Cleanup in Aisle Lunatic (h/t romad1)

[oblong]

2 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

The state gov now trying to gut the Nashville city gov...

Hard to call it anything but just evil - and a total rejection of the whole American premise. The symmetry is perfect though - people who wrap themselves in the Bible and reject every semblance of its teaching also wrapping themselves in the Constitution while doing their damndest to govern as tyrants. 

My family is from rural TN. It’s a college town so not total wacky but you see the conflicts between elements of the university being there and the old yimers.  For instance a brewery was threatened with revocation of a license due to drag queen sympathy.  The racism is just so ingrained and second nature to them that it seems normal. I saw a video of a legislator during the proceedings last week sayinf things in the most condescending and insulting way and it seemed so natural to him. He wasn’t trying to be that way. That’s just how he talked. You could tell.  He’s a guy who doesn’t look over his shoulder before using the N word.  He did everything up to calling him “boy”.  In 2023 a guy in a suit and tie in a legislative body talking that way to a black peer. They see it as their Christian duty to keep these people in line. 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

This fool is trying to tell the people who won't listen the deal and it won't matter until they get destroyed at the polls again

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/12/cnn-poll-trump-indictment-gop-voters/

Thiessen is  wacko. Waste of bytes for WaPo to even post his stuff.

[romad1]

18 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Thiessen is  wacko. Waste of bytes for WaPo to even post his stuff.

What he is is a paid operative.  He knows the money is better if they win. 

[pfife]

 

[Tigerbomb13]

Grifting journalist moves on to practice his grift at a place where grifting is the feature 

Edited April 13, 2023 by Tigerbomb13

[Tiger337]

13 hours ago, pfife said:

 

Is this for real or a parody?  

[Tigerbomb13]

12 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Is this for real or a parody?  

I thought it was parody at first, but looking at his Twitter, I don’t think it is!

[oblong]

57 minutes ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

I thought it was parody at first, but looking at his Twitter, I don’t think it is!

yeah me either.  I mean he's for real in the sense he is really selling it but knows full well his customers are idiots.

 

[CMRivdogs]

Maybe we need some LBGT and Trans celebrities to start promoting guns...

[Edman85]

3 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Maybe we need some LBGT and Trans celebrities to start promoting guns...

Has Cait Jenner?

[Edman85]

12 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Maybe we need some LBGT and Trans celebrities to start promoting guns...

But seriously you joke about this, but the NRA and NAACP were buddies in the 60's and 70's, and that is why it was a bit easier for gun legislation to get passed in the 70's and 80's.

[CMRivdogs]

The only semi serious gun legislation in the '70s came about when the Black Panthers started patrolling neighborhoods in Oakland, Ca with weapons

https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act

[Tigerbomb13]

 

[romad1]

 

[oblong]

 

[chasfh]

On 4/12/2023 at 6:35 PM, oblong said:

My family is from rural TN. It’s a college town so not total wacky but you see the conflicts between elements of the university being there and the old yimers.  For instance a brewery was threatened with revocation of a license due to drag queen sympathy.  The racism is just so ingrained and second nature to them that it seems normal. I saw a video of a legislator during the proceedings last week sayinf things in the most condescending and insulting way and it seemed so natural to him. He wasn’t trying to be that way. That’s just how he talked. You could tell.  He’s a guy who doesn’t look over his shoulder before using the N word.  He did everything up to calling him “boy”.  In 2023 a guy in a suit and tie in a legislative body talking that way to a black peer. They see it as their Christian duty to keep these people in line. 

It is definitely culturally ingrained, in everybody. Every time I go anywhere down south, I am struck by just how cordial black people are to me, how they almost seem to go out of their way to engage me, smile, say hi. That's something you rarely, if ever, see up here in the big city. Based on my fairly extensive readings of 20th-century American cultural and social history, my hypothesis is that they want to proactively communicate to me that they are not a threat to me and then hopefully I won't use the power of the state to go rogue all over them.

[Tigeraholic1]

22 minutes ago, chasfh said:

It is definitely culturally ingrained, in everybody. Every time I go anywhere down south, I am struck by just how cordial black people are to me, how they almost seem to go out of their way to engage me, smile, say hi. That's something you rarely, if ever, see up here in the big city. Based on my fairly extensive readings of 20th-century American cultural and social history, my hypothesis is that they want to proactively communicate to me that they are not a threat to me and then hopefully I won't use the power of the state to go rogue all over them.

Thats alot of projecting... Small town folks are just nicer and happier than alot of big city types. 

[Motown Bombers]

I don't know, I've spent time living in small towns and big cities and I would disagree there. They may be more polite to your face but they are not happier nor nicer. 

[oblong]

When I read Halberstam's book The Fifties it opened my eyes a lot to what went down in the South in the first half of the 20th century. Because of the job opportunities up north in the factories and slaughterhouses,  black families had to sneak away.  The whites weren't happy they were leaving because they needed them to work in their fields and farms.  They would patrol train stations and make threats like "If you go up there and get a job your family might not be here when you come back to get them".  It was a 20th century version of the underground railroad.  Legally the blacks were free but sheriffs and good old boys in the rural towns had their own legal system.   They were still fighting the civil war.  The North was taking all their blacks and giving them better jobs and now they were screwed.

These TN legislators had grandfathers who did that so it was just passed down.

I've also heard of the saying, in regards to blacks, "In the north we don't care how high they get just don't get too close.  In the south we don't care how close they get, just don't get too high".  

 

 

[chasfh]

39 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

Thats alot of projecting... Small town folks are just nicer and happier than alot of big city types. 

First of all, we don't hang out in small towns when we travel. I'm talking about places like Nashville, Memphis, Jackson, Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta.

Secondly, white people in small towns or big cities, either up north or down south, wherever, never go out of their way to engage me, a stranger, and smile or say hi. Every once in a while here in the big city a black person, usually an older black guy, will engage me that way. It's slightly jarring because it's so out of place around here. But it's really common with black people in the south, and every time we go. Not always, and not every one. But enough do to lead me to believe that there's a specific cultural thing among those folks in that area, and for some reason.

[chasfh]

4 minutes ago, oblong said:

When I read Halberstam's book The Fifties it opened my eyes a lot to what went down in the South in the first half of the 20th century. Because of the job opportunities up north in the factories and slaughterhouses,  black families had to sneak away.  The whites weren't happy they were leaving because they needed them to work in their fields and farms.  They would patrol train stations and make threats like "If you go up there and get a job your family might not be here when you come back to get them".  It was a 20th century version of the underground railroad.  Legally the blacks were free but sheriffs and good old boys in the rural towns had their own legal system.   They were still fighting the civil war.  The North was taking all their blacks and giving them better jobs and now they were screwed.

These TN legislators had grandfathers who did that so it was just passed down.

Yes, I have read about this in several sources. It's about controlling their labor by controlling their movement and, really, their whole lives, to such a degree that until shockingly recently, any white man could feel free to walk into any black family's house, uninvited and without knocking, to threaten and abuse anyone inside, and the family couldn't do a thing about it, because the law and everything attended to it belong to white men, and if they pushed back it would all come crashing down on them.

That was the power of control by state violence, and just like the TN legislators passed down their ways of thinking about it, black folks passed down their strategies for dealing with it, and strategy #1 was always: never come off as even a little disrespectful to a white person. Never. Ever. Try to avoid white people wherever possible, but if there's no way you can do so, then always smile, be overly polite, be overly pleasant, to let them know you're "one of the good ones". This social strategy is also well-documented.

4 minutes ago, oblong said:

I've also heard of the saying, in regards to blacks, "In the north we don't care how high they get just don't get too close.  In the south we don't care how close they get, just don't get too high". 

You've posted this here before, and It's so memorable that I've never forgotten it, and I've shared it with another person or two since.

[LaceyLou]

21 minutes ago, oblong said:

When I read Halberstam's book The Fifties it opened my eyes a lot to what went down in the South in the first half of the 20th century. Because of the job opportunities up north in the factories and slaughterhouses,  black families had to sneak away.  The whites weren't happy they were leaving because they needed them to work in their fields and farms.  They would patrol train stations and make threats like "If you go up there and get a job your family might not be here when you come back to get them".  It was a 20th century version of the underground railroad.  Legally the blacks were free but sheriffs and good old boys in the rural towns had their own legal system.   They were still fighting the civil war.  The North was taking all their blacks and giving them better jobs and now they were screwed.

These TN legislators had grandfathers who did that so it was just passed down.

I've also heard of the saying, in regards to blacks, "In the north we don't care how high they get just don't get too close.  In the south we don't care how close they get, just don't get too high".  

 

 

The books The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste (both by Isabel Wilkerson) also do an excellent job of describing this. I wish I could say my city was better... unfortunately I cannot.

[romad1]

15 minutes ago, LaceyLou said:

The books The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste (both by Isabel Wilkerson) also do an excellent job of describing this. I wish I could say my city was better... unfortunately I cannot.

Those who served in the integrated military know all this stuff is stupid.  

Lots of racism still but when you work together you learn that the difference are not actually significant.  

[smr-nj]

32 minutes ago, LaceyLou said:

The books The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste (both by Isabel Wilkerson) also do an excellent job of describing this. I wish I could say my city was better... unfortunately I cannot.

I just received my copy of Caste last week, and look forward to picking it up & starting it soon.

[oblong]

I'm reading a book about the development of the Lunar Module.  When reps from Grumman went to Houston for a gathering of all the major contractors for Apollo, while the Johnson Space Center was still being constructed, the Grumman folks had to stay further away because they refused to stay at hotels where their black employees couldn't eat in the restaurant.   "He can stay here but we ask that he not go in the lobby and we can fix him something to eat in the kitchen".

The race to the moon was impacted.