Newt,

A certain person, yeah -- but there have been others from time-to-time.

Look, everyone knows we're talking about Bob, and I don't want to throw rocks at the guy. FWIW, for all his faults, I believe he's not stupid and is probably capable of presenting something rational if he could just get past bomb-throwing. He's presented a video where someone tried to intellectually defend the views that he holds. It wasn't the strongest set of arguments ever, but it was better than the usual bullshit.

Here's the thing: I actually want to hear what the other side thinks and feels, both from the standpoint of empathy and curiosity. Maybe there's something to learn from people on the other side. But I can't do this when all they present is HURR BLURF HURR CUCK SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE SJW LOCK HER UP ETC.

I hold vanishingly little hope that any kind of consensus can ever be reached again in this country (and the microcosm that is VideoSift) again, but I'm willing to at least listen and try to do my part. That doesn't mean I won't call bullshit, but if someone on the Right is willing to speak their piece without resorting to Alt-Right (Far Right) games, I'm game for something better than the usual flame war.

So...they've got at least 3 things in common with the other side! See? We have more in common than not!

Being nice does not get you to the other side.

They sell underwear on the other side?

Precisely. They have those guns in their hands, and don't shoot people.



The only things that I ding Hillary on are :

- Being a part of installing missile launchers on Russia's eastern border, and giving the asinine explanation that it's "to defend against Iran". Antagonizing Russia is so unnecessary and so old. I swear some people are just thirsty for the cold war to return.

- Cheating with the DNC in the primaries and screwing Bernie out of a win... who by the way could have carried the general election against carrot head. I'd rather have the Bern than either a sellout or a clown.


One side sees the other as paranoid.
The other side sees the first as short sighted.

I don't expect to be in a crash, I still prefer to wear a seat belt. But by all means, I don't care if someone chooses not to.

-scheherazade

Good and interesting stuff in there.

I think Sharpe is right that this escalation happened for a pretty silly reason (known blowhard and mouth-runner Trump runs his mouth, news at 11), and the NFL vs Trump skirmish detracts from the root issue that Kaepernick was trying to bring attention to a year ago.

On the other hand, I kinda agree with the other guy that maybe bringing attention to that skirmish will also bring attention to the original issue, so maybe it is a net good thing.

Yeah, the owners aren't going to give a fuck until shit lands on their doorstep. Yeah, calling people a "son of a bitch" rates at about a 2 on the "Trump just said what?!" scale. Sharpe's cynicism about how we got here makes a lot of sense.

I didn't care about Kaepernick sitting for the anthem a year ago enough to pay attention. I wasn't against it. I didn't think the was trying to "disrespect" the flag / soldiers / country / whatever, but I wouldn't have really cared if he was. Aren't people allowed to be anti-war? Opposed to mindless nationalism?


Fast forward to today. The billionaires that Sharpe mentioned who donated big sums to Trump's campaign finally get upset when his shit lands on their door. His (comparably tame) "Twitter attacks" on the NFL kick off a dog-and-pony show that may possibly have been cunningly intended to distract from the much more weighty stuff that Kaepernick was trying to draw attention to in the first place, but I seriously doubt that Trump is that clever.

However, something good did come of it: I went from "meh" to paying attention. I went back and listened to Kaepernick's interview about why he was sitting for the anthem from a year ago (embed below), which I didn't watch at the time. I heard a rational, honest, and eloquent young man calmly and clearly explain what he was doing and why he was doing it.

He saw injustice, and wanted to do something about it. He had access to a soapbox that very very few of the people on the receiving end of that injustice have. So, he made up his own mind to do something to try to get conversations started. He was surprised and confused that anyone would see his actions as disrespectful towards soldiers / military, and was later persuaded (by a Navy SEAL) to kneel as opposed to sit for the anthem in an effort to make that more clear.

He seemed aware that he can only control what he does -- not how people will try to spin it, and not how people may react to it. And he also clearly accepted that his actions could have consequences, and that he didn't want to rope anybody else in to acting with him unless they were prepared to accept those consequences also.

So, yeah. Some good came of this recent escalation, even if it came for the wrong reasons. Because some of the people that get drawn in to the dog-and-pony show might decide that they care enough to go back and take a deeper look at it, like I did. And when they look deeper, they're going to see Trump's standard, everyday twitter nonsense on one side compared to a lot of more rational stuff like, say, perhaps actually listening to words of the person that got the ball rolling on the other side (Kaepernick, and others). I like the way that scale balances out.

Yay, at least you bothered to watch the video.

And yes, No Bullshit's channel is loaded with a lot of biased opinions as he leans significantly to the right. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that, despite this particular video not making the mainstream air, that the coverage has shown the depths both sides have plunged to. Australian coverage has been downright blinkered at this point, there is no violence on the left at all and it's all nazi's killing folks... /eyeroll

So instead, you could look at channels like Sargon's, who, despite being constantly labelled as an alt right dickhead, is generally slightly left of center but who calls out violence where/when ever it happens.

I've seen a lot of shit in burrowing in to this, from a lot of sources on both sides (and people who try to be objective). Objectively, if you show up in black masks with pre-bagged shit, urine, fireworks and glass bottles, weighted sap gloves, bike locks and pepper spray combined with a clear message that it's okay to attack "nazi's" who's crime is expressing their admittedly vile ideology, you're not a good person.

Red shirts vs brown shirts, Wiemar Germany pre-WWII anyone?

You can try to make this about me ('ermagerd, you caused me to downvotes the video'), but you've admitted you didn't even watch the vid. At least I gave it a fair hearing, and while I do certainly admit the videos maker has an agenda, it is still documenting what is going on out there. Turn off the fucking voice track if you're too much of a snowflake to hear commentary you don't agree with, but the footage is damning...

As for Bob, I've been fairly unequivocal in the past about his line of deeply partisan BS and the veiled racism he espouses. As per the Ruins Everything sift up (https://videosift.com/video/Why-Proving-Someone-Wrong-Often-Backfires) atm about arguing and how it generally reinforces opinions, do you think that you two haranguing each other constantly (or even you and I) is going to accomplish anything other than entrenching the other side? \= |

First of all, you realize that you posted nearly the same reply twice in a row? Are you copy&pasting replies now?
Second, sincerely, fuck you Bob. You don't get to put words in my mouth. You're a white american and you have to own your shitty, racist past.
It's not about reperations or blame, it's about your unwillingness to own your countries' racist, slave-owning, segregationist past.
The ancestors of white americans invaded, stole, raped, murdered, kidnapped and enslaved brown people to get where they are today. Your ancestors did.
If you refuse to own this, you make yourself an accomplice. You help the perpetrators to get away with it.
I own my countries past. I'll tell you all I know. It may be too little, it may be not good enough but at least I'll try. Go visit Buchenwald. I did it twice and I must say, the first time I was too stupid to understand what it meant. I'm ashamed of that.
I stood in the doorstep of a tiny little room where people would enter, believing they were there to have their height measured. They didn't know there was tiny opening in the wall where they stood. They didn't know that on the other side of the wall there's a man with a pistol waiting to shoot them in the neck. They burned the bodies in a large oven.
I want you to know this. I want everybody to know this.
I'm not at fault. I wasn't around. I'll be an accomplice if I wouldn't tell you about it. I know about a crime and I will tell you all I know about it. That's why I'm not guilty.

You, on the other hand, stand in a puddle of blood (haha, you're a clown called Puddles) and deny anything's wrong.
Maybe you didn't own slaves. Maybe you never lynched a black man. Maybe you're not a cop who shot a black person for no reason. Maybe it's not your fault.
But you help them to get away with this by telling me there's no crime.

That's the difference between us two, you don't mind the blood on your hands while typing your manifestos on the internet. I do. I'll tell you all about it.

I'm part way there. In government buildings, city parks, etc., sure -- take 'em down. State flags incorporating the confederate flag? Yeah. Probably time to change.

Civil war battlefields / memorials? Leave 'em up. Stone Mountain? Leave it. Placards noting that these people fought for the wrong side, for wrong reasons (90% of which boils down to slavery) can / should be included. Make it clear that the efforts of these people to try to keep slavery around were evil and wrong.

I've seen it noted that there are no monuments to Hitler in Germany. True, but reminders of the terrible Nazi legacy remain, in Germany and elsewhere. Concentration camps remain, still standing as a reminder of the human capacity for evil. Nazi flags, logos, and equipment remain in museums.

In China, images and monuments to Mao are everywhere. In spite of the fact that even the Communist Party there admits that his policies and actions were terrible -- the devastating Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc. Some Chinese can remember and celebrate the good that Mao did (perhaps a small list) while simultaneously acknowledging his extremely tarnished legacy.


I think that being very quick to say that ALL people on the Confederate side of the Civil War were evil and wrong while their counterparts in the Union were clearly the "real Americans" is entirely too easy. The CSA was founded almost entirely in support of a very evil primary goal -- to keep slavery around. But the people in it, even the people running it, were different from the people on the other side mainly due to accidents of birth location. They fought for what they thought was necessary / right. They were wrong. But, they were real Americans -- and acknowledging that they could have been wrong in that way reminds us that the potential to end up on the wrong side of history also exists for us.

Total BS answer.

WHAT shared beliefs? There is no color requirements or religious prerequisites to being on the right hand side of the political spectrum. I know the media and lefty fanbois try to paint it that way, but that is complete drivel.

Goals? What 'goals' do these white idiot racists have that black idiot racists or hispanic idiot racists don't ALSO have ? What makes one group's racism leftist and therefor tolerable/understandable/justifiable in the media and the other group's racism "right wing" and abhorrent? And yes, there ARE black and hispanic racist groups...

Nothing but political bullsh*t. Racism is racism and it ALL should be abhorrent.

At it's core today, the right-wing political ideal maintains that free markets and capitalism is the best economic system for a free people because it promotes the MOST interchange between classes of people (poor, rich, powerful, etc). As such, a true right wing government would be small and not so powerful in an individual's everyday life.

At it's core, the left-wing political ideal is that capitalism is not "fair" and that the Government should step in to make everyone "equal", trading away freedom to social engineer equality and redistribute wealth. Of course, this means the more power that can be consolidated into the government, the better and more "equal" we can all be. (Don't even get me started on how this path leads to the shores of Venezuela or every other failed socialist country before it)

Back on my point though, racism doesn't rely on free markets or capitalism. Racism CAN and I would argue DOES benefit from leftist ideas of social engineered equality though.

So if these white racists voted as a majority for Republicans this election cycle, I would suggest that they did NOT do it because the are "right wing" at all. I suggest they did it because the other side of the ticket represents nothing but more and more "social engineering" that would NOT benefit their preferred race. Further, I would suggest that had the "social engineering" over the time period of the last Presidency been skewed towards pro-white, that these same white racists would have voted Democrat.

Mock if you must but I used to love this game. And don't forget that the other side of the board has chess, checkers, parcheesi, and backgammon. But all things must pass and as we get older we move on to more exciting sports like curling.

Democrats worry about policy over posture... and that is why they lose. Look, of COURSE in a perfect world with a savvy voting populace, the best policy dossier would win, but the other side keeps proving that is not the world we live in... over and over.

This lady has the right posture. 'Merica Fuck yeah.

"job security"? We got outsourced to some offshore low-bidder whose call center was apparently staffed by AOL dial up veterans. The very first all-hands telecom was hosted by some guy on the other side of the planet, who actually spent 30 minutes reading off names instead of using some modern technology to capture attendance. I'm glad I got out of that racket.

It's hard for me to know why Putin is doing what he's doing. When he moved on Crimea, was he doing it because of the advance of European influence closer to Russia's borders? He's short on good allies unlike 'the west', so can he let people chip away at his comfort zone? Or is he a crazed imperialist?

I don't know. Why don't I know?

Because my government have shown themselves over the years to be a bunch of twats who will literally tell bare faced lies, whilst smiling, and when confronted with the horrors of what they've done they throw their heads back and laugh like a fucking sea lion swallowing a fish whole. And that's what they've done to their OWN PEOPLE. To other countries countries we declare war and send in the multinationals to rape their resources. I consider the invasion of Iraq equally dodgy as the invasion of Crimea. So my moral compass for what's ok and not ok no longer has a baseline.

On the other side, a bunch of people who used to know how the world worked back in 1970 probably thought propaganda was the best way to whip up some nationalistic pride and resentment toward the reds, but in 2017 the majority of young people don't trust a single word they say. So these 70 year old media mogul billionaires can't even tell a believable truth anymore - even if Putin's tanks were half way down my street i'd have to clap eyes on them before i could be sure.

Plus Russia's leadership is Putin himself, he's the spearhead, and he's very cunning. Our leadership is spread across a set of democratically elected people, half of which are both incompetent and self interested, while half of those remaining are merely one or the other. It's easier for one person to look competent and assured. Someone like Merkel has to share the associated incompetency of whatever the German equivalent of her 'cabinet' is.

My brother had a cat back in the days of landline house phones, she would knock the handset off when the phone rang and drag the cable with her teeth into another room. He was always coming home to find the handset on the other side of the apartment and no voice messages.