Samatha Bee on Trump and GOP racism.

Zooey wrote:

What movie is she showing clips from near the end of that?

Do you mean the one with LBJ? I think that’s an HBO movie. Haven’t seen it yet.

Zooey wrote:

All the money and the guy with the swastika tattoo on his neck.

The LBJ movie, I think, is based on a stage play that debuted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival 4 or 5 years ago. It began, iirc, with LBJ being sworn in after JFK’s assassination, and covered the civil rights story. MLK was a character in the play, too. The LBJ stuff is a completely different movie.

I think that’s “Breaking Bad,” but am not sure. I’m one of the few people around who has never seen it.

Good questions, WV.

Personally, I don’t think our focus should be so much on trying to change the way people view race — though that’s important — but instead on preventing its effects. Preventing the application of racist beliefs in society. And one way of doing this is to offer alternatives for people who believe they need to circle the wagons and “stay with their own kind.” Most important part of that, IMO, is economic.

If we had a system that truly offered everyone — not just the richest 1%, 10% or 20% — a shot at achieving their fullest potential, then people have far less reason to feel others are trying to take away their jobs, their culture, what have you. And, I think it’s up to the left to offer this, which means breaking with the neoliberal/corporate/austerity “compromise” absolutely, irrevocably . . . . and offer a super-sized Denmark-like option instead.

At least. As mentioned, I’d rather repeal and replace the entire thing, get rid of every ounce of capitalism and go with left-anarchist models instead. But the Danish mode is more doable near-term, so that’s what we should push for now. For now.

Ironically, tragically — and this seems obvious in the EU/Brexit stuff — it’s the absence of a strong, committed, no-apologies left and leftist alternative that enables far-right appeals to white fears, xenophobia, racism, etc. etc. And that also sets up the counter-screaming from the right that they’re not going to accept accusations of racism and xenophobia anymore. It’s kind of a white backlash against the backlash against racism, etc. A counter-reformation of sorts.

In short, we have to give them reasons to stop fearing the Other. Just scolding them won’t work — and I’ve been guilty of the latter when I get frustrated about things too much.

Yeah, i just wonder what ‘prevention’ would look like. Ya know.

It would require nurturing ‘critical thinking’. How does a society do that?

It would require meeting citizens basic needs so that have time/energy/safety in order to have the luxury of ‘thinking critically’. How does a society accomplish that?

…i suppose amerika has made a ton of progress with race/jingoism/superstition.
But with the pace of corporate-destruction increasing, and the pace of environmental degradation increasing….how much more time do we have to be so…ignorant?

w
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That leisure time is incredibly important. Which is yet one more reason why capitalism should die. It ensures that leisure time for a tiny portion of humanity, while forcing the majority to remain locked in dead-end jobs they can’t afford to lose — but often do. It forces all too many people to work more than one job, because the pay is so low, as they struggle against strong headwinds that never go away. And I’ve felt those strong headwinds myself, for a good portion of my young adulthood.

It’s no fun. And it’s damn hard to spend time on “critical thinking” if that’s how one comes into this world. If that’s all one knows. I was very lucky I was born into a family with highly educated parents, from families with highly educated parents going back several generations. So I had a foundation for it. But most people don’t. And our education system, as you’ve written about before, teaches the opposite. It teaches mass conformity and docility and acquiescence to authority and tries to get us to be good little consumers of capitalist crap.

What if we had a society whose intention was more and more knowledge, more and more (highly diverse) cultural arts, more and more science, discovery — an Atlantis of sorts? What if no one cared about profits, money, how much stuff we could buy . . . but focused all on how much we could learn instead — about the world, history, the arts, the sciences, ourselves? What if this pursuit of knowledge and culture were a goal in and of itself, instead of something only rich people could pursue? What if it were all “free” to everyone, and the norm, naturalized, a part of our every day lives?

It’s actually doable and I’ve mapped that out. All it takes is agreement on a new fiction, one that benefits all of us, instead of the current fiction that destroys most of us and the world.