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Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

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Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Priceless said:
Yes, but the demographics are still the same. I'm about as liberal as they come, but I'm still a white male with a college degree that earns decent money (even though I don't work anymore - go figure!). Is there anyone who posts here regularly that isn't a white male with a college background?
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There's one I know of who's not yet grauated, but is in his senior year...

Of the college grads that we do have here in the Cafe, though, we pretty much run the gambit from welfare recipients (not you, we know your situation is different) to those earning well into the six figures. Also, the quality of education attained varies greatly, too, and that can even show within the major chosen at a particular school as much as the choices between schools. While a statistician might view us as a rather homogenous group, there's quite a bit more variance than you would expect at first glance.
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Gurtholfin said:
By the same token, I wonder how many of you who reflexively take the ultra liberal side of the debate have ever lived anywhere near some of these troubled neighborhoods/areas. Some of your comments lead me to believe that you haven't coz oftentimes, they aren't grounded in reality.
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Does Dorcester, MA count?
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
I think there are definitely more social liberals than social conservatives. Economics, on the other hand, is much more evenly distributed.
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I can agree with that.

Could even say that in regards to foreign policy.
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Gurtholfin said:
By the same token, I wonder how many of you who reflexively take the ultra liberal side of the debate have ever lived anywhere near some of these troubled neighborhoods/areas. Some of your comments lead me to believe that you haven't coz oftentimes, they aren't grounded in reality.
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You'll notice my statement goes for both sides equally.

But another problem is the kind of cartoonism that I perceive in your post. "Well, liberals are all unicorns and rainbows." This may have been true in 1975, but it hasn't been true in my experience, where it has usually been the liberal who is pragmatic while the conservative is reflexively doctrinal. Because of where I grew up, my go-to experience of liberals is the parents of the kids I knew: gravel-voiced, hard scrabble liberal Jews who worked their tuches off to get of poverty and get out of the city, who with open eyes still fought to help the next wave get on up, while my go-to image of a conservative is a smug Paul Ryan sitting on the pillow of his family wealth and pontificating about the virtues of self-reliance. I realize these are anecdotal, but obviously they still affect how I "hear" different narratives.

Everybody thinks their side is logical and the other side is emotional. We all have to self-correct for that. All too often we resort to straw men to put our debate opponent in a box. When it comes to something like Ferguson, totally alien to virtually everybody posting here, it just seems that much more obvious.
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Priceless said:
I didn't have to dig through any. The comparison was part of a tweet sent out by someone else. I then verified it myself and cut and pasted the passages directly from the NY Times. I suppose if we checked the obits of Tim McVeigh, Lee Harvey Oswald or John Wayne Gacy, we still wouldn't find a passage telling us they were no angels. We would probably read all about how they lived a typical life with a typical childhood and then something just went wrong and they became killers. The black kid was a thug who broke the law repeatedly and deserved to die.

I don't expect much different from the people on this board. As I have pointed out repeatedly, this board is not very representative of America as a whole. This board is largely comprised of highly-educated, high-income white males. There are precious few women who post here, no minorities that I know of and no low-income people (sure, there are recent college-grads who have a mountain of debt and are just starting out, but they are almost entirely on a career path that will earn them a comfortable income). A Pew research poll I saw cited recently noted that more white Americans believe they have interacted with a ghost than believe race is still a problem in this country. I have no idea what your views are of ghosts, but I would safely say that a vast majority of people on this board (not to mention five members of the Supreme Court) would say that racial injustice is a thing of the past.
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As Edmund O'Brian says to General James Mattoon Scott in 7 Days in May; "Have we ever forgotten to thank you?"
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Kepler said:
You'll notice my statement goes for both sides equally.

But another problem is the kind of cartoonism that I perceive in your post. "Well, liberals are all unicorns and rainbows." This may have been true in 1975, but it hasn't been true in my experience, where it has usually been the liberal who is pragmatic while the conservative is reflexively doctrinal. Because of where I grew up, my go-to experience of liberals is the parents of the kids I knew: gravel-voiced, hard scrabble liberal Jews who worked their tuches off to get of poverty and get out of the city, who with open eyes still fought to help the next wave get on up, while my go-to image of a conservative is a smug Paul Ryan sitting on the pillow of his family wealth and pontificating about the virtues of self-reliance. I realize these are anecdotal, but obviously they still affect how I "hear" different narratives.

Everybody thinks their side is logical and the other side is emotional. We all have to self-correct for that. All too often we resort to straw men to put our debate opponent in a box. When it comes to something like Ferguson, totally alien to virtually everybody posting here, it just seems that much more obvious.
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"Sitting on a pillow of family money?" Did you actually mean that as criticism? Do da name Kennedy ring a bell?"
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Old Pio said:
"Sitting on a pillow of family money?" Did you actually mean that as criticism? Do da name Kennedy ring a bell?"
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As you well know, his wealth is not the criticism, it's his lecturing the poor that all they need to succeed is a little elbow grease. The hypocrisy of silver spoon conservatives concern trolling about welfare "dependency" is risible.
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Old Pio said:
As Edmund O'Brian says to General James Mattoon Scott in 7 Days in May; "Have we ever forgotten to thank you?"
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I don't think you've thanked me once, but who's counting?
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Old Pio said:
Too many (all?) lefties who post here assume all conservatives are social. That's arrant nonsense.
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No, I get the feeling quite a few of you aren't very sociable.
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Priceless said:
No, I get the feeling quite a few of you aren't very sociable.
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Zzzzzzzzing.

I was surprised to see how many on the board were social conservatives when we ran one of those scatter plot graphs a while back. Generally speaking, white educated righties are socially moderate and regard all the fulminations about Teh Gayz etc as sand traps on the fairway to the Free Market Paradise. But quite a few folks pegged themselves as solid/far right socially. I wonder whether that's also the regional cross section we have (i.e., midwesterners farther to the right on social issues than the coasties).
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Kepler said:
As you well know, his wealth is not the criticism, it's his lecturing the poor that all they need to succeed is a little elbow grease. The hypocrisy of silver spoon conservatives concern trolling about welfare "dependency" is risible.
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This criticism has been leveled against conservatives fairly frequently on this Board over the years. Something that I've always wondered, but haven't yet bothered to ask, is this.

Is it the "lecturing" that is objectionable? I've been lectured a fair amount in my life by parents, teachers, bosses, etc... While I haven't always enjoyed it, upon reflection most of the time I accept it as an effort to educate me, and ultimately help me. So I'm curious if it's believed that lecturing about the need to apply oneself should end.

If it shouldn't end, then who do we leave the lecturing to? Only liberals? Only people who themselves have worked themselves up out of the poor?

I ask these questions in all seriousness.

I am of the opinion people do need to be reminded of the values of getting a good education, of getting up and going to work everyday, or at least looking for a job. Of becoming self sufficient.

I agree the lecture might be more effective if the person delivering it can point to his or her own example. But I had a lot of good college professors who lectured on subjects of which they had no personal experience.

Just curious.
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

Is it the "lecturing" that is objectionable?
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Yes. Why do you feel the need to patronize poor people? Especially when we're part of an economy that is going to have a certain number of poor people simply by design.
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

SJHovey said:
This criticism has been leveled against conservatives fairly frequently on this Board over the years. Something that I've always wondered, but haven't yet bothered to ask, is this.

Is it the "lecturing" that is objectionable? I've been lectured a fair amount in my life by parents, teachers, bosses, etc... While I haven't always enjoyed it, upon reflection most of the time I accept it as an effort to educate me, and ultimately help me. So I'm curious if it's believed that lecturing about the need to apply oneself should end.

If it shouldn't end, then who do we leave the lecturing to? Only liberals? Only people who themselves have worked themselves up out of the poor?

I ask these questions in all seriousness.

I am of the opinion people do need to be reminded of the values of getting a good education, of getting up and going to work everyday, or at least looking for a job. Of becoming self sufficient.

I agree the lecture might be more effective if the person delivering it can point to his or her own example. But I had a lot of good college professors who lectured on subjects of which they had no personal experience.

Just curious.
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So in your scenario, wealthy people are parents lecturing the poor people as if they were children.

I can't see why anyone would find that condescending at all.
 
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet

SJHovey said:
Is it the "lecturing" that is objectionable?
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It's not "lecturing" per se -- I approve of a good hectoring. It's the presumption that people who have had a life of privilege have the right to condemn poverty as self-inflicted. If nothing else, this violates the "mile in a man's shoes" precept.

It's more than condescension, it's willful deflection, because the ultra rich have a dog in this fight, too. By spreading that manure around they're also feathering their own beds.

I just mixed three metaphors in one paragraph; I think I'll sit down.
 
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