The Confederate Flag

Discussion in 'World Events' started by dumbest man on earth, Jun 15, 2020.

  1. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    While I agree with your overall sentiment, comparing the Swastika with the Confederate flag unfortunately diminshes your argument as they are in a different "Historical abuse" category. This leaves your argument/observation vulnerable to not being taken seriously due to the conflations associated. IMO.
     
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  3. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    The bases, all in former Confederate states, were named with input from locals in the Jim Crow era. The Army courted their buy-in because it needed large swaths of land to build sprawling bases in the early 20th century up through World War II.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/06/10/trump-confederate-bases/
    IOW, to court the cooperation of people who voted Democrat.

    Where are we on changing the name of the Democrat party, which is directly linked to supporting slavery, founding the KKK, instituting Jim Crow, fighting against Civil Rights, continuing the eugenics of the racist Planned Parenthood founder, etc.?
     
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  5. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, since systemic racism is not falsifiable, Australia would necessarily be racist too. But naively presuming that Sudanese have no independent culture of their own would be whitewashing. Yes, it would suit your white privilege to dismiss that minorities, no matter how well integrated, retain their own cultural differences and history. After all, how could resist embracing your superior white culture, right?

    Ignoring such stats is racism, presuming that you need to make special excuses for people you honestly believe can't behave as well as white Aussies.
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    lol...
    If I was discussing this issue with a good faith actor then I would entertain getting in to it more so.
    Of course when refugees arrive on our shores to seek asylum they agree to integration and assimilation. If it were not for ethnic cultural differences the words integration and assimilation would be meaningless.
    The term assimilation is in itself a racist term implying that at least two races are to merge into one and form one mono culture ( Australian) with it's inherent sub cultures of diverse ethnicity.
    Systemically, there is no white privilege unless you seek to discuss the ongoing issue of indigenous reconciliation which is concerned about the loss to our indigenous 1st peoples, associated with an invasion by many different races post 1776.

    If you as a white American chose to migrate to Australia would you consider the need to assimilate into Australian culture to be a racist activity?
    If not why not?
     
  8. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    I doubt you'd know good faith if it bit you.
    And it's those exact ethnic and cultural differences that account for disparities, like crime rates. Different people simply have different influences and make different choices. Rational people know that there's no reason to posit conspiracy where basic human nature will suffice. Assimilation is simply coming to have shared goals, not your supremacist notion of "mono culture". "Invasion by many different races"? Hell, I'd bet David Duke has said the exact same thing. He'd be so proud of you.
    As much as you may wish it not so, if an unfalsifiable notion like systemic racism is real, Australia is as guilt of it as anyone. That's how not being falsifiable works. If there is no way to show that a system is not racist, no system can claim innocence, even by degree.
     
  9. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    hogwash!
    racist nonsense!
     
  10. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Bare assertion fallacy.

    Bare assertion fallacy.
     
  11. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    What would you call defending the indefensible?
     
  12. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Calling it "indefensible" is just another bare assertion. Are you going for a record?
     
  13. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    lol... can't keep up with the records you keep making... sorry...

    You ever read about Zeno of Elea?
    There's a paradox...just for you...
     
  14. foghorn Valued Senior Member

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    Once Nazi Germany had won the war, when did they plan to end slave labour?
    Something like 12 million slaves.
    I'm sort of surprised at the number of freed slaves at the end of the American Civil War, just under 4 million.
     
  15. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Since you advocate for police profiling, would you agree that wealthy Asians should be stopped by the police far less often than poor and middle class white people?
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Click to burn sosobra.

    Am I the only person who remembers the time some sector of whiteness started complaining that the melting pot should be more like tossed salad↗?

    Meanwhile, you continue to use terms wrongly; while it probably feels good to say—

    —your spattered pabulum is remarkably unremarkable compared to traditional American white supremacism.

    It is, for instance, one thing if all you know how to do is accuse, but the words don't really have much meaning coming from people who behave as you do.

    Like this laborious setup:

    We're back to tossing salads, and the difference now, twelve and some odd years later, still depends, to put it as kindly as possible, on the supremacist's lack of imagination.

    The punch line—

    —similarly lacks, to say the least.

    And the pretentious puffery only continues to fail:

    Claiming innocence is a waste of time, but, such as it is, your boundaries are what require the insensate absolutism you describe.

    • • •​

    If we consider humanity or, at least, a society, as an organic whole, the composite body politic demonstrates whatever behavioral traits it does. In that obscure context, every now and then humanity, or a society, "learns" something. We keep thinking we learn something, for instance, about genocide and pogroms, but clearly haven't figured out the underlying answer to an effect akin to washing fruit.

    Basquiat seems to represent an attitude shift in which some manner of, not having thought of that yet, appears to have occurred across a wide swath of visual artitsts sufficient to greatly influence future artistic expression. One accessible example is apparently inspired post hoc alteration of paintings sometimes regarded as vandalism. That behavior and its underlying artistic expression was a really blatant address of the prospect that nothing is ever finished, as such. Fast forward not so many years, and Lucas is wrecking his old films, and Spielberg follows with the walkie-talkies.

    To the other, Spielberg won't fix Amistad, so ... whatever.

    We in the mass market didn't necessarily notice so directly; the change is woven into our post-popomo Market period in which the local news is changing its traffic report icons on a regular basis in order to promote somebody else's company.

    For whatever reason, I think back to J. M. W. Turner, The Morning after the Deluge, which is one of my favorite paintings in large part for, to put it simply, everything wrong about the painting. The bit about the painting decaying faster than it should, for instance, because of the pigments he used and his apparent lack of care toward historical durability. The condition of the painting today is part of what makes it artistically admirable; it says more in its decrepitude than it ever could at whatever constituted the apex of Goethe's thesis.

    Or, perhaps, consider dadaism and, later, deconstructionism, with Cage's 4'33" in between. Whatever Joyce, at the height of sensibly making no sense whatsoever, might have accomplished with Portrait, and then Finnegan, Cage and a roomful of musicians settled in a little over four and a half minutes. There is a perfect crystallization of something, what Adams would, over thirty years later, describe in his own context as, that's alright, then. It's like how, if one of my generation isn't utterly confused by 4'33", a common first reaction would run, "Oh, they did that. Nice. But, I mean, that's, like, a one-time thing, right?" And no, it's not. It's like an occasion a symphony performed it for the Beeb, and one of the studio commentators later compared it to having witnessed the rehearsal, and if that made no sense, sure, whatever; if, however, you're laughing through the moment or something because of course there is a difference between a reherasal in an empty house, and a performance to a packed house bringing what an audience contributes, well, right. Try to explain it to someone who is confused by what happens. But to be in the room with that much of an audience utterly confused, even verging toward being offended, by a proper performance of 4'33"? Just describe the piece to someone, and note how they react.

    Basquiat as an artistic result is a nexus of style, priority, and fascination, stamped with an intuitive notion of transitionalism or transitoriness, inherent impermanence, as if something about the place of his rudeness within the boundaries of fine art is inextricably bound to the way it feels. There is a temptation to say, "I get it," even if I couldn't explain it. And in a way, it really is as easily accessible an intuition as the Internet-age impermanence of anything.

    One interesting aspect of art at this point is that certain attributes the audience bring become part of the performance. If Basquiat's influence is exaggerated by market romanticism about the artiste maudit, that, too, is part of the artistic context. Considering the scant line 'twixt pop culture and high art, and the attraction of something one finds apparently simple—i.e., To what degree is Basquiat's fame a bougeois-blanc denigration, a guilty pleasure hidden amid gardens of judgmental disquiet complaining that a five year-old could do this or that?—so, also, does that become part of the artistic context.

    If the sum of Basquiat's art becomes an attention-deficit archetype justifying contemptuous, calculated imitation downstream, the capitalistic performance making him important, blaming the black guy, emerges as the true star. It would be unfortunate, but not unexpected. Whatever it means, meaning will emerge, but part of Basquiat's nexus the inherent subjectivity and contextual relativism.

    Nor can I draw the direct line for you, but somewhere out of Derrida and others—(I mentioned deconstructionism in passing)—emerges a twist on the cogito that runs, I think, therefore you are; I just haven't read the source material to suss out where the story writers got the line, but it was a good one for their needs, and it occurs to mind in the moment because the question of Basquiat's genius is so invested in market outcomes; the question exists because of the audience.

    And that, in turn, means something. To the other, a summary paragraph tying a concise knot, in order get out of this post, is nearly as elusive as a proper explanation for 4'33" given a roomful of people who don't hate art but just think the anti-censorship movement is too elitist and out of hand.
     
  17. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Absolutely!


    And that has fuck all to do with the price of tea in China?
    I don't recall using either term, melting pot nor tossed salad.

    Meanwhile from your non sequitur, what terms in that post do you imagine I've used wrongly?
    It's like you expect people to guess at whatever's rattling around in your head, or more likely just fill it in with their own bias, like a Mad Lib. Either way, it allows you to make vague accusations without substance, which allow you to freely move the goalposts, and avoid providing any tangible target for refute. IOW, it's vacuous and spineless.

    Which makes you whining about accusations projection, at best. And yes, I'm sure you're well-versed in white supremacism, especially the deflecting northern variety.

    Vacuous twaddle. At best, only a vague straw man built on nothing but some imagined guilt by free-association in your mind.

    Just plain vacuous.

    Again, we're forced to ask what you mean by almost every sentence you write, as we only seem to get the commentary of a much larger train of thought that is never expressed. "Boundaries", "absolutism"? Without a decoder, it's not possible to make heads nor tails of your, what, criticisms (I can only presume). Maybe this works for you, in your bubble, where people are happy to fill in the virtue-signalling gaps with a bias you share. But if attempting to make it any sort of meaningful communication outside of your tiny bubble, it fails miserably. But then, maybe it's intended to avoid making any substantive assertions.
     
  18. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Well firstly I'm glad I think I actually understood all the references you mentioned here, so I guess I'm not as art illiterate as I've always feared? I appreciate the idea of deconstruction, of breaking rules so that there's never a checklist that has to be ticked off and another that must be left blank before something is able to qualify as "art". I grew up on media like Beavis and Butthead and the Tom Green Show, ludicrously stupid and juvenile stuff but also utterly hilarious precisely because of how conventional people react to it and get all upset over dumb shit like a guy interviewing people with dog poop stuck to his microphone. When "Freddy Got Fingered" came out I knew all the 60 year-old half deaf fuddy-duddies assigned to review it were absolutely going to hate it to the core like it's just a rotten Satanic ritual in disguise, and I'm not at all surprised that it's these days considered a cult classic "Dadaist masterpiece". It's great to undermine things when they're only accepted based on arbitrary historical standards.

    That having been said, for me the biggest issue is the historical importance and relevance attached in certain circles to certain historical acts of deconstruction. Like 4'33" of silence... Ok point taken, but how is this such a big deal compared to all the other ways that artists and activists undermine accepted conventions every day? Maybe if Cage was scheduled to give what was supposed to be an unprecedented performance for a major world figure on a particularly important day in human history, and he chose to troll the audience a bit instead on that one single occasion, it would be deserving of a memory as something other than an over-inflated joke backed by lawsuits against other people doing the same stupid thing.

    I've seen at least one Basquiat painting that actually did give me a "that's pretty cool" kind of reaction. It was basically like a rebuttal/corollary to another famous piece with a great deal of historical prestige to it, and I could feel a certain sense of satisfaction as if the original artist was asking a question and now here Basquiat is giving the answer. That having been said, I see stuff that makes me say "that's pretty cool" all the time. What would do much to change my opinion of Basquiat is if someone could show me works of his where he doesn't paint with the skill level of a 5 year-old. When I visited the Picasso Museum in Barcelona a couple of decades ago, I could see the gradual transition from his early paintings and sketches to the style he's most renowned for today, and it immediately becomes clear that the dude legitimately knew how to draw and paint whatever he pleased at high levels of detail and realism, that he had exceptional skill and capabilities which he deliberately chose to dumb down and simplify in an abstract format. Same in Rothko's case, his early paintings demonstrate exceptional talent and so I knew there had to be something deeper to his paintings than just a few coloured rectangles and some minor variations in hue. With Basquiat, I fail to see the artistic style he employed as a voluntary choice, but rather a constraint due to a lack of formal talent -which would itself undermine his own wish to not be constrained- and when someone goes and splurges $100,000,000 on this stuff I can't help but think Andy Warhol is still cackling away in his snobby little grave.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2020
  19. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    It has to do with your remarks on disparities and assimilation; you're simply recycling old toxic waste as if pretending it's something new.

    Like I said, it has to do with your remarks on disparites and assimilation. Your declaration, "I don't recall using either term, melting pot nor tossed salad", is fallacious: Nobody ever said you did.

    More to the point—

    Assimilation is simply coming to have shared goals, not your supremacist notion of "mono culture". "Invasion by many different races"? Hell, I'd bet David Duke has said the exact same thing. He'd be so proud of you.

    —it's an interesting sleight of history: As you slothfully regurgitate longtime supremacist rhetoric while trying to deflect and project the implcations of supremacism, you're changing the relationship between historical factors and terminology.

    As a naked assertion with no other attachments, your definition of assimilation is a functional propositon; compared to history, though, you push a fallacy. What makes it fallacious is how you situate the statement compared to history both general and particular. Your attempt to assign invasion rhetoric and David Duke's favor to another requires this fallacious arrangement. Like #563↑ above:

    That "systemic racism is not falsifiable" is your own string of words, and while Australia, as a human institution, is subject to human corruptions such as racism, your assertion that "Australia would necessarily be racist too" is utterly extraneous. Moreover, that anyone is, "naively presuming that Sudanese have no independent culture", is your own unsupported assertion, a fallacious peg on which you might hang strawstuffed poppets. Beyond that, the rest of your post is just a juvenile pretence of reproach invested in your own make-believe.

    I doubt your application of the term, good faith, given your own general lack thereof. For instance:

    Given what I quoted of your post—

    —your pretense of confusion depends on the idea that you aren't capable of figuring it out for yourself. "I", "doubt", "you'd", and "know", all fail to qualify, in this context, as terms°; neither do "if", "it", "bit", or, "you", fit. Most obviously, the term in question is, "good faith".

    The proposition of such mysterious irresolution, "like you expect people to guess", is, at best, a throwaway troll line; reading it as a sincere argument only informs that you're not capable of figuring it out, or following the discussion. It's not much of a coin toss: Are you wilfully disruptive, or actually not capable of keeping up, though at this point it's not much of a stretch to guess that many of your neighbors don't give a damn, either way, because the incompetence or noncompetency or whatever excuse we might apply to your failures does not mean your behavior isn't disruptive.

    So stop and think about it, for a minute: You've put yourself in a position where your excuse for white supremacist trolling is that you are simply not capable of understanding your own arguments and behavior.

    And you've been denigrating yourself like this—and dragging other people through it—for years, now.

    Like how you followed up your fallacious pretense of mystery: "Either way, it allows you to make vague accusations without substance, which allow you to freely move the goalposts, and avoid providing any tangible target for refute. IOW, it's vacuous and spineless." I'm sure you thought you felt better, in the moment, for saying that, but given that you anchored your insult in your own pretense of your own illiteracy, it remains uncertain what, beyond masochistic self-gratification, you thought you were accomplishing.

    We're just going to file that under, ¿Could you please fail to―?

    In this case, since you don't like people going off about your racism, could you please, every now and then, fail to fulfill type?

    Wow, guilt by free association?

    Of course you consider history, "vacuous twaddle". That's why you flail so desperately about "some imagined guilt by free-association". You brought us back 'round to tossing salads, and while it is easy enough to accept your repeated demands that you aren't up to understanding the history involved, your ignorance doesn't change the actual facts.

    A laborious, fallacious setup for a petulant, flaccid punch line about David Duke truly does lack imagination.

    Your confusion is an apparent result of your demonstrable failure to follow the discussion, including your own role.

    Here's your straw man:

    Now, note your phrase, "no system can claim innocence". That's something of a straw man; thus, as I said, claiming innocence is a waste of time. To the other, though°°, your boundaries, such as a necessary implicit dualism, are entirely your own: Your argument, "If there is no way to show that a system is not racist, no system can claim innocence, even by degree", depends entirely on your own fallacious limitations. Let us consider, though, that question of degrees. Because even in seeking a functional surrogate for innocence, only you require absolute dualism, i.e., "even by degree". The dualism itself is established by your defining boundaries; the absolutism about it is a function of applying and requiring the dualism.

    No decoder is needed—

    —but it might help if you stop leading with your emotions.

    And, really, if I wanted to be obscure, you, at least, wouldn't necessarily know. More directly, consider the paragraph in which I discuss what qualifies as terms, in order to isolate for you the term, "good faith". The part about words like, "I", "you", "if", &c., isn't actually intended to be sarcastic or subtle or anything like that; it's just that you really do present yourself as if you're that freaking stupid. Like when you put the sentences, "Meanwhile from your non sequitur, what terms in that post do you imagine I've used wrongly?" and "It's like you expect people to guess at whatever's rattling around in your head ...", one after another. Yes, we get it; either you were very clumsily setting up for strawstuffing, or you really couldn't figure it out according to what was quoted. One sentence of ten words, with only one identifiable term; it was your sentence, but you are confused? You chose the term, "good faith", but couldn't figure it out compared to words like "doubt" and "bit", or maybe you got confused by words like, "I", and, "you"?

    To the one, file under, Whatever.

    To the other, very well, sir, we believe you.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    ° i.e., terminology; see Merriam-Webster↱ for an example of this definition, "a word or expression that has a precise meaning in some uses or is peculiar to a science, art, profession, or subject".

    °° That would be the word, "but", as in, "Claiming innocence is a waste of time, but, such as it is …".​

    "term". Merriam-Webster. 24 July 2020. Merriam-Webster.com. 26 July 2020. https://bit.ly/3g1NmfT
     
  20. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

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    Never implied it was new, and your bare assertions don't refute the reality. Better choices result in objectively better outcomes, even within the same minority and same background circumstances.

    There is nothing false about the fact I didn't mention nor imply anything about a melting pot, tossed salad, or any other euphemism for some variant of assimilation other than what I actually said. That's your own straw man. Hell, I literally said "not...monoculture", nor would I characterize assimilation as a salad bowl. So why don't you drop the tangential, at best, analogizing and just stick to addressing things I've actually said.

    I never claimed to be asserting a historical definition nor comparison of assimilation, so again, you're arguing a straw man.

    It was actually QQ who brought up every one of those bits of supremacist rhetoric you're trying to pin on me: http://sciforums.com/threads/the-confederate-flag.163282/page-29#post-3643627
    "mono culture", "invasion by many different races", all his. Which is why I said David Duke would be so proud of him, perpetuating those racist ideas. QQ is the one who tried to assign that crap to me, and now you're running with his straw man.

    Okay, I'll bite. How is systemic racism falsifiable? It would have to be for any society to be free of systemic racism. After all, if you can't definitively show where it's not, it's everywhere.
    And you can take up your criticisms about Sudanese culture with QQ:
    He literally said they are "just as Australian as any other ethic group that is born in Australia" and "no longer South Sudanese". So not unsupported at all (not a straw man), unless your reading comprehension failed you.

    Yeah, you do like to project. And I was literally trying to guess at what you were talking about. If you think it was clear, that's your own subjective bias, hence "rattling around in our head".

    No, I still have no idea what you mean by "boundaries" and "absolutism". If you want to blame your vague writing style on me, I certainly can't stop you. I'm sure it makes perfect sense in your head, where you regularly interject historicity and other tangents not even implied in what you ostensibly criticize.

    You're kidding yourself if you honestly believe that anything I could say, or refrain from saying, would change one iota of your preconceived bias about me. You've just decided I'm racist, based on nothing more than my political affiliation, without anything but vague innuendo and guilt by association as justification. The biggest problem is that you seem completely unaware of the tactics of northern racism that you regularly employ.

    Another tired straw man, recycled from your earlier one that anything I said was meant in any historical context.

    Yes, claiming innocence is a waste of time, when the accusation is not falsifiable. A hypothesis is either falsifiable or not. If it is, there can be some measure of degree, but if not, there is none. This is very basic science. Something can be more or less false, but nothing can be more or less unfalsifiable. If you don't comprehend that much, you're a sad excuse for a science forum moderator.

    Again, how is systemic racism falsifiable?

    Oh, I get that you think your criticism is valid, I'm just at a loss for finding any supported argument that could merit any refute. When your criticisms are that vacuous, it's hard to tell what's even being criticized.
     
  21. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    The only racist aspect of my post was your racist interpretation.
    You paint others with your own brush and assume a supreme position.
    Fact:
    Most nations are founded on a national mono culture. ( via a constitution in various forms)
    Ie: "Truth , Justice and the American way"
    The American way, typically includes the assimilation of diverse sub cultures. Subcultures that in the least conform with the founding principles of that nation with out necessarily diminishing their ethnicity.
    Example:
    "A Sudanese can quite comfortably wave the American flag and abide by the constitution with out overly diminishing his/her cultural roots."
    Which ironically the white supremacist has significant difficulty in doing especially if the Confederate flag takes priority. ( False Patriotism)

    So typically you have a mono culture that includes a diverse array of subcultures... This is often relegated the somewhat confusing term "multi culture". A term that bigots and racist will seek to capitalize on to further their xenophobic agenda.

    The term "Multi Ethnic Mono Culture" would be a better term to use, with out a hint of racism involved.

    The South Sudanese, for example, retain their ethnic roots while fully participating in the Australian collective mono culture.

    Perhaps you need to rethink your racist agenda and take into account that the national collective culture of the USA is constructed from all those diverse sub cultures and consider that when you use the term "minority" in the way you have been using it is typical of racist stereotyping and profiling.

    Perhaps ask yourself : What does it mean to be American?

    To the white supremacist waving the Confederate flag, egalitarianism is racism.

    Where I live there are over 120 ethnic groups all living harmoniously forming an amazingly colorful egalitarian mono-culture.
    I would imagine that the city of New York would be similar.. ( never been to NYC but )
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2020
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Which is one reason right wingers hate it so.
     
    Quantum Quack likes this.
  23. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    It might be worth repeating:
    and add that it, egalitarianism could be deemed to be racism against the white supremacist to clarify my comment.
     

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