[Subtitle: Unclear on the Concept]
Jesus came into a world where the literal poor were literally oppressed, taken advantage of, pushed down, abused, held back. The poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the orphans, the women, the widows, the unclean, the "dirty sinners," the least of these. We know all these terms and recognize them (if we're biblically literate) because these concepts come up throughout all of Jesus' ministry and all of the Bible.
Jesus
came into a world where the marginalized were largely kept
marginalized. Once you were unclean and an outsider, it was unlikely you
would ever be welcomed as NOT an unclean outsider.
Indeed, women, by the very nature of being women, were permanently on the Out, among the oppressed.
And
if a man decided on a whim to divorce a woman, she had few options
other than begging or perhaps returning home to her birth family (if
they were alive and willing to take her in).
Jesus came into a world of oppression of the poor and marginalized. And of separation between the privileged and the poor. And Jesus came into a world where systems were designed that kept the poor on the outside and likely to remain poor. Even the temple of God was a place where the moneychangers took advantage of the poor.
And Jesus announced right at the start - almost as if it were part of a plan that simply extended the prophetic and Old Testament traditions and concerns...
I've
come to preach Good News to the poor, the sick, the outsiders, the
imprisoned (who, by the by, were often in prison because they were poor
and couldn't pay their debts!).
He came to preach good news - what would
literally be considered literal good news to the literally poor and
marginalized. But was that Good News this...?
"One day, if you get
saved and if God decided God even WANTS to save you - and God doesn't want to
save most of you slugs! - then ONE day, by and by in the sky, you might
get a piece of pie and lawdy lawdy, things will be good then. THEN. IF you're
one of the lucky few who don't get tortured for an eternity."
Listen
to that traditional conservative atonement "gospel." In what possible
world does anyone think that might be taken as good news for people who
were poor, marginalized, suffering and struggling today?
"Do you wanna bet on a lottery
ticket that might (but most likely, won't) be paid out after you and your children have suffered a
lifetime and then died horribly...?" That's NOT good news to the poor.
Nope.
No, Jesus came to that real
world context of the haves and the have nots, and Jesus sided with the
Have Nots. He cast his lot among them. He welcomed them, specifically.
He began forming a nurturing and welcoming community there. Then.
"Thy
realm come, thy will be done ON EARTH, as it is in heaven."
I don't think Jesus had that much use for pie in the sky by and by. Not in the gospel that he taught in his own words.
And we must needs understand, this Good News to the poor was not Good News for all. For the rich who were interested in keeping their wealth and those unconcerned for the poor, this was not their Good News. Indeed, it was bad news.
"Jesus said to him, “There is still one thing lacking.
Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
That rich man walked away sad. Bad news.
"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom:
She and her daughters were
arrogant, overfed and unconcerned;
they did not help the poor and needy...
Therefore,
God said,
I removed them when I saw it."
Literal bad news for the folks in Sodom who were wealthy and unconcerned for the poor.
But for the wealthy willing to embrace and welcome and side with the poor, it was Good News, so it truly was good news for all... except those who rejected this Good News specifically, literally for the poor and marginalized. Consider wealthy Zaccheus who Jesus called down from his tree where he was separated from Jesus and his followers (the poor and marginalized)...
"So he [Zaccheus] hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw
it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who
is a sinner.”
Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord,
“Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor;
and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”
Good News for the poor was Good News for Zaccheus, too. He got it. [And we shouldn't let this story pass without noticing that the poor were poor precisely, at least in part, because of the systems of oppression and defrauding that Zaccheus took part in, became wealthy through, and repented of. Welcoming the wealthy into Jesus Good News kingdom in such a way that affected change, that WAS literally good news for the poor and marginalized. Then. There. And it was also good news for the wealthy who recognized this system of oppression and repented.]
But for those who did not welcome, side with, share with, join with the poor and marginalized? They were called the goats and cast out from God and the saints.
"Depart from me, you evil doers!
For I was hungry and you didn't feed me!
I was sick and you didn't comfort me!
I was in prison and you didn't come visit me.
Depart from me to the pits of hell, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Bad news for those unconcerned for the poor and marginalized and unwilling to embrace or even recognize the Good News for the poor and marginalized.
Or recall how Jesus condemned those who would invite to dinner the rich
or others who might later pay back the favor. Instead, he counseled,
“But when you give a banquet, invite
the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind”
And
again, Jesus began his ministry with the declaration of bringing good
news specifically to the poor and marginalized. He declared the day of
God's good favor, which the Jewish people hearing would certainly
recognize as a reference back to the Jubilee wealth redistribution laws
that were part of what was required of a God-loving nation.
And if you're familiar with the Bible, you should know that I could go on and on with this consistent, Genesis to Revelation story of Good News for the poor and marginalized.
It really is there throughout the whole of the Bible, the Gospel of Enough, of Grace, of the Siding with the Poor.
How did Jesus tell John the Baptist that he could tell he was from God?
"Tell him how I preach the good news to the poor."
And
good news for the poor IS being able to have enough to live and thrive
and being welcomed, not excluded. Grace, grace, grace. Throughout the
Bible and it regularly shows up as forgiveness of debt and the wealthy
paying to the poor.
So, I hope conservatives - and especially conservative Christians - can understand how surprising their harsh rebukes of this Debt Forgiveness plan that Biden has promised.
Debt forgiveness is kind of our thing, if we're decent people and especially if we're followers of the One who came to preach good news to the poor and marginalized.
93 comments:
Again you pervert Scripture for your marxist/socialist agenda. Jesus came to bring good news to the poor of spirit. This is confirmed in Scripture and perverted by those who seek to redistribute wealth they do not own. Poor and marginalized people can abuse other poor and marginalized, and very wealthy people can be servants to the "have nots". So it is today, so it was back in the time of Christ.
Biden is not forgiving debt owed to him. He is, without consent of those to whom debt is owed, redistributing debt from those who owe to those who don't.
Stop pretending you've actually "seriously and prayerfully" studied Scripture, for it it'll be far worse for you if that is true...for to those who have been given much, much will be demanded...beginning with a truthful telling of the message of Scripture, which you once again pervert in defense of bad political policy...again.
Bernie Sanders destroys Marshall.
House Republicans: "If you take out a loan, you pay it back."
Meanwhile: 13 House Republicans took out over $15 million in PPP loans that were totally forgiven by the federal government.
House Republicans: If you take out a loan, you pay it back.
In Craig’s Friday response to your post here, he reveals how little he knows of his own sacred scripture: he’s looking for any, any documentation at all of the early church giving significant money away. Well… here it is - but he doesn’t have the decency to read it much less the guts to acknowledge his ignorance:
The early Christians were in a difficult position. The church began with immediate and considerable financial responsibilities. Transitioning from a small sect led by a homeless prophet with no regular revenue into something organized was not going to be easy.
They could no longer count on Jewish provisions to care for the poor and infirm, which meant that there had to be a plan in place to meet the needs of converts. On top of that, carrying out the Great Commission was not going to be cheap. Taking Jesus’ message to the ends of the earth required a significant investment of capital into the travel and daily needs of workers and into the establishment of new churches.
In order to grow, the early church needed funds. But without a strong base and with zero budget, it had to do some creative financing to meet those needs.
The first Christians underwent a change in how they viewed ownership. It is interesting to note that Luke brings this up more than once; it seems important to him that readers recognize this is not normal. It is a supernatural response to a genuine conversion.
“And all who believed were together and had all things in common.” —Acts 2:44
“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.” —Acts 4:32
This sense of common ownership led them to go as far as selling possessions of great value and giving that income to the apostles.
“And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” —Acts 2:45
“There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” —Acts 4:34–35
As more churches were established in various towns, apostles were able to take collections in order to cover the needs of other congregations.
“Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.” —1 Corinthians 16:1–3
The early church had significant needs that these funds went to support.
For instance, when the church in Jerusalem was suffering from famine and persecution, the church in Antioch took up an offering to help them.
“So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea.” —Acts 11:29
Christians were regularly exhorted to consider the needs of the various churches.
“Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.” —Romans 12:13
“At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem.” —Romans 15:25–26
The apostles dealt with the problem by choosing seven spirit-filled men to care for these widows. They would have needed considerable funds to distribute food daily to both sets of widows.
While the church’s first order of business was to take care of the saints, they also cared for the needs in their communities.
“Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” —Galatians 2:10
“So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” —Galatians 6:10
Lastly, there were funds needed to take care of those who had committed themselves to outreach, mission work, and teaching. This included the disciples and ministers in various congregations.
“Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.” —Galatians 6:6
“Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only. Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again.” —Philippians 4:14–16
“I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you.” —2 Corinthians 8
And it has to be said that the early church was not fat with cash. It was an outsider group in every town where it existed, persecuted, decimated, etc.
It wasn't until the 6th century that the church had wealth to speak of.
But Craig needs to ignore all this to keep his white supremacist religious commitments unconscious to himself.
Marshal, Feodor and I have cited the Bible and noted the context of the times. Do you have anything on topic or substantive to say? I mean, I see you make the claim that "Jesus came to bring good news to the poor of spirit." But that's not what the text literally says. Over and over.
So, while you're free to assign whatever meaning to various texts if you want, if you don't have anything more substantive than that, you're also free to move on.
Empty claims are just that.
As to this...
" He is, without consent of those to whom debt is owed, redistributing debt from those who owe to those who don't. "
Biden has the support of something over half of the nation in reducing/eliminating student loan debt. In our free republic with democratically elected representatives, we don't have to have universal agreement in order to make decisions on how to spend our shared tax dollars. Just as a point of fact.
Tax dollars are spent in all kinds of ways I don't approve of. Either one of us is free to move away if we don't like it enough.
So, once again, if you don't have anything more than name-calling and unsupported and false claims, feel free to move on.
"I see you make the claim that "Jesus came to bring good news to the poor of spirit." But that's not what the text literally says."
What Scripture "literally" says, as in the actual words printed on the page, is different than what it "literally" says, as in what the verse means or how it is interpreted by learned people who aren't marxist/socialist/covetous fakes. You insist on rejecting this fact in favor of your marxist/socialist/covetous corruption. That's a given. I accept you're beyond an honest representation of what you are and what you pretend is true.
In the meantime, your "what Scripture literally says" is not a compelling argument in response to the heavily supported position I and so many theologians throughout history hold. But "Nyuh uh" is about all you have.
For the purpose of this issue, however, nothing you've said about forgiveness of debts applies. Christ/God has the right to forgive our sin debts, because it is Christ/God who holds the marker. It is against Christ/God we've sinned. Now, Christ teaches us to forgive those who trespass against us, not those who trespass against anyone else. If I slap your mother, I'm not forgiven because YOU presumed you could do so. I need your mother's forgiveness for the sin I committed against her. THAT is what we're taught.
Now if I had killed your mother, you still couldn't forgive me for the act of murdering her. At best, you could only "forgive" me for depriving you of her presence in your life. In the meantime, I'd be feeling far more guilty about your mother's situation than how it affected the likes of you in any way, and would feel unable to acquire forgiveness for the murder from anyone other than God Himself.
In the case of the student loans, setting aside the likelihood Biden lacks the legal right and authority in the first place, the loan debt isn't his to forgive. He didn't loan anyone any money. What's more, he won't feel the burden of not having the money...even as a citizen who's taxes are affected and who's cost of living will rise as inflation is further spurred by this expenditure.
Craig laid it out well in saying that it is not a forgiven debt, but one transferred to others to pay. But worse than that, it is forcing the true debt holder...we the people...to swallow the debt without ever having sought our consent or even input on the notion. You want to claim how many morons who voted for the guy support this. Where's the polling data? I would insist on the truth, which is that there are many Dem voters who have paid their debts as they should and aren't cool with this unnecessary move to buy votes and raise Joe's status in the opinion polls.
You then make the lame argument of how our tax dollars are spent. The federal government spends our money in many ways which are not aligned with their constitutional authority. It is right to disapprove and in fact, our duty if we really know the Constitution and give a flying rat's ass about it...which those like you don't. But that doesn't give one liberty to spend more in ways that also are outside of federal authority. "Well, we're wasting money there, why not waste it here, too?" That's rank leftist stupidity and intellectually lazy.
In the meantime, you are no stranger to either name calling or unsupported claims. Indeed, you haven't supported the claim this bullshit redistribution is Biblical. You've only perverted Scripture once again to pretend it is.
Marshal...
"Indeed, you haven't supported the claim this bullshit redistribution is Biblical. "
I haven't said it's biblical to use tax dollars to forgive student debsts. I've said that those who are denouncing debt forgiveness are denouncing principles found in the Bible and basic tenets of Christianity. I've said it's not in anyway contrary to biblical teaching. And that it's surprising that conservative Christians would denounce it so strongly when it's sort of a basic Christian and biblical notion.
And it is.
You are free to think that we shouldn't apply this OT notion of regular debt forgiveness for the purpose of helping the poorer amongst our citizens, but you can't say it's unbiblical. Understand the difference?
You agree with the reality that OT teachings include the notion of regular forgiveness of literal biblical debt, I suppose? I mean, it's just there.
At the end of every seven years you
must cancel debts.
Deut 15. Or Leviticus 25 which speaks of Sabbath and Jubilee Years of debt forgiveness.
https://religionnews.com/2022/08/25/what-the-bible-really-says-about-loan-forgiveness/
And what is the principle behind WHY this debt forgiveness was necessary in the OT? Because sometimes, especially then in that agrarian context, but also today, once one gets in debt - and especially when there's interest involved - people can become trapped by that debt and never get out, without some systemic way out. Like with these college loans where some students borrow $30,000 but end up having to pay back $100,000 and more... they can just never get out from under that ever-rising debt. Without some systemic solution to deal with that trap.
Also note in these biblical examples, there is no accusations or demonizations of those who find themselves in debt. It's just recognized that debt enslavement happens. AND that there must be systemic solutions because there won't be a "natural" solution, generally speaking.
So, you are free to think debt forgiveness is not a good solution in this instance, I don't have a problem having that discussion. I'm just noting that you can't say debt forgiveness is "a sin," itself or not biblical.
It is.
I'm noting that just because a concept is biblical - as debt forgiveness to deal with real world problems of relentless debt IS - does not mean that we should create national policy because it's biblical.
In the same Deut 15 that commands debt regular debt forgiveness, there are also rules about how to enslave people.
Finding a concept in the Bible does not mean that it's a good policy to implement. I disagree with conservative types do that because it's an abuse of the great teachings of the bible and I don't do it myself.
We should create policies that are moral and just and rational, that protect citizens from harm and including from systemic harm.
From a rational point of view, I think most people can agree that if someone borrows $30,000, it is reasonable that they'd repay $30,000, all things being equal. It could even be considered reasonable that they'd repay $30,000 with some reasonable interest - $30,000 + $5000 or 10,000 in interest for instance. But I think most rational people can agree that repaying 3x... 5x... and more what one borrowed, that's an unjust usury (a practice that is denounced in the Bible, too).
And again, I think reasonable people can agree that if you're a billionaire who's promised to pay a contractor $100,000 to do a job, that this billionaire should not have systemic ways of avoiding paying their debt owed to that middle class laborer. And again, this is biblical. I don't hear you complaining about how Trump used the system to avoid paying his debts.
The point in all of this is that I don't advocate requiring billionaires paying their debts or that we need to limit debt interest rates - especially for poorer folks - because it's in the Bible. I advocate this because it's reasonable and sound fiscal responsibility.
But for Christians to support a debt-dodging billionaire while condemning poor and working class poor folks for not paying back 3x what they borrowed... and when they try to say it's unbiblical... my response is that they're just wrong that it's not biblical and it's also not rational or just.
Marshal...
"What Scripture "literally" says, as in the actual words printed on the page, is different than what it "literally" says, as in what the verse means or how it is interpreted by learned people who aren't marxist/socialist/covetous fakes. "
Jesus literally said that he'd come to earth to preach good news to the poor.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
When Jesus said that about preaching good news TO THE POOR, there is nothing in the text or context that suggests he's making a metaphorical claim about "the poor in spirit" or the "blind in spirit" or "the imprisoned in spirit."
Further, Jesus is citing the prophet Isaiah who similarly says...
"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion"
In the context of both Luke 4 and Isaiah 61, there are real poor, imprisoned, suffering people in Jesus' and Isaiah's respect days. Are there some modern theologians who would insist that one or both these passages must be taken metaphorically? Perhaps. But they are the ones who are saying "Nyuh uh" to what the text clearly says.
Likewise, I've regularly noted, when Jesus preached the sermon on the plain, he said "Blessed are you who are poor, who are hungry, etc... because you will be satisfied..." and when John the B asked if Jesus was "the One," Jesus gives as proof that he's preaching good news to the poor. In none of these and multiple other texts (Mary's Magnificat, James, etc) is anything that says "These ALL must be taken metaphorically and ONLY metaphorically."
It's not there in the text. I'm sure there are some modern theologians who find ways to read that into the text, but it's not there IN the text. It's literally eisegesis. And I believe it's a modern phenomenon. I don't think I've ever seen any evidence that the early church or ancient scholars/theologians felt a need to make these metaphorical references to "the poor, sick, imprisoned in spirit."
And what is absolutely factual is YOU have not provided any support for it. Noting that Matthew's Sermon on the Mount uses the phrase in that ONE instance "poor in spirit" in no way means that ALL these other references to poverty and oppression are metaphorical.
A question I insist you answer: Can you name even ONE early Christian scholar who thought the multiple references to wealth and poverty should all/mostly be taken metaphorically?
Note: You answer can be, "No, I can't provide that sort of support" Or, "Yes, I can" and cite a source. But an unsupported claim won't stand. You could clarify, too, that you're NOT saying that the multiple references to wealth and poverty should mostly be taken metaphorically. But you need to answer.
Early Christian theologian, Clement, appears to disagree with your hunches and I've never seen any that would clearly agree with your claim that "blessed are you who are poor..." and "I've come to preach good news to the poor" and "Tell John that the poor have the gospel preached to them" etc, etc, etc, etc are speaking only or primarily metaphorically.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-richman.html
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9321&context=etd
Also, just stop with the ridiculous false claim that I'm a Marxist. I'm literally not. I've always been clear that I'm not a Marxist and I've never said anything to suggest that I'm a Marxist. It's a scare word that conservatives have used for a long time to suggest their liberal counterparts favor fascism and that is, of course, stupidly false.
But I'll give you a chance to explain yourself:
Define socialism and Marxism, as you are defining them.
Once you've done that, do your definitions align with reality (are your definitions aligned with the actual definitions)?
Then finally, demonstrate how I have advocated actual socialism or marxism.
For instance, Marxism is simply defined as:
" it’s a political and economic theory where a society has no classes.
Every person within the society works for a common good, and
class struggle is theoretically gone."
By that definition, maybe even you could say, "That's not so bad... it's certainly not evil..." But that's probably not the definition you're using.
For my part, with that simple definition, I don't know what a "classless society" would look in a world of a diversity of humans. I don't know how that would happen. Now, do I advocate for a society where everyone is valued and supported for who they are? Yes, of course. Of course, that doesn't mean "let's value the rapists or politicians who falsely claim the election was stolen from them when they didn't get their way..." Just that we value someone who's in a wheelchair like we value the person who can walk just like we value the person who's tall and the person who's short and the woman and the man and the gender fluid... valuing these people for who they are... that's a good thing. But I just don't know what "classless" would look like.
But a society where everyone works for a common good? Again, that sounds pleasant enough. Maybe you are marxist in that way, too?
Of course, again, what does "everyone working for a common good" look like? What about when people disagree with what is and isn't a common good? In practice, I'm not sure what it looks like, but it sure seems to be a pleasant general goal.
Do you agree?
If so, shall we call you a Marxist?
So, begin by answering/addressing some of these questions, if you want to comment.
Marshal...
Where's the polling data?
"As President Biden inches toward an announcement on federal student loan forgiveness, a new NPR/Ipsos poll has found slightly more than half of Americans support what has been reported to be Biden's likeliest path: forgiving up to $10,000 per person."
A majority of the general public (55%) supports forgiving up to $10,000 of a person's federal student loan debt. But the more generous the relief, the more that support narrows.
Forty-seven percent of all respondents said they support forgiving up to $50,000 in debt, while 41% expressed support for wiping the slate completely clean for all borrowers...
Support was far weaker among respondents without student loans: Half supported $10,000 of relief, and just 37% supported full debt cancellation."
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/17/1104920545/poll-student-loan-forgiveness
A poll from last year was even more favorable...
"Most Americans want the government to forgive at least some of the $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loan debt.
Some 62% of voters support student loan forgiveness, according to a poll of nearly 2,000 registered voters conducted in December by Morning Consult...
Nearly 30% said that student loan debt shouldn’t be forgiven at all, and 10% had no opinion."
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/22/more-than-60percent-of-voters-support-some-student-loan-debt-forgiveness.html
...With only 30% opposed to any loan forgiveness. Are you suggesting that representatives who align with the 30% should be able to outvote the majority?
And I have a rational, moral question for you, Marshal:
"Among borrowers who still owe money on their student loans, just 37% of all borrowers saw their student loan balance shrink according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."
Some students who owe money are and have been paying their debt... and their loan amount isn't shrinking!!
Do you agree that this is wrong? That it should not be?
I suppose you're aware that in the OT, the laws condemned/forbade usury - the charging of ANY interest, at least to fellow Hebrews.
“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him." (Ex 22)
You could not charge interest - period - to "any of my people who are poor..."
Thou. Shalt. Not.
First of all, you DO agree that this is not speaking of "spiritually poor," but actually fiscally poor and struggling, right?
Secondly, do you get WHY this is a reasonable demand/expectation? Do you understand how the poor have, throughout history, been oppressed by the charging of interest for loans - and especially of high interest?
Re: "Forgive us our DEBTS..." vs "Trespasses" or "sins":
We see it reflected in Luke 11:4 and Matthew 6:12 ["forgive us our debts..."], in which what we forgive is derived from the Greek
aphiemi,
which means
to release or remit a debt, with
both monetary and non-monetary connotations.
By contrast, Matthew 6:14 uses the word
paraptoma, to “trespass” or “sin.”
André Trocmé, the French pastor who, with his wife Magda, saved thousands of Jews from Nazi deportation, explains that paraptoma was written into Matthew 6:14
to ensure that other sorts of debt were added to the financial meaning already clear
in Matthew 6:12.
“The material connotation of the word ‘debts’ in the Lord’s Prayer,” Trocmé wrote,
“was so obvious that Jesus thought it fitting to add a commentary to the prayer,
to explain that the words concerning the debts also applied to ‘trespasses’ in general.”
Trocmé’s reading of two sorts of forgiving ― monetary and non-monetary ―
follows the Church fathers.
Tertullian, for instance, explained his understanding of forgiveness through the parable of the wicked servant,
who refuses to forgive a financial debt even when his own is forgiven
(Matthew 18:21-25).
“For the fact that the same servant, set free by his Lord, does not likewise
spare his debtoi [does not forgive his debtor],” Tertullian writes,
“fits in with this, that we profess that we also forgive our debtors.”
Linking what we forgive to the wicked-servant parable, Tertullian brings financial debt into what we are to forgive, using debtoi or monetary debtor."
Church historian Christoph Markschies sums up, saying that through antiquity,
the debts we are to forgive were understood as both monetary and non-monetary:
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/forgive-our-debts-the-economics-of-the-lords-prayer/11314116
The later human theory held by perhaps some (although Marshal has provided no support) that these terms could not mean monetary debts is just that: A modern and unsupported theory. A great "Nyuh Uh," in Marshal's parlance.
"I've said that those who are denouncing debt forgiveness are denouncing principles found in the Bible and basic tenets of Christianity."
Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were arguing against another strawman you've erected. No one is denouncing "debt forgiveness". We're denouncing the transferring of student loans to those who are not responsible for paying them off. We're denouncing the moronic notion that Biden canceling student loans is "debt forgiveness", which it isn't as I've clearly explained in language so plain even the likes of you two should understand it. And I'm denouncing YOUR lame corruption of the Biblical principles, given you don't seem to understand who gets to denounce a debt. I hope this clears things up a bit for you.
"You are free to think that we shouldn't apply this OT notion of regular debt forgiveness for the purpose of helping the poorer amongst our citizens, but you can't say it's unbiblical. Understand the difference?"
If this is what's going on, you might have a point. But it's not. This debt canceling isn't merely a matter of helping poor kids...none of whom had a gun held to their heads when the willingly entered into a contract requiring them to pay back loans. Are you now going to pervert the situation to pretend it's about poor kids? That would be yet another strawman.
You then go on to bring up Jubilee, but you fail to understand it. It does not support your desire to make other people pay for any student's loans. YOU personally, are quite free to cough up enough dough to lessen someone's financial burden, no matter how stupid they were to take out a loan to study something that won't earn them enough to easily pay it back. Indeed, Joe Biden has enough China money to pay off several loans, no doubt. But that's not what's happening in this case and no Scripture covers forcing others to pay off loans. And that's what's truly happening in this case...the forcible taking of our tax dollars to pay off the loans to which students and/or their families willingly agreed.
That is to say, there was no "trap". The terms of any loan agreement are easy to see and if one is unsure, one is obliged to hold off until one can be. The accumulation of interest debt is the result of not paying according to the terms. But the total can be calculated prior to signing the loan agreement. That is, I knew how much more than the cost of my house (or car) I'd be paying if I simply paid the monthly payments, versus how much I could save with a greater down payment, more money paid on the principle each month, etc. There's no "trap". There's only those whining about the consequences of their own stupidity or ignorance.
This covers you comment from August 28, 2022 at 3:27 PM. I'll respond to your others when time allows.
Marshal...
This covers you comment from August 28, 2022 at 3:27 PM. I'll respond to your others when time allows.
Please answer the questions in bold before making further comments. You'll answer the questions I ask or you will be deleted.
Having said that, I'll leave your last comment to address some more points and get you to answer further questions.
Marshal...
none of whom had a gun held to their heads when the willingly entered into a contract requiring them to pay back loans. Are you now going to pervert the situation to pretend it's about poor kids?
1. People who are poorer often feel like they had a gun to their heads. They feel desperate because of their circumstances. But it's true that they got into that debt and they owed it.
2. In some (many?) cases, they have been paying off the debt but they find themselves in a situation where the original debt is paid/nearly paid AND YET, they still owe twice or more what they originally borrowed. This is the corrosive nature of debt being paid with interest. I've dealt with this above. Please answer the questions put to you.
3. People in the OT who were in debt likewise also got there on their own with the circumstances of their day and they owed the debt. And yet, God didn't feel the need to belittle them.
Marshal...
We're denouncing the transferring of student loans to those who are not responsible for paying them off.
ALL debt is the transferring of the debt. In the OT when the poor owed money to the current landowner or whoever and it was required that the debt be forgiven, then the debt was transferred to the landowner. That's what loan forgiveness is. SOMEONE ELSE paying for your debt.
Who was it who said we are our brother's keeper? Who was it who said, "What you do for the least of these, you did to me..."? Who was it who said "Forgive us our debts, AS WE FORGIVE THOSE our debtors..."?
We are mutually responsible for one another. At least, in a rational world, we recognize the need for this.
No one is an island.
Understand these points?
You've enjoyed the largesse of the taxpayer for years. You drive on roads you didn't personally pay for, go to schools and receive an education you didn't personally pay for, you work with and amongst people who've been educated with an education you didn't personally pay for. We are all entwined and paying each others way already.
That sentence above should have read "ALL debt forgiveness is the transferring of the debt." It's debt owed by one being paid for by someone else. In traditional atonement theories of salvation, the "sin debt" owed by you is being paid for by Jesus. He's taking on your debt. Somehow.
In the real world as spoken of in the OT, the Hebrews who were owed financially were to literally forgive that debt and take it on themselves. In the NT when Jesus said "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," the word he used is referring specifically to financial debts, although it could include other metaphorical debts, as well. But we see the expectation of actual cash/goods going from the wealthy group to the poor/marginalized - those who owed and may end up in actual prison because of their actual debt - and thus, their debt taken on and relieved by this expectation. Jesus expected that the wealthy ruler would sell his belongings and give the proceeds to the poor TO BE SAVED. Literally what Jesus told him. Jesus expected his followers to sell their belongings and give to the poor. Literally what Jesus said. Zaccheus literally returned money to the poor that he'd oppressed and legally robbed in that system, enabling them to repay their debts.
It's there throughout the Bible for those with eyes to see.
More on how Jubilee/Sabbath themes are tied directly into Jesus' Good News to the literally poor and marginalized...
From, I presume, the Vatican...
The way in which Luke quotes Isaiah presents also details which reveal a certain manner of interpreting the jubilee year. After speaking of "proclaiming (...) to the blind new sight" Luke adds: "to set the downtrodden free",
an expression inspired by another passage of Isaiah, (Is 58,6)
where its serves to define the "fasting" which pleases God;
this authentic fasting does not consist in observing ritual ("hanging your head like a reed, lying down on sackcloth and ashes": Is 58,5), rather, it is
"to break unjust fetters and undo the throngs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke": (Is 58,6).
The effect of this addition in the Gospel is therefore greater insistence on the fact that the jubilee year must be a year of liberation. This aspect was already present in the prophecy of Isaiah 61,1-2 which said they were "to proclaim liberty to captives"; the Gospel underlines this, repeating for a second time "set free"
https://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01031997_p-22_en.html
And more...
https://www.theologyofwork.org/old-testament/leviticus-and-work/the-sabbath-year-and-the-year-of-jubilee-leviticus-25
https://www.jubileeusa.org/faith/faith-and-worship-resources/debt-cancellation-a-biblical-norm.html
The conclusion long ago was that Marshal, Craig, et al goons, were committed to being brutality loving, hateful white men. But Scripture wont back them up on that. Their faith is in white male supremacy, the coinage of America for some 60+ milion white people, a consistent minority of non-white men: and around 8% of black people.
Craig just loooooooves listening to the voices of 8% of poisoned black folks.
Marshal doesn't know how - not having the mental resources - to respnod per se. He just spews.
Meanwhile, oddly for a brutalizing conspiracy reactionary, Craig is trying to convince us that the NFL needs to keep a kind of prejudicial favorability for white NFL head coaches. Craig agrees with one data point - that the NFL is made up of 70% black players... but then he goes on to ignore it. There has long been pressure to make sure that owners are including coaches of color when they hire a new head coach. Four coaches have revealed that owners dismiss the possiblity of non-white hires out of hand, despite the rule to interview. One would think that an organization whose revenue is made by a 70% majority black meritocracy - after all, players are picked on performace and, obviously, draw fans and marketing revenue by their performance - one would think that coaches, almost all of whom played the game at a high level in order to understand it and make strategy, would resemble the meritocracy. But Craig misplaces that fact with which he begins and bizarrely says head coaches of color should only approximate the general US population. Craig doesn't understand that this is affirmative action for white head coaches.
Something he abhors for non-meritocratic access to community goods and services and equal opportunity employment.
What's new? Craig never grasps the implication of how he begins to think. He always veers off into the fog.
Marshal, as always, dumb and vulgar attacks with no content to them may well be deleted. Be a better person than that.
On topic comments with supported claims (as opposed to stupidly false claims) and which respectfully answer questions directly will remain.
It's not brain science.
Look, you've posted two comments that I let stand even though they were not especially well-wrought and with on topic commentary or supported claims. Answer questions respectfully, rationally and with support and they remain.
Simple.
Marshal is the coward. By his own words he condemns himself. I have not complied in the manner he insists: I wont will myself to ignorance. I respond as I best see fit: with critical reasoning, directness that he cannot stand, and to points that he cannot bear for shame. I am a man. Marshal is the coward avoiding all decency and self respect.
The raging right and milquetoast neoliberals “love to say ‘pay your debts’ until the word “reparations’ comes up.”
Nina Turner
*one of the 90% of black voices Craig’s conscience cannot bear to listen to.
Marshal and Craig would extol the GI Bill. It put millions of white men and their families into the middle and upper middle classes.
But denied a million black soldiers and women who worked in the homeland factories.
Debt forgiveness is a general, large scale swath of partial justice, no doubt. A good for many newly educated people, who themselves become a good for us as their contributions accure over the years to the general society larger than they could have before debt forgiveness. Just like the GI Bill.
And prominent beneficiaries of the GI Bill became philosophers, poets, classics professors, psycholgists, political scientists, etc, who crticized capitalism, patriarchy, and brutalizing systems of the US - having read Marx, Freud, and Darwin and funneled them through a critique as well... as smart people do.
Questions I asked Marshal to answer.
"A question I insist you answer: Can you name even ONE early Christian scholar who thought the multiple references to wealth and poverty should all/mostly be taken metaphorically?"
Marshal...
Origen was among the earliest of Christian scholars who had a different idea than you with regards to Luke 4:18-19.
That's it. Marshal SAYS that Origen says that the references to wealth and poverty should be taken metaphorically.
Marshal gave ZERO support for this claim.
Score: Reality - 1
Marshal - 0
Nonetheless, I didn't delete it. His inability to find EVEN ONE early scholar who agrees with Marshal's hunches stands for all to see.
Dan:
Some students who owe money are and have been paying their debt... and their loan amount isn't shrinking!!
Do you agree that this is wrong? That it should not be?
Marshal never directly answered, but he did give this:
If these to which you're referring aren't shrinking, it's because they're not paying the amount they should be paying every month to eliminate the debt.
So, Marshal says that if a person who owes money still owes money long after they've paid the original amount, that it's the debtors fault.
"Forgive me my debts, even as I blame the stupid other debtors who still owe money and aren't me."
Marshal is fine with exploitative excessive interest rates, as long as the poor person signed a loan. Loan sharks? No problem. Pay the debt x 100%? No problem. It's the fault of the stupid borrower, according to Marshal.
Let them eat cake is the kind of thing that the rich often cavalierly say. But Marshal sides with the rich in blaming the poor for their own poverty.
Privilege is a cancer.
Like that. Marshal either doesn't answer or he gives bad, immoral, unjust answers. I'm not sure how much I'll bother wading through his non-answers and bad-answers.
After multiple times where Marshal accused me of being a Marxist, I asked him to define it.
His response:
You've played this dishonest game before and you are trying it again. You want to insist that because you might not be the most perfect example of socialist or marxist then any allegations of you being either or both are untrue. It doesn't work that way...
You are socialist/marxist up to the point where anyone actually uses those terms to describe you, and then you whine it is untrue and make typical leftist token expressions of capitalism which fail to convince.
His inability to respond to this VERY BASIC respectful, rational request is the last straw. He's gone. Marshal, if you want to answer this question, you may. Otherwise, get lost.
You can't make stupidly false claims and this is just your go-to idiocy. You are behaving like a perverse child trying to bully your petty little way through life. Worse. You're behaving like Trump.
"To be human is to put on the whole armor of love of truth, and the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak to love and beauty. And beauty must wrestle with terror and in the face of trauma to be a wounded healer." Cornel West
This is the only christian choice.
Marshal and Craig and the other goons sense the tremedous vulnerabilitiy and humility in the only choice possible for the Christian. White people since we were created in the crucible of slavery - as unworthy beneficiaries of the dispossession of Others of land, labor, limb, and life (as if anyone would be worthy of such criminal advantage) - have warded off this sole choice of the Christian and Marshal and Craig and the other goons are committed to whiteness. Whiteness is their faith.
Jesus didn't run the temple sellers out with cords because he hated rich people. He did it because he loved the poor and the oppressed. People committed to be unconscious of our own oppression of others cannot bear to hear this and so repress it where our unconscious must stay silent, shouted out by the narratives of white supremacy deplorably clothed in the cross.
Marshal and Craig and the deplorables are visciously believe that MAGA brutality is justified in the white man. It is sick and destrucdtive and violence begetting ideology that is tearing our democracy apart at the moment. Lies have surrounded us white people all during out childhoods and they have not let them go. It is their faith to lie.
Using abusive, vulgar language, Marshal complained that his comments were deleted.
I asked Marshal answer some specific questions that were reasonable and he took a shot at answering some of them but others he didn't. I said if he answered the questions, I wouldn't delete but the problem was that within one comment, he'd answer some questions and complete dodge others, saying he didn't have to answer them.
Marshal, I know you have a sense of privilege and entitlement that is common to white men, but you don't get to call all the shots or get your own way every time.
You have made repeated claims that I am a Marxist and a socialist. This, in spite of me NEVER saying I was either of those. I gave you a chance, though, saying "Define Marxism as you're using it." You opted not to do so.
If you can't play by the rules, don't complain when you are removed from the game.
In other words, grow up. Be respectful. Stop whining. Use your reason, not vulgar attack nonsense.
This isn't a middle school playground.
Jesus didn’t want to be a perfect socialist either. Or a perfect Marxist variety of a socialist. Marshal doesn’t know the differing varieties that don’t altogether agree with each other.
Neither was Jesus the perfect astrophysicist or immunologist or democratic advocate.
Those were not central to his purpose.
Which was to teach the divine call to love the good, the true, and the beauty of god’s cosmic creation and oppose greed and brutality. Firstly, therefore, we must love the least respected of us: the widow, the child, the prisoner, the foreigner, the poor. We cannot perceive faith in Christ unless we will ourselves, by the powers of love from him, to live in love with the good and the true and the beautiful.
Marshal and Craig and the other goons cannot fathom the gospel message because they love their brutalizing whiteness waaaaaay too much: they believe in whiteness.
You know, the tragic thing is how Marshal, Craig, and their thug brothers are sooooo self hating!
Almost all of us white people are a mixed bag of Europeans who came not as wealthy planters or Mayflower protestants. Our families all arrived fleeing famine, poverty, INDEBTEDNESS, interminable wars and dispossession by greedy, authoritarian oligarchs... and the consequences of criminality because of famine, poverty, indebtedness, and interminable civil wars.
Yet, these goons choose to ignore who we really came from becuase we were all taught white exceptionality. Only now is the lie revealed that we all got here exactly like all other, non-white, immigrants [not slaves] got here except for native Americans: famine, poverty, indebtedness, and unceasing civil war.
But they do not benefit from being included in the unmerited privileges of whiteness - not even Spanish speakers: a European language.
And in order to repress these memories and the way in which our poverty made us collude with oligarchic slavery or the dispossession of Jim Crow, we white people have done damage to ourselves with lie up on lie, brutality upon brutality in thought, word, and deed.
And here Marshal, Craig, and the other thugs are, embracing the violence prone fascist-like behavior their ancesters fled from. MAGA Republicanism is baptised in White Supremacy. It's a destructive ideology tearing at our democracy.
It's one of the reasons I'm so very pro-immigrant and refugee. My family may literally have died out if we hadn't been allowed to escape religious persecution in France by coming to the Americas. They were a relatively wealthy family that escaped with almost nothing.
We should all remember that sort of thing.
But what do we do with a full third (ish, give or take, to greater and lesser degrees) of the nation that has bought into this madness? Biden's taking a nuanced and measured step in denouncing that part of the GOP that has gone all maga-like and bought into/been conned by Trump.
Fortunately, he won't be around in an election cycle or two - he can't be very healthy, no matter how much healthcare being a billionaire (ish) can buy.
Craig claims to be listening to black voices.
Kaepernick took a solemn knee in protest of state violence. Like the MLK you’re all of a sudden soft on.
Craig? Outraged.
Farve took millions from a welfare fund for a volleyball stadium.
Craig? Crickets.
Craig isn’t listening to black voices. Craig culls out the 2% he likes.
And Marshal thrills to abusing migrants like a human trafficker. He’s full of lies and violence.
I happened to be in Martha’s Vineyard last week. The migrants were completely cared for.
DeSantis spent millions of taxpayers money to fly 50 migrants to heaven. While 50 million migrants in Florida do work slobs like Marshal won’t do.
And now there’s an investigation into abusing these migrants like the human traffickers Marshal, Craig, and thugs et al, “pretend” to despise but emulate.
And then, of course, there’s this:
“New footage confirms fake Trump elector spent hours inside Georgia elections office day it was breached“
Finally, three months ago, Conservatives were arguing to the Supreme Court that abortion should be state matter.
Obviously they lied through their teeth in order to achieve sharia laws.
1. They weren’t electors and had no official right to be there. That’s always a danger to free elections. And your commitment to believe lies and myths is pathetic rage.
2. Conservatives used to be fine with abortion before your commitment to racial segregation became a loser idea. So…. presto change, “let’s focus on the fetus” by which you guys have making lives that are female lesser in human rights than men. Good job “values police.”
3. Way to stay ignorant. A Texas county sheriff is investigating lies that were told these migrants who have a federally protected right to walk the streets of San Antonio until their case is heard. Shadowy figures gave them pamphlets and told them they were being taken to a place where they’d be given work. Florida didn’t do that to Cubans when they fled.
That’s some Deep State shit you guys love and blame others for. Nero anyone? Himmler? That’s your company.
4. Kaepernick took a knee to oppose whimsical state executions on the street. MLK stopped traffic on highways for the same reason.
You’re always fucking yourself, Marshal.
Among the many legal and ethical questions DeSantis raised with his stunt was a simple logistical one: Why didn’t he start with migrants in his own state?
“The problem is, we’re not seeing mass movements of them into Florida, so you end up with a car with maybe two,” DeSantis told reporters at a news conference.
“It’s just coming in onesie, twosies,” he said.
___
So... he interferred with another State's issue? And he belongs to Conservatives (States Rights!)
No. He's just kidnapping people under false pretenses for publicity.
He's a brutalist and Marshal obviously loves brutality.
Marshal blocks me and whines when he faces only screening.
Marshal is fragile and self deceiving.
Marshal, you are not blocked. EVERY COMMENT you make shows up here. I've simply laid down some expectations:
* You can't use language that's abusive or rape-y about women.
* You can't use language that's demeaning or oppressive of others, of people of color, LGBTQ folks, etc.
* You can't make claims without supporting them. Especially the stupidly false type.
* In this particular post, YOU made a claim that I was a Marxist/socialist (as you tend to do). I've made clear that you need to answer some questions, including simply providing your definition of Marxist/socialist.
If you can't be respectful and follow rules, then your comments will be deleted. This is not unreasonable.
My moral responsibility here, Marshal, is to hold out hope that this can be a teachable moment for you. I doubt it: your track record is to kill off your moral sensitivities. But I must act as if there is a chance. Because there is.
The apparent contradicditon you think you are pointing out is easily seen as just erasure of thought and judgment. To wit:
a. It is immoral because it is racist, misogynist, and bigoted to judge people by the various identities we carry as the way in which we view the world.
Thus, " You can't use language that's demeaning or oppressive of others, of people of color, LGBTQ folks, etc"
People should be respected. Rules should be observed. My responding to you is the utmost of respect. My responses stay within the rules of reason that all ethical people live by.
Your claim of hypocrisy is a lie and mythmaking in order to repress you consciousness of the self-harm you are doing to your conscience.
How can I say this and still be respecting you? Because I expect you to grow. And growth only comes from the following:
b. It is a moral imperative to name bad behavior. Because society must be protected from creeping attacks on our civility, our mutual bonds, and our democratic fabric. So, it has to be said that...
You love actions of brutality in public because in your armchair talk, you thrill to it. Simple reading of your blog and responses and the way you have chosen to commit yourself to this latest wave of racist, misgynist, and bigoted wave of diffuse, chaotic, irrational, raging violence in word and deed that has caught up 60+ million white Americans for the last 30 years... as a regressive response to progressive change in human rights in our time, at least in our own laws.
This is not something you are marked with by necessity. It is something you choose to perform. And it is judged that way.
____
c. If Colin Kaepernick was not kneeling because of whimsical police killings of black people, make a claim - and find reasonable, external support for it - as to why he was kneeling.
Or give in to facts and stop fucking yourself. Turning away from fucking yourself is in your hands.
Do you deny as well that MLK shut down highways?
You affirm Dan’s rule by quoting him and claiming that he’s hypocritical with his own rule: “you can't make claims without supporting them.”
And then you wrote a screed with zero support or evidence.😂😂😂
You just fucked your self.
Also here: “You can't even defend Kap's claims he uses to rationalize kneeling. "Whimsical killings of black people"??? Rank bullshit...racist bullshit at that!! There's been no example given by him of such a thing, but rather the false claim that recent (at the time) deaths of thugs during confrontations with cops were unjustified.”
So you think it’s a deep state false flag actor using fact that scores of police officers have been fired, indicted, tried, and jailed? 😂😂😂
Feodor, I'd like you to stop using the F word like that here. WTF? I'm okay with. But I'm generally not a fan of the word in most contexts.
...and that has nothing to do with Marshal's hypocritical whining. I just don't care for the word in many contexts.
Dan, I'd like you to support your request with evidentiary reasoning.
And while you think about that, let me give you mine for the use of the word:
1. Jesus whipped money changers with cords. Your post here is about debt forgiveness. So... I'm not even being physical with Marshal.
2. Are we to read Jesus in Jerusalem as modeling violence only for economic oppressions? In Marshal and the other thugs (it's way past time for truth telling language) we are faced with committed racists, committed misogynists, committed bigots. If whipping is for ancient snake oil salesmen, is it not for those who act to take human rights away from living people?
3. Having married into and fostering a black family - and I've said this to you before: I have skin in the game. Living flesh. Do you?
Marshal calls 12 year old Tamir Rice a thug. He calls Breonna Taylor, sleeping in her bed, a thug. He calls 17 year old Trayvon Martin a thug. I'd whip him with cords for that. Because I love people and people love me who are black and who live with group existential worry about themselves and their elder parents and their children and their grandchildren just because they are black in America.
What do Marshal and Craig and Stan and the fake bagpiper and the other goons have to do with this? They are the colluding and collective Will that undergirds and continues the state of things that introject into our white made up makeup an instinctual fear of black bodies. Before we even know them as persons. And if we have a gun, it calls out to that instinct pulling at the fear to say that it is ready to protect whiteness.
What language, Dan, do you suggest I use in the face of these facts?
4. I live in NY. This is how we refuse to cover over dehumanizing rhetoric with southern, nice politesse. Your NYC children may divest themselves of that, too, in time.
5. To respond to Marshal with the facts that face him and to which he plunges into the moral abyss rather than find himself worthy of growth, it is symbolically true - and an address of caution TO HIM - to say he is fucking himself.
And while we are at the intersection of racism and misogyny, this guy, too, is fucking himself:
"A Michigan candidate for the US House backed by former President Donald Trump once railed against giving women the right to vote, arguing that America has “suffered” since women’s suffrage.
John Gibbs, who defeated in the primary an incumbent Republican who had voted to impeach Trump, also made comments in the early 2000s praising an organization trying to repeal the 19th Amendment which also argued that women’s suffrage had made the United States into a “totalitarian state.”
Mr Gibbs, btw, is a black man. And presumably speaks with a kind of black voice to which Marshal and Craig capriciously listen.
You called the black victims of spontaneous police executions who are the the honored dead of Kaepernick's somber kneeling, thugs.
Dan deleted your comments precisely becasue you did so. It's such a psychotic Trump move to think that since your comment was deleted it didn't exist.
You fucked yourself again, in you delusion.
? I'm requesting you not use that word simply out of personal preference.
As for the reasoning for my personal preference, it shouldn't really matter, but here it is, for what it's worth: I grew up in a white male dominated world and in that context, many (conservative) white men used that term as part of their oppression process. "F'ing [insert your oppressed minority group here]!" And they used it as part of their threats of implied violence ("You're going to f'ing pay..." "we'll f*** you up..."). It was part of the white male system of violent oppression and for that reason, I don't generally use it and I'm saying I'd rather you not use it here, at least as a rule. And here, you've been using it repeatedly in many of the last several comments you've made.
Also, you're a man of intelligence and words. It's not like removing that ONE WORD from your vocabulary here would restrict you from using strong words of condemnation for oppressive acts and actors. Diabolical, demented, dangerous, deadly, damnable, despicable... There are just a few from the Ds. I'm not at all saying you can't condemn bad actions or bad acts. I'm just saying don't use that word.
Simple enough.
I love it when Marshal does what he convinces himself is the liberal thing and just erases a passage of the gospel. Jesus used cords, Marshal. On snake oil salesmen oppressing the people. Like you do.
He was sensitive to economic oppression because his family was relatively poor: they did not have money enough for the temple sacrifice of a lamb for Mary's cleansing after childbirth. So they did what poorer families did: the bought two turtledoves.
In the meantime, Dan, don't you think Craig should read a book? LIke a current book?
"But according to obstetrics and gynecology experts, Abrams is correct in saying there is no heartbeat at six weeks. At that stage of the embryo’s development, the chambers and valves of the heart ― the opening and closing of which create the heartbeat sound ― don’t exist yet.
A rhythmic noise can be heard via an ultrasound machine at six weeks. But according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), it’s “clinically inaccurate” to use the word “heartbeat” to describe that sound.
“In fact, there are no chambers of the heart developed at the early stage in pregnancy that this word is used to describe, so there is no recognizable ‘heartbeat,’” ACOG says. “What pregnant people may hear is the ultrasound machine translating electronic impulses that signify fetal cardiac activity into the sound that we recognize as a heartbeat.”
An embryo has not developed enough to be called a fetus until around 10 weeks. And it’s not until roughly 17 to 20 weeks of gestation that the chambers of the heart have been developed and can be detected via ultrasound, ACOG says."
Ok, so, you've not responded, Dan, to my overt question regarding trauma. So, I assume that is not the issued. In which case, I have thoughts I want to share with you as like-minded e-friend.
I'll just take the first two notes and say that you and I both know that we of all people should not be telling other people what they can and cannot say. Silencing others has a massive history of white male power. And, in miniature, that is what you tried.
Second, when you were confronted, quite innocently abou, t what you tried to do - I asked you for an explanation of your reasons - you took yet another well trodden path of whtieness and claimed that you had no obligation to give one to someone whom you wanted to change what they had to say. You felt youd didn't need to answer a direct question about the requirement of the change of behavior of an other. That's just privilege and supremacy - writ small, no doubt - but it's cultural white supremacy performed in a small part of dialogue between us.
Let's see how these may be considered by you before I press on.
It's not a well-guarded secret that the word in question, especially when used in certain ways, is widely considered offensive. Many people find it abusive and troubling, especially depending on how it's used. I simply asked you to not use it at least frequently.
It's not an irrational request.
It's not like I'm a prude above using strong language. I just don't personally care to see it overused.
You are free to continue using it or not and I am free to delete comments that I deem to be offensive. I've done it for Marshal and you and others in the past and will continue to do so.
Your attempt to make this about my whiteness seems, on the face of it, a bit petty and irrational.
That was me, Dan.
And my argument is that using it in the face of committed racists isn't over using it. It is the right use.
Offensive language is cultural. If I wrote that Marshal was bloody tosser pillock, I'm sure you wound not be fazed.
It's no a well-guarded secret - unless from you - that one does not truly live in NYC without its daily use. Unless one only lives in massively white dominent spaces with white people who haven't lived here all that long. It's even obvious to Marshal, for all his blosdy tosser pillock behavior, that male black conversation is filled with what you find offensive. My world is filled with what you find offensive. It's cultural for men who must deal with being conspicuous in public because of being black or brown; offensive language is, as I've written before, bonding by being funny and showing that performative friendship is not wanted (even though the language is performative for just that business of representing a mood, a nod, a cozy collusion in how we get through the day).
Marshal, at the very least, is a simple template for what actually goes on in reality, and not your white abstraction... which is cultural. Not only is real life in NYC a well guarded secret from you but so is real life in Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, DC, and Baltimore.
And this is the case for the simple reason that Louisville carries the legacy of Southern Nice White Politesse. SNWP. This, of course, is an antebellum ideology for controlling the anger regarding slavery, class oppression, and oligarchic high society. When oligarchic high society, as small as it was in Louisville and everywhere else for that matter, the leaders of the society, economic, legal, Chrisian, etc, would admonish all those expressing righteous anger to cool it: hot heads upset the apple cart; anger is indecent; passions are sinful; fomenting anger tears at the fabric of the commonweal.
This, as we both know, was simply a strategy to keep everything in place, just as is.
This is how change, progress in all its aspects has been delayed in 400 years.
Offensive language is only truly offensive to those who don't live on the coasts or in actively diverse cities: white people and many of those of color who are forced to survive nice white culture by supporting it.
For the rest of us, admittedly a minority of the total population, offensive language is a tool. And like all tools, the good and the bad use it to talk to and argue at each other.
So, back to an earlier question, Dan, that is the basis for my language regarding Marshal's racism:
Do you think he is evil or demented? Which would mean not entirely in control due to hardwiring flaws in his brain.
Or do you think he is wilfully choosing to be a sick racist and bigoted bastard in his inner consciousness and, for smart reasons, also wilfully choosing to be strategic with his language so he himself doesn't demonstrate that truth outright, thereby providing rhetorically incontrovertible evidence on his moral character?
As I see it, the second option is the case. In which circumstance, he is f*&%in himself in the head.
And this! IS offensive. And horrifying.
On vacation.
-Dan
You called the unarmed murdered that Colin Kaepernick was calling the nation's attention to in his somber, reverent, unobstructive kneelilng before a game.... you called the dead, "thugs."
But your instinctual repsonse to the possiblity that Bret Favre embezzeled federal dollars for his pet projects and to relieve his own debt... was to find nothing in it.
Marshal, racism is unconscious generally, subconscious on occasions. You know, dimly, the truth about yourself. And therefore have to repress awareness.
You are fucking yourself in the head and you should stop. Take time to really pay attention to the thoughts and feelings and half formed concepts that arise out of ugly feelings... all tripping across your subconsciousness, in and out of the clouds of you will to be ignorant.
"Breonna Taylor found love with two different thugs and due to her association with them, she died as a consequence of the actions of the thug who was at the time her current beau."
This is another teaching moment for you, Marshal. Here is what Dan and I and humankind and all just standards of truth and goodness and beauty and god and Christ see as evidence of your fathomless racist hate and self destructive rage.
___
The funds that Brett Favre received for speaking fees and redirecting to a pharmaceutical company he invests in and for a volleyball stadium - funds that he pushed for in phone texts even after he was warned that it may be illegal to use the funds in these wasy has been questioned - and for which he has been questioned by the FBI... are from TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) is the program that replaced AFDC — Aid to Families with Dependent Children — in the welfare reform of 1996. With the aim of “ending welfare as we know it,” TANF ended direct entitlement cash payments to poor families with children and created a block grant to states that they could use toward four statutorily dictated goals:
(1) provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives;
(2) end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage;
(3) prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and establish annual numerical goals for preventing and reducing the incidence of these pregnancies; and
(4) encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.
6 people in Mississippi have been indicted for fraud in mispent dollars like the above. 2 have pleaded guilty. 38 are named in a civil suit brought by the state.
Brett Favre has not been indicted.
He is innocent, of course, unless charged, tried, and found guilty.
Breonna Taylor dated a man who appears to have engaged in criminal activity like drug running and murder. She quite dating him but he continued to use her address and her bank statements. She moved on to date Kenneth Walker, who has never been found guilty of anything, had all charges brought against him dropped WITH prejudice and his counter suit against the Louisville Metro Police moves on past an attempt to stop it.
So. Breonna Taylor is as innocent as, at least for now, Brett Favre is.
But, even though Mr Favre is so far in the clear, according to Marshal's moral calculus, Mr Favre's decision to have intercourse with fraudulent actors who stole federal black grants for the poor... should entitile Favre to jail time, too.
After all, Ms Taylor was murdered. Snuffed out. Lost her who life.
And Marshal justifies it.
By Marshal's judgment, Mr Favre, though innocent like Ms Tayloy should spend a thousand times more time in jail than the sentence that will be received by those who admitted committing fraud... "due to [his] association with them."
That's Marshal's moral calculus.
But would that be Marshal's judgment? Would he agree with his own measure of justice? Ms Taylor's murder is no injustice because of the man she associated with but had done with. Mr Favre should face the same measure... if Marshal understand his own standard. But of course Marshal would not countenance Mr Favre being sent to jail before evidence was heard.
Ms Taylor he sends to death without a blink of an eye.
____
Obviously, Marshal sees black people and thinks, "monsters."
And Marshal sees white people and thinks, "superior, exceptional, forgivable"
You are sickening. And it is sickening to watch as you fuck yourself in your head.
Marshal: "On what basis does a Christian presume such a thing about another person with whom the Christian has no personal relationship, and about whom there is no history of such behavior to which you've seen fit to point out?"
But then, Marshal, who had no personal relationship with Ms Taylor and about whom Marshal knows nothing about what she knew or didn't know, gets the prejudged treatment : "Again, what evidence is there to suggest her actions on behalf of thugs (bailing them out...the use of her home to store drugs and money...and other allegations)." Ms Taylor's apartment was not searched. You are making up lies. And why was it not searched? Because the man they were looking for was no longer with her, hadn't been for some time but was using her address.
Ms Taylor was living with Kenneth Walker who is not a thug. Who used his gun just as Marshal would have him do: people who did not declare themselves trying to force their way in and firing shots wildly.
If Ms Taylor wasn't with the guy who seems to have committed crimes, was with an innocent guy, and the police gunned her down in her bed... she was murdered without reason and completely by mistake.
But Marshal sees black people in his mind and thinks, "monsters."
Marshal: "Where is it said he had direct connection with any fraudulent actors with full knowledge those actors are of questionable character..."
But then, Marshal, who, on the face of it, admits that he cannot know what either Brett Favre or Ms Taylor knew or didn't know: "Consorting with thugs is not innocence."
Brett Favre was consorting - and we have physical evidence - with people who have admitted fraud in the whole scheme. "According to text messages and court filings, the idea to divert funds to the volleyball facility appears to have been discussed at a July 2017 meeting that included Favre, John Davis, the head of Mississippi’s welfare agency (known as the Department of Human Services, DHS), and Nancy New, whose charity was getting millions in grants from the state agency. New, Davis and Favre are defendants in the state's civil suit."
Mr Davis and Ms New have pleaded guilty.
Marshal, who, on the face of it, admits that he cannot know what either Brett Favre or Ms Taylor knew or didn't know:
"Consorting with thugs is not innocence."
If Marshal was living by his a moral code, he would, logically and conscientiously have to admit that Favre - knowingly or unknowingly - was consorting with thugs ready to commit a crime. He would have to stipulate that just as Ms Taylor lost her life for knowing a criminal in her past life, so Mr Favre should lose his for knowing criminals in his current life.
But Mr Favre - with whom Marshal has had no personal relationship and about whom Marshal knows nothing about what Mr Favre knew or didn't know - gets the white washed treatment: "... about whom there is no history of such behavior to which you've seen fit to point out? ..just standards of truth and goodness and beauty and god and Christ"?
Marshal sees a white man in his mind and thinks, automatically "superior, exceptional, forgivable" and, bizarrely, because Marshal knows absolutely nothing about Mr Favre's soul, "Christian."
___
Marshal, in his mind, sees a black body shot to hell by police and thinks, "they deserved it; it is Just."
Marshal, in his mind, sees a white man and thinks, "exceptional; god favored."
You are sickening, Marshal. And it is sickening to watch you fuck with your soul day after day.
Real quick, trying to do a little catch up:
I had to delete a bunch of Marshal's comments because, 1. He still won't answer the simple questions I've asked him to answer and 2. He continues to spew his racist, hateful, harmful, bigoted comments. Marshal also said...
"neither of you have yet to come close to proving I'm racist, or even producing any evidence which so much as hints of it."
When you call black men, "thugs," you are engaging in the sort of racist attacks that have long been used against black men by white men of privilege and power. That IS a racist comment. When you use that term against a man who has done nothing wrong who happens to be black, you are engaging in stupidly false racist commentary. And Feodor would not be mistaken to note that such thinking/language/attacks ARE "fucked up." It's sick and unhealthy and racist.
For my part, that's not me calling you racist. It's noting the reality of you gladly repeatedly using racist language. Does that make you a racist? Perhaps. But it certainly makes you an ally of racist who engages in racist language and attacks.
You can't do that here.
I'm not trying to "prove your racist." I'm merely noting the reality of your racist, abusive, ugly-as-hell language. And engaging in such language EVEN AFTER you've been educated as to why it is racist IS "evidence which so much as hints of it."
As to the use of "fucked," as a strong insult, I am telling you I just prefer it not be used regularly and probably not at all, Feodor. There are other words. And while I'm sure it may be common in your circles of friends, black and white, in NYC, it's not at all normative for all people in all places. Some people - black, white and otherwise - see the word being used or overused at a website/by a person and they just decide that's not a website they want to regularly visit.
It's not the tone I want to set here. Beyond that, I don't really want to see cussing matches going back and forth between you and conservatives on my space here. There are other words that suffice.
When I have more time, I'll try to address some of your questions/comments about it.
I will start to screen the use of the word, Dan.
After saying the word, "fuck", is a metaphor, when not actually referring to sex. It is an emotional metaphor. And, as I've written but you cannot yet acknowledge, I will once again oppose your use of "insult" which I have never used it as and, once again, say that different cultures use emotional metaphors, ESPECIALLY! sex referents, in different ways. You may try to deflect by saying "New York" but as I point out, go to any major US city on the coasts or the industrial north and you will hear it. Watch any adult movie and you will hear it. Watch cable TV and you will hear it. Read a novel, listen to biggest music industry today. Overhear athletes, cooks, lawyers, artists, poets, cleaning staff...
At least acknowledge, Dan, that white protestant, well meaning Kentucky isn't as represented as well as the rest of us are in the wider world of American English. Admit that this is one liberation you just aren't interested in, but don't lie about the majority of our society.
Further, the word, "fuck", as an emotional metaphor is very useful. It connotes explosiveness, irrationality, aggression, frustration, passion, volatility, capriciousness, etc. And anger. And just as the emotion of anger can be just or unjust, anger at women or anger at those angry towards women, just like that the word, "fuck" connotes anger, just and unjust, as well as humor, sadness, and the already mentioned above.
The word, "fuck", is polyvalent in ways very, very few words are. And this is generally true of other cultures' oft used sex metaphors. Bugger me. Bugger you. Bugger this. Bugger that.
And this is the way I have used it. As justified anger condensed into a word that carries the intensity of that anger, standing as a witness to what Marshal and Craig and Stan and the fake bagpiper and the other true thugs are doing to their moral character and their inner lives.
So, when you refuse to read me and consider what I have written and to acknowledge it in your choice of words, but instead to willfully choose to misname my use of the word as "insult," I am clear that you are responding with the whiteness that wants to deny the reality of anger in society lest all the demons birthed by white supremacy get loose.
You have entered the standard chain of psychology defenses so ready at hand when we, I include myself, white people are questioned and confronted about the white picket fences we erect in order to protect our privileged and unmerited comfort. A chain of rational-seeming rhetoric that is throw up above the rage that is manifest in more than half of us white people nationwide:
- dodge
- deny
- deflect
- divert
- disassemble
- lie
- double down on the lie
- myth make
You are already 5 steps in. Maybe think about backing back out and starting afresh with your thoughts. Actual thoughts.
Christ used cords to whip the money changers and swag sellers out of the temple. Racists won’t be met with kid gloves, Marshal.
You should repent of that. Stop screwing with your god formed conscience.
We all have something.
“Biden was talking to Fort Myers Beach Mayor Ray Murphy. It's unclear what the 2 were chatting about, but at one point the President blurts out, "No one f***s with a Biden." The Mayor responds, "You're goddamn right!"
Marshal still doesn't answer simple questions (DEFINE SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM AS YOU MEAN IT) that undermine his stupidly false and demonizing claims. And he complains of hypocrisy that I don't delete Feodor's use of "fuck" or that I have used it.
I don't know how to be more clear:
FUCK is a word. A series of consonant sounds and vowel sounds. The way it's being used here is to express extreme dissatisfaction and a sense of stupid, violent oppression. Syllables, vowels and consonants are not, in and of themselves, immoral. In the context of language, they may be viewed as harsh or overly-harsh or even vulgar, but there's nothing inherently immoral about the word. Thus, I may use the word to express extreme dissatisfaction to actual immoral words and actions, as Feodor does here. Nothing at all in the whole wide world "wrong" or "immoral" about that.
I prefer not to see it overused as a matter of practical communication, not wanting to push people away unneccessarily, but there's nothing hypocritical or immoral about it.
On the other hand, blaming the murder victim (Breonna Taylor) and her innocent boyfriend using racist words like "thug" IS immoral as hell. And such stupidly false and racist attacks won't be posted here.
Not sure what Marshal fails to understand about basic decency.
Socialism: Socialism is a form of government in which most forms of property, including at least the major means of production and natural resources, are owned or controlled by the state.
The following gives a good enough description of all three leftist extremes, which are the goals of the Democrat party to one degree or another:
https://classroom.synonym.com/differences-between-marxism-socialism-communism-17064.html
As can easily be seen by honest people, the distinctions between the three words do little to insist upon accuracy in use of any of the words for general conversation. All three apply well to those like you, despite your insistence you favor capitalism and free markets. When looking at the essential elements of any of the three words (given they are all pretty much just different by degrees), it's clear you favor quite a bit of it and thus applying the labels to you is accurate and truthful...again, despite your protestations to the contrary.
When you can admit that Trump is a thug, that the convicted Stone is a thug, that Derek Chauvin is in jail, convicted and senteced for decades, and is a thug... then you'll demonstrate that you don't use it in a racist way.
So far, you reserve it for black people. Innocent black people. Because you are a racist.
Marshal, in a now deleted comment for all the typical reasons...
Worse, like feo, you lie when you refer to Taylor as a murder victim. You do so intentionally, which is common for you and feo...
She was KILLED in her bedroom. She was INNOCENT of any crimes. The police ILLEGALLY bust into her apartment under false grounds and in the end, shot her dead.
While no one was convicted of the crime, "murder," that is a murder by any rational understanding. But I'm not hung up on the word. She was a completely innocent person who was killed by the police. Whether or not anyone is convicted of murder (which is mainly due to racist, oppressive systems that result in more black and poor people being killed within "the system" - racist by definition and reality), she was an innocent person wrongly killed by the police.
Likewise, her boyfriend who YOU attacked in a racist, stupidly false manner, was innocent of any crimes other than being a victim of the same system that resulted in the murder/killing of Ms Taylor.
It is your white privilege and blindness to systemic racism that keeps you from seeing this, but you won't defend this killing of an innocent person on my blog. In a better system more free from racism and oppression, someone would go to jail for murder for killing an entirely innocent person for no legitimate reason.
And for those not blind to the very real history of racism and the oppression and systemic oppression of black people in our nation's real history, we know that black men and women have regularly been attacked and demonized as being "dangerous" and a "threat," as "thugs" and "bad guys" and villains..." people to be wary of. And if such a threatening thug approaches you in a way that makes poor little white people uncomfortable, under our system of "stand your ground" type murder justifications, people can and have, in the real world, killed black people for the false non-crime of being a "threatening, thug-like" black person, as so many white people have been conditioned to in our real world history.
Hell, even this week, the coward, Rand Paul, refused to debate (refused to debate!!!) his Senatorial opponent in part because white Paul made the stupidly false and racist claim that Charles Booker was threatening and violent. First of all, the damned cowardly GALL of an elected politician just refusing to debate his political opponent is demonstrative of how very shallow and intellectually bankrupt the modern GOP has become. Who the FUCK does Paul think he is to blow off a debate. Coward! And then, to ATTACK his opponent as violent (again, appealing to racist dog whistles that people like you hear loud and clear) is just another real world example of the modern GOP's wholesale acceptance of racism and racist tools.
Yes, in our real world with our real world history, "thug" used in this manner is a racist term.
Hell, have you even admitted yet that you wrongly characterized Ms Taylor's boyfriend in such a manner? Have you apologized for that?
Not here. Not on my blog.
Recognize your racist words and stupidly false attacks. Apologize for them. Repent and turn around.
Save your soul.
Marshal, in a now deleted comment for all the typical reasons, said...
liars like you and feo won't allow that grace to the cops, either those who returned fire after Walker fired first
"after Walker fired first..." You FAIL to recognize the reality that Walker - an innocent man preparing for sleep at his innocent girlfriend's house - "fired first" when an unknown group of people BROKE DOWN their damned door, rushing into their apartment for reasons unknown.
The VERY REASON that so many black people are killed by white people in our system is because one can respond with deadly violence in our system if they feel their lives are in danger. It's the very reason that no police officers were charged in this killing of an innocent person. Our system says, "IF you feel your life is threatened, THEN you can kill the person that YOU SAY made you feel threatened."
From the BBC:
"Kenneth Walker had claimed he thought intruders were breaking-in when police raided his home in Kentucky last year."
It's the reason that 18 year old kid, Rittenhouse, could get away with shooting a man dead with no charges against him.
It's the reason that racist white guys TRIED to use to justify killing the black jogger - say his name, Ahmaud Arbery - but fortunately failed in their attempt.
But over and over, black men, women and others are killed for "being a threat" and these cops and other white people very often get away with it.
And I'd say that probably the ONLY reason that Mr Arbery's murderers didn't get away with it was precisely because the attention brought by the peaceful protests of the last few years that you routinely demonize, attack and - guess what!? - describe regularly as violent and dangerous. Falling into the same predictable racist routine that has been common throughout our nation's history.
Here's a chance for you to comment and likely have it remain, Marshal: Can you simply admit the very real reality that throughout our nation's history, black people have been marginalized, demonized (sometimes literally), attacked and painted as a violent threat - a threat to our safety, to our women, to our children, to our homes? That they've been portrayed this way by politicians of all major parties in our nation's history, by the media throughout our history, in our movies and television throughout our modern history and by right wing media still today?
This is no stretch. I'm just asking if you can acknowledge the reality of the demonization of black people that has really happened throughout our nation's history?
I mean, who knows? Perhaps you're just another privileged white man who has been able to choose to remain ignorant of these attacks and oppressions throughout our history. If so, just say so. Admitting ignorance is no shame. Choosing to remain ignorant, that's the shame. And it's a threat to historically demonized and oppressed people.
Some other fact-verification you can answer and have remain. Do you recognize the reality that:
I. Mr Walker legally owned his gun.
II. Mr Walker had no criminal background.
III. That police wrongfully gained a warrant to visit the home.
IV. That at 12:40 in the morning while they were half-sleeping watching a movie in bed, there was loud scary-sounding knocking and eventually the door was BUST DOWN and several unknown men in plain clothes who Mr Walker says didn't identify themselves.
V. (And, as an aside: the police say they did identify themselves and other reports are not proven - and this is not terribly critical... the innocent people who were attacked - and Ms Taylor killed - were half asleep watching a movie... is it possible that the police didn't identify themselves? Yes. Is it possible that they did identify themselves and Mr Walker and Ms Taylor didn't hear or understand that? YES. Is it likely that Mr Walker truly thought the six unknown, armed men who were busting down the door in the middle of the night in the home of these innocent people were actually police and he chose to shoot at many armed police officers? Get serious. Mr Walker says he didn't hear and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. You certainly can't prove it.)
Can you acknowledge this set of objective facts?
Marshal FINALLY answered a question:
Socialism: Socialism is a form of government in which most forms of property, including at least the major means of production and natural resources, are owned or controlled by the state.
But then, I do not support government owning most forms of property.
I do not support the government owning the major means of production and natural resources.
By YOUR definition, then, I'm literally not a socialist.
You try to ignore that I don't fit YOUR definition (in this case, the actual definition) of socialism by saying...
All three apply well to those like you, despite your insistence you favor capitalism and free markets. When looking at the essential elements of any of the three words (given they are all pretty much just different by degrees), it's clear you favor quite a bit of it
But what does that MEAN?
I do not support gov't owning all property,
I do support the notion of privately owned property,
I don't support the gov't owning the means of production.
Thus, your claim that I'm a socialist are, BY YOUR DEFINITION, false.
It's clear that I favor quite a bit of it? WHICH bits?
Do you see how crazily irrational and false this claim and approach are? You cite the actual definition and there are no "bits" that I agree with, and yet, you then say there are many "bits" I agree with. WHICH "bits..."?
I favor some reasonable regulation of businesses, but this does not make one a socialist. YOU hopefully favor some reasonable regulation of businesses. Presumably, you don't want the farmer dumping toxic shit into your well water/water source. You support having rules against that. I do, too.
I suspect that we both favor some regulations and I favor more/different regulations than you do (for reasons of human rights, liberty and justice) and you want to falsely call that socialism, because it's an attack term used by lazy, stupid people to try to demonize their fellow citizens. But that's not socialism. It's just not.
Just admit it and move on. Be more accurate in your use of words and don't ignore the reality of oppression and demonization so often used by conservatives in our real history.
When you can’t point to anything backing up your claims, Marshal, it’s just bullshit.
Marshal responded with more vulgarities and entirely empty and unsupported stupidly false claims. It was deleted.
You can answer questions, Marshal, and admit your mistakes and grow as a person, or go away. Against all the evidence, I believe in your ability to grow and be better. Be your best self.
To get to at least one of your questions/points earlier, Feodor, I don't know, Marshal, but I know people like him. To some degree, I WAS like him. So, yes, I believe his problems of racist and sexist and homophobic comments and attitudes can come from a place of ignorance. It may be, as with me, a place of ignorance that was to some degree chosen which I was able to do because of my white privilege, but ignorance certainly explains why people like Marshal hold the views they do.
I don't tend to think that, to paraphrase Mary Wollstonecraft (sp?), most of these people are choosing evil/wrong. They are (I was) pursuing the good they think (I thought) they should and are blinded to the harm their attitudes and words can bring.
This is why I don't see much value in berating or overly harsh language in trying to communicate... and at the same time, I know the immigrants, LGBTQ, people of color, folks with disabilities, the poor and other historically oppressed groups/people need to see us being their allies, so I think it's a balancing act. I also don't know that there is any magic bullet or any one answer.
Once I've spent time talking with a Marshal, Craig, etc, I tend to use harsh words about their specific attitudes or words - calling racist language racist, for instance - without making assumptions about them as people, because I don't see what's gained in that.
Out of time, but there's some of my thoughts on the topic.
Marshal did not answer questions put to him, instead, doubling down on his false claims and not answering questions and abusive bigotry. It's been deleted. Within his comment, he said...
I don't "reserve" the word "thug" for black people and never for innocent people of any race, sex or ethnicity. You only need to believe I do.
You called Mr Walker a thug, in spite of no criminal history and that he merely responded in self-defense of unknown people breaking into his home in the middle of the night. He was innocent, and just defending himself. You, in your bigotry and racism, called him a thug while at the same time give the benefit of the doubt to the police who executed his innocent girlfriend as she was innocently at home, in the middle of the night, based upon a criminally false search warrant. You refuse to apologize for or even acknowledge your racist accusations.
Shame on you. Be a better person, Marshal. You won't defend the killing of innocent black people here. Shame.
"Some other fact-verification you can answer and have remain. Do you recognize the reality that:"
Because you lie about my position, you ask me to repeat myself and in doing so you ignore facts I've presented in articles providing them. Such is the way of the fake Louisville Christian.
"I. Mr Walker legally owned his gun."
Never in dispute and I've never suggested he didn't. Rather, I totally and completely acknowledged this fact. You lie by bringing it up.
"II. Mr Walker had no criminal background."
I've found nothing which suggests he has a criminal record. That's not the same as not having a criminal background. I provided an article which attests to his own words describing criminal behavior in the manner of drug dealing. That's a criminal background in anyone's book who isn't a fake Christian defending the myth of racist cops targeting innocent black people. Thus, you suggest I'm saying something not true, when you only need the lie to be true in order to demonize me.
"III. That police wrongfully gained a warrant to visit the home."
This USA Today article, not exactly a known racist periodical, provides info, none of which suggests the actions of the cops were illegal. Thus, "wrongfully" isn't the same thing and doesn't make Taylor's death a murder, even if wrongful. So "wrongfully" is a misleading word to use and being a liar, it serves your narrative. A better, more accurate and honest term, based on all available evidence, would be "mistakenly". If you don't agree, it's only because you can't handle the truth.
"IV. That at 12:40 in the morning while they were half-sleeping watching a movie in bed, there was loud scary-sounding knocking and eventually the door was BUST DOWN and several unknown men in plain clothes who Mr Walker says didn't identify themselves."
This can't be verified as you intentionally choose to describe it. Neither were found in bed upon entry to the apartment. Indeed, Walker's testimony suggests they were calling out to learn who was pounding on the door. This, too, was presented in the linked article found in an earlier comment you deleted rather than studied and proved false, because you insist upon total agreement with your race-hustling narrative rather than seek facts.
I would ask you to explain upon what basis we can know Walker and Taylor were justified in fearing for their lives by anyone pounding on their door. Why would they suspect they were in any danger? It has been said (though I don't have any links at present to back it up) Walker thought it might be Glover. Why would that compel weaponry in response? You need to answer these questions if you want to insist upon the total innocence of Walker and Taylor. It would seem to me that at some point, a warning by Walker that he was armed was in order. Do you know that he gave such a warning to those pounding on the door? It's how I would have responded before choosing to fire my weapon. Maybe Walker did so, but I've seen nothing which suggests it, which raises legit questions...even if those questions don't suggest willful wrongdoing on Walker's part. See? This how one reasons intelligently. Take notes.
"V. (And, as an aside:...etc"
We can't know ANY of the facts, but can only go by what was reported by all involved. The facts are that we the people are provided two conflicting narratives and you want to insist racism and wrongdoing by law enforcement, while I want to know actual facts not in evidence. I can fully and easily accept truth, but you don't provide any which you don't slant toward your preferred narrative. So I've acknowledged and accepted what limited info compels me to acknowledge and accept and nothing more. That's not good enough for you because you need to have your narrative accepted without question. How is that "embracing grace" on your part? How is that "good faith" discourse on your part? It is neither. It's white-guilt racism on your part and nothing better.
Now pull up your panties and get to deleting. It's what you do when bested.
October 6, 2022 at 5:11 PM
This comment is pure lies and fantasy, not at all reflective of you or things you say and do. No one is more guilty than you and your troll of making "stupidly false claims" and unsupported allegations about others. And your constant lie of having been a conservative...given you've absolutely no understanding of the term...indicts you yet again.
Among your egregious actions is alleging my words are ever racist without proving at all they are. You simply assert it because you can't get around the truth of my words. You don't even try. Far easier to accuse me of racism than to prove I am an actual racist. In the meantime, I've shown my opinions of you are accurate and your response is to delete me on the pretense "stupidly false claims"...a childish and cowardly response.
AS such, you make nothing but assumptions and false allegations about better people all the time, while doing nothing to address the bad behaviors of anyone on your side of the divide.
Marshal...
"This can't be verified as you intentionally choose to describe it. Neither were found in bed upon entry to the apartment. Indeed, Walker's testimony suggests they were calling out to learn who was pounding on the door."
There is precisely ONE LIVING HUMAN BEING who was in the apartment (her place, I merely misspoke when I referred to "his" home... I just meant the place where he was with his girlfriend) when the police wrongfully broke in and this is HIS testimony. We COULD ask the innocent Breonna Taylor, but wait, she's dead because the cops killed her in the middle of the night in an invasion of her privacy. So, the one living victim of this assault has testified as to what happened and he was there and you have no reason to suggest he's making the story up. Certainly not because he is, as you put it in racist terminology, a "t***."
And I merely meant that they were, according to the testimony of the surviving victim, in bed in the middle of the night, half asleep, when the banging began. By the time the door was BUST open into this innocent couple's home with unknown men with guns rushing in, Mr Walker used his legally-owned gun (I didn't say you said he didn't own it legally, just making clear the facts of the case to preclude any such suggestions should they arise) to legally defend himself from unknown intruders bearing arms.
I GET that you want to give the cops and the system (with its known history of systemic racism in the real world - policies which disproportionately and unjustly harm people of color) the benefit of the doubt and you want to call this innocent man and woman (now killed by the cops) "t***s" and NOT give them the benefit of the doubt. But the known facts and the testimony by the survivor and the people who wrongly killed an entirely innocent woman. But the point is, you have no reason to not give the actual victims of this killing and unjust invasion the benefit of the doubt. And certainly no non-racist reasons for calling the survivor of this home invasion racist names.
And once again, that you don't acknowledge the reality of the historic racism in painting black people and black men in particular as "violent" and other such terms which INEVITABLY leads to these outcomes, historically and factually speaking, doesn't mean you shouldn't learn about it and repent of that ignorance.
And see? When you answer questions relatively directly and without the vulgarities and abusive language, your comments remain. That I have some standards that you don't like doesn't mean I have any intellectually rational reasons to let you just spew any false claims, unsupported claims or abusive vulgarities. Get over yourself.
Marshal...
"Among your egregious actions is alleging my words are ever racist without proving at all they are. You don't even try. Far easier to accuse me of racism than to prove I am an actual racist."
I repeat: You called Mr Walker a thug and that has racist connotations. Again, if you used it for actual thugs like the criminal abusers white men in the GOP, it would be more believable. But Trump can boast and laugh about sexual assault and be charged with sexual harassment/assault/rape dozens of times and otherwise behave in criminally shifty and elitist behavior for his entire life and you and your type never refer to him as a thug. It's a term you reserve for poor folks who are typically black.
When is the last time you referred to ANY white man as a thug?
That word and others like them HAVE historically and in reality been used regularly demonize black men. Now, I give you SOME benefit of the doubt and don't call you a racist for using it. But I am noting that it has factually been used as a racist dog whistle and note the reality that Rand Paul, my damned senator, is using that sort of language here and now. This is not ONLY a historic reality, it is a current reality.
The fact that you don't accept that reality does not change that reality.
Don't know what to tell you. Feodor and I HAVE answered your question about why those type of words are in reality, historically racist. That you ignore the answer is not the same as us not providing support for the claims.
It's not like this historical reality is some deep dark secret unknown to only a few. If you listen to actual black people, they will attest to you this reality. If you look at the research, it's documented.
Some examples in my next comment.
"The synonymy of Blackness with criminality is not a new phenomenon in America. Documented historical accounts have shown how myths, stereotypes, and racist ideologies led to discriminatory policies and court rulings that fueled racial violence in a post-Reconstruction era and has culminated in the exponential increase of Black male incarceration today.
Misconceptions and prejudices manufactured and disseminated through various channels such as the media included references to a “brute” image of Black males. In the 21st century, this negative imagery of Black males has frequently utilized the negative connotation of the terminology “thug.” In recent years, law enforcement agencies have unreasonably used deadly force on Black males allegedly considered to be “suspects” or “persons of interest.” The exploitation of these often-targeted victims' criminal records, physical appearances, or misperceived attributes has been used to justify their unlawful deaths."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5004736/
"The brute caricature portrays black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal -- deserving punishment, maybe death. This brute is a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace. Black brutes are depicted as hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially white women..."
https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/brute/homepage.htm
There's more and more and more.
https://blackfeminisms.com/brute-thug/
Listen to black voices. Listen to the experts. Just use your common sense.
Repent.
As Marshal belatedly rises a few feet above his open racist language in some accidental veer toward the distant light way up above him, he still writes solidly in the middle of his de facto racist context.
When did he first use the word, "thug"?
In response to making clear his and Craig's racist hate spewed at Colin Kaepernick. They cannot stand morally strong black men speaking out... even when they are silent and somber and reverently - and UNOBSTRUCTIVELY - symbolizing reistance to impromptu state executions.
I compared their response to a man who has sacrificed his career in the NFL to a Hall of Fame quarterback who is in serious federal crime jeapordy because of the inferences of his texts to admitted criminal fraud perpetrators who stole taxpayer emergency money and gave to his cherished causes and to relieve his own investment debt.
Perhaps Mr Favre is innocent. Ms Taylor who WAS innocent despite every twisting, vile way Marshal wants to smear he... was murdered.
According to Marshal's moral standards doled out without remorse to a murdered black women in which light she deserves her fate according to his writing... Mr Favre should be jailed for the remainder of his life for - as Marshal blames Ms Taylor - associating with criminals.
This stink doesn't wash off unless Marshal admits and repents and of his basic basely racist worldview.
And that goes for Craig, too,
Much less how both of them actually think that they agree with one iota of Dr King's vision.
They wash themselves in blood and call themselves clean.
They don't realize that they are Baal worshipers.
Yes, you're not mistaken about at least most of that.
Marshal complained about Mr Walker's connection to drugs (at least recognizing that he has no criminal guilt established). Here's what I could find about any connection to drugs, from NBC who was reporting how Louisville police were trying to dig up dirt on Walker to shift blame to him for their killing of Breonna Taylor:
"According to the memo, internal affairs officers also found text messages indicating that Walker was selling marijuana and pills from October 2019 through March, according to the memo. The memo quoted a message from Walker's phone dated March 6, a week before Taylor was killed, that
seemed to say
Walker had sold "11 pills" for $6 apiece in a restaurant parking lot.
The memo quotes a text exchange in February about Walker's
sale of marijuana for "$25 for a half quarter.""
For this PERHAPS behavior of MAYBE PERHAPS selling some minor amount of marijuana MAYBE and MAYBE "some" pills, Marshal feels using the historically racist slur of calling this gentleman a "thug."
$25 worth of marijuana.
MAYBE.
This points to the very problem of systemic racism that has been factually historically a part of the oppression of black people. First of all, even though white people and POC use and sell marijuana at equivalent rates, POC are arrested (and make no mistake - DISENFRANCHISED, at least for a time - at a much higher rate.
White people who use and even sell minor amounts of marijuana are seen as "just kids sowing their wild oats" or maybe, "The goofy stoner set, with their dreds and lack of ambition." But black people who wear hoodies and sell or use minor amounts of marijuana? Dangerous thugs, a threat to our nation and children and women.
Black people are disenfranchised and imprisoned and demonized as a threat and a menace, historically and to today. Which leads to further imprisonment, greater disenfranchisement of the black community and greater demonizations and for people like Marshal, "justification" in calling them thugs, which just continues the cycle of systemic racism in our justice system and our electoral process and society at large.
It's observably historic and it continues. Marshal, you are just coming from a place of white privilege where you perhaps truly are ignorant of this reality. But your ignorance is not justification for acceptance. You must educate yourself, learn more, be better. And YES, it is white privilege for you to just be able to ignore this real world threat to people of color. Black mothers and fathers, black people don't have that privilege to ignore these constant "thug" demonizations because it literally threatens them and their loved ones. THAT is what we mean by white privilege.
Be better. Read more. Listen to black voices, and not just the ones that will tell you what you already believe. Listen to the majority of black voices.
October 7, 2022 at 6:33 AM
Here you go lying again:
"There is precisely ONE LIVING HUMAN BEING who was in the apartment (her place, I merely misspoke when I referred to "his" home... I just meant the place where he was with his girlfriend) when the police wrongfully broke in and this is HIS testimony."
You choose to insist without personal knowledge or official verification that Walker's version of events are the most accurate. Note here I'm not saying "most honest", but simply most accurate, so please don't be a race-baiter and suggest I'm accusing him of lying.
"We COULD ask the innocent Breonna Taylor, but wait, she's dead because the cops killed her in the middle of the night in an invasion of her privacy."
Setting aside your unjustified condescension, there's no "invasion of privacy" during a lawful entry by law enforcement with a warrant. So that's another intentional lie on your part. Had I chose to keep track, I would have lost count of all your lies by now.
"So, the one living victim of this assault has testified as to what happened and he was there and you have no reason to suggest he's making the story up. Certainly not because he is, as you put it in racist terminology, a "t***.""
More lies. I clarified my use of the term "thug", which you laughingly now assert is too "racist" to actually spell out. Such fake outrage is just another lie on your part. What's more, as I stated above, I do not suggest he's making up anything, but only that we can't be certain he's providing the most accurate account possible. There are numerous reasons why that might be the case, but you don't care because you're a racist with no real concern for what happened on that night beyond exploiting it to to demean better people. Because you're a liar.
"And I merely meant that they were, according to the testimony of the surviving victim, in bed in the middle of the night, half asleep, when the banging began."
That's fine, but that isn't the same as saying they...or she...was shot in their bed, which you've done.
"By the time the door was BUST open into this innocent couple's home with unknown men with guns rushing in, Mr Walker used his legally-owned gun (I didn't say you said he didn't own it legally, just making clear the facts of the case to preclude any such suggestions should they arise) to legally defend himself from unknown intruders bearing arms."
There's no need or justification for presuming I might suggest ANYTHING which isn't true, as I haven't thus far. In any way. At all. Ever. So stop lying.
"I GET that you want to give the cops and the system (with its known history of systemic racism in the real world - policies which disproportionately and unjustly harm people of color) the benefit of the doubt"
EVERYONE should "want" to give law enforcement...and anyone else, for that matter...the benefit of the doubt, particularly when details aren't or can't be known. We actual Christians and law-abiding Americans refer to that as "innocent until proven guilty". It's kind of a basic concept of justice in the American judicial system.
"...and you want to call this innocent man and woman (now killed by the cops) "t***s" and NOT give them the benefit of the doubt."
This is just another lie. I won't belabor the clarification I've made more than once and will just have to deal with the fact that you're willing and eager to lie about me as often as you feel so compelled. As to their character, I merely insisted neither can rightly be called "innocent" except as far as giving illegitimate reason to have cops fire upon them. Indeed, far more than you or your boy, I've been far more truthful, accurate and a stickler for the facts of the case. In the meantime, you assholes have been busy trying to paint me as a racist without just cause.
"But the known facts and the testimony by the survivor and the people who wrongly killed an entirely innocent woman. But the point is, you have no reason to not give the actual victims of this killing and unjust invasion the benefit of the doubt."
Once again, I know you want to portray me as not giving Walker and Taylor any benefit of doubt, but I clearly have, including comments you both deleted and spared from deletion. You might want to go back and delete all the comments of mine still posted which clearly prove this point so that you can more easily lie about me.
"And certainly no non-racist reasons for calling the survivor of this home invasion racist names."
The lies never stop with you.
"And once again, that you don't acknowledge the reality of the historic racism..."
I don't need to acknowledge a history which has no bearing on the topic on the table, which is the lie that there's a real threat of racist cops targeting innocent black dudes, and worse, citing cases where the black dudes are thugs like George Floyd, Michael Brown, etc. to make that false case.
...in painting black people and black men in particular as "violent" and other such terms which INEVITABLY leads to these outcomes, historically and factually speaking, doesn't mean you shouldn't learn about it and repent of that ignorance."
There's no "racism" in "painting" violent black men as violent, criminal and other such terms which accurately describe the character of those held up by assholes like Kaepernick as examples of innocent victims of racist cops. It's a lie which serves no one in the black community, including the actual thugs you lefty morons defend as angelic.
And while you like to pretend I ignore "historic racism", you ignore current events and the reality of criminality for which we've seen an extreme number of examples, as well as rising crime rates of all kinds from the very people who defend. How sad for good people of the black community to have to see and experience assholes giving them a bad name, and then to hear white morons defending those very assholes. God help them.
"And see? When you answer questions relatively directly and without the vulgarities and abusive language, your comments remain. That I have some standards that you don't like doesn't mean I have any intellectually rational reasons to let you just spew any false claims, unsupported claims or abusive vulgarities. Get over yourself."
I ALWAYS answer questions directly to the degree the question isn't loaded with intent to force an answer which isn't true but only in alliance with your lies. My use of vulgarities is a far more justified response to your petulant and despotic behavior as a blog host than any vulgarity, profanity, obscenity and blasphemy you use while pretending you have legit justification.
Your "standards" are fluid and always flowing toward your profit. They aren't fixed and anything you follow when it doesn't serve you to do so. You've made more false claims about me and the case on the table than you've ever proven I've made and you supported none of it.
Get over yourself and stop lying. There's no need for it except to prevent drifting toward truth.
Everything Marshal denies Mr Walker he eagerly grants Mr Favre.
The death sentence he glibly shrugs off for the innocent Ms Taylor contrasts with the hands off benevolence toward the so far innocent Mr Favre.
That he cannot engage honestly with my pointing out his instinctual reactions infers that he, too, at some repressed layer of conscience understands his own racist makeup. A layer of conscience he kills off daily. He is, as St Paul would say, a slave to the hate of, in, and around his fleshly life.
"The fact that you don't accept that reality does not change that reality."
Again you make unfounded assertions and insist I regard it as reality, while you disregard ACTUAL reality in the case of Kaepernick's lies about racist cops. When will we see some documentation?
"Don't know what to tell you. Feodor and I HAVE answered your question about why those type of words are in reality, historically racist."
No you haven't. Not even close. You just assert such things as if it is provable. When will we see support for your stupidly false lies?
"That you ignore the answer is not the same as us not providing support for the claims."
What "support"? I don't ignore your non-answers. I'm pretty sure I've called bullshit on your entire premise. It stands as such until you provide the level of support you demand from me. Deleting me doesn't change that.
"It's not like this historical reality is some deep dark secret unknown to only a few."
Nor does it have any bearing whatsoever on the realities of today. You only wish it did because it means you don't have to address the real issues.
"If you listen to actual black people, they will attest to you this reality."
That doesn't work because you don't have actual evidence simply because black people you choose relate the same myth.
"If you look at the research, it's documented."
I have, and it's not. What IS documented is that cops respond according to the crimes committed and the threat levels of those in their custody or justly detained. It's more likely a black cop will shoot a black suspect than will a white cop. It's far more likely a black person will be shot dead by a black person. It's far more likely a white person will be mugged, car jacked, raped and/or murdered by a black person. A small percentage of the 13% of Americans who are black are responsible for an oversized share of all violent crime in America and make up a greater percentage of the prison population than the entire percentage of Americans who are black population.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/myth-racist-criminal-justice-system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQW6GjKHNuM
https://www.encounterbooks.com/features/myth-systemic-police-racism/
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=7620793541294212
https://www.therx.com/threads/the-myth-of-the-racist-cop-four-studies-out-this-year-show-that-if-police-are-biased-it%E2%80%99s-in-favor-of-blacks.1067598/
This last is another by Heather McDonald, who's done yoeman's work on the subject of the myth of racist cops targeting innocent black dudes. But it contains links to studies other than her own work. So this is what actual documentation and supporting evidence looks like. You don't bring anything like this to any debate, but only that which more "professionally" makes the same assertions as do you and your boy.
"Some examples in my next comment." Which I've no doubt are more than merely mitigated by the links I've provided above. We'll see.
OK. I've gotten through the first of your links from October 7, 2022 at 6:58 AM. It was long and unlike you, I read entire links with scant few exceptions. This one compelled me to trash it about half-way through, but I soldiered on in order to provide for me the standing on which to comment. The problem, though, is are you willing to engage like a man regarding the article. I'm not going to read another from that date without some assurances you won't default to your typical deletion behavior based on bullshit reasons. What's more, if the other links are as crappy as this first one, I'll be pretty pissed that time of my life was wasted on more "professional" lies...merely "professional" examples of the same poorly supported or unsupported pablum.
So what's it going to be? Are you going to man up, or are we through here with you continuing to perpetuate lies and false accusations?
I considered going back to respond to your boy, but he's a more egregious liar than you, more insulting in his fantasies about who and what I am and basically just a punk...I'd say "thug", but I don't think he's tough enough for that.
In the meantime, I do want to address a question you had, as stupid and unnecessary as it was. It came upon me when reading your link and came to that part regarding Tamir Rice. According to the LA Times, prosecutors stated: "Tamir was big for his age---f-foot-7 and 175 pounds, with a men's XL jacket and size-36 pants---and could have easily passed for someone much older". I recalled this as I read again about Rice, and then I remembered something which I now will relate. Call it my "autoethnographic" response.
About 25 years ago or so, a long-time friend of mine was in a relationship with a woman with two boys. The older was no more than 13 and the younger a couple years behind. The older boy was huge for his age...almost as tall as I am at 6'1", but heavier for sure. This guy was most definitely a thug and I recall referring to him in this manner after social services took the boys away after the thug had a verbal altercation with my buddy. The kid had been leaning on other kids for their lunch money. No shit. That actually happens! He was reprimanded by the principle and was further reprimanded by his mother and my friend. The conversation got heated because the kid was a smartass and my friend pounded his fist atop a dresser in the kid's room. Being a cheap piece of furniture, it broke with a piece of it flying and hitting the kid in the face, leaving a noticeable mark. When he went to school the next day, he played it up when he was questioned by his teacher about the "injury" and social services came and took the kids until it could be straightened out.
Make no mistake. The kid...even at his age...was not only a thug, but liked being one. He abused other kids, including his little brother. Not the worst case of such behavior I've ever seen, but a bully nonetheless. "Thug" was more than appropriate to describe the kid and I wonder what became of him. Hopefully he's repented. And yes, he's a white kid. Despite your crappy article, "thug" is not "racist" in any way regardless of how many black criminal types are so labeled. Keep in mind, we're talking about black people. I don't regard them all as thugs and never did. Indeed, I've personally known far more white thugs in my long life. I've called them far worse than that. It's such a bullshit angle for even racists like you to play.
Thank god there are things of actual intelligence and profound curiosity that raise us up as human beings worthy of glory. Rather than gutter lives like Marshal that depend upon gutter thought, or, what he, mimicking like a trick pony, calls autoethnograpy.
___
Monday a grand jury in Cleveland declined to bring criminal charges against the two police officers who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice last November. Cuyahoga County District Attorney Tim McGinty has already drawn sharp criticism from Rice's family and on social media for his handling of the case.
Prosecutors said "Tamir was big for his age - 5-foot-7 and 175 pounds, with a men's XL jacket and size-36 pants - and could have easily passed for someone much older," according to the Los Angeles Times. They cited "unnamed associates" of the 12-year-old who said Tamir was known to pull his toy gun out "like a robber." The language echoes statements given by the responding police officers, who said they believed the boy was much older than 12.
To some social science researchers, these characterizations would not come as a surprise. Rice is black. And research published last year by the American Psychological Association found "evidence that black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their white same-age peers." In other words, people tend to think of black boys as bigger and older than they actually are.
In one experiment, a group of 60 police officers from a large urban police force were asked to assess the age of white, black and Latino children based on photographs. The officers were randomly assigned to be told that the children in the photographs were accused of either a misdemeanor or felony charge. The officers overestimate the age of black felony-suspected children by close to five years, but they actually underestimated the age of white felony-suspected children by nearly a year.
Particularly relevant to the Tamir Rice case: "Black 13-year-olds were miscategorized as adults by police officers (average age error 4.59 years)."
Similar experiments involving 169 mostly white students found that "participants began to think of black children as significantly less innocent than other children at every age group, beginning at the age of 10." These experiments also showed that respondents were more likely to see the black children as "culpable" of a hypothetical felony compared with white and Latino children.
This research comports with other research done in the mid-2000s, which confronted police officers and civilians with photos of black and white armed and unarmed people, and asked them to press a "shoot" or "don't shoot" button for each image. Cops and civilians were more likely to press "shoot" for black images overall, but they were slower to press "don't shoot" for unarmed black images, and quicker to press "shoot" when an image showed an armed black man.
The APA researchers sum up their findings this way: "Our findings suggest that, although most children are allowed to be innocent until adulthood, black children may be perceived as innocent only until deemed suspicious." The Tamir Rice case illustrates that for some black children, those biases can play out with deadly consequences in just a fraction of a second.
Marshal thinks his under-educated “autoethnography” just has to be more rational than actual scientific research.
He is the raging, self-destructive, manic and fake fear that is gripping and trying to choke the United States.
"OK. I've gotten through the first of your links from October 7, 2022 at 6:58 AM. It was long and unlike you, I read entire links with scant few exceptions. This one compelled me to trash it about half-way through, but I soldiered on in order to provide for me the standing on which to comment. The problem, though, is are you willing to engage like a man regarding the article"
Still awaiting a response to this.
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