Thoughts on Bigotry, Intolerance, Racism, Sexism, etc.

SpecialEdition said:

Having a friendly chat and just hugging it out was not my suggestion so I am not sure why my post warranted such a strongly sarcastic response from you.
I don' think there is any effective way to stop all attacks from happening. I don't think there's a particularly nice or effective way to stop any kind of hate group or terrorist group from rising up. I don't think there's a way to protect everyone from someone else's ideology when they have the resources to act it out. If people want to talk about culture they can look at any number of countries that are corrupt and over-ridden with groups that do not care about the safety and well being of others. Just look at Mexico and the drug cartels for example. There are other areas that are in a constant state of war.

I think that infiltrating countries who don't support our western ideologies has already shown to be so wildly unsuccessful - look no further than Iraq which is a total mess because the USA didn't feel very good about how they were running things over there.

I agree that jihadists are not ideal but they exist and are always going to exist. Someone is always going to fund them and give them power. There is a reason that some people become susceptible to that way of thinking while others are adverse to it. I don't think this is a "massive cultural problem." I think it is simply a result of the wrong people in power which do not allow reform or progression and in some cases end up turning things backwards. When you have billions of people living in those countries and which practice one religion I am really resistant to just simply label it a cultural problem.

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I totally agree with you that there is not any particular silver bullet to protecting people from hate groups. I also agree with you that wars (such as the one in Iraq) do little to stop this problem and have certainly exacerbated it. However, this is not to say that national policy should throw their hands up and say there is nothing to do. I am in complete agreement with, for the time being, putting a stop to immigration from Syrians to the US right now. And I think the Europeans would do well to continue to tighten their boarders as well as deport their illegals until times are more stable. That seems fairly common sense to me. And it doesn't involve bombs and guns. The French air strikes on Raqqa in collusion with Putin (who really just wants a port over there) are going to reveal horribly civilian causalities when the media blackout lifts on that one. Yet the people are loving it. Much the way everyone loved the Iraq war for a few minutes after 9/11.

Of course any number of countries or groups have problems with violence and terror. Though I am a bit less scared of the Mexican cartels because I understand their motives better (albeit I don't live in Mexico or a border state). It's kind of like I'd rather be held up for my wallet (which I just might be able to provide) rather than held hostage for ideological beliefs and actions of individuals I have nothing to do with and don't endorse. You can do business with a drug dealer, but not so much with a terrorist.

Anyway, yes, I think Islam is having a problem right now with acts of mass terror and violence. Here I will insert the requisite boilerplate that will hopefully make it very clear that I don't think Islam and only Islam is having a problem. I have often thought that the random school shootings that have happened across the US of recent are a problem of angry, narcissistic (usually white) young Western men. It's a cultural phenomena and it's a problem of a particular group. Every time one happens, I think "Jeez, same thing as the Islamic fundamentalist terror attacks, except these are young western men, usually asserting some kind of nihilism (the recent one in OR was avowedly atheist and targeted Christians for their faith). Clearly, whether it is fundamentalist levels or nihilism or of Islam, both groups are having a problem with violence. Yet everyone gets their panties in a knot when this obvious fact is stated about one group. There is right now a huge taboo against just saying that clearly Islam (no, not all Muslims everywhere), is having a problem perpetuating terror. It seems fairly farcical to deny this.

This post will probably generate negativity towards me (and certainly no thumbs!), so I am now off to a fragrance chat board to find a vanilla perfume that won't make me smell like a small French hooker in a bakeshop. The most heated controversy there will likely be there is if someone makes the very un-PC mistake of referring to Shalimar or some other classic throat scorcher as "old lady." Or worse, if a body spray is discussed at all (cardinal sin).

Racism, xenophobia, etc. can all be traced to one cause 90% of the time - ignorance. When the attacks on 9/11 happened, for instance, I was immediately looking for a country to move to. I wasn't afraid of the attacks, I was just afraid my politicians would have their typical knee-jerk reaction and declare war with half the world. Less than a year later, they did.

(And no sob stories, etc. since I was actually in New York, watching it happen in front of me)

On the other hand, people that didn't understand and had no knowledge of the history that led to those attacks were waving flags and displaying their "patriotism". For me, and multitudes of others, we were thinking it was only a matter of time before something like that happened.

What if those flag-waving patriots knew that we were the ones who funded those terrorists a decade ago? What if they knew that we gave Osama bin Laden everything he needed? What if they knew our country used to call them "allies"?

Ignorance at it's finest.

Lerxst said:

Racism, xenophobia, etc. can all be traced to one cause 90% of the time - ignorance. When the attacks on 9/11 happened, for instance, I was immediately looking for a country to move to. I wasn't afraid of the attacks, I was just afraid my politicians would have their typical knee-jerk reaction and declare war with half the world. Less than a year later, they did.

(And no sob stories, etc. since I was actually in New York, watching it happen in front of me)

On the other hand, people that didn't understand and had no knowledge of the history that led to those attacks were waving flags and displaying their "patriotism". For me, and multitudes of others, we were thinking it was only a matter of time before something like that happened.

What if those flag-waving patriots knew that we were the ones who funded those terrorists a decade ago? What if they knew that we gave Osama bin Laden everything he needed? What if they knew our country used to call them "allies"?

Ignorance at it's finest.

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Are you saying we deserved that?

???

I make a fairly objective reply and I get 2 responses that assume things I didn't say...

That's it. I'm done with this place. Have a nice life.

Lerxst said:

???

I make a fairly objective reply and I get 2 responses that assume things I didn't say...

That's it. I'm done with this place. Have a nice life.

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I agree with what you said, and I agree that the responses were dismissive to say that least.
Especially inferring that we somehow deserve what we got because of what we did to the Native Americans.
But then when you bring up the religious history of Christianity…oh, it’s all in the past…we don’t do those evil things anymore.

People pretend like they want a discussion, but if it doesn’t jive with their own personal point of view - then you are ignorant and dismissed.
This is a march off to war, to more destruction, to more separation…it builds more walls and only brings more fuel for hate and fear.
I’ll leave with you.

I did want to do a paid intern-ship with involved research/media organisations.....but according to this new BBC creative access scheme, it turns out I can't........because I am white.

I think your average joe blow citizen is an inherently passive participant in life. He is only seeking the most basic ways of life: go to work, bang a chick, drink, sleep safely, etc. he does not have the inclination or the resources to remove dangerous elements from society. He's trying to live the good life after all. In fact he has an aversion to violence and is for all intents and purposes a pacifist. The only weapon he has to keep himself safe is fear, aversion, and intolerance. How can we expect this person to do anything else? Hatred is the path of least resistance.

Kaleidoscopic said:

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Love to see the references for this....each one. Without references, they really mean nothing. There are likely to be different ways to view things said or written that may lean the other way.

Peaceful Muslims celebrate Khan's victory in Pakistan:



'millionaire Jew'...

I think a lot of the root problems here, in regards to the Islamic immigration issue, are less a matter of intolerance per se and more a matter of favoritism and short-sightedness, on both sides.

The anti-immigrant crowd believes that it is more important that the lives of their countrymen be saved and unmolested than the lives of those living in Islamic countries. To me, this is wrong--lives should, barring actual specific actions on the part of people, be given equal value. One could make the argument that, given an evil culture, more of the people inside it will be evil and therefore it's a little less bad if bad things happen to them as a group. The overall moral worth is lower, etc. This, however, is counterbalanced by the lesser likelihood of prosecution, prison time/execution and therefore removal from society of the people that commit these crimes in Islamic countries where it's viewed as kind of an acceptable thing to do than in our own, and the fact that there are many people who are opposed to the kinds of actions taken against them for everyone, and who don't necessarily support equivalent evil in other cases, in those countries.

The pro-immigrant crowd ignores the difficulties we've been having assimilating the radical Muslims that do come in, and therefore the real problems that we might face down the line when their numbers grow. I'm not sure that this won't end up like Ebola and the Malthusian population crisis, but I don't know of any numbers that would mitigate the replacement rate differences (replacement rates are going down I guess, but I don't think fast enough), but the minor issues that we currently face in isolated incidents may just be the tip of the iceberg, as radical Islam gains more power through a rise in their share of the population. There is also an ignorance of the other efforts to aid Muslims in the Middle East that have been stymied by diversion to refugees--UN programs to offer direct aid where they're currently living, for instance.

So, right now, I think it's the classic South Park case of "Wrong for the right reasons/Right for the wrong reasons". Let's see if that holds up. XD