or border patrol agent is tougher than them, they respect him. We have the toughest guys you’ve ever seen. We got tough. They don’t respect anything else. And they shouldn’t be in our country. They were let in for years, they shouldn’t be. And we’re getting them out.... These are animals. They cut people. They cut them. They cut them up in little pieces, and they want them to suffer. And we take them into our country.... And you meet with Democrats and they’re always fighting for the criminal....Ah, this shows he planned to talk about immigration and the wall, but he previewed it a bit earlier because someone called out.
And, by the way, the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats have totally abandoned DACA.... To secure our country, we are calling on Congress to build a great border wall to stop dangerous drugs and criminals from pouring into our country....
But when I walked in today, did anyone ever hear me do the snake during the campaign? Because I had five people outside say, could you do the snake?Oh, no, he's going to do the snake! There's a big lead up, then the entire performance — She wrapped him up all cozy in a comforter of silk/And laid him by her fire side with some honey and some milk etc. etc.
And that’s what we’re doing with our country, folks. We’re letting people in. And it is going to be a lot of trouble. It is only getting worse....Man, this is long!
So I just leave you with this. We have to fight Nancy Pelosi. Want to give your money away....The next election.
The Democrats are trying to figure out who they are because they want to get you back. But you were people, we had people that never voted. But they’re great patriots, but they never saw anybody they wanted to vote for. Then they go to the election, they have trump, pence, trump, pence, hats, all sorts of things, trump over here. Make America great again, hats....Hats hats hats.
He gets so inflated he says, "Even the media, the media will absolutely support me, sometime prior to the election." Oh, but it won't be because they'll realize that what he's doing is right. It's because "if somebody else won, their ratings would go down, they all would be out of business. Nobody would watch. They all would be out of business."
_______________________
* I originally wrote "flaunt" and put so much thought into changing to "vaunt" that I'm going to write a separate post on the topic. By the way, this is the first time, in the 50,000+ posts on this blog, that I have used the word "vaunt."
Posts
260 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 260 of 260So what cultural history did they share?
A desire for a limited government. Natural rights given by god rather than man.
We could go on.
Morocco, and North Africa, was not subject to the sub-Saharan disease problem. Not more than common diseases of the Mediterranean littoral, such as malaria.
The North African problem from the conqerors point of view, was the North Africans.
As for disease in general, its true that disease kept out general European settlement. This was not limited to Africa The death rate in the Caribbean was extreme. There are cases of armies and fleets vanishing entirely through disease, such as at the siege of Cartagena (1741), or the French expedition to Haiti (1801-1803), and likewise the British lost huge numbers, more British soldiers and sailors died there, 1792-1815, than in all its European campaigns.
This too was the case in Asia. The Philippines was a death-post. Inconvenient people were exiled there, among them a couple of my ancestors, with the assumption that they would never be heard from again.
Trump should start sprinkling parts of the Constitution into his speeches to make the dogs howl even louder.
A desire for a limited government. Natural rights given by god rather than man.
We could go on.
That's not a culture, dummy. That's an old political idea not found revolutionary or unique since 17th c. England and negated by the fact that the constitution was written and ratified by men anyway and can be amended by men. And now women. Next.
Talk about a statist. I ask about culture and your first response has to do with government.
I see the Altaposition of the stories on Ann's page today:
"I tried to watch Trump's CPAC speech. I'll just read the transcript and blog it, beginning at the place where I clicked it off and said "It's a white power speech."
WATCH OUT SQUIRREL.
I wasn't referring specifically to north Africa. The Italians conquered Libya and the French Algeria so I'm not sure it was that difficult.
Morocco, as I recall without going to Google, was divided into Spanish and French.
The Kingdom was the first foreign nation to recognize US independence, as I recall.
On 20 December 1777, Morocco's Sultan Mohammed III declared that American merchant ships would be under the protection of the sultanate and could thus enjoy safe passage. The Moroccan–American Treaty of Friendship, signed in 1786, stands as the U.S.'s oldest non-broken friendship treaty.
My wife and daughter have Berber dna.
Mitochondrial DNA studies have discovered a close link between Berbers and the Saami of Scandinavia. This supports theories that the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area of southwestern Europe was the source of late-glacial expansions of hunter-gatherers who repopulated northern Europe after the last ice age.
Morocco did a pretty good job of staying independent.
Talk about a statist. I ask about culture and your first response has to do with government.
My response had to do with how people from around the world would live together by accepting a set of shared values that sought to limit government's intrusion into their lives.
That's an inclusive definition.
You defined culture by what their grandparents had for dinner.
That is designed to exclude.
But you knew that.
Q: about culture : mental habits of the people or merely ritualistic physical habitual activities,
Yawn. When was the last CPAC that wasn't described as a "dog whistle" by the left? Yawn.
Morocoo and Libya required invasions by large high-tech armies 1911-1912. We are talking of armies of 60-100,000 men. And then they required large modern garrisons.
The French took a foothold in Algeria with a Metropolitan army of 30,000+, and then had decades of trouble, requiring a standing army of 100,000+ at various times to keep it in order. There is a tremedous lot of incident behind "Beau Geste".
This compared to enormous conquests elsewhere, at earlier times, where a few hundred or even a few dozen could conquer empires.
This supports theories that the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area of southwestern Europe was the source of late-glacial expansions of hunter-gatherers who repopulated northern Europe after the last ice age.
There were no humans when the last ice age ended. Modern humans evolved during the current ice age called the Quaternary. They might be accurate if they said: "the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area of southwestern Europe was the source of late-glacial expansions of hunter-gatherers who repopulated northern Europe after the beginning of the current inter-glacial, the Holocene."
To expand - just one parallel case, separated in time, but not place -
The Philippines of course.
Miguel Lopez de Legaspi and his subordinates Martin de Goiti and Juan de Salcedo conquered the country the bulk of the later Christian settlement, 1569-76 or so, with no more than 250 Spanish effectives at any time. Of course they had numerous native troops and allies. This was a territory about the size of Italy (less Sicily) with several million inhabitants.
In 1896-98, the last colonial campaign there, the Spanish had to employ about 50,000 men to suppress the Tagalog revolt, of which about 22,000 were Spaniards, of which 20,000+ were emergency Metropolitan reinforcements (my great-grandfather was one of these).
Hmm. Leaving aside the natives -
1569 - 250 men
1896 - 22,000 men
Something was very different between 1569 and 1896.
“Go into the London Stock Exchange – a more respectable place than many a court – and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt."
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This is very lazy analysis by Althouse that tells us more about what's going on in her brain than it does about white supremacy. Anglos, Czechs, Italians may all be 'white' but they don't share similar folkways or morality and organize their societies differently. Voltaire noticed more than two hundred years ago how open Anglo society was compared to anywhere else in world. British culture and morality is more welcoming to foreigners than anywhere else in world and it's offshoots continue that openness.
Only fools are worried about "White Supremacy."
What do they want? Black Supremacy?
Why not as the people of Detroit and Baltimore how that is working out for them.
My point, lost in detail unfortunately, is that, I suppose, white supremacy comes from a time when whites really were supreme, almost absurdly so. These were the greatest conquests in world history. Everything else is just the fallout of these.
Their politico-military superiority, if thats what it was, was such that they had tremendous force-multipliers, as the military academics might say. These force-multipliers are unexplained.
Its not technology, not in the great earlier days. Its certainly not political sophistication, as the conquered were themselves sophisticated, even over-sophisticated. There is no way anyone could be more Machiavellian than an Indian court.
I do admit that "Chinese Supremacy" might win out as the West has been almost fatally weakened by the draining of "toxic masculinity" out of the bloodstream of our society.
Of course the Chinese might settle for hegemony instead of supremacy.
The Jews and Muslims in the London Stock Exchange use a "white" system in a context of European culture. Even the Shanghai stock exchange operates along Euro-American lines, with assumptions of Euro-American trust standards, or they try anyway.
The "market dominant minorities" of Asia, the Lebanese, the Armenians, the Parsi, the Chinese, and later the better class of Indian, these took readily to European systems and flourished and copied. This took very little time, but the fact is that these systems did not exist before Europeans introduced them.
White Supremacy came about because of the ability to kill in wholesale lots. Other cultures might have the same desire but not the technical capacity.
Of course modern technology has given any run of the mill miscreant the ability to produce a body count that would rival that of Hernan Cortez.
It had nothing to do with killing in wholesale lots. The natives were quite adept at that already. Cortez' men relied on swords, and Abuquerques on pikes. Cortez had his stone-age allies do most of the killing. They were 99/100 of the men under his command after all.
Clive had armaments no better than his opponents, and casualties in his wars were remarkably low.
That what you will see over and over when you dig into details.
Tutsi genocide did not use modern technology.
Aztecs - pretty bloody...
Cambodia?
China - Great Leap Forward?
Japan - pyramid of skulls or was it ears in Korea?
White Supremacy came about because of the ability to kill in wholesale lots. Other cultures might have the same desire but not the technical capacity.
So this is what it's come down to? Admiration for your "race's" capacity for the greatest amounts of mass murder?
How about self-restraint, reflection and enlightenment? I guess those aren't values you hold in high regard.
"Instead of ambush, skirmish, or combat between individual heroes, the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. devised a ferocious, brief, and destructive head-on clash between armed men of all ages."
_____________
buwaya - have you read v.d.hanson 'western way of war'? Hanson argues Greeks invented way of battle that dominates other armies, and I know there are lots of examples that argue against thesis, but overall I think author was correct.
Asking good for a friend...
What’s the current definition of White?
It seems to be more of a cultural definition now.
Ben Shapiro was called a white supremacist. So I guess Jewish are now White.
Asians seem to be honorary Whites.
Would Jim Acosta be one based on genetics?
Maybe somebody's already said it, but I think part of the reason the party in the White House normally loses seats in the mid-terms is simple regression to the mean. In any election, there are a lot of close congressional races. In a presidential election year, the presidents coat-tails will tip a significant number of those races to the winning president's party. In the mid-terms, with no coat-tails, those close elections go fifty-fifty, which means the president's party wins fewer of them than it did last time, which means they lose seats.
So the question is - did Trump have typical presidential coat-tails in 2016? If not...
Self restraint, reflection, and "enlightenment" - the last is a matter of taste and definitions of course - have little to do, on their own, with survival.
Who knows how many such societies, or societies that were more that way than their neighbors, have washed away in the stream of time. A good number certainly have.
The classic example are the Buddhist cultures of Northwest India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, those who created the Bamiyan sculptures and a great deal else. The modern residents have no idea what these are about, the culture, at least, has been entirely replaced, or perhaps those ancient peoples were entirely exterminated, or as close to that as is usually possible.
V.S. Naipaul often cites this and more, regarding the cultural erasure that Islam brings.
Yea, I'm White, I think, but I have no idea what that means exactly. I'll take it though, especially if that associates those principles with me. White sounds awesome, especially to people oppressed, I would think.
So what are the high principles of other races. Asking for a friend.
Jwl,
I have read Hanson, and I find this argument unconvincing.
There are any number of peoples which have crushed "western" armies in war and battle, that had no obvious route of western influence. Or which did all they could to reject it. Or which did not believe, on the whole, on battle as such.
And then, of course, there are any number of cases where armies, far from western influence, have sought and contested battles in very much the "western" style as Hanson has it. Chinese and Japanese history is full of this sort of thing.
It takes a great deal of dancing about and playing with definitions to make such an idea stand.
At best it might have applied to a certain time and place, the Persians and their successors vs the Greeks and Macedonians, in the fifth through the third centuries BC, but thats quite limited.
Mohammed's Islam.
Genghis Khan and his Mongols.
20th century communism.
(eaglebeak)
Here's what I said out loud (to my audience of one): "That's a dog whistle. White power." Questioned, I said, "heritage... culture... freedom..." Even freedom? "Yes, in context with our heritage, our culture, and then our freedom. Our freedom."
Really stupid remark. Does AA mean Americans don't have and shouldn't refer to our culture, our heritage, our freedom? Do you really think (AA) that "our heritage, our culture" is only for white Americans? Balderdash. Codswallop.
I am really startled that you came up with this. Apparently you're not the person I thought you were.
I guess blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, and everyone else doesn't get to be part of "our culture"?
Who could think something that reactionary?
One reason the Aztecs fell so easily is that they were hated by their neighbors and the Spanish found allies to help in the conquest
The reason the Aztecs fell is the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose maternal love and affection led to the conversion - not conquest - of millions of Aztecs who previously reveled in human sacrifice.
As for the German national anthem --
The words "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" have NOT been in the anthem for decades.
The actual words of the actual German national anthem are "Unity and Justice and Freedom."
Apparently some people having a snit object to that.
A post on the topic of self-hating Germans might be of some interest.
You commenters are doing an above-average troll ignorification.
Our culture has resulted in poor people who own cars and flat screen TVs, and are fat. This is a culture worth supporting and worth defending.
"There are any number of peoples which have crushed "western" armies in war and battle,"
I'm not aware of any that had equal numbers.
I think his point is that western armies have gotten very good at using technology.
It acts as a force multiplier.
I see Inga is back. Inga, darling, I could have sworn Mueller had you and a dozen of your closest friends under indictment. Good to see you slipped past his dragnet.
A religion of evangelistic conquest helps.
Maybe someone is projecting, yeah.
"That's a dog whistle. White power." Questioned, I said, "heritage... culture... freedom..." Even freedom? "Yes, in context with our heritage, our culture, and then our freedom. Our freedom."
I'm guessing this was for the benefit of Althouse's liberal friends. Liberals are a bad influence and not just only with young immature minds.
Self restraint, reflection, and "enlightenment" - the last is a matter of taste and definitions of course - have little to do, on their own, with survival.
The innumerate and anti-empirical can call anything "a matter of taste," and those things only have little to do with survival if you mis-define survival as the capacity for oppressing and destroying others.
"White privilege. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything else was either particular to the countries they came from or held in common insofar as it pertained to America as a whole or the privileges granted exclusively to America's whites."
Hell yes. We kilt natives better than any other tribe.
Animism is a progressive dead-end. Man cannot bend nature to his will when nature bears predominance through worship. Thus, most animistic cultures had no way to grow to compete with the new arrivals. God gave Earth to man, so man's ability to conquer nature was considered divine, thus whites were able to conquer nature and the indigenous easily.
"The reason the Aztecs fell is the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose maternal love and affection led to the conversion - not conquest - of millions of Aztecs who previously reveled in human sacrifice."
This.
I think his point is that western armies have gotten very good at using technology.
Hanson also made a point of relatively free men vs. essentially slaves.
The Virgin of Guadalupe was found a decade after the fall of Tenochtitlan. In the meantime, the conquest proceeded. The process of the conquest, post Tenochtitlan, is well described by Bernal Diaz, in great detail - in the less well known second half of his memoir.
The story most certainly didnt end with the fall of the Mexica. Endless marches, foraging and hunger, constant skirmishes, constant diplomacy, mutiny and iternecine conflict.
The native Japanese religion, Shinto, is well described as elaborated animism. They do OK with it.
Its interesting just how many parallels it has with traditional Filipino folklore, the remnants of their own pagan religions.
You get a lot of the spirit of the thing in some of Miyazaki.
To survive, on a societal level, is generally quite a cut and dried business. It means to have descendants that will carry on your bloodlines and culture. Usually that means avoiding extermination or cultural replacement.
Its best to have a sound idea of history.
A Constitutional Law teacher doesn’t think we have a heritage or culture?
Huh?
Superior technology is a force multiplier, but my point is that when the trickle of conquerors first set forth from Western Europe they had very little, if any that was relevant, technological superiority over those they conquered.
This grew, in time, but the opposition also, generally, got tougher over time. In the end the colonial powers were deploying armies in their colonial conflicts on the scale of European warfare.
The actual words of the actual German national anthem are "Unity and Justice and Freedom."
Fraternite liberte egalite
You can have 2 out of 3
E pluribus unum
Asian/African peoples who have crushed European armies at various times pre-20th century -
Persians/Parthians/Seleucids, Turks (very often), Mongols/Tatars, Moroccans and other Barbary states, Arabs;
If you want to count flukes, one-offs, or semi-European armies (native troops with European officers), you can add -
Zulus, Chinese, Ethiopians ( Afghans (1839, 1880),
Etc. This can get elaborate and extremely extensive.
A Constitutional Law teacher doesn’t think we have a heritage or culture?
No, that’s not quite the right reading. She equates honoring our heritage and culture with white supremacy because, although we have an abundance of black congress-persons, we would never elect a black senator or a black president. No black lawyer could ever hope to be a member of the federal judiciary, and absolutely not on the Supreme Court. Because everyone who honors Ametica’s Heritage and culture and freedom is a racist, don’t you know.
It’s a fog whistle, so perhaps your ears can’t hear it.
Dog whistle. Most people can hear a fog horn.
I've read this blog for over a decade and this is by far the most fucking stupid thing you've posted. You are much better than this trolling bullshit, Ann.
"White Supremacy came about because of the ability to kill in wholesale lots. Other cultures might have the same desire but not the technical capacity."
It mostly came about because of our insatiable curiosity and pursuit of wealth.
Buwaya.
Mexico fell to Cortes, but it was defeated by smallpox.
A Canadian neighbor and I were discussing the Winter Olympics yesterday.
She: Most of your skaters are orientals.
Me: Well, they are Americans.
I guess she's insinuating that we take unfair advantage of our ethnic diversity.
""We salute our great American flag, we put our hands on our hearts for the pledge of allegiance, and we all proudly stand for the national anthem."
Imagine a German leader saying "We salute our great German flag, we put our hands on our hearts for the pledge of allegiance, and we all proudly stand for the national anthem." Maybe German leaders do say such things. Sounds insanely wrong to me."
I came back to this thread to see what's been said after I wondered if Althouse was seriously racist or just trolling. Since I came across the above and she hadn't responded further to questions about her position, I'll have to assume she is.
Good to know. Sad to see, but as someone mentioned above in response to my comment (Angel-Dyne I believe), we should look on in charity and pity at her for thinking like that.
Besides, she dredged up the Weird Al article from February, and drew me back in.
So there's the difference in responses. I'm a former journalist, and until recently I belonged to a closed Facebook group consisting of other former staffers. One of them posted a request. Someone she knows from a dollhouse hobby has been posting political memes, and she asked us to go over there and set her straight.
The poster was an old woman, and while I dislike parroting viewpoints, she wasn't my friend, and frankly I dislike being recruited for a lynch mob.
This former journalist began posting links to leftist sites, and that's when I decided to disassociate from the group. Nobody's been posting much anyway, and I had enough of their politics when I was working in the newsroom.
So, moving ahead, since I am talking to myself at the bottom of the well, I'll check in intermittently here and see what happens next.
Bill, I still look into the bottom of the well from time to time.
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