Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

You really need to get out more. It happens all over the world, you just see it happening here more because it’s in our news more.

Ask the ********ing Pakis how well they’re tested in many parts of England.

Ok, enlightened world traveler. Educate me. Tell me all about the court cases where a mom took off her shirt and a black guy is suing for not being able to cash a check that he won for the same suit.

I'll hang up and listen.

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Ok, enlightened world traveler. Educate me. Tell me all about the court cases where a mom took off her shirt and a black guy is suing for not being able to cash a check that he won for the same suit.

I'll hang up and listen.

Our institutionalized sexism and racism are bad but they are not the worst in the world. Being a woman in a Muslim country is worse. Being black in Eastern Europe is worse.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Our institutionalized sexism and racism are bad but they are not the worst in the world. Being a woman in a Muslim country is worse. Being black in Eastern Europe is worse.

Last time I checked we're supposed to lead. Where is our leadership? We're supposed to set the example. We're supposed to show everyone else how it's done.

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Last time I checked we're supposed to lead.

We have never led.

"We're juuuuuuuuust anotherrrrrrrrrrr country." The stuff we learned in school about America as a city on the hill was propaganda. We were better than a lot of awful places, and much richer, so people came here. People still come here from Honduras and Vietnam and Iraq. But we were never "great." That was just empty words.

Our job is to make it better than it was. For most people (non-whites, women, non-Christians) America has always sucked. Our job is to make it not suck. For the first time.

Whenever we pass a civil rights law or make the powerful stop abusing the powerless we are breaking new ground. We aren't restoring America; we're changing it from the lie it always was to the truth we always wanted.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

We have never led.

We're just another country. The stuff we learned in school about America as a city on the hill was propaganda. We were better than a lot of awful places, and much richer, so people came here. People still come here from Honduras and Vietnam and Iraq. But we were never "great." That was just empty words.

Our job is to make it better than it was. For most people (non-whites, women, non-Christians) America has always sucked. Our job is to make it not suck. For the first time.

Then we're good then. What do we need this thread for?

[SJHovey]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

We have never led.

"We're juuuuuuuuust anotherrrrrrrrrrr country." The stuff we learned in school about America as a city on the hill was propaganda. We were better than a lot of awful places, and much richer, so people came here. People still come here from Honduras and Vietnam and Iraq. But we were never "great." That was just empty words.

Our job is to make it better than it was. For most people (non-whites, women, non-Christians) America has always sucked. Our job is to make it not suck. For the first time.

Whenever we pass a civil rights law or make the powerful stop abusing the powerless we are breaking new ground. We aren't restoring America; we're changing it from the lie it always was to the truth we always wanted.

It was never true, because no country is perfect. But it was taught. It was believed, certainly by large segments of the populace. And that teaching and that belief helped make it a better place than it otherwise would have been because there was that ideal to try to live up to.

It didn't create a perfect country for women, who were second class citizens for much of the country's history. It didn't create a perfect country for minorities who felt the harm of discrimination. But it made the country a heck of a lot better than it might otherwise have been, and it made a country that good people around the world wanted to migrate to, which in turn made the country better.

Yes, american exceptionalism has always been part myth, but I don't think the solution is to teach the opposite. Teaching that we are a country filled with discriminating nazi thugs has the same effect, just in the opposite direction. As a country we have tended to live down to that "ideal" as well.

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

It was never true, because no country is perfect. But it was taught. It was believed, certainly by large segments of the populace. And that teaching and that belief helped make it a better place than it otherwise would have been because there was that ideal to try to live up to.

It didn't create a perfect country for women, who were second class citizens for much of the country's history. It didn't create a perfect country for minorities who felt the harm of discrimination. But it made the country a heck of a lot better than it might otherwise have been, and it made a country that good people around the world wanted to migrate to, which in turn made the country better.

Yes, american exceptionalism has always been part myth, but I don't think the solution is to teach the opposite. Teaching that we are a country filled with discriminating nazi thugs has the same effect, just in the opposite direction. As a country we have tended to live down to that "ideal" as well.

I agree to a large extent. Except don't teach a myth -- teach the values as aspirational. And still teach the times we fell short and still do. Teaching about McCarthyism might have saved us from Nixon. Teaching about internment and segregation might have saved us from Dump.

[Handyman]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Last time I checked we're supposed to lead. Where is our leadership? We're supposed to set the example. We're supposed to show everyone else how it's done.

Nice shifting of the goalposts. That was pretty smooth even for you

And yes, you did. You went from "It can only happen here" to "We are supposed to be better" which are not the same. Impressive buddy

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Nice shifting of the goalposts. That was pretty smooth even for you

And yes, you did. You went from "It can only happen here" to "We are supposed to be better" which are not the same. Impressive buddy

Not shifting anything. The first post was posted with the second posts context in mind. That's the sarcasm of "Only in America". Which was, yes, sarcasm. But, hey, if you want me to post thinking America is supposed to be ****, I can do that.

[MissThundercat]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Senior student, who just happens to be black, told to cut his dreads or he can't walk at commencement.

[Handyman]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Really sad, but dude should just keep cashing checks off these ignorant white people- or as I saw someone online say, WY PPL

To be fair, the manager was Black.

"Wennerberg said the assistant manager who waited on Thomas was African American, and felt that something didn't "look right," so she called police."

I dont think this was racism as much as stupidity. All they had to do was call the other bank to confirm the check. Calling Enterprise makes no sense because the checks were part of a lawsuit. Plus the second the lawyer sent the proof that should have been enough.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Senior student, who just happens to be black, told to cut his dreads or he can't walk at commencement.

That happens everywhere.

See? That's sarcasm too but it assumes America shouldn't be better than that.

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

That happens everywhere.

See? That's sarcasm too but it assumes America shouldn't be better than that.

Nobody said to do that. If you read my remarks to mean that then I apologize, I must have not been clear.

Also: black people getting harassed about stuff like hair by authorities and institutions as a form of poorly concealed racism does happen in other countries.

Fun fact: Tienanmen Square did not start out as a democracy protest. It started as a protest by Chinese students against visiting African students who had been accused of having sex with Chinese. The original banners in the square said things like "Hands Off Our Women!" At that point the Chinese government was in the process of responding to the initial protest by... deporting the students back to Africa.

America does need to be better. America is not nearly the world leader in either officially sanctioned or amateur populist racism.

[RaceBoarder]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

America being #1 ended when Will McAvoy gave his now famous speech on the 1st episode of the Newsroom.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

The original banners in the square said things like "Hands Off Our Women!"

30 years later, the CCP is still ginning up the same nonsense. The wumaos post stuff about "loser foreigners" (especially Americans) who couldn't make it back in their countries, so they come to China and steal "our" jobs/women.

Tale as old as time, really.